View from the balcony in the morning. 🙂

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We drove to have a look at Goat Island. Apparently a number of islands are called Goat Island due to goats being put on them in case people were shipwrecked. There’s no record of goats being put on this particular one. Pigs were but they swam ashore!

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Then had lunch at Seafriends café. Oh, and a Devonshire cream tea…which we shared. Honest!

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Then we drove to Pakiri Beach which was amazing – there is a marine reserve and there were lots and lots of shells washed up on the sand.

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Looks like a segment of sea urchin.

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Of course, that was all very hard work so we popped into the Leigh corner shop on the way back to test their ice cream. Single scoop ice creams in NZ aren’t quite like single scoop ice creams in the UK!

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We went back to the house briefly before going out to the Matakana cinema to watch Noah with a glass of wine.

Now, if you’ve not been to this cinema and you have the opportunity then you should go! The screen room we went into had a massive chandelier hanging from the ceiling. We went to something else a few days later and the different screen room had masses of paper roses on the ceiling with stuffed birds in amongst them and on the wall. Quite stunning!

We went to the nearby Matakana Village restaurant for dinner.

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