Martinborough, Dunedin and Wanaka

Our end of January/first half of February was exceptionally busy. On Saturday 24th Jan Will and I drove over the hill to Martinborough for a couple of nights camping. He was quite excited by the craft beer gift-box he came across in the local supermarket!

It was nice to give the tent another outing, so soon after our big camping trip away.

The main reason for the trip was to attend the Fat Freddy's Drop concert at the Alana Estate Winery on the Sunday night. They are one of my favourite bands, and are always brilliant live. The winery is a lovely venue for a summer concert. We packed a yummy picnic, washed down with a bottle of the local vino. 

The show was excellent, with the highlight, as usual, being the antics of 'Hopepa', aka Joe Lindsay, the band's trombonist and tuba player. If you have never experienced the band live, you can get a taste of it here with Hopepa in his signature tight white shorts... Give the clip a chance, it's bit of a slow burner and Hopepa doesn't even start playing his 'bone until nearly 6 minutes in!

   

 

Monday was Wellington Anniversary day, so a public holiday for the region. Usually my school year begins straight after Wellington Anniversary day with various different meetings throughout the week. However, as many of you know, I have been granted a year of unpaid leave from my school, enabling me to return to my same position and responsibilities in 2017. This is because Will has been granted Research and Study leave from Vic, and we are off on a big adventure with Will visiting colleagues in his field from all over the world at the start of March.

Not having to work meant that I was able to play some badminton at the NZ Masters Games in Dunedin. I flew down at the end of January and spent a week staying with the Roes. It was lovely to catch up with Georgia, since she hadn't been able to make the family camping trip.

Georgia is holding Alfie, Alexander's super cute pet rabbit. Alfie is awesome, Will and I are very tempted to get a house bunny when we get back from our big adventure...

 

The Roes live on the cliffs above St Clair beach, and the Dunedin badminton hall is at St Kildas beach, so I had a nice 30 minute or so walk along the beach as my warm-up each day.

The first event I played was the team event. My team consisted of Stephen Nelson, Leona Head and myself, all from Wellington, and then Duncan Rae who lives in Dunedin (but actually played for Wellington last season). We ended up with the silver medal for our efforts.

The following day was the mixed doubles where I was playing with Stephen in the 35+ age division. Stephen was also playing with Leona in the 45+ division. Unfortunately these were on at the same time... He shouldn't actually have been allowed to play those two divisions (usually you have to do one ending in a '5' and one ending in a '0' -masters is played in 5-year age bands) but it was an oversight from the administrators. Anyway, what is meant was one very very tired Stephen! He literally would come off court with me, then have to go straight back on to play with Leona and so on, with no rest at all between his games. He actually made the bronze medal play-off match in both divisions, but lost them both, partly through sheer exhaustion! It was a small consolation that the pair that won the gold medal in the 35s mixed doubles, I had beaten the previous day when playing with Duncan in the team event. 

The last day of badminton was the womens' doubles where I was playing with Simone Naylor from the Hutt Valley. Despite having hardly played with her before (my pre-masters 'training' involved visiting her summer club in the Hutt Valley on a couple of occasions where I got a few matches with her) we managed to win the gold medal.

The rest of my time in Dunedin was pretty chilled. I did a couple of big long walks on the beach, and also managed to catch up with Haley, who I used to play rugby with at OBU in Wellington, and who was currently living in Dunedin. St Clair is a beautifully rugged and wild beach, I was a bit too scared to go swimming, despite the amazing weather I had while down there. 

 

After returning from Dunedin I had a few days around the house. I spent a couple of days doing big hours taming our garden, which had got a bit neglected... We've had some amazing produce from it this season, including the best tomatoes we've ever grown in our green house. We haven't been able to keep up with picking them, so several neighbours would also come round and help themselves to large containers full every now and then.

 

On Saturday 13th February Will and I had a big BBQ as a joint birthday celebration, and also bit of a farewell party before we head off in March for the remainder of the year. It was a really fun night, and nice to see loads of people en mass before we leave.

That Monday I was off to camp for the week! Despite not working this year, my school was keen for me to help out on the Year 12 camp in Wanaka, and happy to pay me for my time. It was too good a deal to turn down...

I had a really enjoyable time and the girls were great. It was nice to see some of the ones I had taught last year again. We were based at Glendhu Bay, right on the shores of lake Wanaka. There was my group of 9 girls plus an instructor staying there, as well as Barb Beable's group plus instructor, so it was lovely spending some time and catching up with her. We would do our own thing during the day, but had meals together and spent time together in the evenings. Every morning we would start the day with a compulsory dip in the lake. I thought it was a nice invigorating, refreshing way to start the day, but some of the girls didn't agree!

We had big adventure-filled days including lots of team-building and leadership type activities. Rock-climbing and abseiling was also on the agenda.

On one of the days we did a big walk up Roy's Peak which took a good few hours. We turned back a short distance from the top as the weather was closing in and there was some impressive crashing thunder! Also, a couple of girls were struggling with the relentless uphill slog... We did get some lovely views over Wanaka and the surrounds though. It is a really beautiful part of the world...

Another activity was some whitewater swimming at the Hawea slalom canoe course, learning how to cross the river This was something I hadn't done before, and despite being a little scary, it was very cool. You basically set off swimming at a 45 degree angle upstream, then as soon as you hit the white water you just get picked up and 'whooshed' along. You then needed to swim out into the eddy on the other side of the river. It was reassuring that our guide was a top-class white water kayaker, and was in his boat while we were swimming across one by one, ready to rescue anyone if they needed it! 

Our guide also took us to see the man-made 'standing wave' that has been created on the river. We watched a few guys surfing it.

