Waiheke Island

today i went to Waiheke Island which used to be an old hippy commune type place about 35 minutes by boat away from Auckland.  work chartered a boat to take us all over there which was jolly good.  although it was very windy so quite choppy

a bus then took us to a vineyard where we had to do various team building activities such as ‘get the team up the vineyard as far as possible in 5 minutes’ and ‘roll the very heavy barrel round an obstacle course’

we then did some wine and beer tasting

before doing some archery (did no one think that might be a bad idea ?)

i was a bit rubbish at archery on my first go, but managed to shoot the balloon stuck in the middle on my second go

there was some jucky guess the food game which involved toilet lids and buckets.  no pleasant. 

but our team excelled in the catapult an egg game

we saw a man walking a horse down the street

and went for a fantastic meal in a restaurant which served our food much faster than the place the night before

although weirdly the food had froth on it

perhaps that’s one disadvantage of having the dish washer upperer so close to the kitchens on a windy day ?

then it was back on the bus to get the ferry back to Auckland

here’s the view of Auckland looking back from the restaurant roof

the girls had their swimming lessons after school then we all went to a visit a family who live about 20 minutes away who jane has met via some running connection.  they were great fun and we ended up staying well past 10.30pm which is very late for our girls who have orchestra tomorrow morning

here’s an insect which fell on the table next to a piece of onion.