Kids camp volunteering week

We have had a crazy busy, fun, tiring, wild week.
We have been volunteering at a kids camp all week through people we know from YWAM. It has been a blast! They have such an amazing program. It's all on a farm out in the bush. The kids are all bussed in from surrounding communities. There were 190 kids ages 6-12. Plus all the teen leaders and YWAM DTS students. 
The kids spend every morning building a bush hut. Each team builds a hut in the bush alongside a creek using whatever they could find. They used bamboo, branches, cedar trees and this natural rope tying stuff called flax.  

Then they build a fire and cooked their hot dog lunch. Each team had to start a fire and each kid cooked their own hot dog. The bush huts were pretty amazing! They all had fun trying to make their huts better and better. 


After lunch they all go in  teams and do different electives.. Miranda helped with horse back riding, 

Dean helped with a water slide into a pond, Colton was with the raft building group, I was helping with first aid. The other electives were sheep shearing, crafts, dam building, shooting and a bunch more that I can't think of right now. Today we had a big awards program and bbq at the end of it. They gave out awards for the best and most creative bush huts. Deans team won most creative. 

We are staying with a family (Grant and Glenda) we met through volunteering 3 years ago at the YWAM base. We love being here. It will b hard to leave this weekend. 



We all hung out with great people that we will never forget and hope to meet up again along the way. 

New Zealand week 2

We have done a lot of exploring and hiking on the north island. We started in Welington, where we spent 2 nights with family of the people we stayed with in Perth. Once again, we were treated like family, fed really good food, had great conversations and learnt so much about the area. It's always  hard to leave good people. It was again this time. 

We visited the BEST museum ever! It was pretty amazing!  It kept our interest all afternoon. 

We drove past the town of Rotarua. We went there 6 years ago and I really wanted to see the thermal area again. 

In Tauranga  we had to go climb up another mountain. Just because. It was a great view of the bay and Miranda seems to find hiking a little better. 

            

We drove up the coast to the coramandal peninsula. It is an amazing, somewhat scary ride through very winding , mountainous, narrow roads with no guard rails. The view was continuously more and more beautiful. We ended up at an area called cathedral cove. We hiked along the mountain for about 1/2 an hour to the cove. It was very cool. The tide was low, so we were able to walk through it.

Then we went to hot water beach We dug holes into the sand and the hot water bubbled up into the holes. The water, with a temperature as hot as 64°C, filters up from two underground fissures to the surface where the beach meets the Ocean. The natural springs are only found in 2 small areas. So you have to go look for the area when the tide is low. As the tide comes back in, the holes are washed away until the next low tide. We could have spent way longer there, but there were to many people for Colton, and Miranda forgot her bathing suit. 

Today we returned to the other side of the coramandal. We came to do some rock collecting and tomorrow some fishing. We are staying in our first hotel since the hostel in South Africa. It will be nice to just relax and do our own thing tonight. 

We found this little gem on Air B&B. 

New Zealand South Island

We have spent almost a week on the South Island of New Zealand. We had to visit our friends Derren and Helen and Maddi from Christchurch. This is our third visit to Darren and Helens and they have come to visit us in ambush too! 

We had a great time reconnecting and eating and just hanging out. Plus we went car shopping. We bought a Subaru car for our time in NZ. When we leave, Colton will drive it until he comes home. Then he will sell it and see how much of it we can recoup. 

We also drove 6 hours south of Christchurch to a small area called Kaka point to visit our friends Nelson and Jos and their dog Podge. We only had 2 days, but we packed them full of eating, mussel collecting, cockle hunting and visiting. We should have booked a week, but we didn't. So we just had a short visit. We stayed with Nelson and Jos 3 years ago

We also had to pick up a stock of cheese from the cheese factory that Jos works at! 

Making clam chowder soup

Collecting cockles! 

Australia video

http://youtu.be/IJZqTlNq3sg

Here is the movie from our time in Australia