On the Friday we drove back to Queenstown airport with some very tired girls! We drove over the Crown Ranges, giving one last photo op for the majestic surroundings. It was a brilliant camp, and one I would be very keen to go again on next year when I'm back at school.

    

Camping at Whites Bay

I had a couple of days between arriving back from Hamilton and Will arriving back from the UK on the 1st Jan. It was nice to come home to the Pohutukawa tree by our kitchen window in full bloom. The tui were certainly enjoying it.

It was also nice to come back to our three chookies. Their water source of choice is the birdbath, which is pretty cute. My friends Suzanne and Paul did a great job of looking after both the chooks and the garden while we were away.

I had a very nice and relaxed New Year's Eve, homemade pizzas and a few drinks around the fire pit at Paul and Suzanne's place. I then picked Will up from the airport on the morning of the 1st. On the 2nd we headed off on our biennial camping trip with the Roe family. Our ferry trip over was very misty and atmospheric coming through the Sounds...  

We met up with the Roe family in Blenheim, before heading off to the Whites Bay campsite just 22km from Blenheim. It's a magic spot with a beautiful beach surrounded by bush. The campsite is run by the Department of Conservation and had really good facilities (flushing toilets, cold water showers with pulleys to attach your solar shower for hot water) all for $6 per person per night! This year Georgia (who is starting her second year of university) stayed at home so she could work, and Alexander (who is starting his final year of school) brought his girlfriend Brittany along. We managed to nab a prime spot near the beach and set up camp.

Between us and the Roes we are now pretty well set up in terms of our camping supplies! We each have a large multi-roomed Kathmandu tent, and a new addition this time round is that we each have a big Coleman shelter. The green one is the Roe's which we used as the living/dining area, and the blue one is ours which was used as the kitchen.They worked brilliantly with detachable walls you can put up depending on where you want protection from the wind, or shade.

Our kitchen was also incredibly well equipped. We had a couple of chilly bins to keep stuff cold, a couple of pantries to store our food, with work surfaces on top, our Weber BBQ and a 2-burner gas stove for cooking, and literally, a kitchen sink!

Here are a couple of pics of the beach

The Roes camped with us for a week as Rach had to start work again on the 11th Jan. We had a lovely time with them (as always!) swimming and chilling out on the beach. Will and Rich went out in Rich's fishing kayak and managed to catch us our entree one day. There were also rocks absolutely covered in mussels which you could wade out to at low tide, so we also had them for our entree a few times. They were delicious cooked in Rich's fish smoker.

On the couple of days when the weather didn't cooperate we drove into Blenheim for bit of an explore and to restock supplies. Free wifi and the ability to charge up all our devices in the public library was much appreciated!

On several nights we had very nice sunsets. It was very pleasant taking a glass of wine down to the beach and sitting and enjoying it. Rich took the first two photos below, looking back through the hole in the rock. Will took the bottom two.

 

 

The Roes headed off on the long drive back to Dunedin on Saturday 9th Jan. It was another most excellent camping trip with them, and we'll look forward to the next one, probably in 2018...

 

Will and I stayed on for another 3 nights. In some ways it was a little sad with our camp being halved...

 Now that it was just Will and I, we had to resort to selfies...

We ate very very well on our camping trip. I had pre-prepared and frozen some meals which we used during the first half of the trip. It is also amazing how well you can cook on the Weber. This below was one of our favourite meals: lamb steaks, baked potatoes and sweetcorn, all done on the BBQ. Of course, eating outside with a beautiful view and a beer/glass of wine usually makes pretty much anything taste good!

There are several bushwalks of varying lengths that you can do from Whites Bay. One day Will and I did the Black Jack track which is a nice loop of an hour and a half or so, and offers some good views of the outer Sounds, and also nice views looking back to Whites Bay.

We also did the walk over the hill to Rarangi Beach which is meant to take an hour each way, but was substantially quicker.

One day we also scrambled up the small rocky outcrop on the right hand side of the beach which gave some really nice views. You can see our camp just above Will's head in the pic below, just to the left of the surf club.

Someone had dug a massive hole on the beach. It really was impressive. I could have lay down and had a bath if I had fancied...

In general around NZ the flax flowers have been spectacular this year, and Whites Bay was no exception. It was good to see the tui enjoying them.

After our 10 days of camping, Will and I had a couple of nights booked in the Harbour View Motel in Picton for a bit of R&R before our ferry back to Wellington. The motel was pretty awesome (as you'd expect from the #1 ranked hotel/motel for Picton on Trip Advisor...). I really like Picton and always enjoy my time there. The motel had an interesting view looking out over the marina.

Will always enjoys a good walk around the marina, dreaming about the boats he might possibly own in the future... We also spent a bit of time perusing the real-estate boards, dreaming about our holiday house in the Sounds we might buy to accommodate said boat...

On one of the days we went for a walk on the Snout Track. We got to the Queen Charlotte View lookout, but decided not to go the extra 40 minutes or so each way to Snout Head as the weather looked like it was closing in.

It was a little bit sad because at the lookout we ran into a very excited tourist who told us that she had just seen a kiwi bird! She showed us a photo, but it turned out to be a weka, of which we had seen a couple around the place. We did feel slightly bad for setting her straight and bursting her bubble...

It was a totally different sort of day for our return ferry trip home. We weren't sailing until the afternoon so spent the morning chilling out on the Picton foreshore and getting in one last holiday icecream...

 

We had beautiful views of Picton as the ferry pulled out, and managed to grab prime seats on the ferry, right at the front of the boat with big glass windows to enjoy the view as we sailed home.