My flight back to England is on Monday 26 June at 17:00 and I arrive into LHR at 7:00 on Tuesday 27 June. Mumma and Puppa plan on meeting me at the airport, as do Giorgio and Toni I think, so it’s going to be a big old family reunion. Only one part of the family will be missing, and that’s little Poppy, who I hope still recognises me!
I’m excited, but very sad to leave Sydney too. I’m pretty sure it’s stolen a little bit of my heart. What an amazing place.
So our last week together in Sydney is chock full of fun – and for Dave and I, that mostly involves eating out at all our favourite restaurants.
Monday night was Miss Chu, where we gorged ourselves on Vietnamese rice paper rolls, steamed dumplings, steamed pork buns, and sticky rice pudding.
Last night was Velero, possibly my favourite restaurant in Sydney, where for $38 per person, you get four tapas dishes and a huge seafood paella to share. Beautiful.
And tonight? A semi-farewell dinner with a few friends. I’m not a massive fan of the farewell party – I love going to other people’s to say goodbye, but it’s not really something I want for myself. Firstly, I don’t like the attention being on me particularly, and secondly, I just don’t like saying goodbye. Maybe that’s selfish (as pointed out by Dave) but that’s just me!
We’ve decided on a vegetarian place called Yulli’s in Surry Hills, followed by a few drinks in the Cricketers Arms, a pub which, I’ve been told by a particularly obsessed-with-everything-English Australian friend is just like an English pub – there’s a big open fire and it’s full of good-looking English men (her favourite type of man, of course). A fitting way to end my time in Sydney really!
Monday night was a rather eventful one. Dave decided he wanted ice-cream and when Dave wants ice-cream, all other considerations are swiftly forgotten (we do live about 5 minutes away from the best ice-cream in Sydney, Gelato Messina). In the rush to get there, both of us managed to forget our keys.....
The question was do we call a locksmith or do we kick the door down?
Getting in the building is easy enough - despite them having fitted a security door recently in front of the main door, it took all of 2 minutes to slip a hand through the railings of the security door and open the handle from the other side, and then Dave's substantial weight against the main door easily opened that...
We tried the old credit card trick for a little while and then decided it was just best to kick the door down. This was the result...
Problem solved. Apart from the mess the door is now in, of course. A hammer, a few screws and some putty will sort it out though, Dave is currently fixing it as I write...
Rubgy/football is a confusing concept in Australia as they play both rugby league, rugby union and also Aussie rules. Rugby league and union are both called rugby, but Aussie rules is called footy, with football being called soccer. You can imagine that for an English person this is very confusing!
Anyway, Aussie rules football is a very popular game here; it is a variant of football/rugby played only in Australia.
It's played between two teams of 18 players on a large oval pitch (usually a cricket pitch) with a rugby-shaped ball. The object of the game is to score by passing the ball between the goal posts, with the highest score being awarded for kicking it between the middle two posts. The primary ball-handling methods are kicking and handballing, and obviously running with it too.
We have been planning for a long time to go and watch a match and luckily this weekend the Sydney Swans, our local team who play at the Sydney Cricket Ground, were playing against North Melbourne in the AFL (or gay-F-L as Dave and his friends like to call it due to, yes, the gayness of the players - good for girls watching though because they wear tiny little shorts and are all generally pretty stacked and good looking!) premiership, which is the professional level of Aussie rules.
Matches are played in 20 minute quarters of the ball being in play. These, however, are usually much longer because more often than not, the players are having fisty-cuffs with each other. A game on average lasts for around two and a half to three hours so it's a good opportunity to get together with friends, have some beers and watch a good game.
The match was really great actually - after Dave had explained to me what was happening, it was really easy to follow, much more accessible than rugby union, which can be very confusing if you don't know all the rules in detail.
I'd go so far as to say in fact that I'm a little sad we didn't make more of Aussie rules and go and watch a few more games. A nice way to spend an afternon....!
