Then it was New Year's Eve and we had been asked if we wanted to go and see the New year in, in a place called Tauranga (pronounced Tow(like 'now' but with a 't')-wronga) as friends had chartered a boat. What a novel way to see in the New Year! We jumped at the chance. We left Auckland and hit the torrential rain which we had been seeing on the news (I think Auckland got off pretty lightly!). You literally couldn't see 100 yards in front of the car. It was actually quite scary as some people drive like idiots out here regardless of the weather / winding roads . There's an ongoing campaign to reduce the road deaths, including a TV advert which talks about 'staying in mantrol' and actually has the line "If we're not in full control of such a manly thing [as driving] then what does this all mean?" Since when has driving been 'manly'? Still...if it stops 1 accident then it has done a good job! The road fatalities here in comparison the, for example, the UK are staggering. According to Wikipedia the number of road fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants (you have to take into account number of inhabitants because the population is dramatically different) is 3.59 for the UK and a huge 8.6 for New Zealand. On the side of many New Zealand roads there are signs stating the number of road deaths on that particular road in the past 3 months or so and they certainly make me think twice about speeding.
The view through the windscreen on the way to Tauranga
"Oh, please don't you rock my boat
(don't rock my boat),
'Cause I don't want my boat to be rockin'
(don't rock my boat)"
You gotta' love the 'shuffle songs' setting. We got to Andy & Heni's house in Tauranga and the rain was still lashing down. We got ready and congregated in the lounge to see that the rain had stopped! It was miraculous. We met up with the rest of our boat crew in a nice bar called Imbibe where we had some drinks and nibbles. I should probably mention here how we know these people: the OH met Andy via the British Expats Forum when he was looking for information way back in 2010 before he came out to look for work here. When he was here for a month on his own he met up with Andy (from Leeds) and they went for a night out - hence a new friendship began! His girlfriend Heni is from Slovakia and we got on like a house on fire. A couple called Tracy & Allan also came out on New Year's. The OH knows Allan from his home-town (how surreal?) and Allan lives here with his wife of 2 months Tracy who is Canadian, they are a great couple and again - we all just clicked. We also met up with lots of new people on New Year's Eve who were Andy & Heni's friends - Angela & John, Josh & Louise, Samantha & Dean, Dale and many more. They were a fabulous bunch and everyone got on really well! The we headed off to an awesome bar called Major Tom's which is set-up to look like an old lady's living room! There are all old couches and armchairs in there and loads of pictures on the walls. The boys loved that they had the old arcade game 'Pong' and took to the computer game with vigour! For the young 'uns reading this - you won't know Pong (I knew of it but it was slightly before my time!) but it's basically the simplest version of 2D tennis on a computer screen that I can ever imagine being invented. It was probably the height of technology when it first came out and if proof of how far our gaming has come in such a short space of time!
'Pong' in Major Tom's
After a couple of hours in Major Tom's
we went to meet the boat. It's called The Luvboat II and is
absolutely amazing! If you're in NZ and want a party on a boat - this
is the boat for you! The top floor has a dance floor and pole - which
the lads had great fun swinging around - and the bottom floor
consists of a number of seating booths, karaoke and a bar. Captain
Noel and hostess Natalie were absolutely perfect - nothing was too
much trouble and they were very much an extension of our NY crew by
the end of the night! We had a dance, a sing and a fair few drinks
then all gathered on the top deck outside to watch the fireworks. It
was a fantastic night.
The LuvBoat II
New Year Fireworks
At around 12:30am on New Year's day we were kindly dropped off at the Strand and off we went to a bar for more drinks, dancing and games of pool! If my memory serves me rightly we headed off home at about 3am. Trying to flag down a taxi was proving to be a complete nightmare so we headed to the nearest hotel and they called us a taxi from there. They were very helpful and invited us to sit on the chairs in the lobby while we waited. So we finally got home at about 4am after a fabulous New Year celebration.
