Advertisement
Published: December 25th 2009
Edit Blog Post
P1070782
58km is as far as we got!! “Oh the weather outside’s delightful,
But a BBQ lunch sounds frightful,
We’ve got no other place to go,
Let it glow let it glo, let it glow!”
Wishing you all a warm festive Christmas from sunny New Plymouth, hopefully the snow has melted enough for you all to see family and stagger back from the pub!
I know we are behind with our blog updates and they will follow once we come out the other side of our Xmas hang over, but for now, here is what we got up to on our Christmas Eve and Christmas day………….
Having just bought our new campervan a few days before, we collected it Xmas eve morning and packed up our stuff from the Hearing Dogs site. We were on the road by midday heading to spend our first warm kiwi Xmas with friends in Tauranga. As we were driving out of New Plymouth we were trying to think of a name for our van, and as I turned the radio on to the only station I could find, on came Elton John. Perfect we thought, it’s a sign and as Nath added we’re driving a camper and Elton John
P1070783
Elton and mandy waiting for the cavalry is certainly camp!! Anyway it would seem that Elton was not so happy with his new name and soon after we started to smell smoke/burning. We had thought it was the caravan in front of us so over took them (eventually) to find that it still smelt slightly but was better. After this the exhaust started making noises like it was broken, great we thought that didn’t last long. We hadn’t even got out of the Taranaki county (about half hour) by this point but pulled over on some gravel to have a look………..
The radiator was screwed!!! Water dripping out of it, smoke coming out of the engine and smoke from the boiling hot exhaust pipe. Great we thought; we’ll have to ring the seller and see what they can do. That however was easier said than done. We were surrounded by the beautiful mountainous regions of the Naki and thus had no mobile signal. We walked for about half an hour but still nothing, we had no idea how far we were gonna have to go!! Eventually we found a farmers house and asked if we could use their phone. Now the Xmas spirit was alive here…..NOT…
P1070785
Dressing our Christmas branch..... I mean tree. what a bunch of miserable people. They did how ever let us use their phone so whilst Nath chatted with the seller, I explained politely why I didn’t agree with using shock collars to train dogs-last thing I wanted to do was annoy them before we were gonna be rescued.
Needless to say about hour later the seller and his mechanic arrived to tow us home. They reckoned it was a stone chip that punctured the radiator (aka we have to pay for it) but the worst news was that the mechanic was shut now for Xmas so they wouldn’t look at it again till the 27th. Well that was pretty much the last nail in our Xmas coffin. Miserable and tired we went food shopping so we at least didn’t starve over the festive period, I mean that would just be pissing on our bonfire!! Or BBQ I guess for here. Anyway we got some food together, and although I wanted to spend a huge amount to cheer us up, we had in the back of our minds that the van was now gonna cost us so we bought as cheap as we could.
So with out
box of roses and some meat for the disposable BBQ we headed back to the Hearing Dogs house to wipe away our tears of frustration. It would seem all my moaning about not having snow had come back and bitten us on the arse!!
To cheer me up, Nath made me a Xmas tree form a spare plastic tree twig and a wooden stump he’d dug up earlier form the garden. I decorated it and felt much better. So that evening we had super noodles for our xmas evening meal (yummy) before heading out to the “Festival of lights” to feel a bit more xmassy.
This Festival of lights is basically their local park lit up with lights and very pretty to walk round. It even felt like home as it was freezing cold, well I thought so, although everyone else seemed to be in shorts still!! We then headed back and I spent the evening talking to family online whilst Nath fell asleep in the chair……..
Xmas morning was dull and cloudy and we figured, hey what else should we expect really considering nothing else had gone right so far. But regardless we got dressed in
P1070787
Our tree in all its glory (i told Nath size dosent matter!) a summer flare and went out to speak to family again on our mobiles (we had to drive into town before we had reception). Two hours later we went to the beach…what a Xmas morning. Nath went for a quick swim whilst I watched our bag: hey it’s still not the warmest of waters over here! We strolled along for a while picking up shells and chatting about home and xmas’s past, it wasn’t long before we were both feeling a bit sun burn so headed back to the car.
Once we were back the festivities could begin, and by this I mean the alcohol as now we had no where else to go to! So with the Xmas tunes blaring, we dished out the beer and started on the BBQ which was lush. Would have been nice to share with others but hey maybe seeing our photos you might feel like you were there too, or at least use it to warm you up heheheh
And now we are settling down for our “British Xmas” having done the kiwi beach and BBQ so basically this means eating chocolate, drinking and watching Xmas TV….sweet as!!!
It
P1070788
Our Christmas snack stash would be great to see what you’ve been up to today, send us some pics
Missing you all
Love us xxx
Advertisement
Tot: 0.043s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 7; qc: 23; dbt: 0.0218s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1mb