Lighthouses and Shells

Feb 11th - Lighthouse Looking

We started our day by going to Stratford, also known as the Shakespearian town.   This little town has a building called the Glockenspiel clock tower which houses several figurines of Romeo and Juliet.  Four times a day, the figures appear out the windows of this building and this classic story of forbidden love unfolds in the tower located on the main drive right before your eyes.

From Stratford, we returned back to the house for lunch and to Skype.  This was very exciting seeing as how I got to video chat with my mom and Dr. Frasier for the first time from Taranaki!  Following catching up with those two, we set off on our search for a LIGHTHOUSE. 

This was the first one we came across.  It was actually connected to the Sea Rescue place just south of Warea.   Since it wasn’t really a very popular place to go, we were able to go down on the rocks and find all sorts of shells.  The neatest ones were these Paua shells which are often made into jewelry.

From the Sea Rescue lighthouse, we traveled down the coast on the coast road ‘til we found the Cape Egmont Lighthouse.  This gorgeous lighthouse is nestled up from the coast and is surrounded by a small herd of cattle.  It was gorgeous!

From there we headed to Lucy’s Gully, a place nestled up in the Pouakai range of Egmont National Park.  Although we did not see any, we could hear the cries of the famous Kiwi bird as soon as we got out of the car.  (P.S. Kiwi birds are nocturnal so they don’t come out at night.) 

At the end of the day, we retreated back to the house where I had my first dose of fish and chips from a local shop in Inglewood, and they were to die for!  Fish and chips is actually a very New Zealand dish of battered and fried fish (with in our case was Gurnard Fish) and French fries.  Pair that up with some Ginger beer (which in non-alcoholic) and pineapple fritters (which is a battered and fried pineapple ring with cinnamon) and it’s the perfect ending to another amazing day in the land of the Kiwi!

___________________________________________________________

Feb 12th - Shell Search Saturady!

Well….. today was our last full day with Ms. Carolyn Aish, the Inglewood author who graciously took us into her house this week.  After a wonderful breakfast of Big Bugs ‘n Mud cereal and the creamiest yogart you can imagine, we headed to a remote area along the beach to go hunting for shells since we had so much fun doing so yesterday. (P.s.  That means we’ve spent 4/5 of our days in New Zealand thus far exfoliating our feet in the sand of this beautiful country!)

And we were very successful in our hunt.  As you can see below, I was able to find more Paua shells as well as some curly, snail like ones and oyster shells.  It was fabulous! 

The only problem was, the sun zapped the energy right out of me!  So…. after eating cheese cake and ice cream for lunch and “taking a sleep,” Shelby and I are now packing a preparing for our flight tomorrow.

After we get dropped off at the airport and say goodbye to the precious Miss Carolyn, we will fly from New Plymouth to Wellington (the capital city) and then catch the connecting flight from Wellington to Christchurch where we are to meet someone to take us down to the University.

I don’t know when I’ll have internet again though, so “tut tut”!