New Year's Day certainly saw a few hangovers from our group...even while eating the king of hangover cures - a McD's - we had to keep stopping every few seconds while our stomachs decided how they wanted to process the junk we were putting in. But - it was nothing that a dip in the sea couldn't erase! So me & the OH went to Papamoa Beach, popped on our togs (swimmers) and had a few hours in the sea. It was the perfect start to 2012. The original plan was to go camping until the 3rd Jan but with the wet weather and an offer of bricks and mortar from Allan & Tracy we stayed with them instead. They have a lovely home in Tauranga and Tracy is a qualified masseuse who runs her own business from home where she has an additional building in the garden: it's amazing how you can create an aura of calm and serenity in one place and boy has she achieved it! We had a lovely evening with them and Tracy cooked a nice roast dinner (with champagne) for us all before an early night! The following afternoon we all headed down to Papamoa beach and spent a few hours in the sea and enjoying the New Year sun. When we got up the following day Allan asked "Have you seen the news?" which we hadn't as yet. When we got hold of a newspaper it turns out that there had been a 2 metre shark swimming quite close to people on Papamoa beach the day prior - when we'd been there! Some lamb roasts were falling from the rena into the sea and had attracted a number of sharks to the area. You can read the newspaper report here. A few people have told us since though that there are always lots of sharks in that area - they're not there to eat people, just swimming. I like the innocence of swimming with loads of sharks without knowing it - we're essentially in there domain, it's not like they sneak up on us in bars. Live & let live and all that jazz.
We headed back to a very sunny Auckland on 3rd January as the OH was back in work on 4th. On the Friday when he came home from work it was so warm that we decided to have a merry jaunt down to Cockle Bay for a swim! It was amazing jumping into the sea after a hot, humid afternoon. The sea was actually warm to walk into! I couldn't believe it when the OH said it was warm (he was the water tester) as he always says this to get me to go in but it really was like walking into a warm bath. I had never experienced it before - and that's certainly not the case in all parts of NZ. You usually feel the cold when you first go in but once you've submerged, it's OK and warm - but this was just perfect!
I was back in work from Monday 9th Jan - it was so quiet in the office as most people were back on the 16th but it was great to get back into routine and on top of some things before everyone else came back. I decided when I went back to work that I'd make a New Year's Resolution (albeit slightly delayed) to sit properly at my desk. I'm always sitting with my legs crossed up on my chair or sitting sideways (as if I'm side-saddle on a horse) and I don't think it's good for my back or my knees so I'm consciously trying to straighten my spine, lower my shoulders and put feet flat on the floor. It really does take a conscious effort and I've failed at it abysmally having only been back in work for 2 weeks. You should try it - you'll soon see how hard it is! Even sitting here writing my blog I find it hard to sit properly for half an hour!!
I have diagnosed myself with Illio-Tibial Band Syndrome (ITBS) which means that when I go running the outside of my knee is in absolute agony. I've had it periodically for years and thought it was runner's knee but it got really bad at the end of December so I looked into it and came to the conclusion that it's my illiotibial band that's causing the issue. After reading lots about it I've been doing a difficult stretch that I found on good old YouTube and it seems to be doing the trick despite some saying that trying to stretch it doesn't work. I went for a run yesterday morning and no pain last night or today which is a marked improvement from the end of December when I couldn't physically walk the day after running!
The weather in January seems to be somewhat sporadic still. It's been gorgeous for the past 3 days and then it rained this morning. Not dissimilar to the weather in the UK but it is actually warm here which is good! Living in Wales we were pretty much used to drizzle and when it was sunny or rainy it was usually pretty much the same weather (to varying degrees) throughout the whole of the UK (except Scotland who seem to live in their very own climate!) But here the weather can vary so dramatically from one place to the next. Over Christmas the news showed that there was extreme flooding in Nelson (North of the South Island) which caused so much damage it could take 10 years to put it right and this was a complete paradox to the news regarding Otago (central Southland) which detailed severe drought - not good for an area dependent largely on farming. So it's a bit strange for us to see all the micro climates quite evident - even when driving you can often see that there is a sheet of rain in front of you and you drive from dry into heavy rain.
