The Northland Holiday Top Ten !

Back home again ! It’s always nice to go away – but I think I’m very much a home body. It’s always really nice to come home and be in my own space again. I missed the cat ! Kudos to Hix – who yet again helped us out big time by watching the place and taking care of Shadow.

Here’s Seraph’s Top Ten of our holiday ‘up North’ :

10. Cape Reianga

I guess it was about time that I got here. It seems to be some sort of semi-NZ-rite-of-passage to have been here at least once. And once is ALL it’s going to be too. I wish I could say that I had some massive kind of spiritual experience here ( I wanted to ! ) – but no. The land ran out … and there was a lighthouse. It was interesting to learn that the lighthouse is controlled by a computer system in Wellington. Weird – you think it would be somewhere closer, wouldn’t you ?

9. Uninterrupted reading

It was nice to kick back and read for a good long while – and we had one rainy days where that was ALL we could do really. My one word review of what I got though :

“The Damnnation Game” – Clive Barker - BLEARGH !

“Raven’s Gate” - Anthony Horowitz - **shiver!**

Tom Strong book 4 – Alan Moore - Awesome !

Girl Genius book 4 – Phil Foglio - Hmmmm.

“Shadow of the Hedgemon” O S Card - Cool.

8. Body surfing

It’s always neat to get to do this – even if you do get a cubic foot of sand and grit rammed into your nether-regions when you get dumped into the shore at the end. It builds character !

7. White water rafting

Even though the other losers on my raft ( excluding my good wife, naturally ! ) couldn’t row to save their worthless lives, causing our raft to flip on the seven meter waterfall drop – it was great fun and I’d do it again in a second. Just get me a decent crew who know what “go in time” means !

6. “The Excitor” boat ride

The sea bound version of a roller coaster. A stupidly powerful jet powered thing, which went VERY fast indeed. My face hurt from grinning so much afterwards.

5. Buffet BBQ

OMG. This was a meal we had at a hotel on the way back. So much BBQ … **slaver**…

It wasn’t good for me losing weight … but screw it, it was fan-freaking-tastic !

4. Bacon !

I think I ate more bacon for breakfast in the ten days of my holiday that I had eaten in the previous ten months. I’m pretty sure I could eat my own body weight in bacon if I gave it a good enough try.

3. Diving board action !

We went for a swim at the local high school pool while we were in Kerikeri. They had a diving pool ! Cue Seraph spending a good hour launching himself merrily from them, making it to various levels of the stratosphere ! I wasn’t game for the REALLY big one though ( it must have been 10 meters or so ). My sense of self preservation wasn’t THAT dulled !

2. Sand surfing !

Near Cape R. there are these truly behemoth sized sand dunes – and you can surf down them on boogie-boards. Totally insane. I managed to go down the REALLY big dunes three times – it was flipping SERIOUSLY hard work getting up them ! Viva almost made herself sick getting up the first time ! Yeesh !

Well worth the effort though.

1. Seeing Nine.

‘Nine’ is a very good friend of mine that I have known since standard 4. He lives in Auckland now and I don’t get to see him as often as I used to – in fact, I hadn’t seen him since my wedding. It was really cool to hang out and talk bollocks like the old days.

So there you go ! There were loads of other good things – but they were to top ten as they came to me. Obviously just spending time with Viva was the real joy of going on holiday … but I AM glad to be home. ;)