Out of the middle of nowhere into civilisation!

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Hello..... well as a few of you keep telling us it has been a while since we updated our blog so here is the update!

Our last entry finished with us going to work in a Feijoa orchard pruning the trees. On the Monday we moved into our new home - an old packhouse/ big shed! We parked up our van inside, plugged in and settled into our living quaters - a nice sofa, toilet and kitchen - better than some campsites! We were staying with a Kiwi couple Ken and Kathy, and on our first weekend Kathy cooked us a traditional kiwi roast (lamb) and for the first time we got to experience her amazing passionfruit pie!

The orchard we were staying on was home to a couple of thousand feijoa trees and also a passionfruit orchard. Along with 2 pigs Boris(who is a girl) and Plum, 12 'Chucks' and one cat called Casper. Also most of the year 4 steers, and a Heefa but they were away on their holidays whilst we were there. We became friends with the pigs (easy when you have food scraps!) but Casper never took to us!

Whilst their I (Pru) had a birthday, I had a lovely cake and we went to an Indian in town for dinner (thank you Winters family). However spent the day working:-( was one of the only non-rainy days! We could not work when it rained due to a fungus that used rain to spread, so we took every chance we could to work.

As you can all imagine Ian took to pruning a bit better than me, within a day I had to be moved to special small trees as I was too short for the ones Ian and Ken pruned. Then one day with the electric secaters I decided I did not like my thumb anymore and would try and chop it off. It just resulted in me now having a NZ medical number, and visits to the nurse for giant thumb bandaging and a small numb point but is now healing well and not looking so deformed anymore!

After that excitment we stayed for another week and a half, in which time we cooked Ken and Kathy an english roast and savoured the experience of our final passionfruit pie! Then on the next Tuesday we headed for a tour of the east coast. The sun was shinning (which after the snow from just a couple of days before seemed a miracle) so we went for a long drive the long way round!

One visit we forgot was on one of the last rainy days we had there we decided to head back into town (Rotorua) and visit the museum, this was very good, and we watched videos of erupting volcanoes, read the history and had a tour of the history of the bath house (where the museum is based) and learnt about its time as a restaurant and night club in the the 60s, 70s and 80s!
It soon became clear that the east coast was our chance to embark on a food and drink tasting tour! I first spotted a macadamia nut place on the map but it was closed (is winter here) and then we spotted a honey place and had a lovely ice cream. However the visit here was more to calm the nerves after we nearly ran out of petrol, we were lucky if we had 10km left in the tank, and thats not far here we had been a lot further than that without even seeing a petrol station - as Ken and Kathy were always saying the van was running 'on the smell of an oily rag!' Even when we did find a random pump in a tiny village, figuring out how to gain access to it was another task all together, not to mentioned the price. However is still cheaper than England!

Then on we went to Tolaga Bay, here is the longest wharf in New Zealand and longest concrete Wharf in the Southern Hemisphere. We arrived a bit later than planned so we decide to wait till the next day to do a bit of fishing hoping the weather would hold out - the weather man said it would! We got up the next day and sun was shinning, and went out fishing the cloud moved in and it got very cold but Ian managed to catch a Lemon Shark, and learnt how to fillet it from a local (see pics). We then headed to Gisbourne. I then breaded the fillets expertly as Ian keeps telling me to write and we had a dinner everyone was very jealous of!

Gisbourne is the first city in the world for the sun to rise and is the first place that cook landed here. Cook is the explorer than mapped New Zealand. So we went and saw one of his statues here and that of young nick who was the one on board who first spotted New Zealand. We then decided it was time to continue that food and drink tour and headed over to Cider Brewery. We had a history lesson in cider which was really good and saw lots of tanks! We then got to taste it. Here they brewed 4 different types - 2 New Zealand ones Harvest and Scrumpy (not to be confused with Scrumpy Jacks) and an English and Irish cider - Strongbow and Bulmers under license. We enjoyed then so much we bought a few bottles to help us with more drinking and eating...!

We then from here headed down to Napier. We quick realised there was going to be alot for us to do here but the weather decided not to make it easy this is when the rain begun! It was late again so we decided to wait till the morning and start the day with an Art Deco building self guided tour! Napier had a big earthquake in 1931, this destroyed the city and rose the land by the port by 2 metres creating a lot of extra land and making Napier ideal for redevelopment. In the 1930s, Art Deco was the style of the day and as such the redevelopment was done in this style and along with Miami is one of the largest examples of Art Deco buildings in the world. However the rain had other ideas so after watching a quick video in the Art Deco shop point 1 of the guided walk we headed over to a sheep skin tanning factory for cover!

At the sheep skin tanning factory they have a couple of tours a day and the rain coincided well with the 11 o'clock tour, this was free and really interesting and we are now owners of 2 sheep skin rugs which have landed safe and well in the UK! After this we went to the National Aquarium (its not that big!) and saw lots of fishes including feeding time! After this we decided to give our tour ago again whilst dodging the rain and saw some very nice buildings.

The next morning we decided we hadn't had as much food and drink as hoped so we would do some catching up! So at 10am where better to start than with some wine. So we headed to the Mission Estate Winery, this is the oldest Winery in New Zealand, here we sampled a few wines and moved onto the next. Easily done in the area there are many only a minute of two apart all over the Hawkes Bay region. Anyway the next was Church Road Winery here we sampled a few more and due Ians concern about the legal drink drive alcohol limit we decided following that one it was time to move onto some food! So to a chocolate factory! We decided to skip the factory to spend maximum money on chocolate (it wasn't cheap) to soak up the mornings wine! Chocolates weren't bad though! Then onto Hastings, however due to heavy rain by now we skipped past it to Havelock North and a cheese factory (we did plan to go back but the rain wouldn't stop!) At the cheese place we sampled some lovely cheese and I (Pru) decided I much rather some Stilton so on we went.

Due to the weather we dedicded we had seen/ sampled all the best bits of the east coast and it was time to head to our destination (of this bit of the journey) - Wellington! Wellington is the capital of New Zealand and sits at the bottom of the North Island. We have now been in Wellington for a week and have spent it hiding from strong winds and rain - yes it still has not stopped and when it rains it really can for extended periods of time! We have meet up with some people we meet in Kerikeri - by accident on the motorway on the way in to Wellington and have now set up home in Hutt Park in the suburbs. We have had a couple of days of work in a print factory and are now just hoping something a bit more permanent comes along and it may on Monday, we have an interview - but is meant to only be for one. So that will be Ian's job and hopefully i will get some office work soon!

That's just about us updated... so till next time!

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Photos

A look over part of the orchard
The white bit is the passion fruit.

Ian and his shark
Ian insists it is bigger than it looks!