10 th November: now at Mangawhai Heads in Northland on the east coast, north of Auckland. We've had good flights and time in Singapore. Did the usual bus tours, visited the Botanical Gardens to see their collection of Orchids, really amazing. The rest of the time we visited Changi PoW museum and the beaches nearby,
The camper is great, an older shorter version of the one we have (Fiat Ducata) so feels like home!! We've been stopping at campsites on beaches, Pakiri and Mangawhai Head and guess what, we've got a bird ID book already and the number of "new" on the list is increasing each day!! Almost spotted the really rare Fairy Tern! but have seen lots of others (won't bore you with details). Next it will be a tree book as the plants are so different from home but have seen lots of the Pohutukawa tree that will have red flowers at Christmas time and that seems to grow near the coast, even near sand dunes.
Today we did a walk along the Mangawhai Cliffs north with great views of the nearshore islands. We were supposed to return along the beach but even though it was 3 hours from high tide, the water level was up to our chests, so we decided against it.
The weather is mixed with some light showers and then sunshine, but it does change very quickly. It gets cool at night, down to 10 C and daytime up to 19 C. It should get warmer as we go north over the next week or so. Will try and post a picture of us at Mangawhai.