Overwhelmed

This has been a tough weekend of goodbyes.  I am completely overwhelmed with love and sadness. Enough said.

Toast Martinborough

Not that they like to brag but New Zealand has some pretty good wines. In the Wellington region, the Wairarapa (just the other side of the Rimutaka hills) is the wine region with Martinborough as it’s ‘capital’. Every year they raise a glass to the region and Toast Martinborough. It is a whole day where the vineyards open their doors, bring in food and music, and invite Wellington to the party. This year the tickets sold out extremely quickly but, through a lucky series of events, I managed to get a ticket. I went with a really good friend from work, Charlotte, and her boyfriend Chris.

 

We got a bus over in the morning, with most of Wellington. In typical Wellington style, there was a weather warning for extreme wind (consistently over 160km/hour). Although this didn’t stop us, it was frustrating and rather exhausting constantly battling the wind. I have never been anywhere that is so consistently windy; it has the force of a strong gust all the time. At least we got windburn not sunburn!

 

There were 11 vineyards open and we managed to go to 6. There was a bus that took you around and the glass around your neck let you in to all of the vineyards. We tried the Craggy Point Reisling  (excellent), the Escarpment Reisling (far too sweet), the Ata Rangi Sav (real good), the Te Kairangi Pinot Noir (yum) and some others. Chris was clever and drank sav the whole way round but we chopped and changed depending on the vineyard.

 

 

We had steak burgers at Te K and watched Sola Rosa at Escarpment. The best vineyard in terms of atmosphere was Ata Rangi; mainly because of the nice trees and it was a bit more sheltered!

It was a good day out!

It’s Rhys Darby night!

Rhys Darby is a bit of a kiwi legend. He is most famous as Murray, the ridiculously geeky Manager of Flight of the Conchords. My flatmate, Charli, loves him and this Friday we were lucky enough to have tickets to see him live at the Opera House.

We were sitting in the second row and I was slightly nervous he might call on us. The stage was set up with a microphone at the front and one at the back with a green light on it- like a backstage green room.

He came on first as a Ranger – he is superb at characters – who was doing security for the show. Then the support guy came on, who won the Billy T Award. He was quite controversial but pretty funny. The poor guy got heckled just towards the end of his time though; some girl yelled out “You can get off now”. Clearly they were impatient for more Rhys. He got his own back though after the interval – “that’s what she says to her boyfriend every night”.

Rhys was on for about an hour and a quarter. He was absolutely hilarious! He did loads of characters and sound effects. He can make the noise of a ball bouncing, a helicopter and a as wicked robot. He really had me struggling for breath at some parts.

He said at the end that he would be in the foyer so we decided to hang around, along with everyone else it seemed. We didn’t think we would have chance to see him but he hung around for ages and so we went up and he signed our tickets and had a photo. He is a really nice guy, so was his wife who was taking all the photos.

 

My walk to work

I have walked this walk at least 300 times so I thought I’d share it with you.

 

Cloud Formations

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Remember, remember the 5th of November…

I have been asked so many times this week when fireworks night is. Each time I have replied by saying “the 5th of November, y’know, like the rhyme”. I have then proceeded to embarrass myself by reciting said rhyme to people who clearly have never heard it before. It turns out not many Kiwis know it.

This Guy Fawkes night, I went to a friends house for the first bbq of the summer season (I say summer despite the fact we have had the coldest October since 1945 and it has been gale force 7/8 all week). Just before 9pm we headed home to get wrapped up, make some popcorn, sit at the top of our garden and watch the fireworks in the harbour. We have the best view of the city and got to watch everyones fireworks for free. The main fireworks in the harbour were pretty awesome (although I was spoilt by living in Edinburgh). I couldn’t quite work out if there was a theme but there seemed to be a lot of planet shaped and star sign fireworks. Some of them really felt like they were coming right towards us. Weirdly they stopped after a big finale, then twenty minutes later three big fireworks went off.

Birthday on the beach

Yesterday was one of my flatmates birthday so to celebrate we drove down to the beach at Oriental. We cooked up steak and chips, wrapped it up and ate it on the wall on the beach. It was surprisingly good considering it was driven across town before we ate it.

 

 

We have a great evening of cupcakes and frisbee.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Since he is a bit of a hippy from Nelson, he decided to have some full moon drumming. Loads of his friends came and brought an instrument and we had a bit of a sing-a-long.

A walk in the gardens

This weekend the sun decided to finally peak its head through the clouds so I headed to the Botanical Gardens. Spring is really in full swing now, with leaves and flowers everywhere.

