Cave Rafting

I nearly forgot to upload some photos of us Cave Rafting in the Paparoa National Park on the West Coast! Wow it was awesome fun! We took a train ride into the forest, walked with our tubes across a river and up into some limestone caves for about an hour, then rode our tubes down rapids back down the river to our starting point :)

Katrina's 6th Birthday Party

Yesterday I went to Butterfly Creek for my God-daugther Katrina's 6th birthday party. Everyone had great fun visiting the farm animals, walking through the butterfly house, eating chocolate cake, riding the train and playing on the playground :)

Drag Masters

We travelled directly from Northland to the Bombay Hills for an incredible show case of fast and noisy cars at Drag Masters 2007!

Whananaki

In the new year we headed north to Whananaki for a few nights with other newly-wed friends from St Pauls. Thank you for such a restful time swimming, reading, watching DVDs and eating delicious food!

Maruia Thermal Resort

We spend New Years Eve with wonderful friends at Maruia Thermal Resort nestled in the stunning Lewis Pass. As the Resort is owned and managed by a Japanese couple, we were able to enjoy nabe for dinner in our yukata, then a count down to 2008 soaking in rock pools. What a fantastic start to the new year xx

Gold Panning

After a great night at Global Village Backpackers in Greymouth we jumped on some bikes to find a cache on a local bush track, went to Holy Trinity, and then headed to Shantytown for some gold panning. Yes, we came away with some gold flakes to treasure :)

Geocaching

We've had lots of fun geocaching this summer! Geocaching is a world-wide high tech treasure hunting game, started in 2000, where you use a GPS to hide and seek containers. We found our first cache under a cabbage tree at Cape Fowlwind after viewing a seal colony. Since then we've found them in Greymouth, Hanmer Springs, and up north in Whanananki. When we find a cache we log our find into the notebook inside the cache and also online. Depending on the size of the cache we exchange a "swap", e.g. a soap for some Japanese tissues, a peg for a Ninja Turtle. Geocaching has been great at getting us off the beaten track in places we wouldn't have gone otherwise :) Definitely worth a try!