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.

Singapore and Malaysia

At the end of November I took a holiday in South East Asia. One of my best friends from Warwick, Ingrid, had invited me along to join her friends from Geneva on the trip. It coincided with the week straight after the election, which is usually pretty quiet at the Ministry, so I thought what the hey.


I flew into Singapore to meet up with the group. It was a one night visit that was a World away from the last time I was in there nearly 10 years ago at the start of my backpacking trip around SE Asia. We stayed in a stunning hotel, met up with some friends who've recently moved to Singapore and went for a drink at rooftop bar 64 stories above the city.

Our hotel is the colonial building the foreground

Rooftop drinks

Singapore at night

The next day we flew on to Langkawi, which is a collection of islands off the West Coast of Malaysia. The main attractions are beaches, resorts and the scenery. We had all agreed that we wanted a relaxing time and our trip didn't disappoint.


We stayed in a nice resort called Berjaya. Everything was set up to make life easy - the oversized golf carts that would drive you too and from your cabin in the rainforest, the private beach and the choice of restaurants all within the resort. We got so settled in that we had to make a concious effort to leave and see anything else on the islands!

Pool at the resort

The food was good!

We did manage to drag ourselves away from the comforts of the resort a few times over the week. The first trip was to take a cable car up to the highest point on our island. It was probably the hottest day of the trip and we sweltered in the queue to get on the cable car. At the top the air was fresher and the views were definitely worth it.

Cool curvy hanging bridge

We also took a couple of boat trips to other islands. One was to go snorkelling for the day. The other took in several different sights, including a freshwater lake in the middle of one island and a flock of eagles.

Snorkelling site

Reef sharks were swimming around where we were snorkelling. Up to 1.5-2m
long and really impressive in the water

 

 

 

Euphemism...literally

The Christmas edition of the Economist has an article on euphemisms that I was reading this morning.


"The British are probably the world champions of euphemism...British newspaper obituaries are a rich seam: nobody likes to speak ill of the dead, yet many enjoy a hint of the truth about the person who has "passed away". A drunkard will be described as "convivial" or "cheery". Unbearably garrulous is "sociable" or the dread "ebullient"; "lively wit" means a penchant for telling cruel and unfunny stories. "Austere" and "reserved" mean joyless and depressed. Someone with a foul temper "did not suffer fools gladly". The priapic will have "enjoyed female company"; nymphomania is "notable vivacity". Uncontrollable appetites of all sorts may earn the ultimate accolade: "he lived life to the full".


I never knew any of this.


The article makes a brief mention of the affinity that civil servants have with euphemism before ending with this interesting challenge:


"...scrub your conversation of euphemism for a day. The results will startle you."

Christmas eve on the beach

'nuf said

Seriously windy

So, Wellington has a reputation for being really windy. Since I arrived in February I hadn't experienced much that would live up to the rep...until the last few weeks. It turns out that Spring - down here in the Southern Hemisphere it's Spring - is the windy time of year.


This week has been the most extreme so far. Sitting in our office we can hear the wind whistling eerily through the buildings and today we watched as a giant poster was more or less ripped from the side of a nearby building.

As the news video here shows it can be pretty risky even trying to cross the road. 146km/h is just incredible. I'm bloody glad I wasn't on a plane trying to land here today. It's come at an appropriate time as the city has just chosen the 'Wellington - Blown Away' design for a sign on the hillside by the airport. As the clip mentions this followed some pretty fierce opposition to the original 'Wellywood' proposal.


The good news is that it should be settling down in the next few weeks and then we're in the middle of summer. I'm still getting used to the idea of a warm Christmas!

Toku whaea

At the start of November my mum flew over for a couple of weeks. It was great to spend time catching up with her and to show her a few bits of New Zealand.


We started with a weekend of sight-seeing in Wellington. We took things pretty gently as my mum got over her jetlag. Luckily we had some nice sunny weather. We wandered through town, took the cable car up to the botanic gardens, visited Te Papa (the excellent national museum) and drove up to the Mount Victoria lookout.

Parliament (next to the more famous Beehive)

The Cable Car

Mum in the botanic gardens

Wellington Harbour from Mount Victoria

For the first few days of the next week, mum took a trip over to Picton, where I went back in June. While I was doing a few days in work, she got to do some wine tasting in Marlborough and see the Queen Charlotte Sounds.


We then had a long weekend road trip up the north island to the Taranaki region. On the drive up, we stopped off to stay with some family friends who live in Wanganui. Dora was originally from England, but has lived in New Zealand for most of her life and taught in a range of schools here. Fred had been a fighter pilot instructor during WW2 and gone on to be a flight instructor. They had some really interesting stories, a lovely home and a wealth of knowledge about New Zealand.



View Larger Map


We carried on from Wanganui to Taranaki, which is dominated by two things - Mount Taranaki and the dairy industry.


Mount Taranaki (also known as Mount Egmont) is a volcano that rises up out of the otherwise pretty flat land in the Western extension of the North Island. Except that it's often shrouded in cloud, it absolutely dominates the scenery of the area. Fortunately as we were driving towards Taranaki the mountain was visible as, by the time we arrived it was cloudy and stayed that way for the next few days. It's very strange when you know the mountain is right there not to be able to see anything of it.

We were staying in a small lodge part of the way up the side of the mountain. A short drive above us was a plateau with some striking views of the region spread out below.

The best times to see the Mountain are first thing in the morning and at night. From the back of our room you could look straight out (up) to the Mountain.

Mount Taranaki at night

As I mentioned earlier, the second thing that dominates the area is the dairy industry. Most of the land is given over to herds of dairy cows. There are hundreds of milk tankers on the roads, all heading between the farms and the Fonterra processing plant, which is the largest dairy plant in New Zealand. 


The slopes of the Mountain are all national park land and so we went out on several walks. The forest and bush is apparently 'cloud forest' because of the climate, which after a couple of days of rain made a lot of sense. It was incredibly lush and almost felt like an enchanted forest.

One of our walks took us to the impressive Dawson's Falls -

We also took a drive on the road that circles Taranaki, which includes a stretch of road called Surf Highway. Unfortunately there was no surf the day we were there, so the wetsuit stayed in the car.

Black sand beach

PS - as you can see I had a good time practising with the new camera body my mum brought out for me (a Nikon D7000 for those who are interested).