Swamped is a mild word for this year

Round up of the first 6 weeks of 2018

This year has started with a bang. I ended the year with a hike up to the top of Wairere Falls.  This is the tallest waterfall in New Zealand at 150m high.  It’s a 5km round trip and the stairs are bloody horrible but the view is spectacular 🙂

 

We ran straight into the New Years Day with a fantastic breakfast with some fabulous friends.A couple of days later my darling husband and  I decided to go for a wee hike out the back of Waihi.

 

The weekend bought about the first event of the season with a 5km round the mount run at 2pm on a day that was around 30 degrees.  Way too hot for running.  My friend D did it in just over 25 minutes and then had enough time to make 2 coffees while waiting for me to finish 😉 I’m not fast but I’m doing it 😀

 

Then it cycloned.  The sea was rather scary.

 

We bought ourselves some new push bikes and as soon as the weather cleared up we took our inaugural ride. 20km around 😀

Sadly this was the end of our summer holiday and it was back to work as well as back into the gym.  Nearly died in the heat.

 

 

D immediately dragged us back up the falls after work.  Made for rather a long day but I just love that view 🙂

Two weeks in we had a mini break for a Roger Waters concert.  It was on a Wednesday night in Auckland so I took the rest of the week off. Our hotel had the scariest stairwell.  We were on the top at floor 38.  We visited the Banksy exhibition the next day before heading home.

This was followed on the Saturday with the Taupo Summer Tour Concert featuring Colin Hay (Men at Work), Alanis Morissette and The Orchestra (ELO).  What a fantastic, although extremely hot, day.  Gates opened at 9 and the concert ended at 6.  Seriously going to the one next year if the line ups good 😀

While I was away the world went mental and we discovered that it’s the hottest summer on record.  This meant that when I returned to work on Monday I had 30 inquires requiring my visit.  This was quickly followed by another 10 that morning and it hasn’t slowed down yet.  12 hour days are normal and now I’m doing all my paper work on the weekend.  Still mustn’t complain.  It’s what keeps me employed 🙂

AND just because I wasn’t busy enough I committed to a 6 week challenge at the gym which is taking up an hour and a half of my time each day BUT ITS WORKING! We are 3.5 weeks in and for the first time in 3 years my boobs are bigger than my belly! I will get into all that in another post at the end of the challenge 🙂 Wish me luck because wow todays workout was tough 😉

Ka Kete Ano xx

 

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The big hill in my back yard

There is a bit of a hill in my back yard that is about 3km around and a lovely stroll.  While I was growing up it was called Mount Maunganui and the little sand spit of a town was called the same.  In recent years the mountain, which is actually a volcanic dome, has become more widely known as Mauao https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Maunganui_(mountain).  Approximately 6,000 people a day go either around it or up it every day during the summer season.

Up it can be tough.  Its rather steep even on the easier path.

On Friday during my PT my trainer mentioned that she was going to take her kids up it.  She then invited me so, of course, I said yea I’m in.  I haven’t gone up it in at least a year but it could in all honesty be as much as 3 years since I last braved her rocky heights.

I thought we would be going up at around 9 or 10 am.  I was incorrect and received the ready to go text at pretty near bang on 12. This is the first weekend in February folks and she was aiming for a record high in the temperature stakes. New Zealand is directly under the hole in the ozone and you can crispy yourself very successfully in less than a quarter of an hour if you are not protected.

Just as a minor aside here, may I suggest that America send their newly elected president here for a week in February and he would soon change his mind about global warming and put it back on the website.  My understanding is our burn time of 10-15 minutes exposure is rather short compared to the rest of the world.  We have glaciers turning to slushies as well with Franz Josef letting go of large sheets of ice at occasionally inappropriate times.

Now back to our regular feature.

As I am driving around and around the mount in the vein hopes of finding one of the rare mythological and elusive creatures, the car park, I noted that my car was telling me the current temperature is 32 degrees Celsius.  By NZ summer standards this is the equivalent of a 6 on the fire chilli rating and with no wind, deodorant tends to surrender rather quickly.

I finally managed to get a park about a kilometre from the track and as everyone else was dropped off 15 minutes prior I didn’t want to keep them waiting any longer and found myself jogging to the base track. This may not have been my smartest move to date.

So off we go 🙂 It really was a beautiful day even if bloody hot.  The kids had gotten fed up with waiting for me so they were already halfway up, fair call 🙂

10 minutes in my calves went nope.  I’m already puffing like an asthmatic English bulldog and my calves are yelling at me and calling me exceptionally rude words.

Of course we went the Waikorire path.  Its about 187m to the summit and mostly steps.  In all fairness even though it is a tough climb it is the more beautiful path an my choice every time.

At this stage I had to stop and stretch my calves.  I thought that I would do this quietly and then just get on with the walk.  No such luck.  I was spotted by my beautiful yet sadistic trainer and she decided to get behind me and be ‘encouraging’.  I pointed out that this was Sunday and therefore today we were not trainer and victim but friends.  She laughed at me and told me very sweetly to haul arse.

We had to make some minor stops before sets of stairs. In my defence I’m 45 years old, over weight since giving up smoking (hence the personal trainer) and it was really really hot up there. My beautiful trainer (I may give her shit and call her rude names but I really do love that chick) kept me going at a pace I had not necessarily thought I had in me and we got to the top.

The view is seriously worth it.

The effect is not glamorous

This was my Instagram entitled ‘Dead’

Then came the fun part 🙂 Down time 🙂

That night after chatting with my darling husband he mentioned that he really wanted to head up there as it had been a while.  Feeling brave I went ‘what the heck’ and at 9am Monday morning (public holiday here 🙂 ) we got a park almost at the bottom of the base track and headed back up again.

This time my calves screamed at me the whole way instead of just most of it but it was still really worth it 🙂

It was also way cooler and had just hit 28 degrees when we got back to the car at 10.30am so would recommend heading up at that time instead of the afternoon 🙂

Oh and we jogged down 😀

And I was wearing pants although apparently the photo’s beg to differ on that hahahaha

We did the obligatory FB posting and now I get to do it all over again next weekend with a friend who is coming over specially to climb that little ole hill

I love my little part of the world 😀