Our trip in words and pictures: December 2012

Sunday 30 December 2012

Change of islands, Blair and Amy

Saturday morning we said goodbye to the piglets and our beautiful Golden Hills farm cottage.
Through Marlborough vineyards to Picton where we took the Interislander across.
Today is our second day in the Wellington area. We were exited to come here, mostly because we were meeting up with Blair and Amy, our new friends. We are staying with them for three days in their home in Petone. Blair lived in Belgium for a few years and is a good friend of good friends, when I mailed him about our upcoming trip to his country, he invited us to stay here with him and his daughter Amy who is 10 days older than Madeleine.
It is so nice to be in a "normal" house and we enjoy the conversation with Blair and Tom (a Flemish friend of Blairs who is also touring NZ) and the amazing hospitality they're showing us.
Today they took us to the capital and showed us around, we went to Te Papa, the impressing national museum with an earthquake house and a giant squid. We went for lunch on a boat before heading to Mount Victoria for a 360 view over this hilly city.
Now we have returned from the cinema, we saw "The Hobbit" while Madeleine stayed with Amy, good fun and the boys very happy of course.
So far so good, counting on Michel for some pictures to accompany my text, so if they're not here yet, take a look later (he's playing poker with Blair and Tom.

And tomorrow it's New Years Eve :)

Thursday 27 December 2012

Abel Tasman national park and the piglets.

Today we did a daytrip to the Abel Tasman national park, drove to Marahau, where we parked the car and had lunch before hitting the track into the wilderness.

Out through the forest and back again along the very large beach full of life. Wild geese swimming with their young ones, all sorts of birds gathering for a gourmet dinner of cockles and mussels. We saw crabs chasing over the sand and tried to capture the moment of slippery wet sand between our toes, lush forest rising steeply on one side, and the ocean on the other, to stay with us for ever. Luckily we have the camera to help us with that J

Afterwards the kids went swimming and playing with their new skimboards in Kaiteriteri. I just love the mix of English names and Maori names. They have a beautiful exotic sound to them, a little hard to remember.

Gina who owns this place grew up on an English piggery, so she got herself two pigs last year, one of which had piglets yesterday J We got to go in and have a look, the mother, Tammy, and her sister were pretty protective, so we didn’t stay for long. Weird creatures pigs are. They think everything is food, explained Gina; and they’ll eat anything.

Surf kids

Bird

Walking on the bottom of the sea

Sandy Beach, so grand

Horses

Piglets

Gina showing off her piglets

Playing

wild geese

Oyster catcher

steps

Tuesday 25 December 2012

Nelson and warm weather

We have definitely chosen a good spot for our 7 day "rest."
This part of NZ is hughly enjoyable.
To start with the beaches are great, with warm weather like we have had the last 3 days the water is a good place to be.
The pool has been frequented a lot whenever we're at the cottage, I couldn't believe how warm it was this evening. don't know what they use to heat it well the sun obviously, but what kind of system gets it up to such a high temperature, it was like a bath tub. But I'm not a swimming pool expert... wouldn't mind becoming one... mmm hot summers in Oyes in the pool, fancy that ;)
Today was Christmas day, we didn't think about shopping yesterday, and didn't expect everything to be closed today, I guess because people haven't been acting christmassy, but we found out this morning when we tried to get bread for breakfast.
Finding a restaurant was very hard too... most of them were closed, one was full, one had a table, but they had a fixed 5 course Christmas menu and a 20 percent surcharge on... plus everyone was all dressed up in there and we were on our sandals. At this point a nice guy had noticed our efforts and guided us to the city to "la gourmandise" This was in the deserted center of the city, but no luck there. Luckily a few streets further there was "Cafe Olive" with great service and "awesome" pizzas. We were rescued.
Then it was on to Rabbit island, beautiful beach and picnic area. Swimming sunbathing digging a hole reading, I found a good book here in the house :) "White teeth" by Zadie Smith. I need to read a ittle faster though, just four more days and we're off.
Madeleine is counting down, because she can't wait to see Amy on the north island.
This evening we improvised with cold pancakes and cup a soups, perfect Christmas dinner.
Merry Christmas!

Sunday 23 December 2012

Tasman Bay - Day one

Gina and Martin have 3 pet sheep

I can't believe it's Christmas eve tomorrow. Although Gina did her very best to decorate the cottage with a Christmas tree, Christmas lights and little santas and balls all over. Christmas in summer is never going to be Christmas to us. Gina is our host, she owns Golden farm and the cottage they built next to their house. We are sitting on a hilltop, they view is unbelievable. It's dark now and I can see all the lights from Richmond and Nelson.

After a morning at the pool, we spent the day in Nelson which is a very cool city, has a bit of a provence feeling over it.

After lunch and shopping, Louis finally got his Hawaianas and a very cool Burton cap, Madeleine bought a note book and has been working on her diary ever since, we went on Tahunanui beach. Very nice :)

Some more swimming in the pool and a barbecue and the day has come to an end.

You know it all now :)

The pool is very nice and at 30 degrees even mamma gets in

Sweethearts (most of the time)

The also have young cattle

The mountains to the south

Short walk in Karamea

Lake Hanlon

Terrace with a view, our house in Mapua, Tasman Bay

Lake Hanlon

Underway to lake Hanlon

Two of a kind (in many ways)

The pool, our cottage in the back

Saturday 22 December 2012

Hello - from Madeleine

ik ben met een lift naar boven ge gaan en dan terug naar beneden en mijn broer louis heeft bungy jump gedaan en ik heb ook geschaakt maar mijn broer emil is altijd gewonen.
het is leuk in new zealand nu zijn we in nelson en we heben een zwembad bij het huis.
Het was in de auto 6 u rijden om dat het zo lang was heb ik overgegeven dat was niet zo leuk.

veel groetjes aan mijn vriendinnen en vrienden in belgie en overal... ik mis jullie heel veel xxxmadeleine

dat was lekker blauw ijs

dat was de lift dat ik bedoelde

Thursday 20 December 2012

Blogging in the rain - Punakaiki pictures

Ok, ok even in wonderland it does rain sometimes, and the children have big fights on 4 hour drives, and even the parents argue sometimes, so you see, life will be life J

But at the moment it is only raining here in Karamea,. We drove up here on Michael and Glenis’ advice, Michael’s brother, John used to be principal teacher at the school here, and yes, Joe, who checked us in to Karamea motels was once his pupil. It’s a small world.

Yesterday was an amazing day at Punakaiki, here I go again with my sunshine stories, but it truly was.

Started with a mysterious road, Michel insisted we go off the beaten track and on some serious adventure, I wasn’t convinced, but turned out he was right. Parked the car and went on the track leading to Cave’s creek.

I didn’t want to mention LOTR but I will only once, I was Frodo, travelling with other heroes. Magical scenery. When we got back we went swimming in a lake, still get butterflies in my tummy thinking of it.
Sunset was enjoyed on the beach. Dramatic beach with huge rocks perfect for climbing. To Louis’ disappointment they tell us the beaches here on the west coast present danger for swimmers.

Big drive tomorrow, towards Golden Bay where we will celebrate Christmas, we keep forgetting it almost is… they don’t celebrate it the way we do here in NZ, but they don’t really need to, it’s summer J Somebody told us today that there is a trend nowadays that people celebrate midwinter “Christmasses” which makes sense to me.