I'm back from Waiheke Island

Hi there.  Did you miss me?  I had a lovely relaxing week on Waiheke Island.   30c every day, and not a spot of rain.  Even though 'Waiheke' sounds Hawaiian, it's not.  The island is 40 minutes by fast boat from Auckland (New Zealand) city.  To get there I travelled:  a taxi, a plane, a bus, a boat, and another bus.  I'd never been to this particular holiday home before but I had been to Palm Beach where it was located and I loved the place.  The holiday apartment was excellent.  It was called Seascape, but on getting home I discovered that the place had been bought by someone else and was now named Palm Breeze.  It's  54c Palm Beach Road

 I tied my hiking stick to my shoulder bag for when I staggered out of planes, lifts, doorways, crowds, with my suitcase in tow.  I tended to get the hiking stick tangled between many passerbys' legs.    After about the twentieth apology, I glanced down at the bottom of the stick and noticed that the ferrule (the posh name for the rubber knobby thing on the end) was gone.  What was now showing was a very pointy metal arrowhead.   From then on, I had to really keep an eye on the stick, I was petrified I would do untold damage to a person's private parts.  Worse still, what if I was banned from flying home because of carrying 'a dangerous weapon'.  I'd lost the ferrule once before when I had to travel on the inter-island ferry.  An officer told me I couldn't board without covering the pointy end of my hiking stick.  I boarded the boat with a gayly-patterned yellow and black bedsock pushed down onto my hiking stick which was sticking out from my backpack like some country's flag.  No problem getting past plane attendants, however, returning home from Waiheke, which was a bit scary - what if I'd wanted to use my unferruled hiking stick as a weapon? 

I know that locks were my downfall in Queenstown and, yes, I did have trouble a wee bit with my door key on Waiheke (I left the owners a message to please do some oiling), but curtain rails were my main gripe.     After a shower, I threw the bathmat over the shower curtain railing to dry off.  Boom!  The whole railing, plus curtain and towel, came down on my head.  The railing wasn't solid to the wall, it had just been balanced on wall curves.

Second curtain mishap:  I swished open the long bedroom curtain one morning and, oh dear swished the curtain and the pointy-knobby stopper thingee at the end of the railing right off the entire railing and practically into the next room!

Though I never managed to walk more than 3 kms at a stretch because of my sore ankle, I was determined to walk down a zig zag track at one end of Palm Beach.  I got off the bus at Pope's Corner had a nice walk to the top of the track.  Uh-oh, steps and steepness galore.  I stumbled a few times, sidled down the steps like a demented crab, and finally got to the bottom to discover I was on the hidden away end of Palm Beach.  The nude end! 

Where to look.  Or not look.  Decisions ...  Decisions ...  Should I look straight ahead?  Or at the sea?  Maybe I should nonchalently rake me eyes over to the nude sunbathers (familes, singles, couples), just to show I wasn't a prude?   Except for one quick peek at a middle-aged male's plump rear as he ran past me into the water, I kept my eyes firmly staring at the sand as I made my way over to the non-nude part of Palm Beach.  Oh dear, perhaps I should have shown what a woman of the world I was and taken a nude dip, too....  Only joking.  That much of a woman of the world, I am not!

 Waiheke is a very artsy-craftsy place and I bought a beautiful little ceramic statue of a bather sitting on a towel (artist: Jacqueline Riley).  I broke the 'towel' in half  when I sat the statue down too hard on the coffee table.  $50 down the drain in one not-so-heavy knock.  Maybe I can glue it together.

Here's some pics:  1  my lovely apartment holiday home.  2  view from deck at my holiday home which is just across the road from the beach (and right opposite bus stop from the ferry, great!).  3  A section of Palm Beach - the nude beach is way in the background past that lot of rocks that jut into the water.  3  main area of my holiday home.