With a bit of luck the snow has finally started landing for the season.  We made it up skiing both days last weekend, and mixed it up a bit doing other stuff in the afternoons.  It looks like it’ll be more wintery this weekend so fingers crossed the white stuff will keep falling……

We haven’t even been in New Zealand for a year so far, yet we’ve done so much. 5 months in Wellington, 3 months touring the South Island, and 2 months or so in Wanaka, with my mum out for 3 weeks of that.  Since arriving in Queenstown we’ve been quickly feeling at home whilst still trying to get on our feet.  There always seems to be another bill to settle, another thing to buy….although I’ve been holding off the big tele….but we have been buying more toys (well mainly me)… another beefier mountain bike from a garage sale for me, a pilates machine for Ciara, and I finally have the Stand Up Paddle board I won in Wellington delivered.  The garage is starting to look good!  I’m also holding out for a car but we’ll see. 

I’ve also started playing ice hockey, and joined a league team to play every Tuesday.  It’s something that in the back of my mind I’ve always fancied trying so I checked I could still skate (I said, skate – no mention of turning or stopping), went to a couple of training sessions and before I knew it I had signed up. It’s not everywhere you live that you can join an ice hockey league!  Yes that’s me in the yellow jersey on the right!
(Actually, it’s not…that’s the Queenstown team playing…. but maybe in a few months) 

I finally got out on my paddle board on Saturday for a bit in the lake just along the road from the house.  Yes, we should be skiing, but here I am on a lake.  It’s been so mild recently with the odd frosty morning.  One ski hill has already delayed opening for a couple of weeks and there’s no sign of them opening yet….but the Queenstown Winter Festival starts on Friday with a big fireworks opening ceremony….and there are Winter Games on in August.   There’s loads happening here all year round.

Work’s going pretty well too.  It’s been a bit daunting to take over from someone after them being there so long, but largely due to the lack of knowledge share around the small team.  Ciara is off to Sydney with work for a week so I’ll be home alone for the first time in around 13 months.

We’ve been staying around Queenstown since we moved in. The furthest we’ve travelled has been about an hour down to Glenorchy, and up the other direction to the vineyards and old gold mining areas.  We’ve been mountain biking a couple of times in the bike parks, or along the lakefront.  We’ve managed to walk up the biggest hill you can from the centre of town (Ben Lomond at the top of this post – if you are creative you can see this from the house), and up and around the highest skifield.  We even went on a boat trip – the same boat we see from the house 3 times a day, but we thought we should sample it from the water looking up to the house! 

For the first time in a while we don’t feel the need to try and escape where we stay at weekends due to the variety of what’s on offer around us. 

The bikes fit perfectly inside the van if we want them to as you can see below.  The shot on the right is about 3km from the house as we cycled along the lake looking up to the Remarkables a few weeks ago (there’s less snow on them now!).

We’re excited that my dad and stepmum have booked to come out for a month in mid November, and Ciara’s mum is coming over to join us at Christmas.  We’ve just had our first overnight visitor so look forward to more.  We’d love for so many friends and family to come out and see us, and see what’s around us, but we also realise the massive expense of getting even one person over which is hard.  The upside is there is so much to do around here and all the big ticket items are right next to us, or within a few hours or less.  One example is the vineyards we look forward to exploring – they start about 10 minutes away and there are some of NZ’s best ones within an hour, and loads of them – the signs on the right is only at one junction!

Meanwhile we’re trying to get ready for winter in the hope that the snow arrives soon.  We’ve got the log burner built up and spent a couple of hours stacking 8m cubed of wood in the garage we had delivered at the weekend.  As I sit here our heat pump is getting fixed (at the landlord’s expense thankfully!).

I’ll try not to leave it so long until the next blog post…..hopefully we’ll get one up of us using these mountain season passes we have!  Bring on the snow!

Nice view with my sandwich today…as I sat here taking it all in at lunchtime Ciara called me saying ‘I can’t believe we live here’. 
‘Where are you?’ I asked…and the reply was ‘On my way to the supermarket, I just pulled over to say that’.
Queenstown …..we’re going to like it. Winter hasn’t even started for real yet and I can’t wait I’ll summer…so much fun to have before then!

Not a bad view for breakfast….

Call it easily pleased…or is it just the false pretence of seeing me working for a week while the “boss” stays at home…..but one sight of this gluten free burger (I’m sure it not just this particular burger but gluten free in general)…but on the first bite all I heard was “I can’t go home”.
One week down for me and ciara had her work debut in the pub tonight with the work crowd.
Looking forward to 2 full free days.

About a week after we had arranged the date, we realised that we were moving into the house in Queenstown exactly one year to the day we flew out of Scotland.

