First pics of new house

Here are a few pictures of our new house.

The Living Room

You can just see the patio doors to the left. There is a wood-burning stove on the opposite wall.

Part of the garden

The patio doors lead out here. The larger shed is the sleepout, which I'm planning on turning into a yoga room.

Exterior view of the other side of the house

We're so excited - we can't wait to move in!

Bought a house!

...subject to contract and all the usual guff, we've bought a house in Wanganui. Hooray! We'll post again in a few days and give you the low-down, but in short, it's an Edwardian wooden 'villa' with two bedrooms and a sleep-out in a lovely English country garden-type setting. It's in a really nice neighbourhood, and is only a short walk to the park and river. We've got some little pics the estate agent gave us, so we're going to have a go at scanning them in later.

Our second visit to Wanganui just served to confirm our first impression of the place - in fact, we liked it even more the second time round. It's a lovely town, with a really laid-back vibe, and a thriving arts scene. We're due to complete on 10th November (things move really quickly here) and take possession on 2nd December. Of course, the blood-sucking lawyers haven't got involved yet, so that could all change!

Bye for now,

I & H

Spirit Visit Part 3

After looking through a huge pile of leaflets from the tourist information office, we decided to spend Tuesday morning doing the ‘DUKW tour’. A Rotorua company has bought up and renovated several amphibious craft from World War II, painted them yellow (presumably to make them look like rubber duckies), and kitted them out with manic drivers and a job lot of plastic duck whistles. The word ‘DUKW’ is an acronym, but none of us can remember what it stands for. Suggestions welcome.

Note added 04/01/06:
My sister Diana has found out the answer for us.

D indicates the model year 1942

U refers to the body style, utility (amphibious)

K for all - wheel drive

W for dual rear axles

Cheers, Diana. :-)


The DUKW did a tour of three of the lakes near Rotorua. The first lake we went on was the largest, Lake Rotorua itself, where the driver told us the (supposedly true) love story of Hinemoa and Tutanekai who came from two different tribes – one lived on the lake shore, and the other lived on the island in the middle of the lake.

We then set off a few kilometres down the road to Lake Tikitapu, also known as The Blue Lake. Lake Tikitapu is quite small, with a short, sandy beach, and is surrounded by hills covered in native bush. The lake is extremely deep and its waters are a striking greeny-blue. Legend has it that it got its name, (meaning ‘sacred Tiki’) after a Maori princess accidentally dropped a good luck charm in the shape of the god Tiki into its waters.

The final lake on our trip was Lake Okareka, which is absolutely stunning. The water is crystal clear and the lake is surrounded by gorgeous bush-clad hills. The lakeshore is lined with beautiful houses and exclusive, home-stay-style hotel accommodation. The houses were HUGE and they all had their own jetty and boatshed. Our driver told us that one of the houses rents out for $6,000 (£2,400) per night.

Unfortunately I’ve run out of time to tell the rest of this story; it will have to wait until Tuesday. This weekend coming up is a long holiday weekend, and we’re going back to Wanganui to have another look round and to have a look at some houses. It’s one of the areas we’re considering for the ‘big move’ in January.

Catch you later.

Spirit Visit Part 2 - miscellaneous pics

Phil, Sally and me at Waiotapu Thermal Wonderland

The Champagne Pool at Waiotapu Thermal Wonderland, near Rotorua

Phil in 'Little Mermaid' mode at Mount Maunganui Beach, Tauranga

The motley crew of the Rotorua DUKW
- those things round our necks are duck quackers (oh dear)

Will write more about our trip on Sunday (we're off out on a day trip tomorrow - not sure where yet.) It's sunny now that P & S have buggered off. Typical!

