Wandering Scotsman

Alas, the Rugby World Cup tickets are on general sale today, after the first 2 phases completed earlier in the year.  We think we’ll be around in NZ during them but doubt we’ll go to any matches which is a shame

There’s a few reasons though :

• We don’t know where we’ll be based (probably Wellington)
• The Wellington Quarter Finals start at $164 a ticket and you don’t know who you’ll be watching
• Most of the Scotland games are in the far south, which means they are very cheap, but you have to fly down and stay overnight
• The England Scotland game is in Auckland and not available now (and when it was it started at $300 a ticket!)
• The Ireland games we’re considering for one or two as the crappy seats are cheap….

So alas, the tickets are on sale, but they’re either dotted too far around the country, which is great for Kiwis and the local economies, but not good for random planning.  Otherwise, the ticket prices are just way too expensive for us (Ireland vs Australia in Auckland….$358!).  No doubt flight prices will be hiked up accordingly as well.

UPDATE : We have bought tickets for 2 matches : Ireland vs USA (can they play rugby?) in Taranaki on 11/09/11 and Scotland vs Argentina (guess there’s no big deal with handball in this game) in Christchurch on 28/09/11 !    Whether we’ll make them is a bit up in the air, but hopefully we will!

At the start of last week I was lucky enough to be offered to go kayaking with my Wellington friend Jono.  I know him from over 10 years ago when I spent a winter in Canada.  So yet again, I went out to play while the boss was busting a gut.

The van was pretty jammed with the kayaks in the back (that’s become a very often used phrase!), but we never had to go far.  We put the kayaks out in Evans Bay marina which is literally around 500m from where we stay which is great.

We stayed in the water for around 2.5hrs which was long enough for us to paddle all the way round to the city centre, or as near as, at Oriental Bay and pull up at the beach there. At ‘O-Bay’ there’s a water fountain in the sea so Jono went up for a shower while I stayed away with the camera wrapped in dry bags.  Behind the fountain (above my head) is the main working and shopping area of Wellington.  It’s a great centre as that day there were people training for triathlons swimming in the sea, others sunbathing, fishing, and there was a yacht pulled up playing tunes while the skipper made some lunch.  It was a glorious day and we were a bit pissed that we never took any cash with us – the ice creams at the shop across the road were calling us big style.  I’m glad our trip wasn’t longer – we probably covered about 11km, and Jono went climbing afterwards.  My arms were hurting until a couple of days later so I was glad I passed on that one.

Jono is talking about getting rid of his kayaks so it’s probably a good idea we’re leaving the city in a few weeks or I’d be trying to talk the breadwinner into more budget blowing purchases!  Hopefully we’ll get Ciara out on them before we head away.

It’s reasons like this that the both of us seem to be pinching ourselves more and more when it’s a nice day as it really does rock here, and its making up for the terrible wintery weather.  There’s been a few times over the last few weeks that we’ve just turned whilst walking around and saying ‘we live here!’ with big grins our faces.  Over the last few weeks we’ve been more than happy to stick around the city at weekends as there’s so much going on, and we’ll still have a long list of things to do if and when we come back to Wellington, which we hope we do.  For obvious reasons that some of you reading this will know, despite all this it has hit us very hard recently about just how far we are from home, how difficult it makes things sometimes, and how you can’t quickly and easily go home (and cheaply! last minute airfares from this direction were twice the UK price!).  so we’re thinking of you all back in Ireland.

There is one benefit of being so far away though….  I’d swear here, but blooming ‘eck I’ve never bought anything for Christmas as early as this before!!!  Despite the last recommended international post for NZ being this weekend (21st) I’m sure there will be some very early xmas cards being delivered!

The full van :

Well folks we have officially put in for our expression of interest to apply for New Zealand residency! 

We spent a long time on Saturday filling out the form online, and submitted it today.  We have yet to send off for police certs from back home and a couple of other things so it may be a frustrating month waiting for things to come back over here.

We think the approvals process date is on Wednesday so with the amount of points we have we should automatically get invited to apply for residency.  After that its just waiting for the forms to come back, getting some medicals and putting it all in (and paying the big chunk of money!), but we don’t know when that will be……hopefully before we leave for our road trip round the islands.

Here’s a photo filled updated on our last Labour Weekend in Taupo.  This was the first weekend we have been away with the bikes on the back, and it was superb.  The sun was out in all its glory all weekend and we were wearing shorts, tshirts and jandals (flip flops!) all weekend long.  Shown above is one of the views on the ‘Desert Road’, Highway 1 on looking towards one of the volcanoes on the Tongariro crossing.  I was at the top of the mountain on my last trip looking into the steaming crater, and it was also ‘Mount Doom’ in one of the Lord of The Rings films.

It was quite a long drive but when you drive past some of the scenery alongside the ski mountains you can get over that quite quickly.

