An Antipodean Adventure...

Tēnā tātou katoa Welcome!

Wow that was without a doubt the longest hiatus from the blog we've had so far. Apologies for the silence but it is a reassurance that some of you kept asking about our lack of blogging, but hey, here it so hush now. And to those of you who never asked us about the blog....shame on you!

Our antipodean stumbles have found us living in the windy city of Wellington, New Zealand. Hard to believe it but we have been here 7 months now. We got here in the tail end of winter, so at least we can blame our tardiness toward the blog on us enjoying the Spring and Summer here, as the saying goes, you really can't beat Wellington on a good day. People emerge from under rocks or wherever they usually hide from the wind and they swarm the streets and beer gardens in their throngs to soak up the sun. Which, incidentally has a burn time of 15 minutes. Resulting in unprepared red heads getting blisters across their foreheads! All of this going on while everyone back home is trapped under a blanket of snow. Hopefully your entrance into spring now will melt some of the icicles.

Sunny Wellington!

Before the little green envy gnomes start to rear their heads, bear in mind that when it's not happy and shiny here, we all retreat back under our rocks to hide from the other extreme of Wellington weather. One word can stir up terror across this little metropolis...."southerlies". These Southerly winds make their way up from Antarctica with no other country in their path. Hitting the south island they get absorbed by the Southern Alps. But when they hit the north island they get absorbed by Wellington and proceed to whip rain storms and icy bites across the city. So, really, it's not like we're better off than you guys, just different really.

Stormy Wellington!

As you may recall when we arrived in Australia we got dragged kicking and screaming back to reality after backpacking carefree for 6 months. We all remember the (ten week) struggle Richie in particular faced trying to find work in a city full of barmen. That wasn't the case here in Wellywood. We were like an efficient, well-oiled machine and man, did we hit the ground running! Within two days we had secured ourselves a gorgeous wee house, our own little Hobbinton! This was just in time for the arrival of our best mate from back home, Suzie Q! Who arrived in Wellington after a grueling 30+ hour journey (cigarette free brags Suz!), only to find out they had done her the honour of losing her baggage! Fraught with the anxiety that some happy baggage handler somewhere was using her hair straighteners we were all relieved when a couple of days later the bags were couriered, intact to our abode.

Suzie Q!!!

How dare you! In front of all my asparagus! (In joke, don't ask)

Anyways back to the good stuff! Richie secured a job within 6 days of arrival and then Tammy and Suz landed jobs pretty soon after. Richie got a job working for a company called Provoke, who design and build online solutions. Tammy broke into the public sector and found herself a job across the road from the NZ parliament working in the Treasury. While Suzie ended up with the real social life and got her first ever bar job in JJ Murphy's, one of the many Irish bars in Wellington.

Tammy's building next to the Beehive (parliament buildings)

We had arrived and were secure, safe, and established. Soon life entered its old faithful 9 to 5 routine, which we had almost forgot about. Secure in our little cottage perched on the side of what we've grown to refer to as "Our Hill", we dug in and awaited the Summer to catch up with us.

Walking up "Our Hill" everyday is not easy

That's our little blue house, center left

Kiwi houses have no insulation or central heating, so blankets are a must

Walk to the end of Aro Street, Aro Valley in Wellington and the road splits and the hills begin. Taking the right, up Raroa road and Entrance Street and you find our narrow pedestrianised Irvine Street. At about 15-20 minutes walk from the centre of the city, you'd imagine we'd be still in the thick of it. However, we honestly get praise from visitors to our place about how we just managed to escape it, while at the same time, staying comfortably close. One of our happy pleasures on a warm summer's day is to sit in the garden and look out over the city buzzing around below us.

Giving directions can be tricky...