Spirit Visit Part 1

Phil and Sally flew back to Sydney on Saturday evening, after an eventful week in New Zealand.
They arrived on the previous Saturday afternoon. Their plane touched down half an hour earlier than scheduled, due to a significant tail wind. A strong wind across the Tasman Sea usually heralds wet weather in New Zealand, and, sure enough, the rain started almost as soon as they landed, and it’s still raining now! On Saturday night we braved the elements and walked to Toby’s, a local restaurant, which we’d heard good things about but had never been to. Toby’s is a small, shed-like building with a black metal cat on the roof. Inside it has wooden floors and low ceilings, and the tables are closely spaced, with lots of pot plants and wooden sculptures wedged in between them. The atmosphere was lively, with live music from a guitarist, and all the tables were full. However, people started leaving early, and by nine o’clock the place was almost entirely empty! I know that most Aucklanders get up early in the morning to avoid the worst of the rush hour traffic, but the next day was Sunday, for goodness’ sake! Maybe everyone was hurrying off to a nightclub, but I doubt it.

On Sunday we did a few of the things on our wet weather itinerary. I can’t remember what we did in the morning. Maybe either Phil or Sally could help me out here! We spent most of the afternoon at Auckland Museum, and lost Phil amongst the aeroplanes in the World War II gallery. In the early evening we went to the viaduct harbour, the beating entertainment heart of central Auckland, but the torrential rain, coupled with the fact that it was a Sunday, meant that the usually lively bars and restaurants were almost completely deserted. It was a real washout. Nevertheless, we got to see the ice bar, and Phil took some pictures of the ice sculptures.

On Monday we went to Rotorua for a few days. We stayed at the Prince’s Gate Hotel, where Iain and I had stayed before. Like the Hotel de Wheels in Wellington, this hotel isn’t on it original site. It was built in the 1880s in another town entirely, but was moved to Rotorua during the First World War, where it was used as a military hospital.

We spent the evening at a traditional ‘Maori village’. This is the sort of thing that we probably would never have done if we’d been on our own, but we’re glad we did it because it was excellent. We watched a concert with traditional Maori dancing and singing, and the ‘chief’ told us a few traditional stories and explained some of the weapons, as well as the meaning of his ‘moko’, or tattoos. After the concert we had a meal that included meat and vegetables cooked in the traditional way, in a ‘hangi’ or earth pit oven. After the meal, which was very good, we went for a bush walk. Our guide told us about some of the trees and how the Maori used them, and we saw hundreds of blue-green glow-worms and a freshwater spring containing a family of eels. We had a really enjoyable evening. Here are some pictures of it.

Scary Haka

The Chief gives a graphic explanation of the use of the greenstone club

Beer, puddings and jetlag catch up with Phil

You may be thinking that because we’re updating our blog properly, that we’ve now got the internet at home at last. You’d be wrong. This blog entry is courtesy of ‘cut and paste’. We’ve been waiting for ten weeks now, and Telecom have put our connection date back EIGHT times. It’s getting beyond a joke. Iain rang them yesterday afternoon and managed to speak to a senior manager, who told him he had no idea when we would get connected as they were having technical problems, so it looks like we’ll be making daily visits to Starbucks for a while yet! ☹

I’ll post the next instalment of the visit report some time in the next few days.

Online soon!

Telecom have told us that we will be connected on Sunday, October 9th. We think it might actually happen this time. As soon as we're connected we'll be updating the blog properly.

We've been having lots of fun with Phil and Sally, who are over here for a week. Well, as much fun as we can given that the weather has been awful - pretty much constant torrential rain!!

Looking forward to uploading the pics soon...Phil beware!

Connection imminent

Well, the roadworks were completed on Friday, and the other connection work that needs to be done in order to connect us to the new junction box will (probably) take place by the end of the week, which means that some time next week someone might actually connect us up to the bloody phone line! (If they can be bothered.) Watch this space...

Sort of an update

This is a quick one, as we're in Starbucks, but Iain just got off the phone with Telecom who say the phantom roadworks are currently underway, should be finished by the end of next week, and we should be connected by the end of the following week. Which is good news...if it happens!!

