zondag 22 november 2009

Strand Wanganui

Ankie near a big treetrunk on the beach of Wanganui. The picture is a little dark, but that is because the sand is black.
This is a volcanic area and that's why there is black sand.
Sunday, 22nd. November 2009,
Castle Cliff Seaside Holiday Park Wanganui.
Wanganui is on the west coast of the North
Island.
It’s mostly flat country here and on the seaside
there are dunes (black sand).

This is the camping where we are now today.
As you understand we are near the seaside.
Only a two minute walk from the camping to
the sea.
The road from Wellington (as a matter of fact
it was a township near Wellington called
Lower Hutt) to Wanganui was uneventful,
although we had a piece of road of about
30 Km’s with only one lane, with lots of
hairpins and other corners. This was a tiring
piece of road……. and you never knew
whether somebody else was driving in the
opposite direction.
So I honked a lot as a sign that somebody was
coming: “us”.

We started with rain and after a while it
dried up, the sun showed now and than
(we bought groceries in a place called Levin)
and when we arrived we sat in the sun,
next to our campervan, reading our books.

We had lunch on the beach of Waitarere
(I will never remember these names because
of Alzheimer, Korsakov and the
unspeakable names of the places here).

About places with difficult names.
On the North Island is a village with a
name which has at least 100 letters or more.
I wonder whether people are able to pronounce
this name even if they live over there.
It starts like:
Taumatawhakatanghihangakoaauauotama
and so on.

This village lies near Porangahau, on the south
east coast of the northern island.
If you don’t believe it, look it up on the map.

We made a hike to the sea and on the beach
for a few hours this afternoon.
There was not much to see (besides the sea and
waves, black sand, all kinds of trunks on the
beach and not too many shells and the sky)
and almost no people on the beach.
And there are floating stones (If you don’t
believe this, ask Ankie) a sort of lime stones,
with lots of holes in them like cheese.

After we returned we drank something and
ate something like cheese and salmon on
toast and we swapped books with the camping
library.
In half an hour we’ll have dinner, Ankie will
do the dishes and we’ll read again for an hour
or so and go to bed.

Nothing much to remember but for us a good
day of our vacation.

About vacations.
Lots of motels and B & B’s have vacancies.
Must be lucky people to have their holiday
when we are here.
And then there is something else; when they
have no holiday they have a sign which says:
“no vacancy” which means they are at home.
Strange people those New Zealanders.

About cars.
On the southern island we mostly saw Toyota’s, Datsuns/Nissans and Fords. Almost no other car brands.
On the northern island you see the same but more other brands like VW, Saab and even, now and than, a Volvo.

About Supermarkets.
Most supermarkets are open on Sundays.


About sheep.
People who love sheep have to go to the
South Island of New Zealand.
As far as I can see on that island are the
most sheep.They also keep sheep on the
north island but there are much more sheep
on the South Island (as far as we can see in
two days).
For people who love sheep the South Island
must be really heaven.

So this is it for this Sunday.
I’ll try to get this on my blog tomorrow-
morning, which is then: today.