Happy birthday me!

I had the Friday off, so caught the ferry over the North Shore and met Sarah for a Belgian lunch. A big Brun Leffe and half a chicken later, I was back on the bike.

Turns out Leffe travels better to New Zealand than I do with a stomach full of it up and down hills...

Good times!

Chur!

A Kiwiana Birthday

Another weekend in New Zealand, another weekend off in Carrie the Van... Our excuse this time was to celebrate Sarah's birthday. I'd been at a conference for the last half of the week, so after the final keynote Auckland city witnessed a man in a suit sprinting across town to jump in the van and beat the traffic. Kiwis like nothing better than getting out of the city at the weekends, and I tried my hardest to get in front of them!

This time, we decided to stay in the Auckland region (a huge super-city and regional area which stretches a long way North, encompassing lots of amazing parks). The plan was to tiki-tour around from one regional park to the next and visit the bays, wineries and villages on the way. As well as celebrate Sarah's birthday.

We got out to Wenderholm Park that night, and were the only people in a secluded field sat on a river delta, nestled in between the mountains. Just us and lots of Pukeko, the NZ version of British moorhens. Bring on the birthday drinks!

Sarah's new nautical cardigan, courtesy of her mum!

Next day, we left the van in it's spot and had a walk around the mountains looming above the sea. The parks up there were full of native bush and odd birds, the noises were like walking round a tropical jungle!

Chillin' on my tree

Back in the van, we headed further North - calling in at the Puhoi Valley Cheesery. Sarah insisted. We tried a lot of cheese. Sarah managed to sniff out the cheese which "apparently had to be eaten that day". We bought it. We ate it all that day. Nothing surprising there.

A sight for sore eyes!

Puhoi village itself was tiny - a little enclave formed by Czech Bohemian immigrants in the mid-1800s. Everything was super tiny - check out the vast library below!

Cheese and books.
What more could she need?

And south of Warkworth, a huge beehive establishment - with the complementary tourist shop and museum. And more free tastings.

bzzzzzzz

And then around the next corner? A Kauri tree reserve - the world-famous-in-New-Zealand tree of immense proportions. Check out this bad boy, a mere tiddler compared to NZ's biggest Kauri of around 50m in height and 5m in diameter. A proper big boy.

Spot the difference.

After plenty of sightseeing inland and at beaches, we hunted out our next spot - a site recommended by workmates and the guidebooks, the regional park of Tawharanui. After a Colin McRae style mountain pass on gravel tracks in the campervan, Sarah was glad to finally arrive. And the pots and pans in the back were happy to go back on their shelves.

Boy was it worth it - a stunning peninsular with a pest proof fence (akin to Jurassic park, but a bit shorter) to let the native flora and fauna flourish. Crack open a bottle and wait for the sunset...

Go away clouds- we want colour!

There it is - in all it's glory

Before retreating into the van, to shelter from the persistent wind of NZ. Our rock and roll lifestyle over the last few months has turned us into avid monopoly players.

Be warned any visitors - I'm a pretty cool kid nowadays.

Sunday morning... up super early and off on a hike around the peninsular following the various trails. Along the sandy bays, scrambling over rocks, up a shallow cliff edge, through rolling green fields filled with lambs, to lookout points across the bay and back down through rainforest valleys. All in the space of 3 hours - such a diverse countryside. And the best bit? We saw a real life, wild kiwi bird! It was only a little one and scurried off into the undergrowth before sticking it's head out a few times, but it was great to see. They're supposed to be nocturnal, but this one was a bit confused!

Spring is here!

And back in time for a full English fry-up in the sunshine... Happy birthday, Sarah!

Carrie & Sarah - FRIENDS
(watch Inbetweeners if you don't get it!)

Tiki Touring

Tiki Tour n. a roundabout way to get somewhere, serendipitously discovering sights and activities along the way.

Tiki touring round NZ is a bit of an institution. Travellers fly in to Auckland, buy/rent a van and do a big lap of the North and South Islands, passing over the Cook Strait in between. We've got the luxury of being here for a year, so have plenty of weekends and visitors to go off touring in Carrie the Van.

The country is perfect for it - quiet, long open roads on such a narrow pair of islands, allowing you to go down one side and up the other without ever getting too far from any of the action in the middle bits.

Our first proper tiki tour was down to the Bay of Plenty. We're now coming to the end of Winter but the weather has been ridiculously good (already getting some dodgy cycling tan lines, including brown arms and white backs of hands from wearing mitts!)

First stop - Paeroa; home to L&P with the magnificent tagline of "World Famous in New Zealand", a delicious lemonade made with the local spring water. Every town here has some curious claim to fame and milks it for all it's worth - L&P is one of the stronger claims to fame. Other towns have labelled themselves the mural town (we found two painted walls), the corrugated iron town (with a giant corrugated sheep) and the tudoresque town of Cambridge, of which the only stained timber framed thing we saw was a park bench. I'm sure that bizarre list will grow!

