Happy new year!!

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happy new year!!

Jack and I have just arrived in Picton in South Island, and are preparing to go on a 4 day tramp (had to buy a tent, sleeping bag, food, etc - but it's ok, no need to carry our bags as the water taxis take them free of charge to each campsite for us!). Here's what we've been upto in the last few weeks. (i'll try add photo's when i'm next on).

We spent 5 days cherry picking and grading (sorting out the nice, alright and bad cherries) from 7.30am to 5.30 pm - long and tiring days!! we worked for 2 different cherry orchards, firstly a very distant relaitve, then his scary mad scottish friend. cherry picking is much as it sounds, the first lot of cherries had a lot of water damage to them (rain causes them to split and become unsellable) but they were still very tasty and we ate loads! whilst doing this we stayed at various relatives of mine. One of the relatives (another Kate) had 2 lovely kids who took a great shine to us, and occupied our time outside of work.

The weather finally became lovely for christmas day, and we spent it in the garden with 25 family members (very few actually counted us as family as the connections are so weak, but they were all very welcoming and even included us in their secret santa. One of them also had a look over the van for us!). we stayed until boxing day, and then headed down to Wellington.

Welington is on the south coast of North Island, and is very windy!! also pretty cold and wet!! very much like at home. there we just did the usual touristy things, they have really good musuems there (Te Papa being the best if any of you ever go there), saw Old St Paul's Cathedral (very pretty and made of wood), went up on the cable car to the top of the botanic gardens and wandered back through them, and just had a general look about. we stayed at a hostel in the centre for new years, and spent the night drinking with a mix of Mexicans, Isrealis, Swedish and Americans. Apart form the weather the only bad things that happened in Wellington were our flat battery and parking ticket - very hard to move the van out of the parking area when there's no battery! luckily we got to make use of our AA cover, and the ticket only costs 4 pounds!

The ferry across the Cook Strait was all very nice, watched 2 very cheesy films (The Cinderella Story and Santa Clause 2!) but the scenerey was beautiful. I'm sure this walk will be the first (or maybe last!) of a few we have planned for South Island.

I'll try get some photo's up soon, and let me know how all your holidays are going. good luck to those of you with exams coming up!!

xx

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