Mounting Excitement

It's 5AM and yet again I am awake and unable to sleep, as is Di. Got out of bed and made tea and lurked on Facebook and upset the UK Saturday night contingent. I signed into Skype and ended up talking to Michelle, Di's sister who I promptly passed on to Diane. The sound quality was absolutely fine with minimal delay - no need to pause between listening and speaking. As this worked well, I thought I'd try and get Mum on the blower, so having poked her with a text message to turn it all on and a bit of mucking about we established voice contact. Huzzah! Having chatted for about 20 minutes, we tried enabling video, which again required a little fiddling about with webcams (unplugging and plugging back in) and hey presto. The quality was as good over this free EOL hot spot as I've seen anywhere and apart from a sticky start up, it all worked really well. I can honestly say I was rather impressed. I was even able to show mum the swimming pool! We've booked another call for Wednesday morning (Tuesday evening in real money)

Today was a bright sunny day, T shirt weather, a marked contrast to yesterday. We decided that today we'd do holiday type stuff and visit Mount Maunganui. We caught the increasingly familiar Bay Hopper (this time a no. 30) to the mount. Mount Maunganui is an extinct volcano, and it's possible to climb to the top, but we decided to content ourselves with walking round it. This still takes about 40 minutes. About half way round we stopped to observe a coupe of seals sunning themselves on the rocks. The kids found all sorts of crabs and shrimps in the various rock pools and the beaches seem to be covered in nothing but shells. The water is really clear - a marked contrast to the sewage filled opaque ooze we're used to back home. Afterwards we wandered round the shops, bought ice cream and fish and chips and then got the bus back to Papamoa.

After we got back, most of us jumped in the pool for a lark about. I discovered that the deep end was in fact too deep to stand up in, as it's over 2 metres deep. Phoebe's swimming is coming on really well, she needs to use her arms and legs more, and not panic when she knows she can't touch her feet down, but I think over the next couple of weeks she'll have it cracked. Phoebe has also turned remarkably brown in a very short time. She's not burnt, but it serves to remind us how strong the sun is down here.

Here are a few webcams to have a squint at. Best viewed in the evening if you're in the UK.