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The Gordon-Currie Cat Sitting Hobbity Chrismas
Wellington, New Zealand |
Wellington, New Zealand
Back in June when we were sunning ourselves in Thailand we were applying for house sits in New Zealand so that we would have some where to spend Christmas as there is nothing more sad that just the two of us sitting on a campsite with no presents on Christmas morning.
Our angels were obviously looking after us as after just a few emails and a quick Skype call the wonderful Gemma and Shane offered us their house in Newlands in Wellington with two super cute furry cat babies to look after for 7 weeks. 7 weeks may sounds like a long time but when we are moving all the time, getting more and more behind on our blog and generally just gagging for a snippet of living a normal life with a normal routine this was a dream situation. Gemma and Shane are just awesome people as putting their faith in us to travel through Thailand, Taiwan, South Korea, Indonesia and Singapore before getting to New Zealand to me seemed very brave, but they wanted someone who was really going to appreciate their house whilst they were away roughing it in India. Boy did they pick the right people!
We had a bit of an idea and ran it by my parents and Gemma and Shane as to whether they would mind if we really made full use of their house and invited my parents over to NZ for Christmas and lo and behold they were all delighted at the prospect.
So there the plan was laid, we would be spending 7 weeks in Wellington with 2 fur babies and for a proportion of it my parents, awesome.
We didn’t want to just land ourselves on Gemma and Shane as soon as they got home from work and we found the perfect way to pass an hour or two in the city. Having a tour of none other than Sea Shepherd’s vessel, The Sam Simon. It was so cool to be in the bridge, on the deck and even in the little common room. So cool!!!
Having spoken to Gemma and Shane and seen only a few photos we had no idea how nice their house was until we arrived, a huge lounge, dining area and separate conservatory and a kitchen with a coffee machine to rival any that Starbucks has to offer. And obviously most importantly 2 of the cutest most adorable cats ever, Owl a little tabby girl and Piglet a sleek ginger boy. This was going to be a great 7 weeks.
We spent the first night with Gemma and Shane frantically packing for their travels whilst giving us a whirlwind tour of the house, garden and anything else that we might need to know whilst they were away.
We waved off the lovely Gemma and Shane with Shane looking more than a little concerned as to whether a 7 week backpacking tour of India was a good idea and set to shopping to stock the pantry, we bought and erected a Christmas tree and most importantly we got to know our temporary fur babies. I think that it is safe to say that with Owl snuggling me all night long like a real life teddy bear and Piglet curled up with us on the sofa, the fur babies had accepted us and we were going to have the best time with them.
I had every intention of having a week in Wellington to get organised for mum and dads arrival, with a full itinerary planned and our blog jobs done, however it didn’t quite work out that way as I somehow got the dates wrong and mum and dad arrived just a few days after us.
We picked them up from the airport expecting two zombies to arrive having spent the last 3 days in the air or being hustled through airports. No, these two looked like a pair of celebrities walking out with their designer outfits, immaculate hair and huge smiles. If I hadn’t booked their flights myself I would have sworn that they had been in first class and slept the whole way to the other side of the world!
Having mum and dad in NZ was just awesome, even being as disorganised as I was we managed to have a great time visiting Te Papa Museum in the city, sending mum and dad off shopping for some warmer clothes as they had not believed me when I told them it was freezing, they got to see the Sam Simon before it sailed to the Southern Ocean, we went up the Wellington Cable car and had coffee and cake with a view over the city and we even toured every hotel, bar and shop in the city to see the Lord of the Rings costume trail by WETA Studios. Thanks to mum and dad being so super generous we also ate out pretty much every day for lunch, afternoon tea, late afternoon coffee and cakes and dinner.
We did a pretty cool tour which very nearly didn’t happen as we turned up to our usual city car park to find it had been turned into a fruit and veg market for the day. Thankfully we managed to park Blondini safe and sound and got picked up for our 4×4 jeep tour to see some of the ‘off the beaten track’ Wellington. Our guide was ever so slightly crazy, but in a good way and we set off to get some views of Wellington from the first ever wind turbine, next up we were off roading it through windy farm land down the coast where we stopped at a farm with a selection of huge deer roaming around. We carried on down to the beach and found a few lazy male seals relaxing on the beach. Our guide made us bush tea from Manuka and another delicious tree that I can’t remember but it soothed my random tooth ache and sadly before we knew it we were back in the city being hugged goodbye by crazy driver guide. Back in the city we thought that we would head over the much advertised Christmas market which to be honest may as well have just been called a market as I am still miffed at just how unrelated to Christmas it was. It seems that any market taking place in December can just call itself a Christmas market, outrageous!!
