Holiday japes

Saturday evening here and we are getting into the flow of being on holiday. Even Chantelle is off! Deeply chilled with the occasional outbreak of fighting is how I'd describe the atmosphere right now. Boys have been out and about doing their things so enjoying some downtime with the vid.
Stuey and I are just back from our Challenge walk. It is the second in a series, started off last year with Eric's trip along the beach from Te Paki to the Cape. Stuart finishes at primary this year and we decided to walk from Ahipara to Herekino. Eric took a keen interest in the plans to make sure that Stuart didn't have an easier time that him! I think that in the balance Stuart had a tougher walk. For one thing we were not on a recognised walkway, so there was not always a path to follow. Our decison on which way to go led us into some tricky situations at times. The low point for me would have to be crawling through chest high kikyu grass to climb out of a bay onto a headland, struggling to move forward whilst my feet filled up with stinky bog water and Stuart urged me to get a move on because his feet were getting wet. The funny (?) thing was that when we dragged ourselves to higher ground we realised that there was a car track going all round the back of the headland that we had spent 1 1/2 hours negotiating!
On the plus side we had good weather, saw some sights and places that few others round here will have seen. We camped out wild for 2 nights, ate some wild food - rock cod, mussels crab and winkles. We had nothing but pleasantness from the people we met which was a relief as some of the blokes at College had suggested that we were heading into bandit territory.
We walked out today and decided to follow the vehicle route off the beach instead of going out along the coast. It took a lot longer than I was expecting and involved climbing from sea level to 200m and then back down again. We were both pretty stuffed when Chantelle drove into sight by Rangikohu Marae.
The icing on the cake - apart from the coffee, iced bun and pork bone she'd thoughtfully brought us as a snack, was that Nippy went into labour as soon as we got home and gave birth to a beautiful chocolate ram lamb in front of our eyes.
Pictures of all the above to follow.