Chris and Susan's Big Adventure

March 16 - Hanging out in LA with Howie. We spent the afternoon before our flight to NZ watching the airplanes take off from this park, right across the street from the beach.

After arriving in Auckland we spent about 2.5 weeks at a motel in Papakura, just south of Auckland. It was OK, but we were glad to find a house for rent in Howick. The rental is only short term, but it will give us time to settle in and figure out which part of Auckland we would really like to live in. So far we like Howick. It has a cute town centre and is about a 30 min drive to both of our jobs. We bought a small 1997 Toyota station wagon and are looking for a second car.

Things have been pretty hectic, searching for a house, a car, a job and buying the necessities as we wait for our ship to arrive (May 30th is the current estimate) and, of course, visiting Howie everyday. Today is Good Friday and we both had the day off work and the quarantine was closed to visitors, so we decided it was time for some fun.


April 14 - We went to Goat Island Reserve north of Auckland. We spent some time on the beach, watching people snorkeling and scuba diving. Even though it's supposed to be fall, many people were in the water. We didn't even bring our swim suits as we thought it would be too cold. We did go for a ride on a glass bottom boat to see some fish. Later we walked through fields of cows (all staring at us) to this lookout point (see pic).



On the way to Goat Island we stopped at Sheepworld. We watched a dog (a border collie/greyhound cross) herd about 20 sheep, watched a sheep being sheared and bottle fed some lambs. You may notice that it's a goat, not a sheep in the picture. They also had a baby dear and lots of other cute animals.