holiday

This weekend I travelled down to Papamoa with a friend to catch up with friends we haven’t seen for ages. The drive down was fun and traffic was great, only one quick stop at the BP Papakura Truckstop for petrol and snacks.

Nic #1 greeted us with a glass of wine and we sorted out what we would do first, which turned out to be the Beach Bar on Papamoa Beach – a short walk from Nic’s house.

This is such a cool bar, the view is out over the ocean and has happy hour drinks for two hours which we made the most of and the food was awesome.

After several drinks and dinner we walked home along the beach, dipping just our toes in the very refreshing water, the weather was perfect.

After we got home, we took a quick drive to the supermarket for supplies (beers) and spent the evening watching the big, beautiful orange moon rising and the stars come out.

Next morning we were up relatively early for a walk to a place called “Fashion Island” – the name amused me greatly. We had to walk because there was going to be a Santa Parade down Nic’s street and the road was blocked off, but it wasn’t too far to walk to Fashion Island anyway.

On the way I was seriously impressed with all the Pohutukawa trees (NZ’s native Xmas tree) in full bloom and it was another stunning cloudless blue sky day.

Fashion Island is basically an area filled with outlet stores and amongst it all is a really great cafe called Blackberry and that’s where we met up with Nic #2. What a cool little reunion – the 4 of us all used to work together, so we had loads to catch up on and find out. Afterwards we took a stroll through some of the shops then Nic #2 drove us back to Nic #1’s home, after we got dropped off we basically packed up our stuff and headed home – another fun drive with great traffic. At one point there was a slight concern about which way to drive home coz New Zealand’s first IKEA just opened on Thursday and we were thinking the traffic would be bad at Mt Wellington, however the traffic was actually better than it normally is.

Luckily this year there were three days between the Easter holidays and Anzac Day, so like many others in New Zealand I took those three days off too. But I didn’t want to stay at home, I wanted something to look forward to so I could set up a countdown of the sleeps till I went away and I wanted to go somewhere I could get away from it all and stare at the ocean.

It took me ages to find somewhere that definitely had an ocean view, was available, and wasn’t hugely overpriced because of school holidays, but after weeks of random searches I found the Castaways Resort which is only just over an hours drive from where I live, and is situated on a cliff overlooking Karioitahi Beach, so it definitely has ocean views.

Prior to and all throughout Easter we had a massive storm Cyclone Tam which brought us a lot of rain and really strong winds, so I was hoping it would all be over by the day I left for the beach… and just in the nick of time, luckily it was. And on Wednesday the weather was picture perfect, warm with no rain or wind so I could sit out on the deck all day enjoying the sunshine and then watch an amazing sunset that evening. It was like a dream come true and I felt incredibly lucky. My villa and the view were stunning.