Had a great day in Wellington in the sun. Bought a portable BBQ for road trip, then went to a scenic viewpoint, then some swimming and sunbathing on our local beach 1km from our door. We topped off the day with a BBQ and sat in shorts in the garden til 9pm.
It’s official! We’ve passed the first phase of our residency application process and have been officially invited to make a full application for residency.
Unfortunately we’re waiting on some paperwork from the UK to get over here, and we’ve got some medical things and more to do. We’re hoping that we can submit it in the next couple of weeks whilst Ciara is still working so we don’t loose any points. The timing won’t be the best as it will be tight if we get everything organised in time, and may have to submit our passports just before we leave to go on the road, but I’m sure all those things will work out ok….oh yeh, and now’s the time to stump up the big cash as well!! Eeeeek.
My first real time update. We are sitting in bar Edward in Wellington. Its known for its great selection of beers…including gluten free Scott’s beer from Auckland.
Cheers to everyone!
After nursing someone’s hangover on Saturday, Sunday was an action packed day for both of us, but I think I may have went a bit overboard. We headed down to the fishing shop as our evening class finished last week. We walked out with a 12 foot surfcasting fishing rod between us!
After that we split as I was going to a Parkour training class (you know those mad guys that run around the streets in the cool tv ads, jumping off, over and under things? Yeh…a wee bit like that) and Ciara went swimming. My beginners class lasted an hour and I was absolutely worked during that hour : push ups, wall pull ups, moving along the ground on all fours, jumping on and off benches, walking along thin posts, and easy jumps over walls! My body was a house of pain for the next couple of days!
But that wasn’t enough…. it was a fantastic day last Sunday and I hadn’t used my wetsuit since my mum shipped it over, or our boogie boards. We headed down to Lyall Bay just down the road and I popped in for a bit of a swim an an attempt at boogie boarding. I was a bit beaten up by the waves as I couldn’t get out past them, but that’s what I get going out in a Southerly wind…. the next stop is the Antartic pretty much! Luckily it wasn’t quite as cold as I thought it would be so I had a very small swim afterwards. Any longer and I may have needed little booties, but I’ll be back in soon.
But that wasn’t enough either…. after sitting and having our dinner we went along the road in the other direction for a few minutes and tried our first fishing session just as the light was fading. We never fished where we wanted as we wanted to be on our own spot to avoid any folk laughing at the newbies. The downside of this is that we lost all of our rig (the hooks, sinker, etc – NOT the rod!) on our first cast in the rocky outcrops just past where we stood! Live and learn I guess but very frustrating. We’ll be out again soon though but I think Ciara needs to work on getting her cast to go further than 4m from her feet! (Wasn’t quite that bad but you have to use a bit of poetic licence).
We were kind of glad that we weren’t lucky enough to catch a monster as then we’d have to have gutted it ourself! One step at a time. Although this is a city centre location you can catch some big fish here and some big snapper along the coast.
With the rod, the van is pretty much full up for our travels we reckon. We had a beepy alarm thingy fitted in it this week much to our digust costwise, but it’ll give us a bit of piece of mind. At least it will when we get another small part fitted – I wasn’t too impressed when I stuck my head in the van and it never went off! We are getting another bit fitted to trigger in that dead spot!
We are on the countdown to heading to the South Island for hopefully a few months on 14th December. We can’t wait!
Remember remember the 5th November? Well we will as we went along to watch the fireworks in Wellington harbour. It’s the biggest fireworks show of the year apparently so we met up after work for a few drinsk with friends, then headed outside along the waterfront to view them.
I had great ideas about setting up my tripod and trying my best to get some decent fireworks shots….but after a few pints of Monteith’s finest that went out the door….it was limited to a coffee to warm us up, then resting on Ciara’s shoulder with my camera. Luckily the winds that were forecast held off until just after the fireworks.
Afterwards we stayed on after our friends and had a wee pub crawl which is quite an unusual event for us…and just as bloody well as we spent a small fortune. Mac’s brewery, Havana, Southern Cross…. Pretty much the same cost for a night out at home really, but we start to compare each spent to a treat on our road trip a fishing rod, jetboat trip or something else like that on our impending road trip!!
