whareroa farm

saturday was a bit of a disaster for me. i won't speak much about it except the following: torn jeans, too small knitted hat, bad haircut. done.

sunday was much much better. after a leisurely morning we made our way to whareroa farm, which is on the kapiti coast. it is an actual farm, with lots of walking/biking tracks. we did a 5-6 mile hike and saw some scenery and things. check it out:

flat part of the trail happiness

do not stop! a boulder or a cow may fall on your head.

stunning views

happy boy

exercise bug

anyone who has seen my pinterest account recently, probably already knows... i have been cleared to exercise to my hearts content by my now ex-physio, glenn.

my left ass muscle is now offically stronger than the other (and i will continue to do dips on both legs to maintain strengh). but now i can slowly go back to running 10k (about 6 miles) whenever i want. i started the bridge to 10k app again this week and am excited to build up to it. the first run with the app was run 10 minutes, 1 walk minute (4x). this sounded easy enough, but it really kicked my rear. it is nice to have a running goal to work towards again, and the weather is starting to become nicer and nicer.

another thing: i've been wanting to start doing yoga. not the chanting, philosophical kind, but the moving sweating, gaining balance, kind. there are so many different types and resources...i'm feeling overwhelmed. does anyone have advice (without spending tons of dough on classes?)

random photos

 

cabbage trees through aaron's sunglasses. i was trying to be artsy. eh?

the amount of produce we bought in one week for our family of 2. this is pretty average and doesn't include the canned butter beans or the frozen blueberries (1kg). it makes me feel better about the bacon, sausage, and whipping cream that we also bought.

napier

we went to napier last weekend. pardon the delayed post...but the computer is in a room with no heat. it makes me less than motivated to post. you understand.

friday we drove the 4 or so hours to napier, and mostly hung out after that. bought some groceries and settled in. we rented at "self-contained unit" from the bayview snapper holiday park. it was cheap, clean accommodation with a little kitchenette and private bathroom. nothing fancy, but got the job done.

view from our "scu" right on the beach

saturday morning we explored downtown napier. did some window shopping, visited the farmer's market and had some yummy italian pizza. in the afternoon we did some winery visiting. we went to sileni, abbey, trinity hill, and unison and purchased our fair share of bottles.

the bells in downtown napier

sunday, we got up early and drove 2.5 hours away from napier to te urewera national park, to see the sights and get in a nice hike. our hike in took about an hour, and there was an empty cabin shelter at the end near a lake. at this point the wind was blowing, and the rain was falling, so we went in and made some lunch and took a nice break.

serene lake we sighted along our drive

a nice viewpoint along the way

the dense rainforest we hike through

making lunch in the shelter

 monday we had to head back. i start work at 2.30 on mondays, so we got up relatively early, had some breakfast and then we were on our way. wait. no, there was another viewpoint. but this one was my favorite of the entire trip so i'm glad we went a bit out of the way to get there. it combined topography with lambs. neat-o!

lambs at the viewpoint

accurately depicts NZ landscape