Ok. First thing: I had always wondered where ‘Old Zealand’ was before coming down here. Turns out it was named by Abel Tasman (of Tasmania fame), who was Dutch. ‘Zee Land’ means something close to ‘Sea Land’, and as t was new to him at the time, he added ‘New’ to the front of the name. Thus, New Zealand (‘Zea-‘ being an English morph of the Dutch word for ‘sea’).

Its been a real eye-opener to find ourselves to Internet-free down here. Its made me realize that our lives back home (and perhaps Canada as a whole, by extension), are so hugely facilitated by ‘net access pretty much anywhere we go. Not so here. There’s WiFi in the hotel I’m writing this from, for example, but not in our room. Instead I am seated on two not-so-comfy chairs in the ‘conference centre’, in the dark.

We were able to post last from Jennifer’s office in Auckland, but was, like, a million years ago already. We’ve seen a bunch of stuff: camped at a beautiful spot at the very northern end of the North Island (Taputoputo), walked some hills above a glorious sea, played in some beautiful black sand, driven some intensely-stomach-churning forest roads, and so on.

We’re on our way back down south now to Auckland for a night before heading up the Coromandel coast to a ‘bach’ (“batch”), which is a rented cabin on a beach there called Hotwater beach. The riptides are such there that we won’t be doing and swimming, but the kids have been excited about digging warm sand holes in the beach since long before leaving home.

Carrie, Jen and Owen are keen to get on here and make their own posts or check email, so I’ll sign off now and post a few images from the days so far.

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