Fiji!

There are times living in New Zealand when we forget how far from home we really are. Routine and the familiarity of our new home sometimes distracts us from the fact that we live on a volcanic island on the edge of the Pacific Ocean, that our nearest neighbour is Australia and that we don't shop at Tesco's anymore (mind you, sometimes we call Countdown Tesco's, so I suppose it doesn't really matter). 

But then now and again we remember that we are on the other side of the planet. Case in point - Friday early afternoon I leave work and head to the hospital in South Auckland where Matt works. We jump in the van parked up outside and head to the airport and just three hours later we're in .... Fiji! Tropical paradise and jewel of the South Pacific and so very close to our temporary home. We really are a world away from our real home!

After work drinks!

 With both our 30th birthdays fast approaching we thought what better way to celebrate (early) than ten days on a tropical island. I don't expect this to be the last celebration for said birthdays, so watch this space for more celebratory blog posts.

Having slept off the work week (and a couple of local beers) we awoke to a glorious sunrise and not a bad beach at the backpackers we were staying at close to the airport. Not quite the golden sand from the postcards, but a good warm up for what the rest of our first day had to offer. I will say now it was probably the best first day (and maybe even ANY day) of a holiday EVER.

Not a bad beach really - don't believe
everything you read in the Lonely Planet

 So how did we spend this first glorious day then?

CRUISING!

 A bit of this:

 Some of this:

 All aboard this:

An hour and half aboard on a high speed katamaran followed by the rest of the day on the sail boat 'Seaspray' was our introduction to Fiji's Mamanuca islands, and what an introduction. Our welcome aboard the boat was accompanied by bubbles and cake, unlimited beer thereafter...

Getting a taste for Fiji Bitter and
life aboard the good ship Seaspray

 And a very close viewing of a pod of dolphins!

WOW!

Glorious!

Beautiful!

 After a good play following the boat the dolphins disappeared off to find something else to do whilst we approached a real proper deserted island. The locals call it 'Tom Hanks' island in homage to his time spent here filming Castaway - and it really is the same as the island in the movie! After much shouting of 'Wilson' we jumped off with flippers, snorkel and mask in tow to do a bit of snorkelling on the way to shore. The clear, warm sea didn't disappoint and we were treated to a colourful display of some more of the South Pacific's inhabitants!

Tom Hanks island

 A bit of a walk around the island (didn't take long to do the full loop) and we'd worked up an appetite. Back on board then for a buffet lunch, more beer and cake.

Getting used to Fijian hospitality

Next stop, another of the small islands - this one the home of a small number of traditional Fijian families. The Chief of the village welcomed us with a kava ceremony which involved downing a small dish of a non alcoholic drink made from kava (a type of root) which tastes a bit funny, numbs your mouth but somehow does make you feel very welcome!

 A walk through the village and then back on the boat, we had a bit more time for another swim:

Wish this was my dive!

Enjoying life we rounded off the day with a a sunset trip back to the 'mainland' on the katamaran.

Drunk on beer, kava, dolphins and sun

The sun sets on a beautiful part of the world

Feeling like we could stay in Fiji forever if the first day was anything to go by we awoke excited to head up to the foothills of the mountains near to Nadi (the airport town) for the next part of our trip. Taxi hailed we were soon on our way and pleased to hear that by chance our driver hailed from the same village as the place we had booked to stay in - Sabeto. He was pleased with this fact too, so much so that he took the opportunity to fit his supermarket shopping into the journey...

Spot the keys left in the ignition so we could listen to the radio

 Feeling rather irritated I soon remembered that we were on Fiji time, not Auckland time and just to chill out - our first taste of 'no worry, no hurry' - Fiji's unofficial motto.

On arrival at Stoney Creek Resort (our home for the next two nights) we were pleasd to see that it wasn't really a resort (we were saving that for the last part of the trip), it had the most amazing views of the mountains all around... and we were the only ones staying there!

Room no.1 (also known as the room
with the best view) for us then!