Masterchef is the programme of the moment in Australia and each week the contestants have to cook-off against a famous chef. This week the contestants had to re-create a macaron tower made by Adriano Zumbo, famous in Sydney not only for his macarons, but also for his wonderfully inventive cakes and pastries.
Check out the tower from Masterchef here: http://www.masterchef.com.au/macaron-tower-with-kalamata-olive-and-beetroot-and-raspberry-macarons.htm
We had been planning to take a trip to his shop in Balmain for a couple of weeks, and this week was the one in which we finally managed to do it. Unfortunately for us, so had the rest of Sydney, due to Adriano being on Masterchef!
We ended up queuing for over an hour to get in the tiny little shop, which was full of delicious, mouth-watering treats. We did see Lote Tuqiri (this made Dave's day) though and Adriano Zumbo himself too, which made the wait a little less painful.
Dave, always with eyes bigger than his stomach, decided that he couldn't just get one cake for himself - no he had to get two, plus macarons and a quiche for lunch.
He chose the Shabalicious - caramel crunch, caramel sponge, caramel cheesecake, caramel chew & caramel cream cheese mousse, and the appetisingly green What a Great Pear of - almond creme, pear vanilla creme patisserie, pate a choux sable, pear gel, almond crunch & almond streusel.
I opted for the Got no Grains - oatmeal creme, toasted spelt mousse, maple gel, sesame nougatine & muesli bar. We also chose six macarons. $41 poorer - yes $41 - we walked happily out of the shop and took our cakes to devour in the park.
On the left is Got no Grains, on the right What a Great Pear of, and at the bottom, Shabalicious.
Eating the cakes was by no means an easy task and we both ended up very messy.
However, divine does not even begin to describe how delicious these cakes were! So delicious that I munched half way through mine, declared myself as feeling very sick, but carried on until the end because I couldn't bear to throw such deliciousness away. I then managed a macaron too (not as delicious - avocado and green tea flavour - a bit weird).
On a massive sugar high, and then low, we managed to somehow get ourselves home. And eat two more macarons about half an hour later. What a Great Pear of is being saved for this evening. Hollow legs?? Or just plain greedy...
Last night was our big outing to Sydney Opera House to see Waiting for Godot, and Aria, one of the best restaurants in Sydney.
Our pre-theatre dinner was absolutely gorgeous - and much better than Cafe Sydney despite people telling us otherwise. On arrival we were offered delicious homemade sourdough bread and an amuse bouche of pumpkin veloute with parmesan foam.
To start I had roasted scallops with Serrano ham, glazed chestnuts and brussel sprout leaves, whilst Dave had roasted goose breast with chicken liver parfait and raspberry jelly. Both were beautifully presented and scrummy too.
For main course Dave had the roasted lamb with red capsicum, baby artichoves and a lavendar and green olive sauce. I had a seared fillet of Murray cod with a fricassee of girole mushrooms, salsify and borlotti beans. Although the deal was two courses, we both chose to have dessert for another $17 because we couldn't resist (actually, I could but Dave forced me in to it).
First, however, came the petit fours - pistachio nougat, chocolate covered turkish delight and coconut macaroon. Yum! Dessert for Dave was a custard tart with poached pears, nutmeg and gingerbread ice-cream. I chose the poached rhubarb with honey-scented cream cheese, candied walnuts and rhubarb sorbet. Both desserts were absolutely beautifully presented and tasted pretty good too. The only problem was that they were so pretty, you didn't quite know how to start eating them!
I wish I had taken photos so you could see what we ate but it was such a posh restaurant, I would have felt silly!
On full tummies we headed to the Opera House for a pre-show drink. The play was absolutely brilliant - the acting was fantastic, and it really brought to life the humour that you sometimes miss whilst reading the play. I was quite surprised to see Matthew Kelly of Stars in their Eyes fame acting the character of Pozzo. I didn't realise he was in to acting but he portrayed his character extremely well.
