Matai is Maitai

It is now Friday, 3 Dec.

The days are starting to merge together. We are still at Maitai Bay (the name was corrected from Matai to Maitai a few years back, a local was telling me). We have been swimming and playing at the beach often. But this week has been dominated first by the news that Carolyn's last remaining grandparent was ill, and then by his passing. Yesterday we drove to KeriKeri airport (about an hour and a half) to drop Carolyn off to go back to Christchurch for the funeral. She will be back on Sunday.

I explored a sea cave with James earlier in the week. It was quite a scramble around the rocks, and the cave was surprisingly deep. We had brought James's small wind-up LED torch with us 'just in case', and I ended up wishing we had brought my head torch. He is enjoying having adventures every day. The kids and I also biked over the other side of the peninsula to Karikari beach. It has sand that is much whiter (higher silica content?) than Maitai Bay, and a large selection of interesting shells and bits of coral.

The roar of the waves was unusually loud last night, and this morning when I went to check, I saw waves that were far-and-away the largest we have seen at the beach by a factor of 3 at least. The were rolling in thick and fast and dumping themselves loudly on the beach. After morning tea I took the children down and we went swimming. I only ventured in as far as my waist. The waves were still breaking quite a bit further out, but even then, most were a seething mass of white water the height of my head by the time they reached me. The children loved it. They learnt how to dive under the big waves, did boogie boarding, and general big-wave play for nearly two hours. By the time we got back, the area behind us was a loud teen-tent city. The year-13 students at a nearby highschool have taken it over for a two-night party. There's probably about 40 tents. I mentioned to the kids that I should toot the car horn (it's really loud) at 6am if they keep us up tonight. But then I said that I wouldn't, because we are christians, and that sort of tit-for-tat behaviour isn't the sort of thing we should do. But boy, is it tempting.