Last weekend, in the hope of securing some sunshine we went camping to a place called Muriwai (pronounced moo-ri-why). It's only an hour away and is perfect for 2 nights soaking up nature. We headed there after work on Friday and when we arrived Ursula (my manager in work) & Dan (her boyfriend) were already set-up In the UK when we went camping with the Ooooodex crew it became something of a tradition that as people arrived the boys would help set-up the tents while the girls got the girlfriend a glass of wine. However, when I explained this to Ursula she explained that in their camping group it tends to be the other way around as one of her friends was a girl guide leader so the girls would set-up the tents...hmmm. So the OH and I were putting our new tent together and within 30 seconds I had cut my finger...I don't know how it happened, it just did. At that moment Dan appeared so I was absolved from my tent duties and settled on the bench with a drink while the boys did it. Now...this tent was supposed to be able to sleep four people. FOUR! Well, the queen sized air bed only just fit in it, let alone anything else so I thing that we may have been duped by some false advertising! It is basically a sleeping dome for TWO people - I am so glad we didn't buy the one intended for two people...one of us would have been sleeping on the picnic bench!
Our FOUR MAN tent
Then a game of Sequence ensued. If you haven't played this board game then I highly recommend it. It is board & card based and is extremely addictive! At about 9pm we all got a bit hungry and headed out in the car to find somewhere to have food. One thing to note about New Zealand here is that many places close quite early in the evening. If you're from the UK you'll be expecting restaurants to be open until the early hours of the morning and you won't find it here! It's nice because it makes you realise that the people who work at the food places have their own lives and quite rightly don't want to be working until silly o'clock to satisfy our untimely hunger but it can be a touch inconvenient as you will have noted from my previous blogs when moving house! McD's is 24 hours though so you'll always be able to resort to that if nothing else! Anyway, as we drove out of the camp-site the guy who owns it was locking the gate. He opened it to let us out and didn't offer any information to us about locking up. So Dan asked if we'd be able to drive back in later on to which the owner just replied 'No' and that was that - all the information we were privy to! After that he became appropriately known as 'Mr. No'. We decided to head into town anyway and just park the car up near the camp-site and walk back. We passed loads of food places which were all closed, the town seemed devoid of human life...and then tried one place before we resigned ourselves to a chip shop - a Thai restaurant. It was absolutely full of people - so this was where the whole town went on a Friday night! It was quite posh and we were all dressed in camping slouch clothes but they were happy to accommodate us. The food was absolutely divine - if you're ever in Kumeu and you're looking for a good restaurant then Golden Silk Thai comes extremely highly recommended! After we'd had our fill we headed back and played cards until about 1am when we decided it was time to hit the sleeping bags.
Saturday we woke up and Ursh & Dan had to head back into the city for a few hours so me & the OH put the mountain bikes in the van and headed up to Toi Toi café for breakfast. On the way there the heavens opened and we passed a guy who was hitch-hiking. So we picked him up and he asked if we'd been out on the bikes or if we were heading out. We said we were heading out and he told us of a bike track he'd been told about but had never tried. It was an official bike track and you had to turn down a lane that looked like someone's drive and lug your bikes over these HUGE concrete blocks to find it. Sop we dropped him off at his car and carried on to the café. Again - highly recommended, they have views of the sea; the service and coffee were fantastic and the food was gorgeous! The OH opted for a big breakfast and I stuck with my fave: eggs benedict with salmon. Perfect start to the day! Then we went off in search of this elusive bike track. It was fantastic - all downhill to start which was amazing (although I tend to panic and use my brakes but the OH was gone like a shot!) On the way back it meant some quite steep hills but it was well worth it. We had roughly 2 hours out cycling and it was nice and sunny for the whole time. It's so true that you reap what you sow: if we hadn't done a good deed in picking up the hitch-hiker then we'd never have known about it!