Someone had a bit more of a hangover than anticipated on Saturday so it was a bit of a slow start. I won’t give many clues to who it was, but it wasn’t me 
Just what you want to read on the immigration website of New Zealand! 
It looks like we are onto the next stage, with some quick checks to make sure we’re not fibbing about anything then hopefully we’ll get invited to apply for our NZ residency!
Thanks to everyone back home for their help in hunting down paperwork required for this and the next stage!! We’ll take you out for a spin in the van and a wee fishing session if you make it over here to Wellington – our 2nd best ‘coolest little capital in the world’ 
If you wonder what that comment was about then Wellington was named as probably the ‘coolest little capital in the world’ by Lonely Planet. Actually everyone is taking the quote a bit out of context over here as there are banners up throughout the city reminding everyone of it, but what really happed was they named up as the 4th best city to visit in 2011….behind New York, Tangiers and Tel Aviv!?!
Get your flights booked! We may be here some time…..
I’m about to try and play some catch up on the blog….so here we are rewinding a couple of weeks when we both went on our first real live ‘mussel hunt’!!
Now I’m sure there’s a more technical description but basically we drove a few minutes round the bay next to the house at low tide, then went looking for mussels. We had no idea what we were doing, but it was our first attempt. We had both seen people snorkelling and collecting from the shore in the past so we knew there were some around. Within minutes we had several mussels, but we just weren’t sure what the ‘hairy bits’ coming out of them were….apart from that those hairy bits had a bloody strong hold on the surrounding rocks! A quick call to my local friend an we were assured it was normal….and we later found out that even the supermarket bough fresh mussels have these on them.
So a bit of tugging and within ten minutes we were back in the van driving back to an excited housemate so we cooked them up with a white wine, butter and garlic sauce. And the best thing? None of us were sick, although I did get the housemate to taste them first 
So it was a successful first mission, and no doubt will be repeated…maybe with wetsuit, fin and snorkels in the future! Mind you I just remembered that Ciara still never tasted any…..
It is one thing about Wellington on a nice day – it really does give you loads of stuff to do, and we’re in an ideal location for most of the things, just minutes from the door ‘n’ shore.
Having a great weekend of biking and Chilling by hot water Riverside beaches.
We’ve just felt our first earthquake in Wellington! It was just a small one so hardly noticeable..in fact it just felt like a bus driving past the window.
Don’t worry though mums…..there has been several since we’ve been here and we’ve not even felt the others.
It suddenly dawned on me how long its been since my last post, and I know you’ll all be waiting in anticipation…. 😉
So the last post was about storms, so we decided to wait that weekend out in Wellington as the weather didn’t look too hot….but it was! So we had a walk out to the seal colony a few kilometres from where we stay, and went hunting for some bikes to buy. Walking to the colony just past red rocks is a great way to see how some things in NZ are so different – people were walking, cycling, driving (it’s a 4×4 track) and running along the coastal track, others were surfing, I was bouldering on the way, and others were snorkelling on the coast to collect crayfish and paua. Everyone seems to get along and manages to share the space. The great thing is that once we get bikes we would be able to do this from our doorstep as its about 8km away. We also visited another couple of beaches on both the west and east of Wellington which were stormy as on the west, and quite calm on the east. They don’t call it Windy Wellington for nothing – it’s crazy!
The coast around Wellington is pretty neat though but it takes you an hour to get round the bay that’s only a few kilometres across the sea, but we can walk to the beach in ten minutes too. Hopefully some of the pics will show you the coastline.
On the west coast we have Makara beach (top left), and on the east of Wellington we have Baring Head (right) which has a lot of bouldering and climbing. Makara is just past a mountain bike park which we hope to check out over the next couple of weeks as we both have bikes now…or at least we will once we pick them up at the weekend! We managed to pick up some quite cheap bikes, with Ciara using her birthday cash towards it, but unfortunately we have to pick up a bike rack, helmets and other odds ‘n’ sods to go along with them but they should give us loads of fun when we hit the road, and even around Wellington. I’ve even managed to be sensible and get a cheap one rather than the one I really wanted!
Here are some pics of the walk to ‘Red Rocks’ (they really are red) and Sinclair Head. Hopefully the water will warm up a bit by summer so we can get in!