Sarah bought the super-size bottle (660ml)

But the sights aren't all odd claims to fame - travel around the next bend and the tiki tour points the way to an old gold mining gorge. Slam brakes on. Start turning. Put indicator on. Lots of the old mine shafts were still open (and encouraged to go down!), so we grabbed the torch and went as far as we dared. When the wind started making funny noises we turned back!

Next stop of the day was a vineyard, in the little town of Bethlehem. Judea was just down the road, too. No joke. We tried about 10 different types - whites, reds, sparkling and ports. And cheese. Good times.

Well, it would be rude not to try some.
And even ruder not to buy some.

Time to head up to the hills to find a Department of Conservation site to stay the night. We settled on Mclaren Falls Park, full of secluded spots and lots of newborn lambs. Born to make tasty shanks.

Enjoying life before the butcher

Our spot for the night

Breakfast with a view

Chucking everything back in the van, we headed further East along the coast to Tauranga for a walk around town and to climb the volcano perching above the town.

Nice to climb one without the bikes for a change!

Getting out of town was a bit of an issue - definitely missing our satnav at times! But, in the spirit of the tiki tour, we just kept on going in vaguely the right direction and all ended well. We even drove through the kiwi producing centre of NZ - Te Puke, complete with giant kiwi and kiwi-ana shop! Cue more kiwi wine tasting, feijoa vodka drinking and jam testing. Rock and roll.

Kiwis in NZ are way bigger...

There's only so much you can learn about kiwis - so we left.

And found our spot for the night, perched on the dunes of this lovely bay. Rock and roll living continued, with a cup of coffee on the beach.

Living on the edge.

Nearly there... 1 night left to go! Arriving in Whakatane (Wh = f ). Behave. We parked up on the quayside and enjoyed a long walk along the cliff tops, visiting secluded bays and an ancient Maori pa (a kind of castle of the native folk). Lovely.

More exercise. Why?!

And we found some of these fellows guarding a cave!

And our stop for the night was a more commercial site, nestled in the mountains on the way to Rotorua. Inbetween all the posh campervans, we washed off all the seagull poo from our old banger, before jumping in the thermal hot pool to clean ourselves up.

Sadly the next day was a shocker - pouring down with rain as we made our way down past all the lakes to Rotorua. We saw nothing! Through Cambridge and Hamilton - too wet to get out. Ah well, a dash back home it was. Not the easiest driving!

A giraffe taught me how to drive.

All in, a great trip. Looking forward to more tiki tours!

Love from Mitt and Sirrah x

(it's as close as the kiwis can get to pronouncing our names, bless 'em)

The All Blacks!

New Zealand is known for Lord of the Rings, the great outdoors and of course the All Blacks. We've watched the full LOTR trilogy since being here and as you're all aware, enjoyed plenty of the great outdoors. So we decided a visit to Eden Park to watch the All Blacks take on the Wallabies was definitely in order!

As if we weren't excited enough, we decided rather than catching the train to the stadium we would join with the other supporters and walk the 'Fan Trail' from the city centre. We packed some beers, popped on our cheap but effective NZ t shirts and enjoyed plenty of entertainment en route, including flash mobs, traditional dancers, music and lots and lots of silver fern flags.

Here I am holding one en route

We got to the stadium nice and early so were treated to some more entertainment. 'Hugely successful' (in Australasia) band Dragon, and some angry Maori dancers getting us warmed up for the Hakka.

Stadium starting to fill up

Once the players came on the pitch the crowd were well and truly ready (and rowdy) and joined in a hearty national anthem sing-a-long.

The boys in black

The match between NZ and Australia was the second leg of the Bledisloe Cup test - NZ have had the trophy in the cabinet for the last 9 years, and with a win last weekend in Sydney were looking set to dominate. They still did the Haka just to make sure the Wallabies were aware of their superiority!

Spine-tingling stuff!

 And then the game finally started!

It wasn't the greatest... but memorable for the score at least - 22-0 to the All Blacks! One fantastic try, a few penalties and some very close calls on the try line.

Not so many shots of the actual game -
too busy jumping up and down and
shouting with everyone else!

Before catching the train home we were treated to the new video for the Flight of the Conchords charity single for NZ Red Nose Day. For anyone who knows Flight of the Conchords - you have got to watch this - absolutely hilarious!

'Britt' of the famous NZ duo

Volcanic Velos

Just realised how enthusiastically I've started most of my recent posts on this blog. Loving this, loving that. So I'll keep a more reserved feel for this one.

On Wednesday last, Sarah and I partook in a delightful bicycle ride around some of Auckland's volcanoes. There are about 40 volcanoes in the Greater Auckland region, likely to erupt again in a timeframe of 100 to 1000 years, apparently. We live on a hill, so hopefully the lava will flow around us. 

