I couldn’t get up this morning. Well, actually, I could. I did. But it wasn’t easy. It was flipping hard.

The reason for my slackness was because I, unlike you, spent the Easter weekend on Waiheke Island. ‘Where’s that?’ you ask. In terms of The World, it’s here:

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It’s pretty great too, as far as islands go. Don’t get me wrong; I love islands, but I always find myself getting more and more upset when what looks like the island’s most interesting road ends up a ‘NO EXIT’. It’s an island repetoire of mine: I’ll spot a road and think ‘Let’s go up there’, only to find it’s a dead end. Or not a road at all. I used to do it on Guernsey all the time. Even on my tenth visit.

We caught the car ferry out to Waiheke from Half Moon Bay in East Auckland on Thursday night. It chugged along at about 3 knots, taking about 75 minutes to complete the whopping 20 odd kilometre journey. We noticed as we departed the ferry that we had been just two cars from The Mad Butcher, on his way out for the weekend, so I put the slowed ferry time down to the humungus amount of carcasses that must have been stored in his boot. Long weekend, an’ all…

We stayed at the rather friendly Punga Lodge, which dealt us one complimentary breakfast, a host of afternoon teas, a seemingly private spa pool (I didn’t see anyone else using it!) and a bed. We were also a short walk from Oneroa, which meant we could hit The Lazy Lounge for a couple of drinks and then walk home. Although this proved a little risky on ‘Good Friday’ as the little kiddies were out in their rusty Skyline performing drive-by paintballings. You missed.

The friendliness of the staff at View East vineyard made us want to return for a bit more than a wine taste and a coffee, but sadly time eluded us. We had to fit in the paddling of Punga Lodge’s twin-kayak round Oneroa Bay, a trip up to the World War II tunnels of Stony Batter, a meet up with GU2’s old Head of News Naomi and my sister-in-law’s birthday lunch at Mudbrick vineyard. We also narrowly missed out on seeing Ethan Hawke and Scarlett Johansson’s arrival at Te Whau vineyard, but as he’s grown up a bit since Explorers I didn’t think I would recognise him. Plus alpacas are way more interesting to look at.

All of this fantastic weekend was carried out without my camera, so a return visit will likely happen at some point. And then I can take some photos. And enjoy all over again…