Slip Slop Slap

Every time I smell sunscreen, I have to think of the times that mum filled up her car with as many kids as possible and took us all to the beach. There we would splash some sunscreen (factor 8 at the most)on our face and our back and we’d jump into the water and make sand castles all day long. At the end of the day we would drive home, absolutely exhausted and only slightly sunburnt.

Before I met Gaye, my mother-in-law, for the time, I was not aware of the importance that Kiwis attach to being ‘sunsmart’. Applying sunscreen every 2 hours or as soon as you get out of the water seems to be an automatic reflex for them. Even in gray and cloudy England, where we met, Gaye was getting the little tube of sunscreen (with a factor not under 30!) out of her handbag as soon as she spotted the sun.
It was only when I visited New Zealand in 2004 that I fully understood the impact of the sun over here. You can’t spend more than half an hour in the full sun without getting seriously sunburnt. And even if you’re one of those fortunate people with an olive skin type who always tan and never get sun burnt, you should know better and apply sunscreen regularly. Skin cancer is a major problem here. I’ve been told it’s the big hole in the ozone layer, right above New Zealand, that is to be blamed for it.

From early age on kids learn all about it at school. ‘Slip-slop-slap’ or ‘Slip on a shirt, slop on sunscreen and slap on a hat’ is the slogan of a campaign launched in Australia more than 20 years ago, and introduced later over here. At the beach you will never see little kids playing in the water without rash vest and hat. Even in the nurseries and kindies kids wear hats as soon as they go outside, especially between 11 and 4, when the sun is the strongest.

Luckily Santa brought Jacob a rash vest and we got Ilias one too, as you can see in the pictures, taken today at Matua beach. The green stuff in his hand is sea lettuce, a real nuisance at the local beach, that also washed up on the beaches of Brittany last summer. Apparently 950 tonnes of it has already been removed from Tauranga’s beaches. It’s edible, so maybe we should introduced it into the Kiwi diet. Roast with crunchy sea lettuce, yummy! Or you can eat it straight of the beach while having a picnic. The hill you see in picture 1 is ‘The Mount’ or Mount Mauganui, which is an extinct volcanic cone and a sacred Maori hill. Swimming distance for us is maybe 2 km, driving distance about 8 km. We haven’t climbed it yet, because it would be too hard to push the pram with Jacob up there and as it is a steep climb, Ilias probably wouldn’t make it to the top. But there are plenty of other less challenging walks and hikes here that we can do with the kids. We’ll keep you posted!