We have a few more piccies to regale you with, so we thought we'd put them up.

Normal service (whatever that is) will be resumed in approximately two weeks.

Lake Okotaine, near Rotorua

Beach on the Eastern coast of the Coromandel Peninsula

Helen in Russian Spy mode

Some squinting bloke

Still here part 2

Still no phone line yet - they've got to do some major tinkering as they've run out of capacity at the exchange - they keep rescheduling the work - next date is September 16th, so fingers crossed that it happens then.

Meantime we've been pretty busy, travelling around a bit. Phil & Sally from sunny Burton are coming to visit during October, so we've got plans to do another tour of North Island, and before that we're off to Wellington to scout out places to live. We've made the decision to buy a house there, as we loved the city so much, now we're just waiting for my contract to finish in Auckland (December 21st) and then we'll be off "dahn sarf".

As soon as the net connection is up and running again, I'll get posting some more piccies and more frequent reports - should be back to a once-a-week schedule when we don't have to trudge into town to surf the web!

Still here!

We haven't vanished, honest! We're still waiting for our house to be connected up to the phone/internet so can't update things as we'd like. Should be sorted in a couple of weeks!

Election fever

The other week we found out we’re eligible to vote in the New Zealand general election on September 17th. It came as a bit of a surprise, as we thought you had to be a citizen before you could vote, and we can’t apply for citizenship for another three years. So, anyway, we sent off our registration forms, and are eagerly awaiting whatever it is that happens next. We have absolutely no idea. It’s great being an immigrant.

I don’t know what you think of politics, (or maybe I do, if your name’s Phil), but it has been a source of constant guilt for me, ever since I reached voting age. You see, I feel I really ought to be interested in it, because it’s so important, and because I can feel the ghosts of thousands of suffragettes breathing (or not breathing) down my neck. So I always use my vote.

Nevertheless, I just can’t summon up any enthusiasm for politics. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, it’s boring and secondly, all politicians are scumbags. I’m also a complete political ignoramus. For example, until recently, I’d always had myself down as a ‘wet and woolly liberal’, but when I completed the ‘political compass’ questionnaire I found out, that, politically speaking, I’m so far to the left of Lenin I’m not even in the same collective, and I’m only a stove pipe hat away from being an anarchist. This came as something of a shock, I can tell you.

Once we have the internet at home again, I’ll put together a post about the election here in New Zealand – the electoral system, the political parties, the personalities, and the hot issues of the campaign… then again, maybe I won’t. I’ll have to see how my enthusiasm’s holding out.

Apropos of nothing, here are some photos I took from our new flat. The first picture shows the view from our bedroom window (again, but this time on a sunny afternoon), and the second shows the view from our front door.

Bloody marvellous!

It’s ace. We love it here.

Being without the internet is pretty inconvenient. I’m having to make a bus journey into town every day to check my mail (I need to be connected for work), so it’s a bit of a pain. On the positive side, Starbucks has got a wireless hotspot, so I can grab a cappuccino and a slice of carrot cake while I surf, which sweetens the pill a bit! Insomnia, tooth decay and obesity are a small price to pay for being online.

Ciao,
(That’s the cappuccino talking)

Helen

Moved!

We moved... Horrah! No internet.... booooo!

They need to come and dig the road up to get us connected, so we'll be offline (except at work and via net cafes obviously) until September. So the posts here will stop for a few weeks, however we'll be back with a vengence in a months time.

The new place is pretty damn fabby, cool views and a great flat. Definitely the best place we've lived so far - UK or NZ. It's so quiet and peaceful, surrounded by bush and looking out over the ocean.... bliss! We'll post more piccies when we get connected again.

Moving

Well, we're off to our new spot in the country tomorrow - the phone company is due to connect us up on Monday, but I suspect we may disappear offline for a week or so while the broadband gets sorted out.

