Christmas Day 2002. One to remember.

I wish I could capture the feelings from this day as well, so I could share them.

Do this one day if you can.

...by that I mean go and see some Dolphins, not swim really fast in front of a speeding Catamaran! (But if you can do that, what are you doing in your normal job!)

These are 'common' dolphins, smaller than the bottle-nose ones most of us have seen on TV. These were on their way somewhere and we followed them for a while. They hitched a ride on our bow-wave for a while. It was amazing when we sped up to try to leave them behind - they can keep up some incredible speeds. I hope it was as much fun for them as it was for us !

They don't all spend their time hovering in the air like this either. And I'm not such a superb photgrapher that I could capture these images. I took some video clips with the digital camera, and went through them later and picked out these frames. Excellent !

Waitangi Treaty House.

This was the traditional challenge that takes place before you can enter.

The house represents their ancestors. Note the face at the apex of the roof. The front of the roof is the arms, the verticals are the legs. The ridge on top of the roof is the spine, and the rafters are the ribs.

Me and Lea at Waitangi.

Note the Maori flag, top left.

A fearsome Maori warrior.

...or maybe not.

The unexpectedly good view from the cafe at Waitangi.

New Year's Ev at the Swiss restaurant in Paihia.

The silly hat/grin competition was a walkover.

Pleeeeeeeeeze tell me which cartoon character Brett reminds you of, cos it's driving me mad!

Happy New Year

Sending Brett into the garden to light the Barbeque might not have been such a good idea...

It did get more impressive than this, but by then I was running in the opposite direction.

Life on the road can be tough. Dirty, basic, infested accomodation and...

...oh bugger. Wrong photo.

Shortly after this was taken loads of bubbles appeared.

...and then we turned the jets on!