Going up the wall...
The weather's taken a turn for the worse on the
coast, with grey clouds covering up the blue sky, and delivering rain
showers through the day. So we went swimming to the outdoor pool! Well,
the pools are thermally heated, so instead of being cool, they're heated
to a range of temperatures between 31 degrees (coldest!) to 39 degrees.
And so swimming in the rain is unique, when you've got your body boiling,
and your head and shoulders getting attacked by pin-pricks of freezing
cold raindrops. The rising steam gives it a slightly mystic feel too.
As
the rain carried on in the afternoon, we went to 'The Rock Face', which
is an indoor climbing centre in the town. We haven't seen these kind
of facilities at home – it was in a warehouse, and all the walls were
covered in climbing holds. It cost £6 for each of the girls for all
day climbing. There were lots of adults and children, trying out the
different routes and levels of difficulty. Charlotte, who'd been rock
climbing at Christmas, was straight into the harness and off up the
wall.
Emily
didn't need any encouragement either. As soon as she had her harness
on she was away, up the wall. I had to call her back to attach the rope
to her! Although it was a little more difficult for her, because the
hand holds were set too far apart at times, she managed to get three-quarters
of the way up the wall, and quickly got into the hang of abseiling back
down again for another go. We went there because we were looking for
an indoor activity for a rainy day, but the girls enjoyed it so much
I suspect we'll be looking for a climbing centre when we get home.
As
the rain carried on in the afternoon, we went to 'The Rock Face', which
is an indoor climbing centre in the town. We haven't seen these kind
of facilities at home – it was in a warehouse, and all the walls were
covered in climbing holds. It cost £6 for each of the girls for all
day climbing. There were lots of adults and children, trying out the
different routes and levels of difficulty. Charlotte, who'd been rock
climbing at Christmas, was straight into the harness and off up the
wall.Emily
didn't need any encouragement either. As soon as she had her harness
on she was away, up the wall. I had to call her back to attach the rope
to her! Although it was a little more difficult for her, because the
hand holds were set too far apart at times, she managed to get three-quarters
of the way up the wall, and quickly got into the hang of abseiling back
down again for another go. We went there because we were looking for
an indoor activity for a rainy day, but the girls enjoyed it so much
I suspect we'll be looking for a climbing centre when we get home.
Although
we're travelling with quite a bit of equipment, like our Tablet PC,
CD Writer, digital cameras etc, we've been reasonably lucky so far with
keeping it safe and working. Unfortunately we've had the first serious
failure this week, when the Canon Ixus 400 camera jammed with a nasty
"E18" error message, which apparently means that the lens is jammed.
The bad news is that Canon in New Zealand can't fix it before we leave
the country, and they won't repair it anyway without the original warranty
document (Right, like I carry that everywhere), even though I've
got a copy of the receipt. Also, apparently digital camera warranties
are only issued for the country you buy them in, rather than worldwide.
So we've had to send the camera home with Michael (Sarah's Dad) to get
it repaired in the UK, and then we'll hope to get it sent back at the
end of March. It's lucky that we bought another camera in December –
otherwise all of the website photos would have ended up looking like
the one above for two months!