We're looking forward to it - ironically it's the first time we've paid movers to do the whole thing for us, and we've got less furniture and stuff now than we've ever had! It's pretty cheap to get removal dudes here as well - costing us about $170 ( 70ish quid) for 2 blokes and a van. Mind you, they may charge us extra when they realise they have to cart our bigger-than-the-door-frame-god-knows-how-we-got-it-in sofa down 5 flights of stairs :)

I've got parent's evenings next week - same old cobblers the world over no doubt, so I'm suitably fed up with work, although in reality it seems a) easier than teaching in the UK and b) better organised and resourced. Kids seem to lead a more "Enid Blyton" style of existence here - lashings of ginger beer and adventures. There seems to be less stress about them being abducted, having accidents, getting a degree by the time they're 10 etc, than in the UK - they are just allowed to be kids. I teach in the "rough" bit of AKL, where they have their fair share of gang & drug problems, but even here, the kids have a certain innocence and openess about them at age 12/13 which was lacking in some of the 9/10 year olds back in Burton. Anyway, got to pack.... actually I'm sneaking out to watch the Machinist with Gingacaz + hubby... packing can wait until 10 minutes before the removal van arrives. BTW Mark and Luke, if you're reading this, I could do with a hand shifting the telly downstairs ;)

A Room with a View

We went back to sign all the paperwork on the new place and grabbed a photo while we were there. It was a murky grey day and the tide was in, so you can't see the beach... but heh, you get the idea. A photo of our existing view in the city apartment is included for comparison. :)

view from the bedroom, new flat


view from the bedroom, old flat

We move next week, so hopefully we'll be able to get some better shots soon. Only fly in the ointment is that I'm back to work on Monday, after a fortnight off. Bummer.

New pad!

The lease to our apartment in the city runs out on 3rd August. It's a great location, but a bit light starved - especially as Helen works from home. So we went and had a look around at some new places today, on the off chance we might find a better spot. Boy, did we find a better spot!!!! We fancied living in a district of Auckland called Titirangi - it's on the West Coast surrounded by hills and dense bush. So that's where we started looking - the first place we saw was ok, but totally surrounded by forest, so was no lighter than our current pad. The second place we went to was a dream. Only a small, 1 bedroom apartment (Just built, never been lived in) and again surrounded by bush, but this time much lighter. The outlook is a true, 24 carat, million dollar view. Honestly, it's simply stunning. The place borders a nature reserve, which has paths down to the beach. Awesome. We slapped down a deposit there and then, move in on 30th. We're going back on Saturday to finalise all the legal stuff. and hopefully will blag a few piccies to put up.

Helen says finding this place is the best birthday present she's ever had.

Wow!

I just had to post this new version of the photo of Opotiki beach which Iain created this afternoon.
I love it.
Just shows what you can do with some computer magic and an eye for composition and colour. As the kiwis say, 'Good on ya, mate!'

Here's the original so you can compare the two versions.

Wellington

View of Wellington from the Botanical Gardens

Day 3 saw us heading South towards Wellington. Quite a journey from Napier, we travelled through Manawatu - wide open, flat, farming country. Very pretty if you like that sort of thing, reminded me of Norfolk, but not enough hills for my liking! Palmerston North was the first city we went through - big, open and non-descript like the countryside around it, then on to the town of Feilding, voted NZs best kept town or somesuch. Very well ordered and pleasant but again rather too flat for me. After all this exposure to the central plains of NZ it was time for a few hills, so we continued South on highway 2 through the Wairarapa and into Wellington. Wow. What a place. The scenery completely transforms from the flat open stuff into stunning mountain gorges and dense forest. The road travels across a high mountain pass and is somewhat precipitous - I concentrated very hard on the road and tried not to look down!

We arrived in Wellington at night and after a spot of confused driving around, checked into the Hotel De Wheels in the centre of town. Check out the link, because this place has a very interesting past!

