Friday, October 30th Happy birthday Lize! Hope you have a fantastic day and an awesome party! May you have a blessed and amazing year. We slept late then spent a few hours catching up with the blog. As we were preparing lunch Paul came by and asked if we could help to catch the sheep because they needed to be sheered. It took two tries to get the sheep in the pen because on the first attempt they ran at one of the girls who got a fright and ran away. While Ferdi was helping with the catching and sheering Talita [View Full Entry]

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Tuesday, October 27th Ferdi's stomach was feeling better today. After breakfast the group met and discussed what needed to be done and what our priorities were for the next few days. With that done Bruce started cutting oars for his boat while we assisted and helped where we could. Later Tim and Ferdi was given the responsibility to come up with a way to put the bench in the boat while Talita mixed play-dough in preparation for building the model of the tree (Thanks Mel for sending us the recipe). Sometime after 6pm we headed home where Talita and Tim prepared [View Full Entry]

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Saturday, October 24th We slept late then went to the Saturday market. It’s only the second market event so far with about ten stalls selling farm produce, making music, face painting, hand made clothing etc. The market was on the lawn next to the Global Gypsy and we spent most of our time chatting to Bruce and getting to know some other interesting folks. After sammies we went to the Last Resort and Paddy explained to us, in his great Irish accent, exactly what he has in mind for his barn/house/workshop. It's an American style barn with the upper level as [View Full Entry]

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Tuesday, October 20th We slept a little late and woke refreshed and ready for our big day. After breakfast we left Westport, heading for Karamea, 100km to the north. We were very excited, looking forward to learning some new skills and hopefully finding a different way of life. It took us two hours to get up there. Welcome to Karamea, population 650 (+2). When we arrived we found that Bruce was in Westport for the day so we sat reading our building manuals and drinking tea in the sun. We met Paul, the owner of the land and the guy we [View Full Entry]

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Saturday, October 17th Nicol made a delicious omelet breakfast after which we continued preparing our van. Ferdi went to the shop in search of a few more items. We fitted the last few parts, glued the carpet in place, put the mattress and bedding in, followed by our packing containers. The Boesman was coming together great! Keira had a nap so we waited until she woke before we left. At 15:30 we said goodbye to Team Smit, stopped at the Pack 'n' Save to pick up supplies, then set off for Hamilton. We were in a daze. We couldn't believe that [View Full Entry]

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Wednesday, October 14th We had to wait till noon before we could withdraw the rest of the cash that we needed to buy our van. With the strange inconsistency of available funds in the last few days we were worried that we would not be able to get the amount we needed. Luckily our fears were unfounded and after getting the cash we set off to collect our van in Papakura. Finally! We bought our own van! We had been waiting for this day for three weeks. We are now the proud owners of a black 1995 Nissan Caravan we named [View Full Entry]

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Sunday, October 11th We woke to a gorgeous, sunny, Sunday morning. Nicol made a big egg, hashbrowns, bacon and toast breakfast. Afterwards we borrowed his car and drove to the far side of the city again. We were going to see a campervan that looked great on the website. Through some misunderstanding we ended up waiting for more than an hour for the owner to pitch up. When we saw the camper we were not impressed. It is ancient and has a weird column shifter for changing gears. It has a pop-top which is great cause you can stand upright inside [View Full Entry]

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Monday, October 5th Another day on pause. The limbo was getting tedious. We continued the search for a van and also did some research. Just before lunch we went for a jog. Ferdi had finally gotten so bored that he gave in and joined Talita. It was a bitterly cold day because the north island got a heavy dusting of snow, so our jog was not only wet, it was also freezing. All in all it's not so bad to jog in the rain. Today's highlights: 1. Jogging in the rain. Tuesday, October 6th Just when we had packed away most [View Full Entry]

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From the lack of pictures in this issue of our blog it should be apparent to the casual observer that not much happened in the last few days. We hope you still enjoy hearing from us even though pulling teeth might be more entertaining. Anyway, lets get on with it… Happy birthday to our sister Lindy and our friend Megan! Hope you had a fantastic day and may God bless you with many joyful years to come. Wednesday, October 1st Today we said a sad farewell to our van, The Three Sisters. We spent 65 days together, covered 7510 trouble free [View Full Entry]

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Monday, September 28th We woke to a gray morning poring with rain. For breakfast we made banana pancakes, then piled into the 7-seater Smit mobile and drove into town to visit the iSite. We needed to get info on what to do in the area when the weather's bad. We started of with a Cheese Factory. The directions were bad so we ended up driving up and down trying to find it. Finally Mel found a map that showed the location of the factory, but when we arrived we found the shop unattended. We took a peak through the windows but [View Full Entry]

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