Seeing in 2010

It was great to meet up with Nic & Tom on the 30th. We picked them up from a farm just out of Tokoroa & Tom was happy because he had caught his first NZ fish. 4 of them in fact... On the way back to Hamilton we stopped at Tirau for icecream, & a visit to the giant corrugated iron sheep & sheepdog. Only in NZ...

We also stopped at the Hamilton Gardens, but didn't have a huge amount of time before the gates shut at 7:30pm. My favourite Indian garden was looking amazing.

We finally made it back to mum & dads in time for a lovely dinner of BBQ steak & salad. With the wine flowing & a lot of catching up to do it ended up being quite a late night. Nevertheless we were up fairly early the next morning in order to hit the road for the Coromandel. We had tickets to see in the new year at the Coromandel Gold music festival at a farm next to Buffalo Beach, just out of Whitianga.

We arrived quite soon after the campsite had opened, so got a good spot for our tent. Will & I had bought the tent a couple of months earlier in a big Kathmandu sale, & it was its first outing. It was perfect for the 4 of us, each couple had their own enclosed room at each end of the tent, & there was a large communal room in the middle. We are definitely looking forward to taking it on further adventures... Once we had set up camp we wandered down to the beach for a couple of hours to chill out before the start of the festival.

I was really impressed by how well run the festival was. It was in a lovely setting with a natural amphitheatre surrounded by native bush, with the ocean in the background. The line-up was Katchafire, Tiki Taane, Kora & Shapeshifter, with DJ's playing in-between. The 2 earlier acts were my favourite, although Shapeshifter were a good choice to see in the new year.

After experience of UK festivals, it was quite refreshing to see food & drink very reasonably priced. We had taken a lot of food with us, so my only purchase was a beautiful mussel & trevally fritter on bread for $5. Beers were also $5, & I was drinking $6 Jim Beam & cokes. We must be getting old because we were all sensible with what we drank, & were pretty sober to see in 2010! That's more than can be said for some of the young teeny-boppers around us!

The next day we set off for a bit of exploring on the Coromandel Peninsula, starting with a hearty & much appreciated brunch at a Whitianga cafe. Then it was off to Cathedral Cove.We walked the 30 minutes or so down to Cathedral cove & embarked on a New Year's Day swim. It really is such a beautiful place.Next was Hot Water Beach. We hired a shovel & dug ourselves a nice spa. Actually we cheated a bit & took on one that had been abandoned! The water was incredibly hot, & it was such a scorching day we actually had little interest in lying around in our hot pool! It was more a case of having bit of a paddle, then cooling off our feet in the sea. However it was still a very cool thing to do.

Then it was back to Hamilton. We had the place to ourselves as mum & dad had left for Oz that morning. They are spending time in Melbourne catching up with my sister who lives there with her husband.

On Saturday we drove Nic & Tom up to Auckland airport for their flight back to the UK, via Hong Kong. It really was great to see them, & we'll see them again next Christmas as we are planning on spending it in the UK.

Yesterday we drove back down to Wellington, as Will is back to work on Tuesday. We take possession of our house on Friday so that is very exciting. We pretty much have everything sorted for it... We need to purchase some house & contents insurance tomorrow, & then transfer the last of our UK £££ over here.