Hyacinth Bucket Goes to Takapuna Beach

Well, we got our camper van two days ago - our home for the next 40 days or so while we tour around the rest of New Zealand. We said a sad goodbye to Hastings and our excellent hosts Martin, Catherine, Sam and Bodhi (the dog), aswell as my parents (hi guys!), and heading off to Auckland to pick up the cheapest camper van we could find. We decided to give the van a name as it's supposed to be good luck and seems to be the done thing these days (we need all the luck we can get with this van, that's for sure). Anyway, we decided on the name Hyacinth Bucket (pronounced Bouquet), a) because it's a Toyota HIACE (hence HIACE-cinth) and Bucket because it's a heap of junk with something like 350,000 miles on the clock. It seems to work fairly well though so fingers crossed.

We drove northwards from Auckland to Takapuna beach for our first night. Takapuna beach is near lake Pupuke (I'm not making these names up) and Pupuke is not pronounced Poo Puke (as in crap and vomit) as we found out. The campsite was right by the beach and quite relaxing but not mad exciting really. The view was nice but the weather was a bit overcast. Anyway, here's a photo of Su sitting outside with Hyacinth:

We stayed two nights in Takapuna to get ourselves sorted with food and essentials for Hyacinth and then drove early this morning to Paihia which is on the Bay of Islands. Poor Hyacinth struggled with some of the hills on the way - scary stuff. We've booked two tours over the next couple of days (one that brings us around some of the islands and lets us go swimming with dolphins and one that brings us along 90 mile beach and we can go sand tobogganing). We plan to take loads of photos over the next few days so I'll update the blog as soon as I can. Cheers!!

New Years night and New Years day

DRINK! It's a terrible thing. However, tradition is tradition so we thought we'd go out for New Years night and get hammered. We decided on a quaint little Irish pub in Havelock North called The Rose and Shamrock. They had a "Pimps 'n' Hoes" fancy dress night on and all the bar staff were dressed either as a Pimp or a Hoe naturally. I was asked by the manager to take my baseball cap off as they were not allowed on the premises - while the nice Playboy Bunny and S&M bar girls pulled beer. Seemingly dressing like a gimp is one thing but baseball caps are just a step too far. Anyway, undeterred we got down to the job in hand and drank Pilsner and wine like it was going out of fashion. As you see by the photos it was a good laugh (excuse the redness of the eyes in the photos - I think my camera is fecked...):

Thanks to Dad for coming to our aide at 3am when there wasn't a taxi to be found. We were gibbering messes by that stage so I can't imagine how we would have got home if he didn't give us a lift.

The next day the sun was splitting the stones and just in case we didn't have enough of beer, a decision was made to have a dinner of beer can chicken. Basically, you get a chicken and a can of beer. Drink half the beer and shove the can up the chickens arse, rub marinade on the outside of the chicken and cook in the barbecue on a lowish heat for 2 hours. Sounds mad (is mad) but tastes great!

You can see the can sticking out of the bottom of the chicken if you look closely.

We hope everyone has a great New Year!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everybody from myself and Su! It's raining here today in Hastings so it's going to be a day in front of the T.V, with myself and Su cooking everyone a beef and Guinness casserole later. Then it's off to a pub in Havelock to bring in the New Year! Hope ye all have a good one!

On a Mission to The Mission

Martin and Catherine got us a voucher (100 dollars!!!!) for The Mission Winery for Christmas so we thought that today would be the perfect day for a nice lunch (well, it has been overcast and raining for the last few days). We've been visiting a few wineries over the last few days (it's free booze basically - all you have to do is pretend you're interested in how it's made and stick your nose in it before you drink) and The Mission winery also has a very nice restaurant overlooking the vineyards - lunch came to 106 dollars so 6 dollars for a nice lunch (it'll be the last time we go out for lunch in a while I reckon), was exceedingly good value :)

The winery used to be a really bonefide Mission in the late 1800's - I think - something like that. Anyway, we both had Ostrich - like little medallions of steak really - very tasty. Between the bottle of wine we had and the dessert wine (I had ice wine and Su had their Gold medal Semillon) we were nice and toasted. We still had room to share a dessert between us. Yum!

  

Chocccccclatttte!!!

Christmas in Hastings, New Zealand

First of all we'd like to wish a belated Happy Christmas to everyone back home and abroad! The last few days have been been very busy and boozey so I've been a bit lazy with the blog - however here's a quick update of the last few days. We started Christmas with a lovely Christmas breakfast on the patio in the sun. It's was fantastic! Pumpkin fritters with bacon, poached egg, tomato, and hollandaise sauce - as Su says "To die for!".

Definitely the first time we've ever had Christmas dinner on a patio! We could get used it...

We exchanged gifts and we made out like bandits - woohoo!! We bought Baby Sam a Huge Hefner style silk dressing gown (smoking jacket really) from Thailand. He'll be the man about town next time he's at Mother and Baby group. I think Sam has eyes for Su - he keeps smiling at her - that won't do. Here's a photo of the Christmas tree with Sam's smoking jacket hanging up. I think his Dad was a bit jealous he didn't get a bigger one for himself. In fact, I might get one next time we're in Thailand.

We'd like to take this opportunity to thank everyone for the gifts we've received - both the Christmas gifts and the going-away gifts. We've made out like bandits and we appreciate it a lot. You're all too good. We'd also like to thank everyone who made it to our going-away bash - with people making it from as far as Athlone and even Spiddal! Fair play to all of ye - it really meant a lot. There is far too many people to thank individually but we must thank our parents, both Su's and mine for all they've done for us leading up to this - you've been outstanding!

A Whole lotta shakin going on

We were sitting down to a nice dinner of nachos, chilli, guacamole and sour cream two evenings ago. It was Dads first time eating chilli in... well.. ever.. when the whole house started shaking. It lasted for about 30 seconds and it turns out that we had just experienced our first ever earthquake, and quite a large one at that - 6.8 on the richter scale - about a 10 on the sphincter scale. The epicentre was about 50 miles offshore of Gisborne, which is north of Hastings (where we are). There were no casualties in Gisborne although there was 30 million dollars worth of damage - but I've taken some before and after photos of the mayhem in Hastings.

Brace yourself now...

My mother commented that that was the last time that Dad was going to be allowed to eat chilli.

Napier

We took a trip to Napier the day yesterday to have a quick look around. Napier is the nearest seaside resort to where we are staying in Hastings. It was devastated by an Earthquake in 1931 and was rebuilt in the Art Deco style that was popular around then.

 

Today was spent by the barbecue - eating burgers and drinking beer with some of Martins friends. We then played poker and I got my ass kicked. Rain is promised tomorrow so it could turn out to be an Irish Christmas after all!