Coromandel -- We can't stay away

It's Evelyn again. The kids are on school holidays and the first weekend of their break was Easter weekend. We planned to take a short trip back to the Coromandel, as it had been one of our favorite places on the north island . We stayed in a little cottage near Hahei beach. Here you can see some of the stained glass that was throughout the house.

The entry

Our bedroom

I had set my expectations a bit low as we were having terrible weather. After weeks of drought and lake levels getting pretty low, we had about a week of rain and it was predicted to continue all Easter weekend. In fact the day before we drove up, the streets had been flooded and impassable.

We were so pleasantly surprised, as you can imagine, to find the weather pretty agreeable and sometimes downright sunny.

Here's the sun and our silly boys

One of our favorite places on the peninsula is the famous cathedral cove. There is a long walk to get there. We had this idea that we would carry our beach things, and stop in various bays on the way. It was a  pretty walk, but we didn't stop that often. Each bay we came upon was beautiful but not suitable for stopping or swimming. Here's part of that walk. You can see Tom with our beach bag.

There were lots of beautiful views along the way.

The boys love to play in the Pohutakawa trees along the shore. We love their gnarly shapes - even without their bright red flowers they are so beautiful.

Another amazing bay that is inappropriate for swimming

OK, I haven't been following the adventures of stickman. That's Tom's thing. Doubtless, he has something witty to say about the overhang falling onto poor stickman's head.

We've made it to Catherdral Cove! Aidan is enjoying the beach blanket and Jasper ---

-- is back from cavorting in the waves.

The weather was a bit cloudy - but because it was the holidays, the beach was so crowded!! We were a little surprised to see so many people.

They boys are resting here on our way back. You can see the trail full of tourists behind them. The crowds did give the place a different feel. The first time we visited, we felt like we had so many beaches all to ourselves - we felt so lucky and isolated. This weekend we felt like everyone was on holiday, which was fun, too.

Here's the scene they were looking out upon.

Yes, Jasper has fabricated a headband out of dried grass for himself. He's learned so much here in New Zealand, we can't help but feel proud.

The next morning I decided to use some of the twenty five oranges the owners had left for us to make juice....

...not too long thereafter, I had had enough juicing. The boys and I each had a mouthful of juice for breakfast. I think I understand why they make machines to do this.

Here's Tom in front of our cottage - on his way out with us on Easter Sunday. We are visiting the pa, or fort. Many pas are built in places where it would make sense to build a fort -- high up so you can see the enemy approach. Of course, that means they are often in beautiful places, overlooking the sea and looking out over the surrounding hilly landscape.

Tom and Aidan, look at me. Jasper, you're an airplane. Perfect.

"We're male and child models!"

Predictably, the trail was beautiful - and we were pleasantly surprised to see it was very well maintained

Jasper's favorite pastime: pretending to walk over the edge of a cliff into the waiting sea below

No, actually, his favorite pastime is sticking out his tongue at the last minute and ruining all our photos of him

Here we are arriving at Lonely Beach. Place names in New Zealand tend to be either Maori and difficult to pronounce or English and boring.

Who knew lonely was so beautiful?

We had fun climbing the sandstone rock.

Climbing rocks AND trees - Aidan's dream come true!

The next day was a little overcast. We had a very nice brunch and had booked a glass bottom boat ride, as the boys had so loved the last boat trip we had taken in the Coromandel with John and Sara. We had never been on a glass bottom boat before and there was a chance we might see other wildlife -- like penguins -- on the water. Just before we got on the boat, I decided to stay on shore. I wasn't feeling too well after eating and the water was looking a little choppy. Tom and the boys went ahead and here are some of the resulting photos.

Here's that glass bottom.

It did rain, which was okay, as the boat had a roof. However, I think the rain may have kept the penguins away.

Sea cave in the rain!

We went back to the house and spent the rest of the day recovering (me) and playing board games and listening to the rain on the rooftop. Both boys got to be surprisingly good at Scrabble :) One of my favorite moments was Aidan's hesitation and quick glance at me before placing S-E-X on the board (for 26 points!) We also watched "Frozen" again (shout out to Susan - thanks for that) and endured Aidan singing snippets of songs for days afterwards. (Again, to Susan - thanks for that.)

Next day - on another hike!

I love when strangers offer to take our photo - it happens so infrequently that we get a photo of the four of us together.

Aidan is working on his tree pose.

Climbing rock walls- so much fun!

"OK everybody, jump!"

"OK let's try that again! Don't forget to hold Jasper's hands! Aidan, don't forget to hold on to your head!"

Amazing climbing trees on every beach!

The boys found a little cave - like rock formation on the beach and played for a while hiding in nooks and crannies. Here's a photo from above.

Aidan is seated on the throne.

Our last views of the Coromandel :(

Here's our last photo. Jasper's collection of treasures. We've taught him well. Leave only footprints. Take only pictures. And seashells. And wildflowers. And bits of sea glass, but that's it.

Local weekend fun

Hi, it's Evelyn. We are nearing the end of our time in New Zealand. We leave for the States in just under four months, and things are starting to wind down a bit. After the busy visits to the South Island during the summer, we have been enjoying the quiet time just the four of us. However, we still want to spend as much time in this beautiful landscape as possible, and so this particular weekend in early April, we headed back to Tongariro National Park and walked a track called the Silica Rapids track. Our area has suffered a bit of a drought lately and so, although we've walked this track before, lots of it looked very different than the last time we visited. I love being so close to a national park that we can visit our favorite places more than once and see the different sides and moods of a single place.

Two happy boys on the trail

Aidan in the bush. An Aidan in the hand...

Here are the berries that Jasper collected, after first asking me about the likelihood of these berries being poisonous. 

Waiting at the trailhead for daddy to return after dropping the car off at the end of the trail.

Treasures

Aidan's on the catwalk to nowhere

A great shot of our volcanoes. Spending time here makes me wonder why we aren't spending every weekend here...

I generally encourage the boys when they point to a rock in the distance and decide they want to climb to the top and look around. These boulders are here because of an old lava flow.

Lava can make oddly shaped rocks

Yes, and I try to DIScourage this type of behavior, but as every mother knows, it's hard to stop a boy when he wants to walk around with his shirt over his face.

You guessed it! Lava flow -- but this used to have water flowing through it the last time we were here.

And here they are - the silica rapids :)

So many colors in one landscape!

Some of my favorite moments are when I catch these two very seriously discussing whatever the topic of the moment in little boy land happens to be.

...so much to discuss

After our walk, we stopped at a beautiful place for lunch right on the edge of Lake Taupo. It was still perfect weather and we all enjoyed the restful scenery.

Here are my three boys at our table, huddled together to stay out of that strong New Zealand sun.

The next day we stayed in town and visited the hot pools. Both boys have been here with school but we have never gone together as a family. We were so excited to receive a gift certificate for a family visit from Kevin and Karen for Xmas this year. The mineral pools are green and quite warm. There are also standard chlorinated pools with a big waterslide where the kids can swim and don't have to be afraid of catching a thermal parasite every time they put their heads underwater.

Note the green water - we generally stayed in the hot pools - because they were so nice....

All the landscaping is sort of fake but still pretty