11June06 Joan and Wayland

11June06 Sunday

This morning we left the Manukau Top 10 Holiday Park and drove over to the Manukau Habitat home worksite that we had helped with.  We were curious to see what had been accomplished since we had left a week ago.  The wood house that we had worked on had the cladding installed since we left and the roof completed.  Also the cladding around the bottom of the foundation had been started and it is giving the house a more complete look.  The concrete house had the windows trimmed on the outside and has been spray painted outside giving the house a much more completed look.  Both houses are looking very nice.

 

We left Manukau and drove north up through Auckland.  We decided to go through Orewa and stop there for lunch along the beach.  We parked along the main street that runs along the beach and stopped in a café that had pastries and sandwiches and bought a few things.  They didn’t have coffee so we stopped at a café behind that place and got a short black and a cappuccino.  The couple who own the café were from the United States and had been truck drivers.  They knew the whereabouts of the Schneider truck depot out around Medina.

 

From Orewa we traveled on up Hwy 1 and made the turnoff in Warkworth out to Goat Island Marine Reserve.  There we took a glass bottom boat ride out around the island and got a very informative commentary by the operator.  We saw a lot of red snapper, a few manta rays, and some other colorful stripped fish whose name we don’t remember.  There were also a large number of shellfish and although we didn’t see any there is a large population of crayfish.  The operator said that the crayfish differ from lobster in that crayfish don’t have claws.  Apparently they are about the same size.  There is a large area that is part of the Reserve covering a few thousand acres.  Every living thing in the area is protected and you are not allowed to even take shells from the area.

 

From Goat Island we went on north on Hwy 1 and then turned west on Hwy 12 and stopped for the night at Matahohe which is the location of the Kauri Museum.  We haven’t decided if we are going to stop there in the morning since we had been there last year but it is a very interesting place.