Today we drove to Muriwai to see the Gannet colony. There was a path to walk on to go and see their home. When we got to the first lookout, Jennifer fell in love with the baby gannets because they were gorgeous, looked soft, fluffy and cute, so she sat at the rail and sang them a lullaby.

The number of gannets was amazing, they were on every ledge along the cliffs.  We were amazed at how fast they can fly, but it gave Jason a good challenge to photograph.  Apparently astronauts are in awe of the gannets wing design and only wish they could exactly replicate.

We walked to Muriwai beach, it had black sand. Mummy read that a volcano erupted in the ocean a long time ago and that made the sand black.

Now just what is one to do when the water looks so inviting and you have no swimmers – well, we decided go in anyway so we walked down to Muriwai beach across some rocks.  We took our sandals off as we had to walk thorugh some water to get onto the sand.  James decided he could find a better place to wait while we were taking off our shoes, so he moved over to the sand where the water was just deep enough to wet his toes, next minute a wave rolled in and soaked him, so off came the soaking shorts.  We also took off Jennifer’s skirt and we went for a paddle along the edge of the water until we got to where the life savers were watching the beach. Mummy, James and Jennifer went into the water and had fun when the waves rolled over us and splashed us. We all got soaking wet, it was hilarious as we were in ankle deep water and then the waves rolled in with such gusto.

We walked up to the grassy picnic area and had a late picnic lunch in the park before we drove home.

Our finale dinner in New Zealand was a yum char dinner at restaurant called China Yum Char in Auckland.  James, Mummy and Daddy were very adventurous and ordered lots of yummy food like pork buns, seafood dumplings and pork rice rolls to name a few while Jennifer enjoyed the fried rice and sweet and sour pork.  We had a lovely dinner and all agreed that we had a fabulous family holiday.