We decided a night cap was in order so we walked to the Shangri-La hotel which has a cocktail bar on level 36 that provides gorgeous views of the city. Interestingly you can purchase a $10,000 martini here, which includes a one carat diamond at the bottom of the glass....
We weren't quite feeling flush enough for that so normal cocktails sufficed!
State of Origin is one of Australia's premier sporting events - a best of three series of rugby league played by the Maroons, QLD, and the Blues, NSW. During this time there is a lot of rivalry between the two states and the matches attract huge audiences.
Games 1 and 2 were won by QLD, so NSW supporters were understandably feeling a little deflated, especially seeing as QLD have won State of Origin five times previously.
Despite NSW's losing streak, we decided it would be good fun to go to the ANZ Stadium at Olympic Park and watch the last game live rather than on TV. I bought the tickets for Dave as a present for our four year (eek) anniversary, which was in May.
First stop after work was obviously dinner - we went to a Thai restaurant called Spice I Am near Central station, which everyone raves about. It was average - I wouldn't go there again.
We then caught the train to Olympic Park and once we arrived, settled down to a couple of drinks before the match began.
Our tickets were in the "Blatchy's Blues" supporters box so we were surrounded by New South Welshmen which made for a very good atmosphere. As part of our ticket price, we received a curly blue wig and a t-shirt to wear. A very good look I think you would agree...
The first half wasn't great because QLD had majority possession and had scored two tries to NSW's one by half time. The second half however was fantastic, NSW had majority possession and after a couple of near-attempts, scored their first try, which caused uproar in the stadium. The atmosphere was fantastic. Unfortunately it wasn't too long until QLD answered back to this and by full time they had well and truly won.
Despite the full time score of 18-23, we had a really enjoyable night.
Another post about food I'm afraid but yesterday turned out to be a day of eating!
Currently I'm working at Toyota and each year the team I'm with do an International Food Day where everyone brings in their signature dish for lunch.
We have lots of people of different nationalities where I live - Chinese, Indian, Macedonian (random, I know), Iranian, Italian, English...the list goes on...so we had a veritable feast of different dishes, all of which were delicious.
I decided to embrace the English part of me so I made scones - sultana ones, and maple syrup ones - and also brought in some jam and cream (just normal cream as you can't buy clotted cream here) to go with them. I used an interesting recipe I found on Nigella Lawson's website - 3 cups of flour, a cup of lemonade and a cup of cream, that's it! I think the lemonade is supposed to make them rise alot whilst also keeping them light in the middle. They turned out really well though, and they tasted good too so I think that recipe is a keeper! I forgot to take a photo of them when they were done but this is them in the oven, with another 10 minutes or so to go until they were done.
Other things on offer were two different curries, beef goulash, Thai fish cakes, spring rolls, chicken nuggets (the Australian offering...!), a beautiful Iranian dish of saffron rice with pine nuts and chicken, Italian meatballs, various salads, and chips. All yummy! We also had cupcakes, banana bread and the most gorgeous pistachio and almond biscotti and cannoli.
And the best part of our International Food Day? The fact that our lunch break was well over an hour long...! Although the rest of the afternoon was spent in a sleepy, food-induced stupor!
Making the most of the rest of our time in Sydney often means eating out at one of the numerous excellent restaurants here. Last night we decided to go to Cafe Sydney which is down by Circular Quay, and has probably one of the best views a restaurant could...
Aria is the restaurant which all tourists to Sydney are recommended to visit whilst here, however if you talk to a Sydneysider they will always say that whilst Aria is good, Cafe Sydney is miles better. Obviously, we had to give it a try!
