Ducklings

Spring is in the air along with duck feathers. The ducks who live next door to Aunt Melanie have twelve fuzzy yellow ducklings that hatched on Sunday. We've told Eddie and Chamille that ducklings are off limit for snacks and we hope they listen.

Sari Charlie

Lots of people from India live near Aunt Melanie. Today we stopped by the Sari Shop. The clothes are shiny and covered in sparkles. They even have versions for kids.

These clothes come in lots of bright colours and are worn for special occasions.

Waikaretu Caving

Today we went caving in Waikaretu (Why CARROT two). We saw stalagtites, stalagmites and creepy crawlies. We walked through water up to our knees and mud that went past our ankles. The mud sucked one of Melanie's shoes right off of her foot!
 

One part of the cave is a tight squeeze. We had to crawl on our hands and knees through an underground stream for 50 feet. The water was cold and the stream was rocky. An eel lives in that part of the cave. Eels are slimy, but don't bite people.
 

At the end of the cave, we climbed up stairs into the light. The surrounding bush is lush and thick with moss. Do you see the Dr. Suess trees? Those are called cabbage trees.

 

We saw a cave spider and many glow-in-the dark glow worms. Because their light is a soft blue glow, we weren't able to to take a picture of that. But you can see the long sticky strings that the glow worms use to catch their food. There was fungus that looked like hair. And outside we saw a bird called a tui in the flax plants.
 

New Zealand Toilet

Commodes in New Zealand don't have a handle to flush. They have two different bottons. The buttons on this one show a circle half filled in and a circle all the way filled in. The half filled in button flushes with half as much water as the button with the completely filled circle. Sometimes you need to use the button with the filled circle to flush down anything REALLY big.

 

They don't use the word commode here either. They just call them toilets. Ed the cat likes to jump on top of the toilet and push the buttons to make the toilet flush. Like a lot of animals, he likes drinking out of the toilet more than drinking out of his water bowl. And if he flushes the toilet, he gets very fresh toilet water to drink.
 

No Trick-or-Treat, but Some Candy

 

Boys and girls in New Zealand don't get to go Trick-or-Treating on Halloween. So instead I'll show you some lollies (candy) from New Zealand.

Pineapple Lumps, Jaffas and Chocolate Fish are lollies you can get here. Instead of saying that someone deserves a gold star, in New Zealand they say "you deserve a chocolate fish."

The white and pink lumps in front of the other candy are pieces of Turkish Delight, like Edmund ate in "The Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe." The inside is a gooey gel and the outside is covered in powdered sugar. This Turkish Delight is rose flavored (like the flower), but you can get other flavors like orange, lemon and pistachio.

Volcanoes

I'm on the top of a volcano! This one is called Big King in English and Nga-pare-toka-a-Te-Rauiti in Maori. There used to be three volcanoes right next to each other called the Three Kings, but two of them have been mined for rock called scoria. There are at least 48 volcanoes in Auckland. In the background of this picture you can see another one called Mt Eden in English and Maungawhau in Maori. You can also see the Sky Tower.

 

Maori, the native people of New Zealand, used this volcano as a fortress. You can see the hole dug in where Terry and I are standing. That hole used to be used to store kumara (sweet potatoes) for when people were on the volcano.

 


Here is an island volcano off the shore of Auckland in the Hauraki Gulf. Everyone calls this volcano Rangitoto. You can take a ferry out to Rangitoto and climb to the top.
 

Muriwai Gannets

Muriwai, where I went bloKarting, is a black sand beach. The sand here is ferromagnetic. That means there is a lot metal in the sand and you can pick it up with a magnet.

My new friends Di and Jem are typical Aucklanders. Di's full name is Diana Tu'inukuafe. Her family is from the island of Tonga. Jem's full name is Jemini Patel. Her family is originally from India. People from many countries like to come and live in New Zealand.

Here you can see me, Terry and Melanie near the gannet colony. Gannets are sea birds with white bodies and yellow heads. They come to New Zealand for the spring and summer then leave in late fall to fly north over the Tasman Sea to Australia for the winter.

The gannets nest on rock formations just off of the shore and also on shore.

Gannets in flight.

Gannets and babies. The gannet chicks are fluffy and don't have yellow heads yet. Gannet nests are spaced regularly on the rock surface. Each nest is barely out of pecking distance of the birds around it.