First of all, to answer the number one question about the
last blog: Hokey Pokey is vanilla ice cream with bits of honeycomb toffee mixed
in. Our Hokey Pokey ice cream was, in fact, that plus a generous bit of heaven.
Today, the weather was still unsettled. But we were treated
to a trip out of the city. We headed west to the Waitakere Regional Park to see
the rain forest. We got to see a kauri tree. (They were nearly felled to
extinction by the lumber operations run by the early settlers and were saved
mostly only by the lack of sophisticated equipment available at the time which
limited accessibility to certain areas.)
Then we traveled on to the western coast to take in a bit of
the 50km plus stretch of volcanic black sand beach at Muriwai. Apparently just
three weeks ago the gannet birds had not returned yet from Australia to nest on
the cliffs. But since then they have been showing up to stake out their nesting
areas and to commence their adorable courtship and breeding rituals.
The stretch of black sand beach at Muriwai was striking and
provided a good sample to add to our sand collection.
It’s especially sparkly sand and is supposedly very magnetic
due to a significant iron ore content. I’ll have to test that out when we get
home…which will be Monday. Tomorrow (Sunday) we leave the hotel at 5AM, fly to
Sydney, then to Dallas and then to Miami arriving still on Sunday after doing
the time warp thing over the dateline heading east. We’ll rest up there
overnight before taking what will seem like a mere skip of a plane ride
home. Next travels? South Africa and
Portugal…in less than 4 weeks. (We are making up for that ridiculously long 8
month hiatus before this trip.) Safe travels.
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