It's quite an expensive restaurant so we decided that the plan of attack would be to share a starter and dessert, and order our own mains. We shared the grilled scallops with white anchovy, shaved fennel, cabbage, ruby grapefruit and pine nuts; the scallops were quite small but it was still nice. For mains I had tandoori-roasted ocean trout with lentils, roasted globe artichoke (which was actually an explosion of amazing taste in my mouth - it was gorgeous) and buffalo yogurt raita whilst Dave had the twice cooked pork belly with caremalised pear, speck, pistachio and jus. Both were delicious although, as is the case with all these kinds of restaurants, the servings are quite small and you get no vegetables!
The best part of every mealtime finally arrived - dessert. We chose the bread and butter pudding with brandy macerated winter fruit (prunes, apricots and figs) and honey ice-cream. Every part of this dessert was delicious - it had a creme brulee style top which was a lovely contrast to the creaminess of the pudding, and the winter fruits tasted just like Christmas (if you know what I mean). Possibly one of the scrummiest desserts I've ever had.
The bill came to $144.50, which isn't too bad considering we also had wine and beer. My review in general? Well, it was nice but I'm not sure it deserves all the rave reviews which people seem to give it. I've had much nicer food elsewhere. But the views were amazing, the service was really good and it was a nice evening so I'm definitely glad I went!
Living a luxurious lifestyle, next Friday we're off to Aria so we'll see how it compares....
This Saturday we decided to join the tourists doing some of the more popular activities that Sydney has to offer.
First stop was breakfast at Bill's in Darlinghurst, which, best known for their ricotta hotcakes with banana and honeycomb butter, is somewhat of a Sydney institution - -http://www.timeoutsydney.com.au/venue/restaurant/modernaustralian/bills.aspx. We, of course, just had to order these and they most definitely were not a let down - probably a days worth of calorie intake but absolutely delicious!
Next stop was the Opera House tour, which, helped by the fact that our tour guide was very passionate about the place, was really fascinating. It was a good chance to have a look at the main performing place - the Concert Hall - and learn about the history and workings of one of the most famous buildings of the 20th century.
Interestingly, Sydney Opera House, which is the youngest buildingo on the UNESCO World Heritage Site list, is a very controversial place. The Danish architect who designed the building, Jorn Utzon, was one of 233 entries (and obviously the winner) of a competition to build a dedicated opera house in the city. Legend has it that his design was actually rescued from 30 "rejects" by Finnish architect Eero Saarinen. Utzon had never visited Australia and had never seen a picture of Bennelong Point, where the Opera House stands, an amazing feat considering how well the building is placed and uses it's beautiful surroundings and views.
Utzon moved to Sydney as the principal architect on the build. The initial time frame and cost of the build was 3 years and AUD7 million but due to the ground-breaking design, they were soon over this estimation (it ended up taking 16 years and cost AUD102 million, which is equivalent to AUD1.9 billion today). Differences with the newly elected Premier, Robert Askin ensued, and Utzon eventually resigned from the job and returned to Denmark. So, although the building itself is an Utzon design, all of the rooms inside were designed by Australian architects.
Utzon never returned to Sydney, and never saw the completed Opera House, which is incredibly sad considering how famous a building it is. But there is a slightly happy ending: he was actually commissioned in 1999 to redesign a room, now called the Utzon room (by this time, however, he was 83, and obviously too frail to make the long journey from Denmark to Australia). Nevertheless, it is very interesting to compare the Australian-designed rooms and the Utzon room - to me, the latter is very airy and clean, and the attention to detail is incredible, whereas the former seems to be more more oppressive and less detailed.
Enough of the history lesson....next stop was Centrepoint Tower, Sydney's tallest free-standing tower, and the second tallest building in Australia. Luckily, it was a clear day, so the views across the city were excellent.
Finger Wharf in Woolloomooloo, where Russel Crowe owns a AUD14 million waterside property:
Darling Harbour:
Sydney Olympic Park:
The famous Coca Cola sign in Kings Cross, very near to where we live:
And, of course we couldn't leave this one out, American Express:
A day full of activities and walking was followed by a lovely relaxing evening of our favourite picnic-style dinner featuring yummy food from the David Jones Food Hall, and a film. Lovely!
