Whangarei Cruising Club POP is a brilliant night stop, just look at those hills.  The Club facilities were excellent and the caretaker welcoming. Wenderholm Park is another great overnight place Akeake and Pohutakawa or Rata, I still can't tell the difference And, of course, our Christmas tree!
Tui, the local beer have great advertising bill boards, often based on topical gossip like this one putting the boot in to Mike Tindall during the Rugby...	It's possible to design your own and prizes are available for the best submitted.  We've seen this on the back of a very grand motorhome	The Tui website .. Tui .. Will show you more
	Christmas is coming ... All sorts of preparations are needed.
	Santa landed on the lawn and walked snow into the house as he does every year, you can see the footprints on the right just outside the door.  The snowball fight took place at 7.30 A.M. and continued for most of the day. Thank you Shula for sending ready made snowballs from England; they haven't melted yet.
		~~~~~ a little blue penguin at Gulf Harbour They're about 8" tall
After Christmas we travelled north again At Lang's Beach a new installation has obviously annoyed the locals .. the sign reads .. How can our council spend $27000 on these poles when our footpaths are buggered and rubbish bins overflow. Please explain their purpose - an enhancement on the natural beauty perhaps? Do they come with dancers? and another has added The rate payers and the rate takers are poles apart
In Kerikeri we learned that this post means "Tapu", a place that is forbidden to enter We also found out why the bridge was removed in 2009.  On our first visit here in 2006 we crossed the river on an interesting bridge that was quite low to the water, certainly there was very little clearance underneath. The next time we came the bridge had been removed and we were quite surprised.  Why on earth would a perfectly good bridge disappear and the detour be quite long.	It transpired that because of the low clearance any debris in floodwaters would get caught up on the bridge and cause a flood upstream. The road to nowhere still catches many Below right, giant plug swimming platform (?) in the river.
Art water feature in the park   Note a Dad and his small son exploring the 30ft high towers of boulders		There were once thousands of kauri trees throughout Northland, they were a great bounty for the early settlers. These pics taken in pouring warm rain !
		The foliage of the kauri trees is quite acidic.  Over many thousands of years they helped water to cause erosion to the rocks and at Horeke the Wairere boulders were formed.  This valley was discovered in the 1990s by the Swiss couple, Rita & Felix Schaad, who bought the land.  They had lived there for 4 years before they discovered the valley full of incredible rocks!  The goats are actually in the middle of the pic on the far left and give an idea of the size of the rocks.
		www.wairereboulders.co.nz  Panorama

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