Sunday, 7 August 2016

Lindsey's Visit: Part 2

Lance Again:

I took a few days off work when Lindsey came out to visit to take her around some of the cool areas of New Zealand.  First up was Bethell's beach and the sand dunes hike.  As before, we've done this one a couple of times and it is one of our favorites.  We had a great time on this one, although this was the first time we did the hike in the fall/winter and the stream portion of it that in the summer feel amazing, was a tad chilly and the vegetation was a little overgrown.  We were touch and go with Lindsey at the beginning and I thought we were reaching the point of no return, but she stuck it out and saw how incredible the area was when we pushed through the beginning.





As with everything that James and I do, it turned into a game of jumping around on the dunes.



 

I upped the anti a little bit and showed everyone how to jump off the cliff face of the dunes.



We then headed over to Bethells to show the beach were Taylor Swift shot her 'Out of the Woods' Video.


T Swift (she was smart and did it during summer)



Next up was a trip to Whangerai to take in some glow worm caves and a beautiful waterfall for a nice picnic lunch.  Gotta give Lindsey credit, she cried quite a bit and was very uncomfortable, but she went into the caves to see the glow worms and came out alive.







I wonder where James gets it to climb up on things.


Off to Whangerai falls for a great lunch.  There's worse places to have lunch:

















Unfortunately for me, the rope swing that I got to do with our friend Nick out here about a year ago had been cut by someone and it was not to be.  I was pretty bummed, if there's anything that I like, it's a good rope swing.



Lindsey's Visit: Part 1

Lance Again:

So Lindsey came out to visit after her trip to Australia to stop in and see a bit of New Zealand and of course Sweet Baby James.  I'm going to try and cover the first part of her visit even though I was working for the majority of the activities, so I might be relying on a lot of pictures until Maggie can get onto here and clean up the details.

If my memory serves me correct, I believe the first place they went was Shakespear Regional Park.  As avid readers know this park is featured heavily on this blog as it was the first park I went to when I first got to NZ, it was the first one that Maggie and James went to with me when they got over, and it was the first place we took my parents during their visit.  In between there, we have actually stopped back there a few times, but this was Lindsey's shot.  Maggie and James even got her to go really close to the cows and sheep, that cute little kid can convince anyone of anything.



















Next stop, Waiheke for some wine country on the beautiful island in Auckland's harbor.









And of course there were some fun moments around the house with the little guy:








And yes this was Lindsey giving James a popsicle right before he was supposed to go to bed.  All I can say is the revenge will be sweet.