Friday and Saturday

For a long time now we had been planning to go camping last Friday. As it happened the weather forecast was really good and earlier in the week Keryn started sending me suggestions of things we could do. One of these suggestions was to visit Kapiti Island and it took me all of 10 minutes to read the suggestion, look it up and then book our boat and sign up for the required DOC permits.

I also emailed (well, Facebooked, is that a verb yet?) our friend Lydia to see if she wanted to come along. Lydia is a lady of leisure until the school term starts in January and as such has time on her hands. She agreed to come along as well.

Now, everyone knows I like taking photos and I carry a camera with me everywhere. On Thursday night this saw me taking photos from the roof terrace of a restaurant on Oriental Parade while a quite wonderful fireworks display took place. It looked like this:

Photo by Brendon & Keryn

Wellington Fireworks.

Upon getting home I downloaded the photos and started charging the batteries. I realised I had left the camera and batteries next to the computer the next morning as I bend down to look in my bag and found only sunglasses where the camera should have been. Damn.

So, for photos (and a description of the day) you’re going to have to look at Lydia’s blog which is here:

http://lydsadventures.blogspot.com/

The moral of this story: always take someone else with a camera with you when visiting islands covered in interesting birds.

We camped at Otaki Beach and managed to put our new tent up with a minimum of fuss. Dinner was fish and chips, sitting outside our tent on camp chairs with a cold beer (me) and cold cider (Keryn). We sat on a driftwood log and watched the sun setting, taking a break to go grab some ice-creams before returning to the beach and this time a more comfortable bench.

The tent came down the next morning with only a little fuss, though it doesn’t quite fit in it’s bag anymore. We took the advice of our neighbours and drove to Otaki Forks where we had a pleasant walk for an hour or so and then went back to Otaki for some retail time. We ended our trip with a drive around the Queen Elizabeth Park further south – looks like a nice spot for camping and BBQ in the future.