The hill might cause most who tackle it, to reach our house out of breath. Pizza deliveries and taxi companies have grown to hate us I bet. But taking a moment at least once a day to appreciate our little view makes it worth while. Standing at our doorstep and looking out we have trouble imagining ourselves standing waiting for the bus back on the cold, wet streets of Dublin. Though people usually go on about how there's not much difference between places like NZ, Australia, Ireland and the UK, which on the surface is kind of true. When you manage to lift up the rug and look underneath you soon realise the differences can be substantial.

Welcome to 11a Irvine Street

Whether sitting inside or out, your thoughts can be disturbed at any moment by the abundance of wildlife we share our hill with. Look up to the sky when you hear the magical sound of a Tui or the hilarious sound of a Kaka. Inspect the bushes when you hear a rustling and you'll always find very confused but but surprisingly brave (or just stupid) hedgehogs. But be careful what you unearth, cause insects in NZ are monsters! And our house has its fair share of creepy visitors that could make it a no no for some people I guess.

Green stick insects or Kate Moss as we call them are regular visitors

Esmeralda was our resident guard spider next to the back door for about 4 months

Tunnel Web spiders are probably the biggest spider any of us have ever shared a house with

Wellington in comparison to Melbourne and even Dublin is a very small city. But its this size and the fact that its full of Kiwis I guess, that lend to its atmosphere. This atmosphere alone is what causes people to want to emigrate here. Where Dublin has the craic and Melbourne is just so effortlessly cool, Wellington is super chilled. From walking past people meditating in parks on your way home from work, to trying not to step on the toes of one of the many people who insist on walking around the city in bare feet, to receiving a warm smile and cheerful Kia Ora (hello in Māori) from the bus driver every morning.

Eating Fish and Chips by the bay

Poetic sculpture down by the waterfront

Oh the excitement of grocery shopping....

These guys are in Aro Valley Park everyday

After a while, when we were more comfortable, it was time to start planning ahead and seeing NZ. This was really made clear to us, after a small day trip with some people from Provoke, where we visited the Marlborough wine region on the South Island. At the time there was persistent bad weather in Wellington and we assumed that this was probably the case for most of NZ. Then all of a sudden one morning we find ourselves on a ferry coming into port at Picton, with the sun beaming down on us and dolphins playing in the waves, left in the wake of the boat.

Cross the water and NZ seems like a different country

On our return to Wellington we immediately set about planning further excursions. Thinking ahead to a big road trip around the South Island (which we have still yet to do), we weighed up the options of either renting a campervan for the road trip alone or just buying a van ourselves. Excited by the additional freedom that owning our own van would provide us with. We decided to go with plan B and get our own. And so Itsy Bitsy (In honor of Kev & Des's much bigger van, Sexy Betsy, which if you remember we drove around Thailand) came chugging into our lives and man have we regretted it since.

Our "mighty" chariot is the envy of all her friends

Even if she has been cursed to fail...

Itsy Bitsy, Vanimal, The Dammed, Shite Wagon, Nightmare on Irvine Street. These are only some of the many names that we have used to refer to our van, which has honestly turned out to be the biggest financial mistake we've made since starting our travels. Neither of us are very well schooled when it comes to buying cars and we're also complete novices when it come to auctions.

Suzie carefully mounts the wagon of uncertainty

Letting the adrenaline of the bidding war take hold of us we unfortunately purchased a vehicle with a dodgy radiator. I'm sure for most of you I don't have to explain in detail how impossible it is to fix a radiator without fully replacing it. And replacing it would cost us more than the van was worth to us so it has spent quite sometime sitting idle and alone, with $500NZD worth of camping equipment inside! She has the welly to get us around Welly but that's pretty much it. Push her any further and all of a sudden you can hear that tell tale bubbling sound coming from beneath the front seats, and then boom, she goes into the red without any warning!

