Time flies

It's the last weekend of the summer holidays for our two ruffians. Work and school will recommence in earnest this week, giving all of us a much-needed break from the relentless routine (beach, lunch, play, sleep) and endless, task-oriented time management ("what are we going to do now?", "are we nearly there yet?", etc) – it'll be great to get back to the 9 to 3 for five days of the week. They've had a spectacularly good holiday, the evidence of which shines out of them both. Amazing how much they've changed in such a short time.

New things during January:

Elly now tells the time (just about), reads really fluently, rides a bike without stabilisers (again, just about), constructs and delivers an a priori argument from a distinctly Kantian perspective, still has a near-pathological inclination to spill any drink within arm's reach and hence learned to shower herself clean of Ribena. Repeats everything Oscar says.

Oscar can really "talk" now, having discovered sentences if not quite up to speed with punctuation, has accidentally learned forward rolls while practicing his handstands, can draw proper faces, complete with eyes, nose and mouth, and has generally become a fully-fledged Little Boy, right in front of our eyes: he's even out of nappies. Repeats everything Elly says.

They both love to watch movies. Lots of movies. Current faves are High School Musical 2, Toy Story, Mary Poppins and Bee Movie. We just got back from seeing Bolt at the cinema. Brilliantly done but a bit disappointing, I thought, it was Oscar's first ever big-screen experience, unfortunately coinciding with his afternoon nap time so he was unconcho for the second half of it. This love of movies was the only reason we even dared think of taking a vocally exuberant two-year-old to the flicks, and he did us proud right up to the point where he realised Elly had eaten all the popcorn.

Elly's unspoken excuse was that she was completely absorbed from start to finish. It's a lovely thing, despite the odd Hollywood-inspired side-effects: Elly (and therefore Oscar) is prone to saying "Awww, meaaaann!" at the drop of a hat and Oscar likes to insult people by calling them "hockey puck", after Mr Potato Head in Toy Story. He also likes to wear his underpants on his head, though I'm not quite sure which movie that's from...

I'm sure I'll find the time to post some more pics up this week. This one of Oscar sofa diving kind of sums up the mood of the holls, they've had such good fun, at times you're not sure if they're jumping for joy or levitating with excitement. Roll on the next ones.

Last train to Parksville

Er... hello blog readers. (I know there's more than one of you because you left a comment a while ago... if you're still reading, don't be shy, let me know what you're thinking!) I kind of dropped off sometime last week as we were leaving Rotorua. Since we got back our container arrived, some work came in, we still have a house full of kids and their incessant demands and the little time we've had to ourselves has been spent on our bikes. It's sooo good to be out on two wheels again, even if we do live in the hilliest part of the hilliest town in all hillydom. I took the car in for a service yesterday and chucked the bike in the back, figuring on checking out Auckland's city riding while it was getting sorted. What a place. Like a rollercoaster with traffic lights. Anyway, I'll try to keep the blog ball rolling from now on, but bear with me if there's more waffle about riding bikes than there has been of late.

Backpedalling a coule of weeks, Rotorua was the site of the last night of our holls, a lovely dingly dell farmlet just north of the lake, full of sheep and goats and chickens (the farmlet, not the lake..) most of them rescues from animal hospitals and local dairies. You forget that a reliable supply of goats milk means removing the kids from the nanny when they're very young, whereupon they either get the chop or they get a place on Ed & Debbie's farmlet. Eventually they end up on Ed & Debbie's plates of course, but it's better than no life at all, especially when you get to spend it being hand-fed by excited boys and girls. There are pics of this and the rest of our trip on the Picasa page I linked to last time. It's grown a bit big (about 120 pics) and I've filled it out with some non-iPhone shots, so you have to scroll down a bit if you want to skip the older ones. Anyway...

The town of Rotorua is incredibly smelly. Clouds of sulphuric steam billow out from boiling mud pools along the roadside and all over the surrounding area, setting loose what is effectively the world's biggest eggy fart. It drifts through town, in and out of shops and bars and hangs round pavement cafés like a hungry dog. You get used to it quite quickly and to my jaded palette the egginess gradually mellowed, taking on chocolatey, popcorn notes with just a hint of buttery vanilla. Surprising when you consider – as mankind throughout history surely has – that only your own ever smell that good.

It's also surprisingly good to be back up in Auckland, which is to say the thought of it was clearly much worse than the reality. We really lost ourselves in this wild and startlingly deserted country. It was a very nice kind of lost, where your fears aren't borne of what might be lurking round the next corner, instead they emerge when you contemplate your return to suburbia. In fact on the road back north we realised we were more worried that it might take us so long to return south, the rest of the world will have beaten us to it. All that wonderful wilderness will have become parkland, hemmed in by quaint wooden houses, all congregated around tastefully-laid-out shopping malls.

