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Published: December 16th 2008
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So we've been pretty slack about blogging but it's been great to settle down for a while and unpack the backpacks! From India we had a lovely few weeks in Australia visiting friends in Melbourne, Sydney and Port Augusta in South Australia. It was strange experiencing reverse culture shock on returning to the developed world after so long in Asia - Melbourne airport and train stations were eerily quiet, clean, orderly and empty in the early hours of the wintery morning on which we arrived! It was great to hit the open road in a hire car, after getting used to bumpy buses and long train journeys the freedom of being behind the wheel of our own car on the spectacular Great Ocean Road was awesome!
From Oz we headed to Auckland and took a week to make our way to Wellington. Got a taste of NZ; bubbling mud at Rotorua's geothermal parks, Maori performance of Haka, Poi and more, the pristine beaches of the Coromandel and dramatic weather - floods, landslips and clouds so low we couldn't see the mountain we drove right past! On arriving in Welly we stayed with family for a month whilst we got sorted
with work and a house. Bob's System's Analyst contract for the New Zealand Transport Agency is going well and I've been temping in a variety of places - currently Group PA for the Literacy and Numeracy Implementation Unit at The Tertiary Education Commission - longest job title I've ever had!
So we live in a three up one down house near the Wellington zoo. The house is built into a hill (Soooo many hills in Welly!) there is just a spare room on the ground floor and upstairs are all the other rooms. We even have a yard and a patch of grass which is North facing and catches the sun (everything is in reverse here!). On a still day - not many of those yet as Wellington is one helluva windy city - we can hear the baboons and the African wild dogs from the zoo, we once heard a lion roar too! It's been great to have a house after nearly a year on the road - spent lots of the cold wet days of winter in the kitchen creating weird and wonderful dishes out of our veggie box! The veg box at home used to be
challenging enough but now we have to contend with fruit and veg we've never even heard of like tamarillos and kumara. The abundance of summer fruit in the shops now is a brain twister - fresh cherries, peaches, strawberries, raspberrries etc at Christmas time! And shops selling bikinis and sunhats alongside tinsel and santa outfits - truly strange!
We are making the most of city life. There are plenty of cafes to hang out in - Wellington has more coffee shops per head than New York and the Wellingtonians are SERIOUS about the standard of their coffee. Been eating out a little - great Asian food but also Turkish, French, Italian and some fab cheap eats - the kebabs are pretty classy here! There are some beautiful art deco cinemas showing films such as Mongol which was awesome to see having been to Mongolia! We've visited the theatre quite a bit - some inspiring contemporary dance, modern theatre, circus and music stuff has been to Welly. Managed to get myself involved in assisting with the dance rehearsals for a production called 'The Outing' a kind of Priscilla Queen of the Desert based on a bus journey through Wellington -
that was great fun and the final prodcution was quite something! Have enjoyed sampling classes from the vast array of yoga and meditation centres. Been out walking in the hilly town belt - there is a lot of green space in this city and you can be in amongst swathes of pine trees or high up on a hill within minutes of the central business district. Wellington is a very livable city - compact enough to get around quickly, lively enough to keep entertained, diverse enough in terms of cultural mix, socio-econmics and ages to be interesting, plenty of green space and you're only ever 3 miles from the seaside!
Managed a couple of weekends away to Nelson on South Island and Paekakariki about an hour up the Kapiti coast from Welly. From Nelson we headed to The Abel Tasman National Park - a beautiful coastal national park with plenty of tramps (Kiwi for walks) on offer. We caught a boat out to a beach called Bark Bay and walked back - about 20k - a lovely walk with beautiful views of the coast. Paekakariki (pronounced Pie-kok-ka-reee-keee) is to Welly like Wivenhoe is to London. We were there the
weekend of an arts festival so there were open studios and houses around the village exhibiting sculptures made of drift wood, collages, paintings, jade jewellery, items made of shiny paua shell and contemporary versions of traditional Maori flax weaving - beautiful stuff.
Bob's Mum has been visiting the last couple of weeks and this weekend we set off on the road in our new van! Heading for the east coast - planning to visit some wineries in the Hawkes Bay region and looking forward to being the first in the world to see the sun rise from Gisborne! Spending Christmas with my family before heading to a festie near Auckland - the novelty of NYE in the sun is exciting! In 2009 we'll work for another couple of months before leaving our jobs and our house, moving into the van and heading off to explore South Island. After that we'll see what happens!...
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