Have camera will travel

Feb 10
Up early, as the whiney kid from down stairs is up and crying, only took him/her about 5 minutes to start. It rained during the night, so there is that nice clean fresh smell in the air. It is overcast, but still warm and humid.
Just a note about the fires in Australia, we are not ( as far as we know), going to the Melbourne area, so we are not getting a job fighting fires next week. But we might have to help out in Sydney, as that is where we are going next week.
Drats, it’s raining, o well. So we are having breakfast, toasted enflish muffins and jam. Soon we will be off along the coast toward Mount Maunganui, it’s not very far, but we will be stopping a lot to run into the ocean and take photos.
So back down the wet windy road – didn’t seem as long going back today. The trees and ferns look so green. We stopped at a different place today for lunch – north american style (Burger King). Then off on a different road toward Mount Maunganui.
And ther the ocean was again. So another stop to walk in the water and chase sea gulls down the beach.
So driving down here is a bit different, other than you are on the left side of the road, the car is different as well.
The pedals are the same gas on the right and brake on the left. but the gear shift is also on the left. The turn signals are on the right side of the steering wheel, and the wipers on the left. The taxi driver told us in Auckland, taht who ever drives should get a 5$ fine every time they turn on the wipers instead of the signal. So I owe a lot of money from the fist day of driving.
But I now owe double from yesterday – as we were coming back out to the highway, Vicki had her head down and was writing in her book, we came up to the corner, adn I turned on the wipers instead of the signal light, they screeched across the dry windshield, and scared the crap of of her, she jumped, I then jumped becasue she jumped, and then we got the giggles driving down the highway, I could hardly see becasue I was laughing so hard.
But we survived, and on to the next time I spyed the ocean and had to pull off the road.
We stopped again at Papamoa Beach, and wandered around again, so some birds that were getting ready to migrate up to Alaska, and Vicki tried to scrape the crap that she has some how collected on the bottome of her shoe. The clouds have gone away, and the sun is shining again.
Back in the car again, and now we are off to find our friends place. We drove around a bit, and then we found it without too much trouble.
For the rest of the day we sat around, and I drank – I didn’t have to drive anywhere. We had a very nice tea (supper), and then tried to decided what we wanted to do tomorrow. No decision before we went to bed.