Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Monday 15th December 2008- Kauri Kingdom-Awanui

It was a little damp when we left home this morning intent on visiting the ‘Gumdiggers Exhibition’ and also Kauri Kingdom. When we arrived at the Gumdiggers the heavens opened and it poured with rain and so a walk through a forest in the rain (we had no rain gear) was not considered an option and so we decided to leave it for a better day.

On the other hand, The Kauri Kingdom is all undercover and complete with café and all mod cons, including toilets, see the sign.

Kauri Trees are reputed to be up to 45000 years old and have retained their condition by being submerged in swamp lands. They have to be located and then dug up and some of them are very heavy indeed. One tree was so large that it has been carved to form the staircase from the ground floor up to the first floor in the centre of the relatively new building, see photo.

They have a wide choice of products made from the Kauri Trees and also some more rubbish products no doubt made in China.

We did not buy anything except lunch and then headed back to the house for a quiet afternoon.

Later in the afternoon the wind and rain increased significantly and at one time we thought it might start blowing the balcony chairs around. We watched a rubbish American film called ‘Wild Hogs’ about a group of late middle age guys who have no excitement in their lives and they decide to hit the road west from Cincinnati to California on they Harley’s We have seen better films but that was the best on offer for today. NZ television is a mixture of Australian Channels and the usual CNN, BBC News channels and even Doubtless Bay local channel which is very amateur but quite interesting. There are a lot of adverts on NZ TV which can be frustrating and particularly so on the Discovery Channel which we have now stopped watching.

On an earlier Blog I mentioned that we had seen some young lads driving a car which worried us, however it would appear that kids of 14 are allowed to drive on private roads and kids of 15 on public roads but they are not allowed to carry passengers. We are not sure if we like this process

Tomorrow we take the car back to Kaitia for it's new windscreen to be fitted and then it will pass the WOF test.