Aukland's not that bad. Being away has kind of made us appreciate it for what it is: so good, everyone wants to move there and in fact already have... a third of the popluation live here and in Howick they live cheek-by-jowl in a low-rise sprawl which very occasionally breaks into parkland, allowing the passer-by a glimpse of ocean. Satellite pics give you the best idea. Domains (as in "public") are bits of incredible hilliness that are thankfully geologically incapable of supporting a house, and they are nice, in a kind of urban parkland kind of way. The truth is it's so beautiful round here you start to resent those fortunate enough to have built their houses right in the way of the lovely views. Honestly, it's that bad. When you do peek between them you get a tiny hint of the breathtaking scene it must have been before they were built. It's not just ocean views, either; a few miles south of here you get an idea of the way it must have been in Howick before it got built up, all rolling valleys and wooded hilltops.

We're fortunate enough to have some good friends who are fortunate enough to have just such a view. So that's alright then. We won't be falling out with them in a hurry. But like us, they're keen to go south and leave their privileged spot behind, and like them, we took one look and realised there are still plenty of places there busy enough for the kids, cheap enough for the Dream House to be built and wild enough for everyone to fall in love with. There are also a lot of hills but what the hell, at least we'll be able to see them as well as bust a gut riding up them...

Homeward bound and gagged

The similes, if that's what they are, were flying today. The landscape between Wellington and Napier (where we are now) is astonishing in its variety, such that we started in Girona and finished in the Cumbrian hills, taking in parts of Ireland (around Levin) the Picos de Europa (outside of Palmerston) New South Wales (pretty much any small town you come across) and ending up in a Pacific version of Scarborough, complete with Art Deco buildings and wide boys in pimped cars along the promenade. All this and monster vineyards too; it's really hard to believe it's uniquely New Zealand, when everything is so incredibly familiar.

The trip's almost over and I'm starting to look forward to not driving for 5 hours a day. We still have Napier to explore and a have a night booked in advance (ooh...) on a farm overlooking Lake Rotorua, but we're definitely on our way back. By which I mean we can feel the "pull" of the places we fell in love with, like Wellington, Nelson and the little town we hope to call home one day soon. I'm superstitious about these things, so please forgive me if I don't say where it is... but we knew straight away we were home, the minute we got there.

We're staying in a great motel apartment on the ocean front, complete with barbie and pool right outside our patio doors. These places are amazingly good value: we have a self-contained studio with a double and two singles, clean, modern and central, and it's only $180 – about 65 quid – a night. We're paying nigh on the same in rent in Auckland, fer chrissakes.

Anyway, I'm pooped, it's late and I've used up all my internetty time posting up pics of the trip on a new Picassa page. Hopefully you'll get an small idea from them what a great place this is to travel; we've been knocked out by the constant stream of amazing sights and brilliant food, the lovely friendly people and their unpretentious towns and cities. Can't wait to get out of Auckland now, even before we get back...

Oh, I forgot to mention the (evening) ferry crossing was rough the other day... great fun, great views, much more like it! Pays to be choosy which boat you pick too: this one (Aratere) let you stand right at the bow, the other (Kaitaki, I think) has you penned like sheep midships. Baah.

A night at the eggy baths

Sod it, we deserved a treat after all the shonky places weve been staying in courtesy of the wonderful I-site peeps. Great service, just a bit arbitrary: you roll into town, pop into the i-site office, tell the girlie what sort of thing you're after and she finds you a place, negotiates a good rate for you and takes your payment upfront. Scary if youre used to planning ahead like me but oddly reassuring after just a couple of visits. This is how we ended up in a complete skip of a caravan, mind. It's convenient, not foolproof.

Once we'd decided to take to the hills it was easy to find a place, cos there's only one. Well, nigh on. The hills are peppered with thermal springs, and once you've bypassed the touristy places there's only the posh resorts left. That's our other nemesis, the Rough Guide to NZ, which seems to be a fair bit wide of the mark most of the time and completely wrong the rest. Maruia Springs Resort is described as both "rustic" and "reasonable", and it's neither. It's a very posh Japanese-style thermal pool complex and not for the faint of wallet. The one time we didn't use the I-site... lets just say haggling was futile.

Still, you do get a right good time of it. There are segregated pools for skinnydipping, complimentary kimonos and sandals for flouncing to the pools in, no TV, no phones, no mobile reception, and miles away from anywhwre so no pizza delivery even if there was. A choice of a la carte menu or starvation seemed a bit rich, but the food was amazing.

