As a small business person, I often find it difficult to get away from it all. Even though the bulk of my work comes from schools or from people who work around schools, I find that I am quite busy even during school holidays. Also, increasingly I’m finding that, people expect computer technicians to be available seven days a week and for hours well beyond daylight. Recently I’ve discovered that to have a break I need to really need to get well away.

After a really intense couple of months we decided that we needed to have a weekend away. We’ve always wanted to visit Great Barrier Island and so decided to take a bit of a long weekend.

Our flight left Auckland Airport at 7:45am on Saturday morning. It was a wonderful way for Ben to have his first ever plane flight. He was thrilled to see Eden Park and the Sky Tower from a new angle.

When we landed in Claris we got ourselves a little Mazda 121 rental car. It was very small and very cute but not the best vehicle for gravel roads (as I learned reasonably quickly). For the rest of the day we drove around the southern part of the island visiting the bays around Tryphena and even going as far as doing a short bush walk to see some hot pools.

We stayed at the Pohutukawa Lodge at Pa Beach. Pohutukawa Lodge is part of the Currach Irish Pub so we were very well fed and watered while we stayed there! Louise (who seemed to do everything except for cook our excellent dinners) is a wonderful hostess. The lodge is a cross between a backpackers and a family hotel. The room we had was small but comfortable and looked out on to a beautiful garden. I was amazed to see banana palms growing all over the garden.

On Sunday we decided to explore the northern part of the island and after buying some junk food set off up to Port FitzRoy. After a lovely little picnic where a certain boy attempted to choke some ducks on his spring onion chippies we set off back down towards Claris. On the way we stopped at the Windy Canyon walk. After a bit of a wander through some bush we climbed a few steps and got to the top of a ridge. Although the weather was closing in, the view was incredible. Feeling a bit intrepid we ventured a little further along (and up lots more steps) along the ridge. It was an amazing walk with views of amazing rocks and cliffs. We’ll definitely be going back to do the complete walk when the weather is a bit better.

I was kept awake overnight by strong winds and rain. It wasn’t until I spoke to Louise that I found out that there had actually been a fairly rough storm. We were glad to be heading home although slightly apprehensive about flying through the bad weather. In the end the flight was quite good with only a few bumpy moments going up through the clouds as we took off and again as we came into Auckland.

There are some photos on Flickr if you want a closer look!

And, FWIW, I missed several phonecalls over the weekend from customers. Next time I need to actually change my answerphone message.