Mangere Mountain Trip

This was NOT Jigglepuff's finest hour organisationally. She got the wrong day! The trip was meant to be last week! Nevertheless, she and Charizard had a wonderful walk/play/talk as we climbed one of the most beautiful sights in Auckland. Some of the things we talked about were...
how we might calculate our journey pace, like in Ko's Journey. Charizard made up his own sums.
how to treat dogs we met safely, not looking them directly in the eye, keeping calm and still, and most important, no screaming!
Why the Roman soldiers were called legions. This was because we were walking along a high ridge where we reckoned Maori soldiers had once stood guard, keeping watch for enemies. We talked about how the legions were made up of centuries and Jigglepuff later found a website - here - giving more information.
how Charizard and a friend had recently seen a cockroach giving birth. What had come out had been transparent. Jigglepuff thinks they saw an egg capsule, which contains 20-40 eggs. What good nature observation, Charizard. (When we read this, Charizard added "I'm gonna puke!")
what fun it would be to do an overnight trip at Ambury Park, down the road, and walk between there and the mountain.
Some of the things Charizard noticed/learnt were...
1. That people do make stuff in white so that in the future they can put images through it
2. That volcanoes can be formed in very strange ways.
3. I found out that the higher you go the less oxygen you can get, so crying is a really bad idea because it will exhaust the air surrounding you.
4. The lava. It was amazing. And I think that the Maori soldiers threw some of the solidified lava down to invaders. We found an arrowhead!

Something new that Jigglepuff learnt was...that Maori gardeners used to put scoria stones underneath and around their garden beds, to retain the sun's heat and extend the growing season by about six weeks.

After that we went for sausage rolls, cake and coffee at a nearby bakery where we ended up talking about how you can sell stuff at a loss by making it too cheap.
On the way there and back we listened to Michael Morpurgo's story of King Arthur, which so far is fantastic.
Hmm. We better not tell dad but on the way home we stopped at a bookshop...enough said...
Charizard's favourite bit of the day was going to the very very summit.
Jigglepuff liked buying books best!