Highlight of the stay was probably Oscar trying to eat his chips with chopsticks, or maybe Elly failing to understand what the soup of the day was when she asked the Japanese waitress. Nik went over to her rescue and came back in fits: it was cauliflower. Bless.

Back to Wellington tomorrow, quite refreshed and mildly enlightened. I thought these places were all about the smell of rotten eggs and the stealthy emptying of pockets, but it seems that's only half of the story. The rest of it is fun..

Pics from December

What with one thing and another, I never got round to posting the December iPhone pics, so here they are.

Christchurch is good. Too much going on to blog any of it, and we're about to leave for Lyttleton and the Banks Peninsula, then hopefully get into some hot springs after lunch.

Ironic that this is the first proper internet access since we set off and all you get is a couple of cheesy links, but that's life... I'll do more pics & stuff when we get back to Wellington.

Vines, seals and automobiles

The road south from Nelson takes you through Marlborough country. Maybe that conjures up an image of a bloke in a hat smoking a fag on a horse, and maybe I did see one on the way... this is the wine-growing Marlborough, probably the biggest wine region in NZ. Vineyards line the roads all the way down through Canterbury & some of the Marlborough ones are distinctively posh, not at all like the Spanish ones I'm used to. The vines are manicured to the point of topiary, forming perfect maze-like rows with a rose bush in full bloom at the end of each one. Very impressive, very English, really. This is how they'd do it in Surbiton if it wasn't so cold and wet and like, full of houses.

We're going to be missing the best of the South Island scenery in this trip. It's just not possible to get round it all in one go without having a month to do it in, and we have to remember it's more a business trip than a holiday, a mission to find somewhere decent to live. Hints of what we're missing are around every corner; from the expected snow-capped mountains to quite unexpected golden straw covered hills, then vertical forests lining mysterious valleys, huge, sweeping coastlines of craggy volcanic rock, and we just sweep by them all, ever onward.

We did stop for three things: crayfish (for lunch, cos it was for sale at the side of the road) seals (cos they were practically in the road; dozens of them lolling round the rocks in the sun) and a supermarket just off the SH1 highway, where I took the pic above.

It's really hard to say where it all reminds me of; if I was in Spain (and I think a part of us still is) I'd say it was as if Andalucia had shifted north to the Costa Brava with the Sierra Nevada in tow. We'll definitely be back, either to live or to spend time more frivolously, when I'm sure we'll find out it's like no place on Earth.

Dire straits

Maybe Auckland has spoiled us a bit, for both facilities and space, cos we're incredulous when places are closed on a Sunday and feel crowded just thinking about airports & the like. The ferry was full to busting AND they'd all done the German thing & got there at dawn for the best seats, so we were a bit harked off before we even left the port.

It's one of New Zealand's top journeys and it really wasn't that bad, but nor did it live up to the hype. With near-perfect weather, the open ocean was like a puddle on a windy day. In fact it wasn't even windy, which made the locals visibly uneasy and probably made the front page of the Herald besides. There were some great mountain views but a fair bit short of breathtaking; I think that was the biggest let-down. They presumably need more dramatic weather, with the ship bucking like a steer, waves crashing off the bow and clouds hanging over the peaks like an ambush. Sunny and warm was just dull & lifeless.

On to Nelson and our little cabin on a gorgeous campsite just south of the town. Nelson was closed, of course, cos it's Sunday. A very pretty place, just totally deserted. All we wanted was an icecream, ffs.. whinge, moan..

And then we look again at where we are, and where we've been, and how utterly gorgeous it all is. Feeling like a bunch of bloomin' ingrates, we are, or at least I am, as I can't shake off the desire to park up the car and do off on me bike, which of course is still in box somehere in Auckland. Onward we shall press to Christchurch the morrow, full of vim for the start of a new week and a gander at the place we're hoping will stop our spoilt-brat faces twisting.

Blown away by the windy city

First impressions count for a lot and at first, I couldn't help thinking of Wellington as Melbourne. Since we spent less time there than we have here, first impressions are pretty much all I have and might well end up counting for too much. Whatever: both are infectiously cool places and miles better than their rival cities, as far as I'm concerned.

Some great cities have a real focal point, like Granada's Alhambra or Barcelona's Sagrada Familia; others have none, like Welly and Melly, and despite some earnest efforts in association with big name architects, the thing that leaps out at you is the attitude of the people who live there - way bigger than any bridge or tower.