We managed to get onto a great free camping site, Reids Farm, which was just 3km out of town.  We thought we’d only stay here one night then move on somewhere a bit more peaceful but it couldn’t have been better so we hardly moved the van all weekend.  We were parked up by the riverside, with free basic toilets and never had to pay a penny…..but we had somewhere to ‘spend a penny’ when we needed to

On Saturday we never even moved the van which was a great feeling – we managed to cycle directly from the van, straight onto the mountain bike trails and spent 6 hours cycling and were also able to see the Huka Falls, and the Craters of the Moon.  We had both seen the Huka Falls on our last visits, but Ciara hadn’t seen the Craters of the Moon before which is a geothermal natural park where you can see the volcanic vaults steaming, and the bubbling mud pools….along with the stink of sulphur in the air.

We both love Taupo as its probably the most touristy part of the North Island, slap bang in the centre, and right on the edge of a massive lake which is actually the filled crater of an old volcano….so large you can hardly see the other side of the lake some days.  You have a great view of the volcano’s and snow covered slops of the Tongariro Crossing (one of the NZ’s best walks) and the ski fields of Mt Ruapehu.  It is also one of the best trout fishing areas of the world, and you can do pretty much every activity you want from here – fishing, (for prawns too in the hot pool farms!), scenic flights from seaplanes, hiking, biking, parachute jumps (this is where Ciara did hers a few years ago), jetboats and loads more.  The following pictures are of the Huka Falls and the jetboats that do up the river to them.

Unfortunately it is also the home of some great outdoors shops….but we managed to behave ourselves.  Our only real indulgence was going to the burger takeaway which was our only spend the whole weekend which was great.  When Ciara can get gluten free burgers like the one below, it’s a bit of a no brainer….we even had to take it back to check that it wasn’t real bread!

There was a fair on as well so we also saw some pretty weird and wonderful vans so we know what we want to trade up to as well when we’re really settled here : (only kidding!)   The other photo is of the Craters of the Moon geothermal park.

I think most of you will also know by now that we have decided we are going to apply for our residency as well.  It’s hard call as its so far away from everyone but it also seems like the right thing to do to give us options in the future.  We hope that it will get turned around quite quickly but there’s a lot of form filling, a bit of waiting and several checks to be done in prepration for our hopeful invitation to apply.

This weekend we’re going to be hanging around Wellington to try and do the admin for the forms above.  We’ve had a pretty uneventful week apart from looking up immigration websites.  We’ve had our last classroom fishing session and will be taken out for a practical session at the beach down the road from us on Wednesday, then we’ll decide whether we’re going to buy a rod for our road trip or not.  Hope everyone is well back home – it’s a great thing that we can get in touch with people easily through Skype despite the awkward time difference.  As much as we love being here just now, and can’t wait for our road trip we do miss everyone! (and our local pub – The Shore in Leith, Edinburgh).

I’m not sure if I mentioned this but a few weekends ago we spotted some boogie boards in a garage sale……of course I was the bad influence and we ended up buying them, and a frisbee to go with them.  With them and the bikes our van is looking well stacked now.  We still have to try out the boogie boards if we get our hands on wetsuits but the beach is only minutes away!

Those of you with absolutely superb eyesight may have noticed our NZ sticker at the top of the ladder….that’s our way of pretending we’re locals so that any theives hopefully choose to target one of the big white tourist vans before ours     The roofrack at the top is like it’s been made to measure for the boards!

We had an absolutely fantastic weekend up in Taupo this weekend with a lot of cycling and sightseeing on the way.  We even managed to stay in a great free campsite just outside of town.  Unfortunately after having 3 days of glorious sunshine we’re getting set in our head to hit the road in December…..just as Ciara starts her new 7 week contract.  I’ll try to get some more info on last weekend and some pics up by the weekend.

Its been a while since I posted so I’m just going to fire up a quick one before we head off for the weekend.  The blog posts are surely getting a bit repetitive “cycling, outdoors, weather good, weather bad” so I’ll try and work out some new stuff to write!

Needless to say it should get a bit more interesting as time goes on. We are definitely hitting the road in the van mid December for a road trip, mainly around the South Island once the breadwinner’s contract comes to an end.  We will be on the road for around 6 weeks, then we’ll be joining a campervan road trip as my mum has booked to come out for 3 weeks mid January (thanks mum! ).

We’ve been going to a few evening classes to learn how to fish off the coast although we’re not learning the basics which has been a bit of a blow but we’ll see how we get on….yes, fishing…bizarre eh. We have a romantic notion of being able to catch our dinner sometimes on the road trip, but we may well end up spending a few months catching nothing but we’ll see.  Who knows how we’l get on doing it from a van without all the stuff to keep everything cold, but there’s a pier about 10 mins from the house for us to practice on – it’s a really popular spot.

We’re just about to hit the road for the weekend so we’re heading off to Taupo with the van, which is looking bigger than normal….I’ve just been wresting to get the bikes on the back of it – soon we’ll need a ‘Long Vehicle’ sign!  Being honest though there are far bigger campers than ours on the road – it’s not unusual to see converted buses on the road here.  We hope to be able to spend a couple of days biking around Taupo.  It’s going to be mobbed though as it’s Labour Day weekend meaning most people have a long weekend.  I stumbled across a funny video about how to pronounce Taupo properly as it’s probably mispronounced about 95% of the time over here.