The view from Toi Toi café
The ominous start to the bike track
The lane access to the bike track
We headed back to the camp-site and straight to the beach where the OH donned his wetsuit and got in the sea with his body-board. I got cosy on the sand and watched, taking pics and enjoying my sport of choice: people watching. The waves on Muriwai beach are inconsistent and can be very dangerous. In fact, as a general rule the sea on the East Coast is generally calm (Pacific Ocean) and they have white sand beaches whereas the West coast (Tasman Sea) has black sand and is very unpredictable and can be ferocious. The North Island's west coast surf spots (Piha, Bethells and Muriwai) have the worst reputation for fierce currents but the East coast rips are harder to spot. You need to watch out for rips (you should be looking out for these anywhere really) which can drag you out if you panic. In the schools here, kids are taught all about rips but in the UK it would never make the curriculum!
A kite surfer on Muriwai Beach
With that in mind, I'll give you a short lesson on what I've learnt so far:
- Sometimes you can see the rip and sometimes you can't
- Surfers often use rips to their advantage - they can be used to take surfers out to where they need to be to catch the best waves (not that I'm advocating this!)
- Rips are the biggest killers in NZ waters: of the 14 people who have drowned in NZ since Christmas, at least 5 were killed after being caught in rips
- Swimmers die because they exhaust themselves fighting against the current. If you don't fight it and just tread water, you have an 80 to 90 per cent chance of the rip current conveyor belt returning you to shore in three to six minutes.
Rips are identified as:
- Calm patches in the surf with waves breaking either side
- Rippled or ‘criss-crossed' water
- Darker water due to depth or sand stirred up off the bottom
- Foamy water with debris extending beyond the surf break
If you are caught in a rip:
- Stay calm and conserve your energy
- If you are a weak swimmer, float with the current and try to swim parallel to the shore until reaching the breaking wave zone, then swim back to shore or signal for help.
- If you are a strong swimmer, swim at a 45 degree angle across the rip in the same direction as the current until you reach the breaking wave zone, then return to shore.
I don't want to scare anyone off and they're certainly not exclusive to New Zealand - far from it! Plus the beaches do have flags which you are encouraged to swim between as they're the lowest risk areas in which to swim. These red & yellow flags also indicate that there are Surf Life Saving NZ teams patrolling. These teams patrol specific beaches from October - April each year and consist of volunteers who devote their spare time to saving lives. It really is commendable and they are always welcome to receive donations :)
Anyway, after a short while on the beach it decided to rain again but we stuck it out for a while until the wind really picked up and after about an hour we went back to camp to freshen up and get some dinner! Then settled in for the night for a few drinks and many games of 'Oh, Hell!' and a new one called 'Presidents & Ar*eholes' - both again very addictive indeed! Sunday morning we awoke to the feeling of being suffocated. You know what it's like when you've had a few drinks and then sleep in a tent and the sun comes up really early and cooks your tent nicely so that when you wake up you feel like you've been stuck in the desert for days and desperately need water and air! We decided that tents should have a number of vent holes a sleeping height - like the portholes on a ship which you can lift up a little Velcro flap and just suck in some air when you first wake up - that would be genius!
Sunday we had a lovely breakfast cooked by Ursula and packed up the tents then we all headed off to grab a coffee and went for a nice long walk to see the gannet colonies on Muriwai beach and then had another walk along the beach itself and soaked in the vitamin D on offer :) In the afternoon we got a lovely ice cream and then headed back home ready for another week in work. It was a fabulous weekend and I felt so relaxed as is so often the case when I go camping and have zero access to technology - it's so refreshing.
A calmer looking Muriwai Beach
One of the Gannet colonies
This weekend we've had a very quiet one - did a bit of shopping yesterday and bought some helmets for cycling (it's illegal to cycle over here without a helmet!) and we made our first trip to the amazing 'English Corner Shop' in Onehunga (pronounced on-ee-hung-a although I like to pronounce it one-hunger in my head, it just tickles me). This was very very exciting for me - a pescetarian as they sell Quorn and it's the first taste I've had of it since moving here 7 months ago. So last night consisted of Quorn burgers with salad for dinner and today I have had Birds Eye Potato Waffles (they're waffly versatile) with Quorn bacon - I am in Quorn heaven.
One final update from me - and that's with regard to 'Tom'. He's certainly grown since we re-potted him and he's carrying loads of yummy tomato babies for us!! Yey!! Check him out and bask in his fruit-bearing glory.
My lovely Super'Tom'
Check out his fruit babies!
