Kiwi Christmas and New Year

I had a pretty packed couple of weeks over the Christmas and New Year holidays.


My friend Tyra came out to visit again. Her birthday is on the 24th of December and she'd always wanted to celebrate somewhere warm. In the weeks running up to her visit I was getting worried as the weather was pretty mixed. Luckily, New Zealand put on the sunshine and heat for her trip. We spent her birthday driving all along the coastline around Wellington, starting with Oriental Bay, which starts in the heart of the city.

Wellington from Oriental Bay

We stopped off at a couple of the bays to enjoy the sun, including Lyall Bay. We had lunch at the Chocolate Fish Cafe, which is famous for being a hangout for the Lord of the Rings cast and crew.


We then came back to the flat for a birthday cake. New World, a local supermarket chain with a very Orwellian name, supplied an amazingly tasty chocolate cake that got the thumbs up all round.

Tyra's cake

Christmas day itself started with pancakes and bubbles (the Kiwi name of champagne and sparkling wine). While my Mum was over to visit, she had put together a stocking and left it with my flatmate. This was a total, and lovely, surprise. I spoke to my Mum on skype, before she headed off for her Samaritans night shift.


We then headed over to my flatmate Gabby's family home for a Christmas meal. Again, the weather was scorching so we spent the afternoon in the shade in the garden chatting and enjoying a few drinks while the meal was cooking. The meal itself was fantastic, with roast turkey and roast ham, lots of traditional trimmings and some lighter summery additions like artichoke hearts and asparagus.It was so nice to spend my Kiwi Christmas amongst such a welcoming family.

Carving the ham

Yum!!

Lighting the Christmas pudding

Boxing day was a relaxed affair. In the afternoon we went to the cinema to see The Iron Lady. I enjoyed the film a lot, even if it skimmed over much of the politics. As all the reviews have been saying, Meryl Streep gives a fantastic performance.


The 27th was time to say goodbye to Tyra, who flew down to Christchurch before heading home. In the afternoon I then went to a Twenty20 match at the Basin Reserve. My last visit had been to see the Christchurch fundraising match in March. The Wellington Firebirds were playing the Central Stags. Unfortunately the Firebirds kept up the traditional of the Wellington Hurricanes (rugby) and Phoenix (football) and got soundly beaten, by 29 runs. Fortunately, it was still a good afternoon sitting on the grass in the sun and enjoying a few beers.

The next day (28 December) called for a hike to work off a few of the Christmas dinner calories. My friend Carina and I had decided to do a day-long walk in the Belmont National Park. This is a great area that is incredibly close to Wellington, one minute you are driving through suburban housing and then a minute later you're at the start of a forest track where you won't pass another walker. The day was cooler and cloudier than the week had been before, which was actually refreshing and made the walking a lot easier. We didn't manage to follow the exact route we intended. We still managed to take in all the sights we'd planned, including the scattering of old WW2 ammunition stores, the hilltop Trig and the views over the coastline in most directions.

The ammunition stores...and some cows

Made it to the Trig

Luckily when I woke up the next morning my legs weren't sore from the hike, as I had a long drive ahead of me. I was heading all the way up to Gisborne on the east coast to meet up with a group of friends and go to the Rhythm and Vines music festival. I set off pretty early and a mere 540 kilometres later arrived in one piece.

Having travelled across half the North Island, I was ready for a beer, but the first task was to set up my tent. Although the festival has big campsites, we'd scored a much better arrangement as a friend's family has a house just outside Gisborne. So although we were camping in their garden, we had access to bathrooms, a kitchen and a deck. Meaning instead of a diet of mars bars and pot noodles, we were having oven cooked pizza and daily BBQs, including freshly caught fish.

In the garden

I arrived a day after most of my friends, who already had their tents set up. When I started unpacking mine, which I borrowed from a colleague, it quickly became clear that what they'd described as a 'two...or maybe three person' tent was, compared to what my friends had, palatial. I couldn't quite stand up inside!

Mine's on the right

The festival started that night, so after a couple of drinks and BBQ it was time to head in. Buses ran from right outside where we were staying to the festival site. The music kicked off late in the day and with most people drinking before they went, it was always an entertaining ride out to the festival and even more amusing on the ride back.


The site was a local vineyard and was suprisingly hilly, with different stages and bars scattered around and lots of different routes between them. Rhythm and Vines isn't as big as the major UK festivals, but it has about 25-30,000 people attend, which gives it a great atmosphere.

The line-up across the three days was pretty good. There were a bunch of local artists and then the headline acts for the three nights were Pendulum, Calvin Harris and Example ('changed the way you kissed me') on NYE. Without a doubt, my favourite was Pendulum on the first night. As well as being one of my favourite acts, they had an incredible visual show for their set. The entire stage was made up of screens and set over several different levels, so they could move around the graphics.

Pendulum visuals

The weather across New Zealand was pretty atrocious in the few days up to New Year, with storms and flooding in several places. Gisborne was among the least affected, but on New Year's Eve the heavens did open up. That did make it feel completely like a UK festival in one important way...mud! I slipped over a couple of times and it looked like the majority of people did the same. By the end of the night, some people were simply diving into the mud and sliding around.


With the combination of mud and a bit too much to drink, New Year's Day had the potential to start pretty badly. Fortunately, we were staying a few minutes walk from the beach. A dip in the pacific was a fantastic way to start the first morning of the New Year.


We left Gisborne and road-tripped back as far as Napier, which I visited back in March. I stayed the night there to break up the drive (I was not going to try and attempt the same epic distance in one go after three nights of festival mayhem). I met up with Helen and Harry, who were also stopping off for the night there. The next day saw some mini-golf and pottering around the Hawkes Bay before driving back to Wellington.


A lie-in followed by cleaning a tent, a lot of washing and a surf on the 2nd and I was all ready to head back into work on 3 January. Luckily things were pretty quiet at work for the first few days.