yet another catch up....

Been slacking again, been so, so busy......

Summer is now long with us, it has been very hot and dry the whole of January, we have only had 17mm of rain in Cambridge, the ground is parched, brown and tinder dry. The local councils have issued water bans to stop people using sprinklers on their gardens..

So, we welcomed Jan's mum again, she flew in from a cold UK to a warm Auckland night just after Christmas.  We did the usual trips around the locality, meeting people and just catching up. But we decided to go to Island View Holiday Park over on the East Cape as we enjoyed it earlier on in the year.

Then went to various little places, but decided to do a bit of camping over at Waikiti Thermal Valley which was amazing, especially the visit to the nearby Wai o tapu thermal park with it's strange bubbling mud pools, geyser and volcanic lakes.... baking hot day as well which made it a bit of hard going.

A new experience for all of us as we had never done these things before, it was well worth it, the camp site was great, a different experience to our normal camping places...!