Christmas and the "Hunting of the Native Waikato Zebra"!

I'm just back from a trip up to Cambridge to celebrate Christmas with relatives. As expected, this ended up being 4 days of almost constant laughs, plenty to eat, not too much to drink and more laughs!

Christmas lunch was to rather large affair, with more relatives and others around a large table, then more laughs [you get the idea!]. Add in to that a trip to Auckland and even more laughs [and a few lies from what I remember!]... a great time was had by all.

A special treat though was a visit to Maungakawa, aka Sanatorium Hill, on the outskirts of Cambridge. In ages past this was a place for the treatment of tuberculosis . Nowadays, all but one of of the buildings are gone, but it makes for a nice place to visit and offers great views over a fair part of the Waikato region. Included in this special treat was a safari to try and track and follow the mysterious, and not very well known, native Waikato Zebra.

See if you can spot the Waikato Zebra in some of the photos which follow. Top to bottom are photos of Maungakawa, views and the results of the safari. Last is a photo of my parents and aunt and uncle. Enjoy!

Trip to Cambridge and Lake Karapiro

Earlier this month I spent a couple of days in Cambridge [NZ] with relatives. A nice relaxing time, including all the stories about the dodgy things other family members had gotten up to, in days gone by. My lips are sealed. Sort of.. :-)

One day we went for a bit of a drive to look at the local area. What follows are a bunch of photos from various parts of Lake Karapiro [famous for world-class rowing training and championships], including the hydro power station dam. You'll see from the pictures that this is a particularly picturesque part of the country - helped in no small part by having a cool, but nice day.

The first 4 pictures are from one part, the next 2 from Hora Hora Domain, then the big rowing centre and the last 5 from the Karapiro Dam.