Peace and tranquility were the order of the next couple of days - you couldn't help but relax when greeted with this from our own private terrace:

Relaxed feet

Of course, doing absolutely nothing was never an option for us. Fitting a rather hot 10k in on the first day we decided a walk was more appropriate on the second, which took us to a hot springs and mud pool where we got really really dirty (particularly Matt) and then super super clean!

Attempting to look scary whilst
covered in restorative mud

 Having slapped on the mud we let it properly dry in the sun before we jumped in an oozy, gooey mud pool to remove the crusty layer.

This bikini may never look the same again!

Luckily, the final step in the process was a much cleaner hot pool which we soaked in until we felt clean from the inside out.

A walk back through sugar farms and over a stream we caught up on some reading, enjoyed another beautiful sunset and a delicious meal.

The sun setting on the Mountains of the Sleeping Giant

Before bed we had a bit of a kids fest with multiple ping pong games and a good old fashioned Monopoly-a-thon. Believe it or not I actually lost this game despite my stash of cash!

Probably shouldn't have showboated so much with all the £100 bills!

Our second and last morning left us time for a last cup of tea on our terrace with our adopted cat Jo (three legged, but our ideal cat nonetheless).

Not a bad spot for a cuppa

Leaving comfort behind we jumped on a local bus for a bone jangling bus journey back to Nadi, followed by another (slightly less bone jangling) journey to our next destination, the Coral Coast where more comfort awaited us - part 2 coming soon!

Open air travel !

A Mid-Winter Christmas (in June)

Crumbs. Two months since our last blog - you know when you're behind when both Mums start demanding an update on our activities. 

June and July have flown by - it's winter here in the South Pacific, with no festive season to break up the work routine. So - it's been nose to the grindstone (with only a couple of weekends away in a very cold, ice-covered campervan. It'd be rude not to...)

But that's not normal. Over here the Christmas displays have Santas on surfboards. Their seasonal christmas tree is the summery pohutukawa. So to normalise it all - we recruited our two very British friends (Suffolk and Nottinghamshire represents) Hannah and Jody for a very British Christmas. In June.

Here's some highlights. Starter 1 provided by Cope's mobile catering services. 

Round 1 - Blinis and Bubbles!

 And the aperitifs (yeah right) courtesy of the Bailey-Wells Bar...

The measure of a man (& woman) is their willingness
to invest in a dedicated beer fridge

The beauty of their house is that more than one person can be in the kitchen at the same time. Useful for the mound of food being prepared.

Main course chefs!

From the below, you can see we went all out with the decorations. No expense (financial or creative juice) spared.

A Kiwiana Christmas Tree

Catching the cork from the second round of bubbles

Ding ding - Round 2 - curried parsnip soup

After several pre-aperitifs, aperitifs and post-aperitifs, it was time for our first ever vegetarian Christmas roast.

Round 3 - She's ready for more...
The Mushroom Wellingtons

Secret Santa (but, as Cope tradition dictates,
presents should only be opened after dinner
is washed up and a walk completed.... boo!)

It turns out Secret Santa is hard to keep secret with only four people...

A head scarf and a head band.

One is good for yoga. One isn't.

Presents dished out. Bellies full. Glasses recharged. Cheese demolished. I've announced "That's Christmas over". Best turn on the TV for the evening's entertainment!

Cheering on the All Blacks as they win the third of the three tests.
Why not? We'd already lost the series!

England smashed once again. So naturally the next logical step is to fish out the spare door from under the house, wipe off the cobwebs, march into the house (past an unhappy set of wives) with it and proceed to try and throw a ping pong ball in each other's drinks.

And beer pong. With a spare door.

Little did Jody know, but I've been practising for this moment for months. The Mount Gay Rum was all his. Nice team-work on the sharking, Sarah.

Beer pong loser = brandy winner.

And what would a Christmas be without some kind of word game. Here's the Bailey alphabet classic underway.

Letter games. The forte of pissed people.

And finally before bedtime, Jody brings out his guitar for an amazing private gig to some of his favourite classics. Amazing stuff and we've still got the songs going round our heads.

Time for bed - and the beauty of Auckland is you're never far from some great nature or an amazing view. This is what Hannah and Jody wake up to every day, incredible stuff!