When you hear the bubbling, it's time to stop and wait

We set off on our first road-trip in Bitsy just after Christmas, oblivious to the impending stress that we were about to soak up from the road. We loaded up the van with bags of festival gear, tents, welly boots, chairs, hats and alcohol. Not forgetting the 4 giddy and excited festival goers. Poor Bitsy was dragging her ass off the ferry on the South Island weighed down by all our "essentials". I don't think we made it 20km out of the first town before she slammed up into the red, and this was the way it continued for the next 3 hours; drive 20km, wait, tentatively remove the heater cap, avoid the red volcano explosion, load up with fresh water and head off again...repeat every 45 minutes.

Down at the main stage

Our roads divided when the two ladies, Suzie and Alla, stuck out the thumbs (and legs) and hitched a less stressful lift to the festivities. Richie and Tam caught up 5 hours later when we finally made it to the festival gates. 200km in 8.5 hours is bad right?! We were horrified when we were ordered out of our van as the ruthless and unsympathetic security forces who poured out a total of 1 bottle of vodka (sad face for Suzie), 1 bottle of rum (sad face for Richie) and 1 bottle of gin (red, angry, tired face for Tammy). It's a brave man who pours away the hard earned booze of an Irishman (or women).

It wasn't easy, but Bitsy made it in the end

With 12 cans of well hidden beers between 4 thirsty people to last the weekend we prayed that the second coming of Christ would take place at an obscure Drum n Bass festival in New Zealand and he would open with the water to wine trick as a crowd pleaser. No such luck. Suzie and Tammy spent the weekend sneaking cans of beer from the bar to the campsite. The sad thing was that the bar people opened the beers first so inevitably when we tried to walk out of the festival with 6 cans of beer in our tights we arrived back to the campsite with wet legs and empty cans. We stopped short of wringing the tights into cups. But hey, what doesn't kill you, or cause you to resort to homicide can only make you stronger right?

Cleaning off the festival grime down by the river

The days before our Phat adventure saw us enjoy our second helping of a warm and toasty mid Summer Christmas. I know, I know, you're all thinking "it's March people!", but Tammy was so proud of her first ever attempt at roasting a turkey, that there would be war if this blog post did not contain some pictures of the feast! It was a close call too, we were all nearly going to be left eating tofu and potato salad when Tammy had a little bit of a "mishap" in the kitchen.

11 pound bird, mummified in bacon!!!

The turkey was frozen and was sitting patiently thawing on the counter-top awaiting Tammy's big debut. On Christmas Eve Tam put said turkey into the oven to get it out of the way as she got the place ready. Unfortunately Tammy had totally forgotten the fact that she had switched on the grill. A few minutes later, wondering what that bizarre smell was, the blood drained from Tammy's face as she dived towards the oven to rescue the turkey, the plastic on which had melted down the sides to reveal two turkey breasts nicely crispy and brown but still frozen solid on the inside. After a panicked call to the butcher, the executive decision was made to plough on with dinner as planned and to never mention anything to our guests.

Devoured, nom nom nom....

Well, nobody died and dinner was a success so here it is....the truth in its rawest form! It doesn't beat a story from a rather senior public servant (who shall remain nameless) who accidentally seasoned her chicken fillets with ajax. Some emergency scraping was involved and I am happy to say she lives now with a conscience clear from manslaughter charges.

Bursting point....

So that about wraps it up for us for now. The seasons are beginning to shift towards cold, dark mornings and the cicadas are singing in a more muted yet still dulcet manner. The tuis are saving their voices until next spring when they will rise again with their dawn choruses. And the Irish are looking forward to swapping the sangria garden parties for mulled wine evenings in beside the fire. Thanks for once again stopping by our blog, it is always lovely to hear your feedback.

Loads of love from way down here...

Next time we will report back from our road trip around the south island, although I am sorry to say that it looks like Christchurch will still be off our radar. I will leave you by reporting back on how truly touching it is to witness the hard work, sweat and tears flow into the effort to help those most in need. Many marae (a place of gathering) have sprung up across the country, built and sustained by people with love and time to share. What is truly a tragedy has gone to show just how much people are willing to do and give when it matters the most.