Our first couple of weeks in New Zealand were spent mainly visiting beaches, national parks, and catching up with family. We started by visiting Omaha Beach for our first taste of the ocean in 9 months and Dre braving the water for his first ocean swim in about a year.
We spent a day walking around Tawharanui regional park through the bush there and around the coast too. We stopped for quite a while to watch some Tui’s playing and singing to each other and overall had an awesome day.
Tim came to the beach with us the next time, and this was followed a few days later by the three of us going kayaking together at Whangateau. This was another fantastic day out with weather that we were really thankful for. We also accepted Tim’s invitation to join him at his bucket racing practice day where Dre got to ride for several hours on the track – a real highlight of the trip for him! During the day Kate came to whisk us away to collect Jillian from the airport and after briefly catching up we returned to the track for Dre to ride until the petrol ran out.
The following 2 days we caught up with Jillian for dinner and then lunch, and went for a long walk along Orewa beach. A couple of days later we then caught up again with Jillian and Tim for another awesome day walking around the coast of Leigh and Goat Island. Again the weather was just perfect and much appreciated!
The rest of the week was spent playing with our gorgeous nephew Storm, hanging out with Karen’s family and on wedding preparations for Julia and Sam’s wedding; photos of this will follow! To see the photos of our NZ adventures so far, click here.
