2kiwis

It has popped up on the blog in the past briefly but could do with another visit. In December 2006 we visited Morocco and saw some wonderful sights. We also had some ghastly experiences but I’ll touch on them another time. The trip was taken on another group tour, this time with the company Exodus. We travelled from Casablanca north up the coast to Rabat and then inland to Meknes, then taking a flying visit to the ruined Roman city of Volubilis before arriving in Fez. These are now many photos of this section of the trip on flickr. Here are a few highlights.

Next up will be more of Fez and our continuing journey east to the Sahara desert.

The other day there was another interesting sunset over the Pauatahanui inlet and I managed to drag myself up from the chair in the lounge to take a couple of photos.

Having been out to Sinclair Head to see the fur seals I took the first suitable opportunity to go out there again, this time with Keryn along for the walk. The seals were again plentiful and also just as unexcited to see us as they had been on my previous visit.

It was a good walk, about an hour each way. The track of rocks and sand wasn’t so good for Keryn’s back but she survived mostly in one piece. It was quite warm as well (for winter anyway) and it has been generally warmer the last few days, maybe spring is on the way?

We again attended the Petone Winter Carnival this year, having enjoyed our visit last time around. We weren’t quite as organised this year and turned up late for the fire sculptures, most of them already alight or finished burning when we finally got to the beach. We got to see the final two burning, the last memorable but for the wrong reasons.

It was quite warm for a winters night and there was a breeze coming onshore. The tide was also coming in leaving not a huge amount of room for the sculptures and presumably to aid safety there was a perimeter set up to stop people getting too close to the flames. No one was behind the perimeter, largely I think because the incoming water meant you either got wet feet or stood inside. As the flames took hold the wind took the smoke and pushed it towards the road and the roadside stalls.

The last sculpture was a stylised tree and the leaves looked to be large pieces of foil coloured paper attached to the wooden structure. As the leaves caught fire they detached from the tree and were carried towards the road. There were also a lot of sparks and the on-site firemen were busy hosing down the adjacent food stalls so they didn’t catch alight. As the number of flaming wind borne leaves increased the fireman were quickly onto the beach and dousing down the sculpture, bringing a quick end to the spectacle. The increased smoke did make for some good photos, hopefully next year there is less wind (or it’s offshore) and the tide isn’t quite so far up the beach.

There was still an hour to go before the fireworks so we walked back to Petone and got some burgers for dinner. The plan was to then head down the beach and away from the crowds to get fireworks photos but we left it too late and didn’t find anywhere to park in time, so missed most of the fireworks. We’ll have to be more organised next time.