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Holidays good
Oct. 25th, 2005 08:31 pmHave I mentioned lately how much I love my country? Heh. And, I totally love my friends, they're marvie. What a soul-restoring few days I had.
It rained almost the entire time, except Sunday, the day I was leaving. It'd apparently been totally gorgeous for the two weeks preceding. Of course, I get back to Canberra, and it's still raining.
Even so, here's a nice piccie of the Hokianga Heads, the top of the harbour I spent most of my time driving around "up North" (of Auckland). ( Hokianga Heads )
The whole northwestern coast of the North Island is festooned with sand dunes. South of Auckland, you get the black iron sands at Port Waikato. The currents bring the black sand to the west coast beaches of Auckland, and I have tons of memories of not being able to stand on the beach due to the heat generated by the iron deposits. Literally foot-frying. Also, there can't be too many places in the world where kids take magnets to the beach for fun (who knows if they do now, but we certainly did then). The black sand beaches aren't so black these days, since they finally found a process to extract the iron for smelting in the late 70s - as you can imagine, getting iron out of the silica it's bound up with in the sand isn't a trivial process.
Anyways, this post is just for starters. I'm happy with my new phone/camera, although since the shutter speed isn't too fast, I have problems holding it steady enough with my wobbly hands. Since I totally overdosed on the yummy coffee to be had at home, they were even less steady than usual. Never mind.
It rained almost the entire time, except Sunday, the day I was leaving. It'd apparently been totally gorgeous for the two weeks preceding. Of course, I get back to Canberra, and it's still raining.
Even so, here's a nice piccie of the Hokianga Heads, the top of the harbour I spent most of my time driving around "up North" (of Auckland). ( Hokianga Heads )
The whole northwestern coast of the North Island is festooned with sand dunes. South of Auckland, you get the black iron sands at Port Waikato. The currents bring the black sand to the west coast beaches of Auckland, and I have tons of memories of not being able to stand on the beach due to the heat generated by the iron deposits. Literally foot-frying. Also, there can't be too many places in the world where kids take magnets to the beach for fun (who knows if they do now, but we certainly did then). The black sand beaches aren't so black these days, since they finally found a process to extract the iron for smelting in the late 70s - as you can imagine, getting iron out of the silica it's bound up with in the sand isn't a trivial process.
Anyways, this post is just for starters. I'm happy with my new phone/camera, although since the shutter speed isn't too fast, I have problems holding it steady enough with my wobbly hands. Since I totally overdosed on the yummy coffee to be had at home, they were even less steady than usual. Never mind.
