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Published: April 3rd 2007
Orewa
View from Glenda's house in the evening ----No pictures yet everyone, computers are being horrible, I will upload them soon!---
Well after 11 years I finally made it back to the place where me and the rest of my Veira clan spent all our time in New Zealand. This was going to be a big part of the trip for me as I remembered so much about the time we spent there. For those of you who don't know I will quickly explain. When I was 8 year old my old man was singing over here in New Zealand and he brought me, my mum and two brothers with him. We spent two months living in Orewa in a beautiful house, only 5 houses down from the one I was in this visit.
So I was really looking forward to getting to Orewa and seeing if anything had actually changed. We have spent so much of my childhood talking about New Zealand and how amazing it was, and how we all wanted to go back - It was my turn to go back first.
We got the local bus service from Auckland ('MAXX') into Orewa, and it only took us 45 minutes to
Orewa
Our walk along Orewa beach on the first night get there. I was so engrossed with seeing Orewa and the surrounding again, that i missed our bus stop which meant we had to walk a good 35 minutes up a hill to get to Glenda O'conners house where we were staying. Glenda knew Mum and Dad when we were over here and has kept in contact with Frank, the guy who's house we were in (we are visiting him in Oz).
We got to Glenda's in the early afternoon and it was great to be there. She was so welcoming and we sat on the balcony talking for hours while watching the sunset over the estuary. That evening before dinner me and Andy took a walk down the estuary and all the way along Orewa beach. We didn't realise how far we had got until we looked at our watches and it was meant to be dinner...we pegged it back pretty fast in the dark.
That evening we met Glenda's son Jean who is a great guy who was also welcoming and just wanted us to have fun. He had been fishing earlier that day and had caught us fresh snapper (fish) for tea which was really
Orewa
Me and the lovely Glenda well cooked and tasted great. For the rest of the evening we just sat on the balcony having some beers and telling them all about our trip, it was a fun night.
The next morning before Andy woke up I decided to walk down the banks of the estuary and went and saw our old house. It seems exactly the same, but completely different at the same time. Seeing the house brought back so many different memories of my time 11 years before, everything started flooding back to me. It was so calm and peaceful I sat with my feet in the water for over half an hour.
After breakfast, Glenda drove us over to the Gulf Peninsula which was a beautiful part of Orewa full of marinas for the rich to put their boats. We then went straight on to play golf at Glenda's local club. It was a fun game and we all had our bad holes, it was fun to see the relaxed Kiwi style of golf though.
That afternoon I finally got to go inside the old house. Glenda's daughter now lives there and welcomed us in and showed me the changes
Orewa
The view from our old balcony....remember this mum? they have done. I remembered quite a bit, and from what i worked out that had changed the kitchen and the bathroom, apart from that it is the same as we left it. The balcony had the same stunning view it had 11 years ago. It was great to be in it again, as it has always felt like a home away from home.
The next day had to be our most exciting of Orewa by far. I was on the computer sending some emails and Jean walked in and threw me the keys to his Mitsubishi 4X4 Pickup truck!!! He said that he had checked the insurance and I was covered on the car. I was over the moon and didn't know what to say. The people who we had only known for two days trusted us enough with their truck, they were just so kind.
We worked out where we wanted to visit and I jumped into the drivers seat expecting an automatic gear box, but was shocked to see a manual. Andy hadn't driven a manual in a year or so, which meant it was up to me. I couldn't wait though and we
Orewa
Me driving like a trucker! got of straight away (after doing a 6-point turn to get out of their driveway).
We drove for quite a while and I started getting used to the gear box and engine, I was so happy to be driving this truck and it felt so good. We made our way towards a place called Leigh and Goat's Island. The problem was that it started raining....only a drizzle at first but after 3 minutes there was torrential rain and i couldn't see a thing, rather exciting though. After much fun and fast windscreen wipers we finally got to Goat Island, but the rain was so bad that after 3 minutes of being outside the car we were both completely soaked. Needless to say we were off driving towards Leigh no less than 2 minutes later.
We got to Leigh for lunch time and had the best fish and chips in the world. They had caught the snapper earlier that morning and cooked it only when you ordered it....not like seafare back at home! We finished off our driving with a visit to the Waiwera hot pools. I remembered these as a kid and they were just as fun as
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Me at the old house they used to be. There are lots of pools there and they are all different temperatures ranging from 32 degrees to the hottest of 48 degrees (that was HOT!). We had a great afternoon swimming, lounging and going down the fast slides....we havn't grown up at all on this trip!
On our last day in Orewa, we only had the morning. We got woken up early by Jean getting us out of bed, into some old clothes and pushing us into his van. We were going fishing!! He has a small speed boat so he drove us down to this quiet beach and we backed the boat into the sea. After setting everything up and getting everything out of the van we got in the boat and he tried starting the engine......after 20 minutes we knew something was wrong.....and after two different batteries we realised we wernt going anywhere.
Jean being a crazy Kiwi had the brilliant idea of jump-starting the engine with his truck. So he drove the truck (the one we drove the day before) into the sea, water pretty much up to the engine, and we pulled the boat close to it while he
Orewa
Another view...loverly tried to jump start it. Probably was not the best idea he's ever had, and it still didnt work - we didnt get electricuted either. So plan 3 was to go back home and get the battery out of his cement pump, so we did that.
After an hour of trying to get everything sorted we finally started the engine and got off. We didnt realise how fast this boat was and we were bumping over the waves at around 35 knotts!! We were loving it, and Jean was so crazy and loving it that he put me on the wheel. He also told me to put it at full throttle which was fun and we could hardly stand up, we were loving it!
Once he found a good spot around 20 minutes from the shore we put the ancor down and started getting all the fishing lines ready. We had four lines out and we started catching a lot of fish. We were only catching snapper as that is the main fish in that part of the sea. The one problem that we encountered was that the fish had to be over 27cm for you to keep
Orewa
Me in the truck! or they were still young fish. We kept on catching fish around 26cm, and they are really strict so we had to keep throwing them back in. But it was really fun and we were catching lots. At the end we had caught two good sized snapper fish both over 30cm. It was a great experience as me and Andy had never fished before, and being out in the sunshine and open NZ water - we loved it.
After the fishing we had to get back home, have a good long shower and pack our bags up as Jean was dropping us back to Auckland shortly. We said our goodbyes to Glenda (thanking her many times for everything) and then Jean drove us back to lovely ol Auckland. We were staying in the same place as before, but we both really didn't want to leave Orewa as we were loving it so much - but everything has to come to an end at some point.
We had something that evening to make us feel better though. That evening we went to go and see the Auckland Blues play the Cheetas at Eden Park in Auckland. It was
Orewa
Orewa beach on our drive a great match and the Blues thrashed the Cheetas, so we had much fun shouting and chearing. Our seats were brilliant and really close to the front....the best thing about it though was that the seats only cost us 5 pounds!! Score!
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Mum
non-member comment
What memories!
Oh wow! As I read this I am there! The picture of you sitting and dangling your feet in the estuary took me right back to that place 11 years ago. So many happy hours spent on that lovely springy grass next to those amazing trees and then dangling our feet in the water. You didnt feel like grabbing a surf board and trying some more grass surfing there?! Sooo glad that you are making the most of this trip. Love you. Mum x