This is a pretty cool city, a bit run-down and a bit full of itself, but ballsy enough to turn all of its faults to its advantage. Just like Melbourne; great food, amazing bars and cafes, big-hearted and mildly bohemian. You could easily forget that this is the capital, it's so laid back and does the boho chic thing so effortlessly... not giving a flying fart what anyone thinks is both how it works and why it's so appealing. It's also very windy. I asked a bloke I met if it was always so. "Ask an Aucklander," he said, "and they'll say it's always this windy. Ask somone from Wellington and they'll say, 'what wind?'"

The sun came out this afternoon and lured us up to the lookout at the top of Mount Victoria, overlooking the city, which was making a good job of looking impressive and important. Looking the other direction, an Inter-island ferry criused into its vast harbour from the infinitely more vast ocean to the South. It was still very windy, but somehow none of us seemed to notice...

Tomorrow: Nelson and the South Island. It's the high point of the trip but the surprise so far is looking forward to getting back & having another look at this wild and wacky city. More pics soon.

The long road to Welly

A motorway-style roadsign on the main route south from lake Taupo warned of "high winds on Desert Road", which was odd on two fronts: first, it's nowt like a motorway, second, this is the last place on earth you'd describe as "desert". It's so unbelievably verdant and well, wet, basically. Apparently the layers of volcanic soil are so permeable, rainwater just drains away as soon as it lands; the greenery is all heathers and tufts of wiry grasses clinging on for dear life in the gale-force winds. Fantastic scenery, must try & get some shots on the way back, when there might be a reasonable chance of staying upright.

A fairly epic leg completed, we had the good sense to stop off at the ferry terminal on the way in. That 5.25am sailing we booked sailed on the 1st.Yesterday. Don't ask how, I have no idea. Fortunately, the nice boy at the ticket office took a shine to us and all we had to pay was $35 to book the Sunday morning crossing instead. Force 6 gales forecast for the Cook Straits tonight and tomorrow, I think fate has smiled on us today :)

The sprogs have been superb today too, here's hoping it lasts another week...

Away in a minger

It might not be Carnegie's yacht but it's cheap, available and er, full of character. And mosquitoes. To be fair, that was our own fault, leaving the door open after sundown and being made of mozzie food, in fact it was all our fault for leaving it so late to book a place on this, the busiest day of the year. I mean that Jesus was born in a trough thanks to his mam & dad's ineptitude. Travelling with child, at Christmas, without booking in advance? What were they thinking of? At least our little lad has a mattress on the floor.

We've done better than a trough, cos even though you can eat out of it, thanks to a clever design it transforms into a bedroom with just a minor 20 minute workout. According to Olwyn McStingie, the owner of Turangi Cabins and Holiday Stables, our caravan has "just been done up", as is evident by the DIY debris scattered around the pitch. The inventory of knives, forks, spoons and pans pinned to the wall bears little resmblance to the prehistoric contents of the skip-salvage kitchen unit. As Nik pointed out, it's as if she saw the caravan abandoned at the side of the road and thought, " I'll 'ave that, make a bloomin' fortune." - at $22pp you've got to admire the ambition.

Next stop, Wellington, home of the gum boot. Hopefully, it won't come to that.

As promised, a miracle

I think I've got it now. It's not enough to know the levers to pull, you need to know the order to pull them in.

Assuming this works, I'll post up a pic of the luxury accommodation we located, before we hit the hay. Hay's about right... Anne hasn't stopped laughing since we checked in.

Out with the old

Just realized it's finally 2009 on the dark side of the world, so a Happy New Year to one & all, let's hope it's a good one.

We're starting it as we expect to end it - on the move... the long-threatened exploration of the kiwi world beyond the end of our street commenced at first light on the first of Jan; which is to say, we left the house at ten to twelve and made it to Hamilton (120km south) in time for lunch. If I succeed in posting a photo via this phone, it'll be a marvel of modern technology and a picture of us having a picnic at the Lake Domain.

Plan is to navigate our way to Lake Taupo by nightfall, then onward to Wellington in the am, overnight there and catch the early inter-island ferry on Saturday.

If the day so far is anything to go by, I'll be grateful just to make it out of the park without ending up in the lake. We really must invest in a map. Satnav is all well & good if you know your left from yer right, and to give Nik full credit, it would also help immensely if you actually had satnav in the first place. Gmaps on the iphone is ok, but just as soon as we make our way to the shops by way of Eastern Tibet I'll give up & buy her a proper one, "with a curly binder and road numbers and everything." Anything, as long as it gets us to the boat in time...

Twenty-six degrees here today. Hope you had a warm start to the year, wherever you ended up.