Annual Camping Holiday

There are a few things that makes the Kiwis, Kiwis. One of them being camping. As we discovered last year, the Kiwi camping is not quite how we camp in Malaysia.

Instead of pitching and breaking camp every few days like we did last year, we decided to go to one campsite and spend most of our time at one location. We chose a campsite by the sea in the Bay of Plenty at Ohope Beach. What attracted us to this site was the amount of activities they had for kids during the Christmas - New Year holidays.

It was a 6 hour drive from Paraparaumu and we headed off with the Odessey all packed to the brim at half past five in the morning. We reached the campsite as my trusted GPS said we will, at 11.18 am. We got a site perched on a hill over looking the sea. Beach front property! Prime Real Estate! What a way to holiday!



When we arrived on the December 23 half the campsite was empty. There were tents scattered all over. Then the exodus began on Boxing Day. There were endless flow of campers, trailers, campervans, caravans of all makes and sizes and soon by evening, the whole campsite looked like some third world refugee camp!

The campground owners had lined up all sorts of activities for kids starting from scavenger hunts to talent shows and even water slides.



Ashwini took part in the talent quest. Although being the youngest to take part, she did not win anything as the others were well prepared for it and were a lot better. Here is a video of her performance. Not sure how it will turn out in a blog.



After a few days at the camp everyone made friends including the kids. We adults found out we were camping next to an older couple who were also from Paraparaumu.





Here is the other Kiwi tradition. What would a camping trip be without some Barbeque?



And barbeques are definitely men's territory! Here's proof!



Of course women can multi task which men can't. Ashwini seen here riding her scooter, eating breakfast and clinging onto her new underwater camera!



Just before leaving, we just booked for another stay at Ohope for next Christmas at a choice sea view section. We were advised to book latest by March if we wanted a slice of this view.

Happy New Year everyone!

A blast of light from space

Yesterday afternoon Vera came running and said this must be the most incredible display of lights in the sky. Somewhat a rainbow but with no rain. In fact it was a bright hot summer day. I decided to capture this amazing display in my camera, right in front of our home.

Here it is...



This morning, I was reading the Dominion Post (our local newspaper) and this is what we discovered it was.

" It looks like a rainbow that's been set on fire, but the solar phenomenon is as cold as ice. Known in the weather world as a circumhorizontal arc. This multi coloured arc is caused by light passing through wispy, high altitude cirrus clouds which contain fine ice particles. This optical phenomenon is said to be reasonably rare.

Though similar in principle to a rainbow, the hexagonal ice crystals that make up the cirrus clouds are shaped like thick plates with their faces parallel to the ground. When light enters through a vertical side face of an ice crystal and leaves from the bottom face, it refracts, or bends, like light through a prism. If cirrus srystals are aligned just right the whole cloud lights up in a spectrum of colours."

Christmas Lights

It's that time of the year where tree is lighted and presents abound. In the neighbourhood we live in there is also a competition for the best decorated home. Read that as the most lights! Since it gets dark only about 9pm, we were not able to capture some of the homes at their best. Here are some of the pictures I took. All we had at our place was a lighted Christmas tree and even that was inside, so no one would have known.













At all of these places, the streets were packed with cars, parked on both sides of the road, and in some streets you had to actually wait to get into your drive way. One of them was ours, as our neighbour who won the competition for 2 successive years had their lights all up and people were parking on our drive way.

These are the ones of our neighbours.





What we did not capture was the national winner of the best decorate home. This family won $10,000 for their effort in putting up 42,000 lights in their house. I can imagine where most of the ten grand is going to end up in!

Merry Christmas everyone as we will be heading for our annual pilgrimage, camping!