Wellington Harbour

The next day we got to explore Wellington properly and I have to say, we were both blown away by what a beautiful and buzzing city it is. The centre is full of public spaces, parks and art works, and has a thriving cafe culture. It seems more lively than Auckland, and a much more attractive place to be. I think we've found where we'll be heading after December!

Wellington Centre

We checked out the museum of New Zealand - Te Papa, which was seriously impressive, although I find I get "museumed out" after a couple of hours. It's the sort of place you could keep going back to and there would always be something new to look at. Next we decided a bit of fresh air and exercise was called for and so trooped off to the Botanical Gardens. There are some great walks (mostly over 12k long!) based around there so we had a bit of a wander before staggering back to the hotel in an exhausted state!

Crotchety and forgetful

It's official - we're both old farts.

Not only did we both forget to post day 2 of our North Island tour yesterday, but when we discussed it this morning, neither of us could remember what we actually did on day 2.

We had a brief contretemps about who should write today's entry. I reasoned it should be Iain because I wrote the previous entry, but he said he could only write about Wellington, (which was day 4), because he couldn't remember anything else. Maybe that was a calculated ploy to get out of doing any writing today by appalling my orderly mind, and if so, it worked (grrrr). I couldn't bear the thought of posting the account of our trip out of order, which means it's me who's posting yet again. Iain, your account of our visit to Wellington had better be good.

Day 2
Gisborne to Napier

Sunday morning in Gisborne dawned chilly but bright, with the promise of a warm and sunny day ahead. We set off for a brief drive around town and a stroll along the beach before starting on the next part of our journey. Iain wasn't too impressed with Gisborne. He said he thought it was a dull and lifeless place. He seemed to be overlooking the fact that it was early on a Sunday morning in mid winter. I'd be amazed if any town is buzzing with life then. I thought Gisborne looked pleasant, if a bit characterless, but from a practical viewpoint it seemed well equipped with anything you might want on a day to day basis, and the town centre was well-kept. I really liked the palm trees that line the high street. Anything remotely exotic-looking like this still impresses the socks off me. I suppose I like to be reminded I'm somewhere 'foreign'.

Gisborne High Street

Gisborne beach is gorgeous. Iain took some photos of it, but he's gone all 'prima donna' and is refusing to post them. He says they're not good enough. Nothing wrong with them if you ask me.

Gisborne beach is a gently curving bay of biscuit-coloured sand strewn with driftwood, with a rocky headland on one side. The other side of the bay isn't quite so picturesque, being dominated by some sort of factory with dozens of huge cylindrical containers. It reminded me a bit of a brewery, but it definitely wasn't (and having lived for ten years in Burton on Trent I know a brewery when I see one!) My guess is it was a desalination plant. Maybe someone who's been there can clear the mystery up.

The drive from Gisborne to Napier was spectacular, especially the first half. Almost immediately after leaving Gisborne the road begins to climb steeply into bush-clad hills. We stopped the car at a scenic viewpoint and saw the whole of the bay and acres of bush spread out below us. The unfamiliar birdsong in the trees all around, the warmth of the sun on our faces, the glitter of sunlight on the sea below and the stench of a decomposing possum at the side of the road all combined to make a truly memorable moment. We took some photos, but they're no good. We knew they wouldn't come out very well, as the sun was in exactly the wrong place. We should have waited eight hours or so. Then we would have got some brilliant photos.

I can't remember much about the second part of the drive from Gisborne to Napier, apart from the fact that the landscape opens out quite a lot, and Napier itself is on a broad plain which looks as if it was once part of the sea bed. Napier is much more 'sea-sidey' than Gisborne with a lot more accommodation to choose from, and it is geared very much towards the tourist trade. The town itself has more character than Gisborne. This is mainly due to the art deco style of many of its buildings. The town had to be rebuilt from scratch after being completely destroyed by an earthquake in 1931. Oddly, neither of us took any photos of Napier. I have no idea why not. To make up for our forgetfulness, here's a link with some photos of Napier.

