KeriKeri and Claus

Claus's orchard in KeriKeri

On our exploration up the Northern Island we have made many great stops and met many wonderful and interesting people. One particularly wonderful and interesting couple were in a town called KeriKeri. There names were Claus and Moara. Claus is from Sweden and Moara from Scotland. They live on an orchard where they rent rooms from their home and grow oranges. Claus is a burly man with a grey beard and a Swedish New Zealand sort of accent. He had a pretty dry sense of humor, and was very friendly. Moara was so loud and so friendly! The house was adorable as you can see in the above photos. But the best part about it was Claus- and the Christmas tree he had set up in his living room, decorated and everything all year round! If Santa Claus is true and living we met him last week in KeriKeri.

Well it just so happened that the night we were renting a room from Claus, Moara was having dinner guests. We had just made the trip to the grocery store and had decided to cook our own dinner to save money. We were all a bit weary of being in their way while they had their dinner guests. I mean they had their nice linens out, candle's set and everything. But they never asked us to leave, they just went on with their cooking. Every once in a while Moara would yell at Claus, and tell him to "Mash the Potatoes" and "Peel the turnips" and Claus would just say "NO." And Moara would squeel and yelp, and then would tell him to do it again five minutes later. The potatoes never were mashed- I think they ended up baking them. Their guests arrived at about 8:00 pm- their names were Bill and Diane. Maora kept saying to Maegean and I, "give Diane a snuggle, b/c its her birthday." Moara, Claus, and their two friends, Bill and Diane, all had dinner and then asked us if we would like to join them for dessert and a visit. We agreed and before we knew it Bobby was lighting the candles on Diane's icecream cake and leading everyone in the Happy Birthday song. We all laughed and visited for a few hour and had a lovely time. It was a very very memorable evening spent in KeriKeri.