We are lucky to live in a city where there are many diverse cultures from practically every continent of the world – ask someone where they are from and they are very rarely “Australian”, more likely Italian, Lebanese, Irish, Japanese, to name but a few. The most obvious way this has impacted Sydney is in its food culture – it is a foodie’s heaven and every conceivable kind of cuisine is available here; it’s something about Sydney that I am going to sorely miss once I’m back in England.
Much like London, Sydney has its own ChinaTown, where there are numerous Thai, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Malayasian, and Vietnamese restaurants. For me this is usually a place I avoid – it’s not my favourite place in the world for a few reasons, mostly because Asian people seem to walk really slowly.
My interest however has recently been piqued by a book I have read called Japanese Women Don’t Get Old or Fat. Now, I’ve always loved sushi but to presume that Japanese cookery is just sushi is very narrow-minded. This book really inspired me to delve further into the world of Japanese cookery, which seems to be simple, with clean flavours, and above all, very, very nutritious.
A trip to ChinaTown it was then, accompanied by Dave, to stock up on all the essential ingredients I would need to start my Japanese cooking adventure.
Easing ourselves into this we had lunch at a Japanese restaurant called Mizuya – a delicious meal of grilled teriyaki vegetables and steak, with various side dishes, rice, miso soup and the essential green tea.
This was followed by a dessert of almond milk tea with tapioca pearls, a favourite of the Japanese in Sydney.
Next stop was an Asian supermarket in the heart of ChinaTown. This has to be one of the most daunting supermarket experiences of my life – I must have spent about an hour trying to find the ingredients I needed, during which I mostly stood in one aisle staring at the hundreds of varieties of soy sauce there were, wondering what the difference was and which was best to get.
Everything (unsurprisingly) was in Japanese, Chinese or Thai, and although with a short translation on the back, I was still pretty clueless as to what kombu, bonito flakes and dashi were, what they looked like, or how I was meant to use them for cooking.
Anyway, helped greatly by Dave’s patience (I almost left my basket and walked out), I managed to get everything I needed, including some little treats called mochi – glutinous rice cakes filled with red bean paste. Treat, in retrospect, is definitely not the right word for them; they were absolutely vile. I think the clue was in the fact that they were filled with red bean paste…errrr, yuck????
To cut a long story short, my Japanese cooking experience was quite disastrous. I attempted a beef and rice dish, which was basically beef with onion and leeks broiled in dashi, a Japanese broth made from water, kombu and bonito flakes, over brown rice.
Apparently you can buy dashi ready made, but I couldn’t for the life of me find it in the Asian supermarket so I made it myself – I think this is akin to making your own chicken stock as when Dave relayed this story to his Japanese colleague, she was rather impressed.
The beef turned out as tough as old boots, although the taste of the broth was quite nice. I attempted to save the dish by instead making it vegetarian - stir frying some vegetables and then pouring the broth over this. It was average. Understandably, my enthusiasm for
Japanese cookery has somewhat waned since – I think I might stick to letting the experts do it and just get my Japanese fix from the local takeaway.
Sydney weather seems to be quite clever – during the week, when Sydneysiders are at work, it usually rains, and at the weekends, the sun puts his hat on and comes out in all his glory. The last few weekends have been the equivalent of a beautiful English summer’s day so we have been making the most of this (before we come back home to, no doubt, rubbish weather) and spending lots of time outside.
One Saturday morning, after our usual breakfast of croissants and coffee, we decided a trip to Watsons Bay for their famed fish and chips was in order. Ask any Sydneysider what is worthwhile doing whilst here and this will usually be in their top ten – it’s been on our list of things to do since we arrived, and now 5 weeks before I leave, we finally get around to doing it! This particular day, everyone clearly had the same idea as us as the ferry was packed.
