Manaia

We've been taking life pretty easy since we arrived in Auckland. Perhaps it's the atmosphere or perhaps it's the fact that we know that we are going to be in the country for some time but we haven't felt the need to do a mad dash of the tourist spots here. We did make it to the Auckland Museum though and were treated to an excellent exhibition called Vaka Moana, obviously we weren't allowed to take any pictures but to explain briefly it was an exhibition describing the exploration of the Pacific some 4000 years ago when the anestors of the Pacific launched their first ocean going craft. After that we had decided to attend a Manaia Cultural Performance, experiencing Maori song, dance and of course the famous haka. Most of my photos didn't come out well due to dimmed lighting and intense action on stage, so I've just posted the best of a poor lot. Our families will be treated(?) to the whole performance as Cathal captured it on the camcorder. We still haven't downloaded anything to DVD yet so it'll easily be the New Year before ye will receive a DVD - apologies!

Today we headed out to Devonport on the ferry and took this picture of Auckland on the way out. It was an absolutely beautiful day and the factor had to come out - yipee.
Here's a quick glimpse of our arrival on Devonport. I'm not going to elaborate about Devonport I'll leave that to Cathal. I will talk about it a little on my other blog though, I found a yarn shop there, and continued my stash enhancement ( did I mention I also managed to find a yarn store in Hong Kong).
We're off to Hamilton in the morning to visit Sean and Anna Mc Cormack for a few days - Leixlip readers will know who I am talking about.

We'll be back online mid next week when we get down to Wellington, till then see ya.

Sharon