Stanning.

Feeling slightly jaded, Sarah and I ditched our grand plans for a good run and went to the zoo instead. The orangutans got stared at a lot. And I remembered to take just the one photo.

How we felt...

So, Happy Christmas from Auckland!

After a busy couple of months at work, we're off to Fiji tomorrow for a 10 day break from the winter weather and as a birthday present to ourselves for our imminent 30ths.

Other than that we've both got back into the training. Sarah's gunning for a London marathon qualifying time this November, by smashing out the Auckland marathon. I've got two cycle races, one mountainous and one endurance event, in November. More on those another time perhaps!

East Cape Escapades

Having caught up on sleep the previous weekend we were ready for something a bit more active for Anzac weekend (Anzac Day is the NZ/Oz equivalent of Remembrance Sunday in the UK). With the Friday as a bank holiday, and taking the Monday and Tuesday as time off in lieu/leave we set off Thursday night after work for a bit of monster drive down to Te Urewera National Park, and specifically Lake Waikaremoana. 

Getting halfway on Thursday and finishing the drive on Friday was a good call for Matt - as the 70km through the National Park to our campsite was all very bumpy, gravel road through absolutely stunning, isolated forest. Beautiful scenery for me as the passenger but hard going for Matt driving! I like to think it was worth it though as on arrival at the campsite on the lake's shore we were treated to a stunning view.

Mystical Lake Waikaremoana

Whilst I could have spent the weekend chilling at the campsite and admiring the view we had come all the way to the wilderness specifically to tackle our fifth Great Walk - the Lake Waikaremoana Track, a 50km track through lush native forest and up and over a challenging climb. The track is recommended as a three or four day hike. Having planned the trip during our Ironman training we decided that two days would be plenty, so booked into a hut halfway round, we set off on the Saturday morning at a pretty fast pace!

Oh dear - mud does have a
tendency to slow me down!

Taking a breather!

Luck was on our side with the weather yet again so whilst we were going at a good pace we enjoyed some beautiful views on our first day.

Almost a mirror lake

A lone boat

Our day 2 climb in the distance

Quick detour to a waterfall

We were right to keep the pace up - with darkness arriving at 6pm we only just had time to arrive at the hut, get our sleeping bags out and meet our bunk mates before it was time for head lamps (the hut had no electricity for lights).

Lots of fun to be had with his and hers head lamps.
No? Just us then

The hut didn't have gas for cooking either (unlike huts on previous tramps in NZ). No matter, we had planned to go continental so enjoyed a dinner of cheese, salami, pitta breads and sun-dried tomatoes. Followed by chocolate. Yum. Bedtime followed at 8.30pm - and we were up late compared to the rest of the hut's guests!

Up and off the next morning, we were the first on the trail to tackle the big climb.

Matt and our home for the night

Some of the Ironman fitness must definitely have still been there, as we were at the top within two and a half hours, rather than the recommended 4-5. Suffice to say a break was in order!

Not a bad view for a chocolate and nut break

Carrying on along the ridgeline we were treated to some epic views of forest as far as the eye could see.

A very happy hubby

Enjoying life

Before we knew it we had descended all the metres we had climbed and were back at the lake front for our water taxi back to the van. Jumping in and hot footing it to the coast for a pie, hot pool and bed we were ready to explore a bit of NZ's far east.

First stop Gisborne - one of NZ's wine making areas.

A flight (or two) of wines

...And the very first part of NZ spotted by Captain Cook. Whilst this statue has pride of place overlooking the town, apparently it doesn't look anything like the famous explorer (even the plaque underneath said so!)

Captain Cook (or some other bloke)

Turning back in land we started heading home, first via the Waioeka Gorge - another part of the north island which still felt pretty wild.

A view of Carrie parked up while
we explored a bit of the native bush

Hotfooting it along the coast we revisited some old haunts from our very first Tiki Tour - Whakatane, Mount Maunganui, Tauranga and Paeroa. Neither us of can believe that we arrived here nearly two years ago now. Is there anything left to explore?!

View from 'The Mount'