Ocean and Orchard Festival

Saturday brought sunshine and the urge to get out and do something. We decided to go down to the beach and redeem our certificate to use the hobie cat since we were rained out last time. The wind was to strong to legally rent the cats, so we opted for a kayak instead. We paddled out from the beach in Paihia to a small island in the bay. We beached the kayak, walked around for a bit, then jumped back in for more paddling. The wind did give us a bit of a workout around half of the island, but then pushed us paddle free around the other half. Once we were back, we laid out in the sun for a while to dry our salt water splashed bodies and soak up a little sun. Saturday afternoon, we drove over to Kerikeri, for the Ocean and

Orchard Festival. It was held in a nice big grassy area in the center of town with plenty of tents, chairs, food booths, drinks, and live music. We enjoyed walking around checking everything out and listening to music, but most of all we enjoyed the contests. There was a lemon eating contest, which was enjoyable to watch. There was also a kiwi carving contest for the kids, which was very interesting. The biggest contest was an oyster eating contest with three heats competing for a spot in the final round. Jill convinced Dave to partake in the contest as they were asking for volunteers. Dave likes oysters, so why not? There were six people in the heat, who all had a heaping pile of very fresh raw oysters, that had to be eaten one at a time. Once the contest started, Dave dug right in and went to town shoveling the oysters into his mouth. After about 7, he slowed a bit and had a small gag. Then a couple more went down the hatch and he realized the guy beside him was finishing up so he threw in the towel. It was quit comical to watch and the crowd really got into cheering everyone on. Even though Dave didn't win, he did have a good time trying to devour the pile of oysters.