Not sure if our hill is also a volcano though. Ah well. Off we go.

Sarah doing an impression of the locals
(minus todger)

Definitely not going mad.

So, we set off on our new bikes (mine's a Wilier called Willy, Sarah's is a Merida called Miranda. We're fine, don't worry. Just need a little variety of company!) Off from the CBD area, along the rather posh Mission Bay beach front, hugging the rugged coastline all the way along. Before heading round to Point England and conquering Mt. Wellington, a proper steep little bugger!

From the top of Mt Wellington looking down at the
estates filling up the old quarry

It's Winter here in Auckland, so the locals are wrapped up in long coats and other riders are out in full thermal lycra. We think it's pretty much tropical, as evidenced by the blue skies and palm trees!

Down towards Point England

After our first volcanic climb, we were getting a bit peckish. With no bike lock with us, and the TV being plastered full of amazing McDonalds adverts for the Lamb Burger.... well. What else could we do apart from navigate the drive thru by bike.

Took a few rolls over the pressure sensor, but finally
the intercom knew we were there!

Of all the views, this is where we had our lunch

Tummies full of the most amazing burger (Chris - think lamb kebab, but even tastier!) it was time to tear up the next peak, One Tree Hill. Someone cut the one tree down, but the name remains the same. This is by far the best view of the city we've had so far.

Empty legs!

And what a view it was from the top...

Mt Eden (our last peak) sits in the distance

After completing Mt Eden and cruising back into the city, we were pretty ragged - so squeezed the bikes into our studio flat and jumped into the hot tub downstairs.

All in, not a bad day.

Bubbles machine not working?
No problem.

Our little piece of NZ

So you might all be getting bored with the "we're settling in" themed posts - this will be the last one for a while we promise (we will be out on the road again for some exploring soon!) But we thought the nosy amongst you might like to sneak a peek at our new apartment (its not a flat, apparently - you only get them out of the CBD (central business district in English). Also - bungalows here can be two or three storeys. How's that work?

We moved in at the weekend and a trip to Warehouse and Pak n'Save later we have managed to brighten up the place a little bit, and stuffed the teeny kitchen to capacity.

Living/dining/reception/bar room

The world's teeniest, but best stocked, kitchen!

Bedroom - spot the bikes!

Weirdly, we are loving how compact the place is - we haven't got a lot of stuff, and its only us two... so cosy is good. Oh, and there's a gym in the building, a swimming pool, hot tub, our own balcony and we're just a short walk from everything we could want (including 5' for Matt's train to work and possibly mine - once I make a job choice!)

Swimming pool from our balcony!

 Visitors, we're ready and waiting for your arrival!

New kitchen clock - definitely ask for Speight's - its delish

Settling In

Well, it's been a month since our arrival and we're starting to feel really settled, if not a bit exhausted! In the last 6 months we've got married, packed up all our belongings in storage (thanks parents), toured the world, found a temporary flat, found a new flat (with a pool!), found jobs for us both, bought a van and purchased two lovely road bikes. Tired but so so happy it's all working out.

To celebrate Sarah getting a job offer, we had arguably a bit too much of the local sauce in the flat. Silly dancing ensued:

Tailor-made Vietnamese dresses.
Good for swirls.

 And I got bored of dancing with Sarah, so danced with my bike: Willie.

I needed a taller dancing partner.
And one that ate less cheese.

Before we calmed down a bit...

Still happily married!

Before our jobs start, we're making the most of our free time. With plenty of running, tourist sites and trips out in Carrie the Van. Auckland is littered with steep, grassy volcanoes and we're trying to get round them all. Here's the view from Mt Victoria, in the posh area of Devonport.

Not bad for a winter's day!

 Devonport is also home to NZ's Naval Museum. Educational, but the wardrobe was obviously the best bit.

Rear Admiral Sarah

 The only thing that fitted me was the lowest ranking outfit. Charmed.

In the Navy...

 Before taking some Fush 'un Chups back to the van - a great taste of home...

But no vinegar on offer, what's with that?!

 Naturally, like every Brit and most of the World, we've been glued to the Olympics. The Kiwi banter about the Aussie medal performance has been hilarious. The +11 hour time difference has been taking it's toll though. Evidence of me scoffing mince pies whilst trying to watch the mountain biking below:

As it's cold, I'm expecting Christmas soon.
Buying mince pies has confused me further!

 And the last picture is the latest addition to Auckland's chapter of Hell's Angels, Sarah Cope. Watch out Bradley Wiggins, the mini-dynamo is on your tail...

Proud of her new wheels!

And the final piece of news, we've bought some tickets to see the All Blacks v Wallabies later this month, in the Antipodoean version of our 6 Nations. Can't wait!