January Outing...Fishing and Camping

Second week in Jan we took off again back to Tongarero National Park area with Marilyn and Ray, cruiser friends. Chuck and Ray enjoyed a try at flyfishing...see the movie clip at the Utube site below. No fish but still had fun!

Also see the one of Lynn/Lexxy being miserable in the cold also on Utube.

Camping in old age is humbling. What in the world are we doing sleeping on the cold hard ground??? We are sooo sore in the morning but we do save money and the scenery is wonderful. We also meet great folks and get to take beautiful hikes....so as long as there are sleeping pills we will camp!!!

We especially enjoyed staying in Te Urewa National Park way up in the mountains. There were great waterfall hikes but we didn't have the right clothes and got quite colld.

After hiking we stopped at Rotorua to scout out the town that smells like sulfer from all the volcanic vents in the earth.

Holidays on CYAN

They weren't much to speak of!!!

We stripped the exterior teak with a scraper and heat gun...well Chuck did that work. Then we taped in preparation to add 3 coats of varnish-like Cetol finish and sat and waited for the weather to clear for 2 whole weeks. There is quite a variety of weather from rainy to windy to stormy and finally it clears for a short while and we see the sun!!
So... just after Christmas we got enuf nice sunshine dry the sanded wood and we got to coat the teak and one of our most dreaded jobs is caught up for at least 6 months. WHEW!!!
We spent Christmas Day and dinner with Jeff and Linda, a local couple we got to know. They included us with their family in celebration and now we havr folks to visit when we travel to the South Island of NZ during the month of March.
For New Years we camped in the back of the station wagon at Waipu village where they had the 137th annual Highland Scottish Games. The town was founded in the mid 1800's by over 900 Scots who finally settled there after trying Australia and Nova Scotia.
We learned to do Scottish country dancing with the locals at a ceilidh or evening of dancing, food, drink and music for New Years Eve.

On New Years Day we watched the traditional highland games, the marching pipe bands, folk dancers, saw the longhaired cattle and clan exhibitions.



There was the caber toss competition but Chuck was too late to sign up...ahhhh!!! These guys are twice his size. He did join the Scotch tasting trials, tho!
Looks like he came in second!!!