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Published: January 8th 2013
Christmas Dinner
No sprouts but the best yorkies!We headed to Hamilton after The Hobbit expedition and met Bobby for a pint in his local and then spent three days hanging out at the house he was sitting. It was fab; we had a double bed, hot shower, a kitchen that was fully stocked, a patio, garden, Jazz the dog and cats - bliss! Hamilton was not as bad as we thought it would be after hearing it was a bit of a dump. The public gardens as you enter are beautiful and have an impressive Japanese and Indian sections complete with pagodas and a mini Taj Mahal (well it beats East Park) and we enjoyed a take away pizza sat in them on our way in. In fact we found the whole place green and clean and you can easily miss the Waikato River that rolls through it! To be honest we didn't do much apart from enjoy the comforts of a 'home' for a few days, Paul especially enjoyed the sky and caught a bit of the premiership and the free calls to the UK were much appreciated even if they did give me a home sick pang afterwards!
Paul cooked a Christmas dinner for us,
minus the sprouts as we couldn’t find any, but made up for it by making the best Yorkshire puddings of his life, they were excellent!
Bob sorted us out with our currency for the rest of the trip at mates rates which was very much appreciated (thank you so much Bobby) and before we knew it, it was time to say cheerio and move on up to Auckland to sort out our American visas. This really annoyed us as we had to pay two hundred quid for an American visa for two hours in the airport due to our temporary passports, what a joke.
After three hours of being fingerprinted and interviewed (Q. Why do you want to come to America? A. (A very narky Janey replied) We don’t, we have to) we explored Auckland by foot checking out the cooler end of town with its op shops and even spotted some Hornsea Pottery! After a Groupon burger lunch we were ready to head to The Bay of Islands for some sea, sand and sun. We enjoyed a few days in the sun visiting Russell, a quaint Englishy town which was NZ’s first permanent British settlement. We missed
A little birdie!
One for Mike Wright the bird spotter! the orgies on the beach by one hundred and seventy years but enjoyed a pint before getting the car ferry to Paihia. We arrived at our cheap but amazingly beautiful campsite right on the Haruru falls and enjoyed one day of sun lazing around reading, before we got the tail end of Cyclone Evan on its way over from Fiji (the worst Cyclone the place has seen for 40 years). We spent Christmas Eve in a bar drinking cheap glasses of wine and listening to a band knocking out all the seventies classics and Paul won a quality bottle of sauv blanc in the free Christmas raffle which sent our slightly drunk spirits soaring! We had fush n chups at Shippey’s on board a moored nineteenth century tall ship which brightened the day for us!
For the next few days it did not stop raining, the sky was dark and it was possibly the most miserable Christmas Day either of us has ever had. The rain let up for half an hour and Paul quickly cooked up our Christmas dinner of fajitas before getting back in the van to enjoy them just as the rain started. We had plenty
of wine, beer, cider and chocolate so we gave ourselves a talking to about how lucky we were and made the best of it! Not the Christmas Day on the beach we had hoped for! We spent Boxing Day exploring all the little coves further north which were beautiful but would have been even better if the sun was shining and we could sit on them, before finding a DOC site right on the beach and the sun eventually came out!
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