Weekend

Here’s a quick synopsis of our weekend.

Saturday: we didn’t go to the market but rather hung around the house in the am – I finished my book (1776) while Angela did some work on her painting. Since the day started cloudy and cool, we wanted to wait a bit for it to warm up and for the clouds to burn off. We took our road bikes out for the first time and did a 17 mile ride out towards Richmond. Back home and we agreed upon fish and chip takeaway for dinner – good stuff. Our friends Ina and Stefan (yes, they are German) called around 6:30 and we planned on grabbing drinks at the Saltwater Café down on the waterfront. We relaxed, had a chat, watched a large shipping vessel arrive, and saw a young girl catch an eel while fishing (it appeared to be about 3 feet long). Turns out Ina and Stefan have just purchased a house – in Germany it is terribly difficult to own a house if you don’t have it handed down, so they are absolutely ecstatic. Turns out they don’t move in until February – they still have to save up some $ for the down payment.



Sunday: Again, we lounged around a bit in the morning after a late night (for us anyway). Had a Skype call with Angela’s mom about her recent trip to Italy then packed up the car and headed out. We decided to preview some of the back roads for cycling and then head over to Mt Arthur for a hike. A lot of the back roads here start off paved then, as we quickly discovered, turn to gravel. So we logged a lot of miles on dirt and gravel road. We did find many nice places to ride so we plan to try them out next weekend. Then we were on to Mt. Arthur and Kahuranghi National Park for a quick hike. Mt. Arthur is 1795 meters high (about 5400 feet) and takes about 4 hours of vertical hiking. I’ll save that for when I go with friends as Angela’s arthritic knees can’t handle that kind of climb. We did about an hour walk to Flora Hut through beech forest – it’s a really nice area and I’m sure the views would be much more fantastic without all the clouds. I've added a few pictures but they really can't capture the scene. It was very quiet with the exception of the various bird calls. I did see the shell of a Powelliphanta snail (very large carnivorous land snail - the shell was at least 3" in diameter). Very few people - we passed 9 on our hour long walk.