Our mini tour of North Island

Our route

Well, we're back from our mini tour of North Island a little earlier than planned, although to say we had a plan when we set off is stretching the facts a bit far. We wanted to see all the major population centres on North Island which we hadn't yet seen, as well as a significant stretch of countryside (well, the bits bordering the highways at least), with the purpose of beginning to choose where we want to settle down and buy or build a house when Iain's job finishes in December.

Five days and nineteen hundred kilometres later (don't ask me to convert this into miles because I haven't got a clue!) and we're back. We have no more idea about where we'd like to live than before, but this isn't because we didn't find anywhere we liked. On the contrary, almost everywhere we visited we would be happy to make our home and can imagine living there! There are a few exceptions, but more of those later.


Day 1
Auckland to Gisborne

We'd already done the first part of the journey, from Auckland to Tauranga, on a previous trip. Once you reach the Bombay Hills (sort of the Watford Gap of Auckland) the landscape opens up and it's a very pleasant drive through rolling green farmland. We had planned on driving into Whakatane, the main town on the eastern Bay of Plenty, but we really needed to press on, and so didn't make the diversion. This was because we'd set out late morning, on a whim, when we'd originally intended to start our trip the next day.

We stopped briefly for a leg stretch and a photo stop at Opotiki at the very easternmost edge of the Bay of Plenty and took some photos on the beach. Here's one of the best ones.

Opotiki Beach

From Opotiki the road heads inland and cuts across a range of hills to Gisborne. The road twists and turns through a landscape which is particularly wild and rugged, with lots of native forest (called 'bush' here), and spectacular river gorges. We only saw a few other cars, even though it was a Saturday in the school holidays and we were travelling along State Highway 2, which is the equivalent of the M6! Unfortunately the sun set soon after we left Opotiki so we didn't get to see much of this wonderful place before it was dark. However, there's always an upside to everything, and the good thing about it getting dark at this point was that we got to experience the most spectacular night sky I have ever seen. The road really does go right through the middle of nowhere, and with no glare of light pollution, the stars stood out brilliantly against a totally black sky. The Moon was the most arresting sight. It was a thin crescent, but its light was so dazzling that the rest of the Moon's surface was also visible, and appeared to glow with a diffuse silver-grey light.

We arrived in Gisborne at about 7 pm, and rapidly began to wish we'd set off sooner, as it's not so easy assessing accommodation in the dark. We booked a motel room just out of town, which turned out to be rather cold and shabby, but on the positive side, it was immaculately clean (thank goodness!) and very cheap. We decided to spend the money we'd saved on accommodation on a nice meal, and so went for a drive around town looking for eating places. We found a really cool place with an odd name, The Works Cafe. It's a classy bistro-style restaurant owned by a local winery. It has a really cosy and relaxed atmosphere, friendly, efficient service and excellent food. We even got a seat next to the fire! A perfect end to a great day.

One of us will make another post tomorrow describing day 2 of our tour.

Yippee!

Iain's broken up for the end of term holidays, so we're setting off today on our trip around North Island. This morning dawned sunny and bright after 72 hours of more or less incessant rain, so it feels like a good time to be off.

You may be wondering how we got the photos of the flat seeing as our camera is broken. Well, we didn't sit looking at the piggy bank for long before going out and buying a new camera (a digital SLR). We were both into photography as teenagers and we really fancy taking it up again as a hobby together, hence the more 'serious' camera. We were feeling frustrated by the fact that the 'happy snaps' we took with our old camera weren't capturing how gorgeous New Zealand is.

So now our journey has an extra dimension. As well as being a holdiay and a chance to scout out possible places to live, it's also a photography field trip. Iain's off buying milk for breakfast, and I'm supposed to be getting ready, so I'd better go now! Catch you later.