Arriving in Watsons Bay we headed straight for Doyles - http://www.timeoutsydney.com.au/restaurants/sydneysbestfood/fish-and-chips.aspx - also known as Sydney’s best fish and chips. We joined the long, long queue, which luckily went quite quickly, and before we knew it we were sitting down at a table overlooking the bay with our food.
I’m not the biggest fan of battered fish so I ordered grilled Mirror Dory with chips and salad, whilst Dave had the battered Barramundi, also with chips and salad. And the review? Good, but definitely not as good as fish and chips you get in England.
Tummies stuffed, we went for a walk around the head of the bay. This is where the story gets interesting. Watsons Bay is home to the only nudist beach in Sydney – Lady Jane Beach. And oh were we witness to something spectacular this lovely, sunny Saturday afternoon – a naked man (apart from a hat) of about 60 playing with himself.
We were both rooted to the spot in complete dismay; I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. And I’m still not sure what is more wrong – the fact that he was doing that in public, or the fact that we were watching him and carried on doing so for far too long!
After eventually dragging ourselves away from the scene, we managed to finish the walk and get the ferry back to Sydney, thankfully without any more disturbing incidents! A very interesting afternoon that’s for sure…
For those of you who do not have the time to read the last twenty-or-so blog entries, or who do not want to humour our self indulgence any more than is absolutely necessary, I am going to attempt to summarise the last fortnight in a page or two. After all, a quick word count indicates that there is well over half a full length dissertation to contend with, most of which is, admittedly, my own drivel.
New Zealand as a country masquerades under many different guises- Akoxxx, (the original Maori name meaning ‘land of the long white cloud), EnZed (Lucia’s favourite), and Godzone amongst others. Godzone comes from God’s Own, as in ‘this is God’s own country. If he were to live somewhere, it would be here. Though should God not be such an adrenaline junkie and so disdainful of the British weather he may well find much of new Zealand packed away in the secluded corners of Britain.
Certainly Ireland can provide the rolling hills and much of the scenery (though perhaps to a lesser extent), Scotland can provide the snow capped mountains and Wales can probably put forward the sheep- which outnumber the residents ten to one. And England? England can provide the populous, as it seems to have done. Every other person in New Zealand seems to be an expat, or more accurately a gap year student who has exchanged the proceeds of his return flight home for one last bungee jump and is still working in Queenstown to recoup the money. He has even sacrificed haircuts to do so.
New Zealand is not a big country and we managed to cover the South Island fairly comprehensively during our stay, but didn’t even touch on the north. That’s not to say we didn’t leave our mark on the place; I take personal responsibility for one decapitated turkey and a comatosed possum; Lucia for running dry New Zealand’s stock of Perky Nanas; and Skins has left a trail of emotionally scarred and, in some cases, broken hearted sheep in his path.
With a short and intense journey like this, personal learnings are often the greatest. So what have we learnt? Trying to squeeze three people into a two berth campervan to save money is not a good idea. My toes are now too well acquainted with Skins’ face and vice versa; and the only positive to come from the situation is that Lucia managed to stay quite toasty sandwiched between the pair of us.
Speaking of sandwiches, we have also learnt that a human can have cheese, tomato and avocado sandwiches for lunch every day for three weeks with no significant ill effects.
Finally, before I came to New Zealand I thought personal hygiene was an imperative. I’ve since learnt that it is optional, and you can put a price to personal hygiene- exactly $1. In one of our more regrettable moments we actually sacrificed our morning shower to save the $1. That’s 50 pence!
Oddly, New Zealand does not seem as rugby obsessed as people seem to think, even in the current build up the World Cup soon to be hosted in NZ. Sure it shows rugby on all the TVs in pubs and most of the restaurants, but you certainly don’t see groups of Maoris practicing line outs in their lunch breaks as the media would have you believe.
Also, don’t go to New Zealand expecting constant entertainment, of all the cities we visited, with the possible exception of Christchurch, they could be quite extensively explored within a few hours and the only place I would like to spend a prolonged period of time was Queenstown, which has everything; it’s a haven for food lovers, beer lovers, adrenaline junkies and spa goers. We spent three days there, and I could easily have spent more...going to FergBurger every night for dinner.
