Beautiful black beaches

When most people think of a beach, they picture beautiful blue seas, sunny skies and golden sandy beaches.  That is how most of us know beaches to be.

So picture the same blue seas and sunny skies but with beaches of with black sand.

These black sand beaches are truly beautiful, masterpieces of the nature and make the most spectacular and dramatic photos.

In New Zealand, we have magnificent black beaches along the west coast of North Island.  There are 5 such beaches along this coastline of Auckland and we have been staying at a campground at one of them situated north-west of Auckland.

Muriwai Beach Campground has been our home for a little while and is an amazing black beach which is just wonderful for long beach walks.

Now I totally love black beaches.  I love the black sparkly sand.  It is such a dark rich colour that makes a perfect contrast to the hues and shades of the ocean and skies.  In my mind, they simply make spectacular dramatic photos.

Sunset Silhouettes - at Muriwai Beach

Tide is out  - Sunset at Muriwai Beach

Afternoon walk - at Muriwai Beach

Driftwood beach art - at Muriwai Beach

 For more information on the other black beaches of Auckland, you can check out this link:
Auckland's West Coast Beaches

That 4 letter word called "Work"

Hey, what, huh!?  Work??  What has work got to do with our travels and living on the road?  Well, there is this thing called money ..... And the little luxuries that extra money buys ..... which also keeps our retirement nest egg safe and sound.

In April, when we sold the house and decided to live our dream after I lost my full-time job, we knew that we were starting this journey as full-time travellers a little earlier than planned.  For that very reason, we decided to keep our work options open.

I figured as an accountant I certainly had transferrable skills - skills that I could easily use in any environment, even while on the road, moving from place to place.  All that was really needed was a good laptop, cellphone and reliable internet service - all of which I had.

As something different, I could always do something else. like seasonal work or campground hosting.  Variety is good!

But for now, I have been relying on my accounting skills and have picked up remote contract accounting jobs.  Which does explain why we have been doing longer than normal stays at campgrounds and going nowhere fast.

It has certainly been an interesting 6 months.  The remote contract work is great as it means I have control over my working conditions.  I can start and end my day as I chose.  And best of all, I have had the most beautiful offices to work from - such as this view:

At the moment, I have put the remote work on a temporary hold and we have spent the last few weeks in Auckland so I can to do onsite work at a firm in Kumeu.

Time is coming soon to get back on the road for summer and do some travelling.  I probably will still be working as we go (for that treat of an overseas trip) but with the promise of summer coming soon, hopefully I can cut down on my hours and get outdoors and enjoy summer living.

One thing for sure is that working on the road is not a 9 - 5 jobs -it gives us total freedom to choose how we want to work.  If less money is needed, we can choose cheaper campgrounds, do some house-sitting along the way or line up better-paying jobs that are less time-consuming ..... or ..... just stop working when it suits us.

But for now, those little luxuries in life will keep me working anyway - smarter hopefully as our time on the road evolves.

First House-Sitting Gig

September?  What happened to a whole 30 days with no new update?  Why no post in September - what happened and why were we so quiet?  Two reasons ....

Firstly, we are doing our first house-sitting gig on a small life-style block in Pukekohe (just outside Auckland for our friends and followers outside of New Zealand).

Secondly, I got caught up in a terrible backlog of online work that was quite exhausting.  But more of that in a separate post.

So more about our house-sitting/farmstay camping expedition.

We did a house-sit on a little lifestyle block in rural Pukekohe for the month of September.  Life was generally slow for us on this small farm.  Besides having a presence on the property, we had a few chores to do that were really easy as:

1.  Looking after the water for 13 young cows (or was it 12 cows and 1 steer - I am not sure?).  They were on a neighbour's block over the road from us -some days we saw them and other days they were nowhere to be seen so must have on back paddocks way out of sight.  When they were close by,they would all come over to the fence for some of our attention.  They certainly loved us to talk to them and were totally fascinated with Lulu - kept staring at her with their beautiful souful eyes.

2.  Feeding 6 Chickens .... and collecting their lovely yummy farm fresh eggs for our breakfast.

3.  Feeding 2 cats who spent the day sleeping in any comfy place they could find.  They were totally cruizy cats who pretty much did they own thing in the day.

4.  And lastly, doing nana/grandpa duties for 3 children LOL.  All we really had to do was to make sure they left for school in the morning and then to pick them up in the afternoon.

Other than those chores, we are free to enjoy the lovely farm environment.

We also got to meet and enjoy time with the other farm animals, a horse called Becky, 3 very frisky and active miniature horses and 2 very quiet little dogs called Molly and Harold.

So life in September was certainly a bit restful and peaceful which was just as well as the spring weather certainly took a temperamental turn for the worst with torrential rain gale-force winds and freezy cold temperatures.  Where was our wonderful Northland warm weather ..... gone for sure.

So here are some photos of our month on the farm.

Early Morning Mist in Pukekohe

Beautiful day - one of the rare few we had during our farmstay

Lovely green outlook on the farm

A bridge over a stream on the farm

Lulu was not sure at all about these miniature horses

Young one-year old cows enjoying our chat with them 

Lulu was always totally fascinated with the cows as they were with her.