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.

BloKarting

Today we got to go BloKarting. You get on a cart with a sail and sail down the beach instead of on the water like a boat. We went with Melanie, Terry, Diana and Jem. The sail gives you power and there is a handle for steering. You pull the sail's rope in to go faster and let it go to slow down. If you pull the rope in hard, you can go very fast. The speed record on a BloKart is over 50 miles per hour. You might have seen BloKarting on the Amazing Race.

We zoomed up and down the beach in the strong wind. We also drove our carts through a freshwater stream 2 kilometres (over a mile) down the beach. We got completely wet! Jem held on to her rope too tightly and the wind blew her completely over. She ended up hanging from her seat belt in the middle of the stream. TWICE!

We had a lot of fun and got completely soaked and covered in sand. We sure needed a bath after that!

After we got back from BloKarting, we had a hot chocolate and a piece of chocolate cake.

Madelaine in MAD

Today I got to go up in a biplane called MAD. MAD is a Pitts Special S2B. Planes like MAD are extra fun because the go upside down, loop, roll and spin. This is me with Terry the stunt plane pilot.

MAD has two sets of wings like the plane Snoopy flies. Planes with two sets of wings are called biplanes. Planes with only one set of wings are called monoplanes.


Here you can see all the dials in the front seat. They let the pilot know how fast, how high and how hard he or she is flying.

MAD has two seats and the pilot sits in the back. That makes it hard to see when the plane is on the ground. Terry flies in competitions with other pilots, so he took me up while he practiced his Unlimited sequence.

I got to fly upside down and inside out! Terry made the plane spin, go in loops, roll and dive. He even pointed MAD straight up and then let the plane fall backwards. He called that part a tailslide. When we came out of the tailslide, we flew away upside down!


Terry wears a tiny video camera on his helmet. Here is a video of what my flight looked like from inside the plane. Terry put some music on the video because inside the plane all you can hear is the engine roaring. The engine is so loud you have to wear a headset with ear muffs to protect your ears from too much sound.

Eddie and Chamille

This is Eddie, one of Aunt Melanie's two cats. He is a kind of cat called a Devon Rex. His fur is extra short. His whiskers are short too. At night, he likes to play fetch like a dog. Aunt Melanie pulls back on a pony-tail holder, shoots it down the hall and Eddie will run after it and bring it back.

Eddie likes to climb, so he is named after Sir Edmund Hillary. Sir Edmund was the first man to climb to the top of Mt.Everest and he was from New Zealand. You can see a picture of Sir Edmund on the New Zealand $5 bill.



Chamille has funny fur too. Hers is a lot longer than Eddie's and it is wavy. She is a kind of cat called a LaPerm, because it looks like she's had a perm on her fur. LaPerm cats originally came from Oregon in the USA.

Chamille likes to carry toys and socks around the house. Her favorite toy is a Beanie Baby Octopus.

Jellyfish

After our fish and chips dinner we had a walk. We found a big gooey jellyfish washed up on the beach. Sometimes jellyfish can sting, so I was careful not to touch it.

Fish and Chips

Kiwis (people from New Zealand) don't eat much fried chicken, but they love fish and chips. Tonight we went to St. Helier's Bay to get fish and chips from The Fishmonger. Kiwis don't say French Fries, they use the word chips instead, so we really had fish and french fries for dinner. Above is a picture of me and the fresh seafood. You can see fish, shrimp (called prawns here), scallops, oysters and squid.

Instead of serving the fish and chips in boxes and a bag, you get them wrapped in old newspapers.





But inside, there is fresh paper, so you don't ink on your fish. Today we got kumara (KOO-mah-rah) chips instead of regular ones. Kumara is a kind of sweet potato.

We also got an L&P to drink. L&P stands for Lemon and Paeroa. Lemon is the flavour and Paeroa is the place where the drink was originally made. It tastes a bit like a Sprite.



The seagulls like to hand around and see if they can get any of your dinner. We ate all of ours.