That said, all the cities, if small, are lovely, charming and friendly and the roads that join them offer some of the most staggering scenery imaginable- it’s no wonder Peter Jackson decided to film the Lord of The Rings trilogy here. The decision may also have been based on the residents’ natural resemblance to Orcs.
On reflection, the things that I would really recommend doing are as follows: The Milford Sound overnight cruise; a glacier walk on either the Franz Josef or Fox glacier; a trip to see Shireen in Akaroa; exploring the Fox River caves if you’re feeling frugal; and spending a fair bit of time around the Queenstown region- skiing on The Remarkables, if possible.
In the interests of being impartial I should also suggest some things not worth doing; the Cadbury factory tour in Dunedin is pretty terrible (only surpassed in terribleness by the chocolate it produces); Pancake Rocks aren’t really worth seeing (or at least don’t go out of your way to see them) and finally; don’t try to share a two person campervan between three people in the middle of Winter.
As today was our last full day in NZ we thought we would try to make the most of it and do some nice things. After getting up and packing our campervan away we drove down to the centre of Akaroa for about 9.30am and purchased one of the day kayaking tours from the tourist centre.
The tour operator was going to pick us up at noon, so we spent the next couple of hours walking around Akaroa and having breakfast at L'Escargot Rouge. Akaroa is famed for having a somewhat French feel- all the roads are called ‘Rue’, the police are known as the ‘Gendarmerie’ and the community gather together annually for the Race D’Escargot which is, as the name suggests, a snail race.
After our fill of pain au chocolat and croissants we went back to the visitor site where Shireen, our tour kayak guide operator, a middle-aged lady, was waiting for us. Today, Lucia and I were the tour, so we had some quality two-on-one time with Shireen, who is, quite probably, my favourite New Zealander to date.
She drove us across the isthmus of Banks peninsula to Flea Bay, or Pohatu as Shireen likes to call it. It’s called Flea Bay because of the huge number of penguins (which are rife with fleas) that live there. Pohatu is the original Maori name for Flea Bay, and is for obvious reasons a slightly more endearing name.
The drive over was about 20 minutes, which was for the most part Shireen’s personal driveway. They owned over 1,500 acres spread across two valleys encompassing a protected marine park and home to Shireen, her husband and son, a few feral peacocks, four chickens, six dogs, a couple of seal colonies, approximately 100 head of cattle, 200 sheep, 300 penguins, many possums and many times more fleas.
Shireen and her family live off the land and eco-tourism- a very wholesome life. One of my favourite quotes of the day was from Shireen- ‘Sometimes, when his sheep die, our neighbour will chuck his sheep from the top of that cliff into the sea...he’s naughty that way’, certainly something you don’t usually expect to hear on a tour.
The kayaking itself was nice and peaceful, there were plenty of seals and birdlife to be seen, though fairly uneventful. The sea was a bit too rough to go too far out of the bay and when Lucia started to feel queasy from the 2m swells we decided it was time to head back in for a tea and homemade muffins.
The table was piled high with ammunition; the dad had spent the day hunting wallabies for the family dinner and the son was about to go out hunting possums (both are considered pests in NZ) for the dog’s dinner. After stopping for a few photos on the way back we said our goodbyes to Shireen and jumped in the campervan en route to Christchurch.
At about 6pm we arrived at a campsite in the centre of the city, which was actually just an expensive parking lot for the hotel guests which they rent out to campervaners. We went out for dinner at a nice, if slightly pricey, Mexican before heading home to spend our last night in Billy.
Somehow in the excitement of our holiday, someone didn't blog about this (I blame Dave). My memory certainly isn't good enough to remember this far back so it's highly unlikely Dave would as it's fairly certain he probably can't even remember what country he was in at this point in time...