So here’s the year in statistics :

11 countries
8 flights (9 including a scenic one)
5 ferry trips
5 train journeys
1 commercial fishing boat trip
372 non-paid days (+9 more) for Darren (i.e. not employed)
…and in NZ :
2 new house moves
12,000km around NZ’s South Island
2 mountain season passes
2 heli trips (scenic)
1 joint residency application
1 tenancy lease signed
2 bikes purchased
2 boogie boards purchased (only one used…both travelled 11,000km on the roof though!)
1 cheap $2 shop ratchet strap frayed by 3 months of UV light, holding said boogie boards
2 fishing rods purchased
1 fishing licence purchased (but only one fekin’ fish caught…in the sea, where no licence is required!…despite about 40 salmon jumping in front of me in Diamond Lake while the sandflies attacked me and Ciara laughed from the van as I walked through the bog) 
1 van bought
2 small souvenir parcels sent home that we don’t know when we’ll see them again
7 interviews
3 earthquakes felt
35 times in “The Warehouse” saying “jeez that’s bloody cheap”
32 times at home saying “god some of that stuff from The Warehouse is sh!t”
209 (ish) curses of the price of “stuff” in NZ
2 sets of skis, boots and poles purchased
1 order of firewood for the logburner next week!
1 (probably) record breaking amount of stuff stuffed in a Toyota HiAce, and still keeping it liveable in

So that’s about it!

3 months travelling around Central Asia (“the ‘Stans”), Mongolia and China, after starting off at my sister’s old place in Oman.  We landed in New Zealand at the end of July, and intend being here for quite some time longer.  We are waiting for a “Work to Residency” permit (a longer process due to Ciara not working when it was processed), and are about to move into a house in Queenstown.

NZ’s been a very interesting time, from seeing our (and more so Ciara’s) change in attitude towards wonderful Wellington, leaving there with loads of stuff not done as we “knew” we’d be back to live….but it never worked out like that.
After almost buying a few different vans we definitely made the right choice for our road trip – it’s been amazing (although we’ve never required the 4×4 really) and we’ve never once got bored of living out of a van.  We have a record amount of stuff in it now, which we’re looking forward to emptying out into a living room and being able to pack it away.

We’ve had an amazing road trip of several parts : Phase 1 before my mum arrived, Phase 2 with them, Phase 3 before we landed in Wanaka for 2 months doing a HelpX scheme in Wanaka (which was “interesting”), then Phase 4 between that, and moving back to Queenstown.

In all phases it’s been great.  We’ve not done as much walking, climbing, swimming, fishing, kiting, cycling etc that we hoped, but we’ve had a fair stab at each of them.  Everything we’ve done has been the pick of the bunch or weather – from our wonderful one day walks, to out 1hr scenic mountain flight, 1 hr scenic mountain heli (a freebie!), to swimming with dolphins and everything inbetween.

It was always going to be extremely difficult to get something skilled in Wanaka but we’ve been so lucky (we hope!) to be able to move just 1hr away (or “over the hill” as us locals say, or “Southem Wanaka” as the main tourism Wanaka guy called it!) to Queenstown.  It’s hopefully going be out near perfect balance of a small, but very busy place, although we’re 180km from the nearest city, which just happens so sit at the very Southern tip of NZ’s South Island!  We’re looking forward to our first full winter in a ski resort town.

Although our road trip is ending for now, our little trips will continue right on our doorstep and around.  There’s almost everything you can do outdoors within a few kilometres of the house, including non active things like the best wine in New Zealand being grown on our doorstep.  There’s also 2 ski resorts within 15km of the door which we hope to explore extensively between July and October.  I should be getting my stand up paddle board delivered to the house shortly.

If we can stand the cost of living, it’s going to be a great next adventure.  The cost of living will be the subject of a post soon….the price of living in “playtown” as a friend called it and the harsh realities of living in NZ’s fastest growing town.

After reading that post you may never complain about a heating bill again…..it doesn’t help when you are placing an order for firewood and the person on the other end asks where about in town “Oh, that’s the cold bit” she responded!

Aaaaah Queenstown, it all sounds so good.

Oh bollocks……….I just remembered I’m gonna have to start working in a week!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

PS : The pictures in this post are the views from the lounge of the house. The top left of the 2nd picture is the top of one of the local ski resorts which is on the other side of the mountain – The Remarkables.  Time will tell whether we went against the advice of a local builder friend and got seduced by the view or not!

We’re all signed up and moving in on 3rd May.  We’re back in Wanaka to see Ciara’s cousin tomorrow night, and we did an amazing walk up Roys Peak today.

From there we’re heading up the West coast across the Haast pass, up to Franz and Fox glaciers and we’ll see on time after that.  We may just head back the same way, or less likely, come back over Arthur’s Pass and the long way round via Christchurch. We officially have 12 days left on the last leg of our road trip!

Its crazy. We’ve been in Wanaka for 8 weeks pretty much and only today did we manage to walk up Roy’s Peak…which was top of our list.  We were greeted with a superb view, and it may show why we love it here so much.
Lake Wanaka. At least its only 1hr from our door!

In 14 days between us we’ve had 2 interviews, 12 house viewings, 1 job acceptance, 6 hill pass crossings between Wanaka and Queenstown,2 mountain season passes bought, 1 lease acceptance and today we topped it off….
Ciara, after a mere 1 days skiing, bought her first skis and boots.  Today I bought my first pair of ski touring skis and boots, and my first skis for about (eek) 23 years.
It looks like my snowboard and ice axes may hit a ship over soon …if my mum doesn’t go demented with my packing requests first (thanks mum!)

On top of all that my 12 foot Starboard stand up paddle board I won in Wellington with a photo at a coastal cleanup should be winging its way to Queenstown in 2 weeks time! (The fact that its too big for the van can be worked out later!)