Lord of The Rings Tour in Wellington

Daily Life

So many months uploading pictures on this blog and we've just realised we haven't shown any from...Hooooome

Our garden=bbq place

Palmerston North

Sunset at Himatangi beach

Taranaki

This is Mount Taranaki (or Mount Egmont), 2,518m high, an active volcano in the West coast of the North Island. It's so much like Mount Fuji that some of the scenes for The Last Samurai were filmed here.Some scientists from Massey University believe a large eruption here is overdue (scaaary)

Waitomo Caves

Bay of Islands

Down the Te Paki dunes

Christmas in Northland

Cape Reinga

Surfing at Rarewa beach

The Kauri Forest

Raglan

A road trip to Northland in Summer? A surf-addict is driving?...
yes, you guessed right, the first stop on our first kiwi Christmas road trip to Northland was...
Raglan.

For those of you who might not know, Raglan is the number one must-see for New Zeland surfers. If Phil was the one writing this, he would tell you about the famous breaks, the swell, the longest left hand ride in the world and why this spot is so cool... I can only tell you that the beaches we went to (with black sand, by the way) were packed with surfers of all levels who seemed to be having the best time ever!! The landscapes on the coast were beautiful, with lots of Pohutukawa trees in bloom, and the town and people looked very laid back, living in a "peace-and-love" atmosphere that I had not seen before (that's the thing with new Zealand, just when you thought you couldn't find a more relaxing place, you find yourself in towns like this... :-D). It was hard to leave, really.

Oh! and I obviously got overexcited when I saw this bar in the centre of town:

Zaragoza, in Raglan!!
sadly I couldn't find out the why, where, how and so on...I'll try to, next time.

Pohutukawa-New Zealand Christmas tree