saturday

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can you guess what this is?  answer below …

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so, in a desperate attempt to catch up, here’s yesterday’s news

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we got up a little later yesterday as kezia and i were back at midnight on Friday

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then we drove over to a place called Shelly Beach.  which is a very common name around new zealand for some reason.

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this was a really nice little bay on the mouth of a giant natural harbour on the west coast.  Being in land quite a bit and a still day the water was lovely and flat. 

we did a spot of geocaching, walked up a little cliff and then went to the end of the wharf

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here’s what we could see

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then we got back in the car and worked our way back towards Helensville stopping for a couple of geocaches and farm shops along the way

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this chap was good value.  no wonder kiwis are such bad drivers.  don’t drink, smoke and drive people.

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did you guess what the picture at the top of the page was?  if you guessed macadamia nut shell, you were right.  if you didn’t, you weren’t.

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we stopped at a macadamia nut farm which was more interesting than you might expect.  Unless you were expecting it to be extremely interesting in which case you might have been slightly disappointed. but we weren’t.

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there was a nice cafe with a great view from the deck and cakes (oh my!)

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then we went for a little walk round the farm track which was the closest we’ve been to a national trust walk in the woods for a while, so that was nice.

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after the nuts we went swimming at parakai hot pools where jane and i escaped the noise of the main pools by going in to the spa area, and then we got dressed and watched the girls throwing themselves down the slides

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then it was home for an attempted early night for the girls, some more computer setting up for me and then half a Mike Leigh film (rest pending)