Anyway, better dash – get the coolbox ready, throw the last things in, then hit the road for our 4-5hr drive.

We finished our week at our alternative accommodation in Wellington’s Mount Victoria area.  We had a great week and were very fortunate to have a great host too – including dotty the cat.  Unfortunately the weather was the probably the worst we’ve seen so far with wild winds and torrential rain so that put paid to any fitness plans of running around Mt Vic for us 🙂

We picked up our bikes on Saturday so had a great weekend of weather for cycling around the area.  Ciara’s first “training session” was on the road around the bay and beach close to our house, topped off with a great local ice cream.

On Sunday we got a tad more adventurous and cycled along to Sinclair Head and red rocks where the seal colony is.  We went quite a bit past there though so had a great afternoon out. I also managed to have a bit of a bouldering session on the way back in the sun.  It all felt very civilised and healthy as we never did anything on Friday or Saturday nights apart from watch a film on the tele with our housemates.

The van is getting a bit max’d out now but we’ve managed to get hold of a cycling rack as well – if we keep going we may have to buy a trailer soon!  I still have visions of having an inflatable kayak strapped to the roofrack (defalated of course!) for the lakes down south and the bays around here in calm weather but I think I’ll be overrulled on that one, even though you can pick them up from about £180 and the roofrack is just the perfect size.  We hope to get out on our friend’s simple kayaks soon if the weather behaves as it’s now officially Spring here!  The clocks are forward so we’re now +12hrs from the UK

We’re about to add to our new pastimes soon though as we’ve both booked on a 4 week evening class for surfcasting and rock fishing!  Before we know it we’ll be buying a rod and fishing for our dinner from the pier along the road.  Well, that’s the plan but I really expect we’ll be buying any fish from the supermarket for some time!  I’ve been observing the locals ‘mussell hunting’ (my preferred term) at low tide about 2km from the flat so I’ve got great notions about that as well as I stopped today on my morning cycle and saw three mussells just waiting to be taken home.  If we do catch anything it’ll be a bit of a shock as we won’t have a clue what to do with them when we get home.

We’ve also been spying the local beaches and can’t wait until it gets warm enough to be able to swim in the sea (hmmm…wetsuits!), although we may have to learn to swim a bit faster – local fishermen netted a 2.6m great white shark in their nets at Breaker Bay – one of the swimming bays earlier this week!  I’m still getting a bit too used to my life of leisure which I may have to change if we stay in Wellington longer but at the moment I like to kid myself this is reality….  here’s some pics from my morning cycles.  The bay on the left is Breaker Bay where some folks go surfing (shark fishing anyone?).  And yes – that is a warning for motorists about penguins crossing the road.  Although we’ve not looked for them apparently they’re quite common around here but they’re quite small I think.

And here’s one of the many styles of houses we’d love when we win the lotto :

This weekend we headed up to Napier as it was…..windy in Wellington!  It apparently turned out not too bad in the city, but we headed away anyway.  The drive was a bit of a nightmare as it felt like I was driving a mini metro, with a 12 metre kite on top, in a hurricane.  Ciara said I looked like I was playing a game as I could never really relax totally.  We decided to keep going anyway, and it was all good once we arrived just before dark and parked up by the beach.

Napier is very famous for it’s art deco buildings as the whole place was rebuilt after a devastating earthquake in 1931.  Saturday was brilliant though as we managed to get our shorts and tshirts on, with our ‘jandals’ (flip flops) and have a game of mini golf. Unfortunately I couldn’t resist the MacPac outdoor’s sale either…

Unfortunately there’s a few places we’d like to go to that are around the same distance away but we reckoned it was just too far for a normal weekend.  300km takes a bit longer in the van, although you can’t drive that fast in NZ anyway.

Sometimes in NZ though it feels like you just can’t get away from the roots of some of the people that have emigrated out here :

This week we’ve moved to another house for the week as one of the girl’s sisters and nieces are up to stay.  Its a nice change, and yet again someone we don’t know has been very accommodating.  We can walk to the city within minutes, and have Mount Victoria literally on our doorstep so can go for some walks in the forest there, yet we’re right in the city centre.  I’ve been a bit of a slacker though as Monday was great weather so I was bouldering on the beach with a friend, then went and found a cheap bike for me.  We’re going to pick up the bikes at the weekend when we move back to the house, and we’re kicking off the wild weekend (!) by looking at glowworms in the Botanical Gardens.  I may also go to a Laphroig whisky tasting on Thursday…

We’ve decided to hang around the city this weekend as there are large storms forecast to hit this weekend……it could be exciting as I sit here with thunderstorms and the odd bit of lightning as I prepare to catch the bus into town.  Here’s a shot of one of the storm fronts coming through a couple of weeks ago…

Just as a bit of chance I’ve added a ‘Donate’ button the right hand side of the blog…..if anyone wants to try it…erm, just to see if it works   ;-)   …..I’m sure we’d be delighted to have a coffee from you in NZ….or a night in a 5 star hotel….some rafting, skiiing…..car deposit……  I saw a lovely 4×4 Mitsibushi Delica van waiting to be imported from Japan…….  (Mitsibushi Delica’s on Trademe)