Its been another week of little blogging and no photos so just a mini catch up before the weekend. Last weekend we managed to get out and about a bit with a beach walk, and a kite fly, then some indoor climbing with friends on Sunday so at least we got around after Ciara’s first week at 9-5 (well, 8.30-3, and 8.30-1!).
Ciara has ‘settled’ into her job, and I’ve been doing all the sensible things like looking for vans and stuff like that. We got delivery of the new family addition yesterday – we are now the proud owners of our big behemoth baby Hamish the Hiace! (name is ‘work in progress’). You can check him out on my van gallery! Yes he’s not small or light, weighing in at probably 2.5 tonnes and maybe about 12 feet high, probably about 15 feet long….a 1994 2.8L Diesel, and 4WD to boot!
We absolutely friggin’ love it!!!!
(but we’re still getting over the size of it! – if I was to stand next to it I’d only be half way up the windows……it’s even got a bloody ladder on the back to get to the roof rack!).
Unfortunately my friends only told us they had kayaks after we bought it, and we don’t have a flat roof to carry them….oh well, can’t have everything I guess!
We did splash out quite a bit more than we wanted though, but buying an empty one and kitting it out would have probably cost us almost as much……believe it or not this was the first van we viewed in NZ where the sellers had bothered to clean it, knew much about it, and actually had some paperwork! And it had by far the lowest mileage at 118,000km….yes, that’s very low for here.
Anyway, we spent a bit too long at The Warehouse tonight, NZ’s source of cheap…..well, everything. From books to towels, fishing rods to clothing, sporting and gardening goods, and everything inbetween. Why we needed an egg slicer though, I’m not so sure, but at $2 who’s complaining. Then of course there was the luxury 16 piece cutlery set at $4.49.
Anyway, I’ve had a long day at ‘work’ today – I had to take the van registration to the post office, check the cooker in the van worked ok, deal with loosing internet access today and lots of complicated stuff like that – jeeez I’m ready for a weekend away! It’s hard.
This weekend we’re aiming to head to Cape Palliser – the southernmost tip of the North Island, which probably means it’s going to be windy as hell and pissing it down, but hey, we’ll be able to cook inside and brew up a cuppa without getting out of bed….assuming we managed to blag a decent stopping spot.
Although we’ll keep on the roads this weekend, we’ll be dreaming of when we head up 90 mile beach in around 6 months like the previous owners below!