It’s surprising how much of a lie-in you can have in a campervan which is freezing cold and not particularly comfortable; again, neither of us woke up until about 9am. Our first port of call was the supermarket to stock up on food for the last few days of the holiday, and after this, we walked in to Kaikoura to see what the town had to offer.
During the summer months, it’s a haven of activity; you can swim with dolphins, whales, see the seal colonies, go kayaking, and various other adventurous activities. Today, however, it was raining so that ruined our initial plan of kayaking and whale-watching.
We attempted the Kaikoura Peninsula walk, which is two hour walk around the peninsula of the town (surprising) where you can spot lots of interesting wildlife and see the awesome views that Kaikoura has to offer.
We got about a third of the way, and promptly gave up because we were absolutely soaked and very, very miserable. We did get to see the seal colony though, which was quite cool – they were seals dotted around the place; some just chilling out by the roadside, others further out on the rocks...
Very wet, we tramped back to our campervan, stopping at the bakery on the way, where we bought some carrot cake, a sultana scone, and a custard slice to try and lift our mood. The only way to spend such a miserable day is snuggled up in a cosy van so we ate our cakes, watched a film, and before we knew it, it was time to go to the very art-deco-style cinema to watch Bounty Hunter and eat yet more sweets, ice-cream, and cakes.
Last night it rained all night, so, as you can imagine, neither of us had a very good night’s sleep because all we could hear was the pitter-patter of rain multiplied by a hundred on the tin roof of the campervan.
Luckily by the time we had woken up the rain had stopped and it was turning into a nice day. We had planned to get the 9am water taxi up the Abel Tasman coast to Bark Bay and then walk back to Marahau, about a six hour trek. Unfortunately, we slept in by accident and it turned out that the next water taxi wasn’t until 12:30pm. We decided instead to walk from Marahau to Torrent Bay, about a four hour trek, and then catch the water taxi back to Marahau at 3:30pm.
It was a really beautiful walk; the perfect temperature, and some gorgeous scenery too. All in all we must have walked around 22km – we were both very tired by the time we arrived at Torrent Bay – a rest on the swing was a must...
Our water taxi arrived half an hour early – lucky we were already there as it would have gone without us otherwise, as they were just about to leave when we rocked up. It was an interesting ride back to Marahau with two red-neck North Carolinians and two Asian girls, followed by being pulled out of the water by a sea-faring tractor, which then drove us to our final destination. It was quite surreal being pulled along in a boat, by a tractor, on the road.
The next leg of the trip was the four hour journey to Kaikoura on the west coast – we stopped along the way for some Thai food, and finally arrived at the campsite (having thought we were going to run out of petrol, as at least the last 40 minutes of the journey was spent on the red) at about 9pm.
Tired from walking and driving we were soon asleep...after the bed had been put up of course, which is always a half an hour effort with Anal Dave (my new nickname for him) as he has to get his ruler out and make sure everything is symmetrical, parallel, perpendicular, blah blah blah.
We woke up this morning to spitting rain, which as we had our breakfast, gradually got worse. The plan had been to drive up to Mount Arthur and do a three-hour hike but we soon cancelled that as the weather was too bad, and just getting up there in the campervan would have been impossible. Instead we decided to drive to Nelson, one of the larger towns in the north of the South Island, to have a look around the shops. They were all fairly uninspiring – cities in NZ seem comparable to small towns in the UK so, as you can imagine, it’s not really the country for a good old shopping spree.
An afternoon in a cafe it was; we found a lovely little place called Zatori, which was beautifully decorated and sold the most divine cakes. We settled down with the moistest and most delicious carrot cake I’ve ever eaten, chai lattes each and a book, and enjoyed the warmth for a couple of hours.
Next it was on to Marahau, the gateway to the Abel Tasman, as we wanted to do some more tramping. Turns out Marahau is yet another dead NZ town in the winter, so it was another night in our tin can with a lovely dinner of pasta, a book and a few films. Quite cosy really!
