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'

Easter Trup

Most of April was spent being a bit manic at work, so we were both pretty relieved when Easter came around and we were treated to four days work-free touring in Carrie north of Auckland.

We haven't spent much time in the Far North, so it was great to explore the Tutukaka Coast for the first time - a beautiful stretch of coastline not far from Whangarei.

Despite having experienced the tail-end of another cyclone in Auckland on the Thursday, we set off that evening with our fingers crossed that the weekend wouldn't be a wash out. It worked as we were treated to blue skies (with just a few showers to keep us on our toes - it is autumn after all!).

Rugged coastline

View out to the Poor Knights Islands - home of some
of the best diving in the world, apparently

Ahhh, gorgeous NZ scenery

Gentle waves

Chilling

Having spent a couple of nights at larger campsites in the area we stumbled across a gem of a site. Owned by a local farmer, the farm was perched on cliffs overlooking two beautiful beaches. Each site has a spectacular view and you felt like you had it all to yourself! We enjoyed a couple of days of swimming, reading, sunbathing and eating. Heaven!

Not a bad view from the van!

Our home for two nights

One of the site's beaches

Easter Sunday lunch

Matt testing out the rope swing during
one of the wetter parts of the weekend!

Sun poking through clouds

Autumn colours

Pohutukawa tree - our favourite

Feeling refreshed after so much relaxation we were ready for three days of work before another bank holiday weekend!

Over-indulgence and temperance

Post ironman, Matt and I were in need of a bit of relaxation. Luckily we had anticipated this beforehand and so had booked ourselves into a beer festival in Auckland with fellow poms and beer connoisseurs Jody and Hannah. The excitement had mounted somewhat over the work email in anticipation of festival day with plenty of banter regarding our costume choice (despite it not actually being officially fancy dress, for some reason going dressed up was essential). After much deliberation we settled on going as air crew (don't ask why). Hannah led the team as Captain Bailey, Jody appeared as Air Traffic Controller Wells, I dished out peanuts as Stewardess Broad and Matt had a  last minute promotion from Baggage Handler Cope to Trainee Ground Crew.

Costumes and props prepared we headed down to the waterfront in gale force winds (thanks to a south pacific cyclone my perfect stewardess hair lasted minutes). As you can see, a great time was had by all:

Boozy Jet (complete with name badges)

Peanuts anyone?

Managed to crop Jody's crotch out this time

Come in Captain Bailey, come in..?

There she goes!

Time to head home methinks

The beer festival weekend, and another undocumented drinking weekend later, we all felt we needed a bit of time off the beers. So in late March we set off down to Raglan for a couple of days and managed to not touch a drop of booze between us! Instead, the boys surfed, the ladies ran and we all drank lots of fizzy drink and caffeine! Fun times:

Surfer dudes

Best cafe in NZ (so says Hannah)

Bridal Veil Falls

Team Temperance

It really does look like a bride's veil!