Wonderful day at Rainbow's End

I had a great day at Rainbow's End with Nonie and the boys yesterday.  I took loads of photos with my phone, not wishing to risk my camera and not giving a toss what happened to my phone.  I uploaded 48 of the better ones to somewhere with my phone - buggered if I can find them but there's some good generic pictures on the Rainbow's End website.  OK - found them and updated the phone drivers - nerd day today.





























The place I am staying here is on top of a cliff in Red Beach, north of Auckland.  It has no internet access, hence my sporadic blog entries.  I can use the internet through my cellphone but if I do that I pretty soon want to hurl the darn thing in the sea (not much of a throw).
I also can't persuade my PC to read the photos from my phone which doesn't amaze me.  I will email them to myself so I can get them on my laptop when I get to the airport.  Maybe. (I did later find out how to do this).
Anyway, if you don't know Rainbow's End, it's a smaller version of Carowinds or Disneyland - no giant roller coasters and no 2 hour queues which I reckon is worth the trade-off.  We must have done at least 20 rides each and, at the end of the day were bruised, wet, shaken, exhausted and stupidly happy.  The only time we had to wait for a ride was if it was running when we got there so the longest wait was maybe 3 minutes.  Perhaps not what you come to New Zeland for but if you get kicked out of your accommodation at 10 a.m. and your flight out isn't until 7 p.m., I can think of a lot worse ways to get your kids ready for a long nap.
I'm down to my last 6 days here and have really done everything I wanted to do and been amaxed at the things I really didn't want to do and the places I really didn't want to go.  A major dose of "Been there, done that."  I may potter out to Piha on Monday but have no desire ever to return to Muriwai, a place with few fond memories.  I still haven't seen Maurice, Alex, Bev & Graham but have them all in my sights for Tuesday.

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