The First Days

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Kaia

We started our first day with a breakfast of tea and crumpets. Yum! We headed out for a kayak tour in the Roukaka Estuary. There were a lot of interesting shells that we wouldn't see at home. I collected a few to take back with us. We had a picnic and I tried salmon and cream cheese on crackers and we had fresh pears, passion fruit and feijoa. It is fun to try new fruits that we don't have at home. Passion fruit is my favorite.

We spent the afternoon at the beach. It is much bigger than beaches I've been to in the U.S. and there are hardly any people there. On a busy day there are only about 20 people there to share the WHOLE beach! My favorite activity so far was playing with our friend Anaka on the beach, hunting for shells and jumping waves. We ended our day with a nice meal of fish and chips which we made into fish tacos.



Quinn

We left the home at 11:30 on Friday the 29, traveled for about 26 hours, and arrived in Auckland, New Zealand at 7:30 on Sunday the 31. We crossed the international date line and so are currently 16 hours different from U.S. central time. When we arrived in New Zealand, we were met by a climate much different then the one at home (a hot, sticky one). We were picked up by my dad's friend Nathan (Nate), who he knows from his younger days. We drove to his house and on the way we stopped at a hiking trail to take a break from the drive. It was like we had taken a step into another world. Everything, from the soil to the trees, were nothing like home. Nate is really knowledgeable about the nature of New Zealand, and gave us an informational commentary of our hike. After the hike we headed back on the road to the beach on the way to Nate's house. We were ill prepared, as we were dressed in the grubby shirt and sweatpants that we had been wearing for almost a day and a half straight, but we rolled up our pants and had fun, in spite of our filth. We had one more stop before we arrived at Nate's house. We stopped at a nature preserve called the Quarry Gardens. We met Nate's wife Tif, and his children Ezra and Anika. We explored around the gardens, but were interrupted by rain. We drove to Nate's house and my dad got his first taste of driving on the opposite side of the road. The windshield wiper and the turn signal sticks are switched around, so every turn we watched for the windshield wipers to go off. When we finally got to Nate's house Ezra, Anika, Kaia, and I went biking/scootering in the frond driveway. We got inside, ate dinner, took a shower, and I went straight to bed.

The next morning, we went to the Ruakaka estuary and got ready to go on a nature tour of the estuary. It was just us, and a guide that reminded me a lot of Crocodile Dundee. He was really awesome and told us about everything from the birds in the estuary, to Maori (native New Zealanders). We then came back to the beach on the estuary and ate a lunch of crackers, cream cheese, and canned fish with Nate and his kids. We finished lunch and decided to go to the beach, the same one that we had gone to the day before. Nate is an avid surfer and my dad and I wanted to learn. We got out onto the beach and just jumped right in (we may have had a little instruction). It was way harder than it looks in the movies, but it was fun just getting pushed by the waves, but by the end of the day, I could stand up and ride it. So far this has been the highlight of my trip, even though it has only been three days, or two. I would be just fine leaving now and have had the experience of a lifetime (though I would rather not leave).

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