Ahoy Matey ...

As we don't have a big family in New Zealand, and the girls are getting older, we let them choose somewhere special that they'd like to go either on their birthdays or just after. Am not into birthday parties with lots of friends every single year ... what's that about? Family and close friends yes but not the entire neighbourhood or school yard...   When Agent Smelly was younger, she adored picnics and would choose one of those, which was really hard considering that her birthday is in the dead centre of a NZ winter!

These days both girls prefer to do something active on their birthday's, IE rock climbing or bowling  and so on. That really appeals to The Papa who is an active sort too. This year she chose mini golf, so we headed off to a new one called Adventure Golf in Auckland which has a pirate theme.

There's a hole for you to play on the ship!

The poor Papa has to pass this each day to and from work and we girls have seen it quite a few times ourselves but never been in. Isn't funny how you can travel miles away to some places but never seem to stop at ones you see all the time!

You have to play around the pirate headstones ... check out these two hamming it up!

Anyway this place would have to be the best mini golf place we have been to. You have to hit the ball over some little water things and even have the option of hitting a ball into a stream which carries it down to the hole! Just clever. There are two courses, one has the pirate ship and the other you play through a cave. The holes from both courses are all mixed up over the venue. So you might be playing hole 7 (yellow signs) and right next you might be hole 12 (black signs).

This beautiful man-made lake runs through the middle and a waterfall feeds into it. There are signs warning of the shark in there ... we laughed to note that a plastic bag had caught on the sharks fin that goes around and around in circles!  There's also a wee "explosion" (canon blast?) that goes off in the water near the pirate ship every so often. The Papa and I weren't expecting it and both of us jumped in fright much to the girls amusement!

This lot are quite competitive, so it's rather fun playing mini golf. Thankfully no-one gets grumpy or disappointed or anything but there is a lot of good natured ribbing going on.We all yell and throw up our hands and try and distract each other all in the name of fun.

So if you are ever near the Auckland and need to kill a couple of hours (one hour on each course), try this place, it's quite good.