 

 

 

 

Unfortunately, the sun was stronger than I thought. Even though I was cold in the wind, I managed to sunburn my legs to a beautiful lobster colour…ouch.

 

 

 

The symbol of new life and growth in Maori culture is called the Koru and is taken from nature. The new fronds of the fern trees start off tightly curled.

They then slowly unwind to show the new leaves.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I spent the day wandering around and made my way up to the top of the gardens, where there is a plateau with the old and new Observatories.

 

 

 

 

The Cable Car from town terminates at the top pf the gardens. The old winding hut is now a Cable Car Museum with restored Cable Cars and all the old machinery on show. It was quite revolutionary in making the areas of Kelburn and Karori high up the hill accessible to live. in 1926 apparently 2 million people used the Cable Car, more than the population of the whole of NZ at the time! I watched a short video on the miniature Cable Cars people have leading up to houses in Wellington. I have to say a cable car would be pretty handy to bring the groceries up to my house!

Labour Day Weekend Road Trip

After a long winter lacking in public holidays, we have finally entered Spring and welcomed back the public holidays with Labour Day. This year I was a bit cheeky and asked for leave on the Friday before anyone could realise that this would mean a four day weekend.

I flew up to Auckland on Friday morning to see Katie (who you may remember from way back when in Hong Kong and Auckland the first time round). I had packed completely inappropriately with a raincoat, hat and long-sleeved tops but thankfully had brought my sunnies. The weather is so much warmer up there.

First of all I headed out to Henderson to meet Katie at her work. She is a caterer on a film set of a TV show I have actually watched, Legend of the Seeker (which is about as lame as it sounds), so I got to have a look round all the sets. I have to say that film sets are far less glamourous than they appear in my mind. There are a lot of trailers, make shift offices and people just hanging around in ridiculous costumes. From work we drove out further west to Bethells Beach. The west coast beaches are gorgeous but really ferocious.

The next day we drove south to Tauranga and Mount Maunganui in the Bay of Plenty. These are the Cornwall or Florida of New Zealand – holiday and retirement destinations with lots of sun and beaches. On route we stopped off at Waihi, the centre of gold mining for the North Island. A massive amount of gold and silver was mined there and, after a couple of decades hiatus, is now back up and running. What surrounds the mines is a cute town typical of the gold rush era.

Tauranga is a cute seaside town with lots of fishing, boats and restaurants and bars along the waterfront. Mount Maunganui is about 5km away and sticks out in a thin strip leading out to the mount, Maunga. It is a special place in Maori history and certainly stands out. We climbed up to the top, which was quite steep, and soaked up the views. The steep rocky sides and wide blue sea reminded me of the Mediterranean. The view below is of the wide sandy beaches and the bright turquoise sea hitting the rocks – it is easy to see why people like it up here.

The beaches are perfect; wide and long with golden sands. They are covered in shells too. We paddled and picked shells before having lunch on the waterfront. It was so warm it actually felt like Summer. I had a really tasty kiwi fruit sorbet. The township itself is typically beachy with a laid back attitude.

On the way back to Auckland, we made some stops along the way. Waihi beach was another glorious wide sandy beach we walked along. After stopping for strawberries, we walked up to Owhiro Falls in the Karangehake Gorge. The Gorge is beautiful.

We then drove along the Pacific Coastal Highway, which hugs the coast with views of the Coromandel. As we were driving, I realised that I have now driven on Pacific Coastal Highways on both sides of the Pacific.

 

On Monday, Labour day, we drove out west to Piha. It is about 50 mins out of Auckland but you have to drive through dense forest to get there. Once you emerge, the road overlooks a gorgeous beach with black volcanic sand. Right in the middle stands Lion Rock, looking like a lion sitting tall.

My Kiwi Soundtrack

Top five kiwi songs of all time. One; Shapeshifter – One. A song that reminds me of driving down the side of Lake Wanaka watching the stunning scenery drift by. Listen to this when you are feeling like everything is on top of you and pushing down hard. Two; Ladyhawke -  My Delirium. This Wellingtonian made good was playing all Summer everywhere. This song also won the single of the year at The Tuis, the NZ music awards. Three; Fat Freddy’s Drop – Wandering Eye. This is classic NZ jazz/dub/roots/reggae sound comes from a most treasured Wellington band. Very summery and can be heard in any situation from dinner party to club. Four; Tiki Taane – Always On My Mind. This is the best selling NZ single of all time and was playing on the radio as I drove into Wellington for the very first time. Five; Midnight Youth – All On Our Own. This band was playing live at Mardi Gras and this song takes me right back there-a fantastic night with some awesome people.