Posts Tagged ‘vacation’

Bach to the future

Monday, January 16th, 2012

Through the love and generosity of good friends, we have been blessed to be able to spend the last few days in their family bach on the Hibiscus Coast.  In the spirit of many a Kiwi holiday home, it is only 45 minutes away from where we live but just 100m from a great beach, so the delightfully quirky (no two doors the same width) and slightly confusing (three levels in two and a half storeys) 1960s bach made a lovely place for a long weekend of relaxation and fun before I headed back to the office this morning.

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The bach was a testament to decades of a loving family life lived well together and was full of charming period artefacts like the bakelite Philco valve radio and the 1970s vacuum cleaner, not to mention the carefully labelled family albums and wonderful EktaChrome slides, complete with viewer.

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For the family, it has meant long sunny days at the beach with a bag full of books and sunblock, Sunday morning devotions together before a long walk on the beach to enjoy cappuccinos and juice at a cafe and leisurely stroll home through the tide pools and sand.

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It also provided a great opportunity for us to catch up with friends like the Smiffs and funkypancake & family, recently returned from Blighty and bearing large quantities of watermelon and cookies, which were consumed with lashings of tea and soft drinks.

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For all that, most of all, it was a great time for the younger members of the family to enjoy the very best of what the Kiwi way of life has to offer – fun in the sun, friends over for sleepovers, lazy days, takeaway dinners, kite flying, card games, jigsaws and crosswords, warm nights in creaky wooden baches  – and the chance to simply smile and be happy!

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Talofa Samoa

Saturday, November 21st, 2009

samoan beach

From tomorrow morning, this will be the view that will greet me and She Whom Must Be Obeyed each morning for the next week.  After a family meal of chicken piri piri with our girls and a friend who will live with them for a week, we’re heading off to Aggie Grey’s Lagoon Resort in Samoa – most recently, the location for Survivor Samoa – for our first holiday without kids for 18 years.  A bit of saving and a bit of a bonus and a bit of a travel agent discount have all been combined to make this happen so we’re planning to make the most of the break and really relax.  As we have met and worked with a few Samoan folk in New Zealand, we are looking forward to seeing something of their homeland.  Having booked this trip months back and collected the tickets on the morning of the recent tsunami, we were a little conflicted as to whether we should still take the holiday there with so many having lost so much on that day.  However, the advice we have been given is that because tourism is a mainstay of the economy, just spending our tourist dollars will be of benefit.  Be that as it may, we also hope to hook up with a local contact in Apia for a little mini-mission while we’re there.  With that, I’m off for a plate of chicken piri piri.