Having mum and dad with us also meant that we could utilise them to help us with all the jobs that we needed to do to Blondini to make her just that bit more perfect than she already was. So with dad’s skills as an ex car and upholstery cleaner we hired a big green cleaning machine and set him to work with an unlimited supply of beer and sandwiches to get our girl looking beautiful. With mum and her OCD cleaning whereby nothing is declared clean until it has been fully washed down with neat bleach, we could safely confirm that it would not be possible to get Blondini looking better, with her few little nicks and scratches rubbed down, painted and polished she was looking like new.
As mum and dad had been so good at doing their chores we decided that it was perhaps time for them to set off on a little adventure of their own, as it would be such a shame to come all the way to NZ and to only see Wellington, not that there is not enough to see and do in Wellington but there is a whole other island out there in need of exploring. So on a wet and windy cold wellington day, I sat down with my laptop and dads credit card and set to work planning a trip. Thankfully mum and dad like an adventure and possibly didn’t quite realise how much I had planned for them as 7 days to get the boat to Picton for a couple of tours, a bus to Christchurch, a train to Greymouth and back, a bus to Queenstown and then a day trip to Milford Sound before flying back to Wellington just in time for Christmas eve was something of a feat even for the most seasoned travellers. Thankfully everything went smoothly, the sun shone for their whole trip and they absolutely loved everything they saw and did. Phew.
With a week to ourselves to put our feet up and enjoyed our furry friends we watched the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy back to back, with takeaway pizza and cat cuddles. Whilst mum and dad had beautiful sun in South Island, Wellington was wet, windy and cold and therefore we felt fully justified kicking back and relaxing in Middle Earth.
With mum and dad back from their big adventure and beaming with joy of how beautiful South Island had been the sun was once again shining in Wellington and we went into the city for a Christmas eve walk. We found ourselves at Oriental Parade paddling in the sea which was sparking gold and had ice creams in the red hot sun, now this is how all Christmas eves should be spent. Tim had planned an extra special evening activit
y for us for Christmas Eve, he was going to take us to ‘Lights over Broadway’ a special display of Christmas lights which you can park in front of, tune in your radio and listen to the music that accompanies the light show. It sounded like it was going to be amazing, sadly it really wasn’t. it was a good effort by the homeowner and god only knows what connections they have to have got any advertising for this display, it was just a house with some lights on their fence, hedge and roof which flashed in time to the terrible Christmas songs which blarred out through our radio. Thankfully mum is extremely easily impressed when it comes to anything involving fairy lights and she had a great time. Although the highlight of her evening and quite possibly her holiday was Tim getting breathalysed on the drive back home, ha ha Us Jersey folk do lead sheltered lives.
Christmas morning was so nice walking up with our family, for the first time in three years. We had a champagne breakfast and then went around to see our friends Marco and Ursala for a Christmas coffee. We all took our swimwear for a Christmas day dip in Karaka Bay, but with grey skies and cold winds I was the only one brave enough to commit. Christmas day dip in NZ, done!
Mum and dad prepared us an amazing lunch, which is no mean feat when there is a carnivore, a pescatarian, a vegetarian and a vegan to feed. With dinner done it was time to move onto my favourite part of Christmas day, the games! We played build a beetle which far from lived up to my memories but thankfully Tim salvaged the game playing with an iPhone game of describe who’s on my forehead. What fun we had, so many great memories.
With Christmas over in a flash and with Tim and I now experts on everything LOTR we decided to take the LOTR tour around wellington to check out the sights where various scenes were set. We visited the quarry that was once Helms Deep, we went to parks and rivers where various scenes were set and even went to Rivendell home of the Elves where dad and Tim did a very good job of playing Legolas, ha ha ha! Next we went to Mount Victoria in the middle of the city where many of the hobbit scenes were filmed and our guide did a great job of reconstructing them with various props to really bring the locations to life. The tour was absolutely amazing, there was just one problem there was one guest who was the most pathetically immature waste of space we have ever had the misfortune of being the same space as. Seriously this girl was beyond annoying, before the guide had even finished the sentence to ask if anyone wanted to be in the next picture she had thrust her camera at her poor long suffering boyfriend and was jumping up and down with her arm in the air like a four year old waiting for birthday cake. She was such an embarrassment you couldn’t but laugh and we spent the last half of the tour just watching as her boyfriend tried to get Middle Earth to swallow him up. As there was just no chance of us getting in any photos with this loonatic on our tour we just took notes and came back on our own.
The final part of the tour was a behind the scene tour of WETA studios which was awesome, but sadly in case we are going to steal design ideas from them no photos were allowed. Thankfully the WETA cave shop gave us plenty of last minute photo opportunities with Gollum and Tom, Bert and William the trolls. Having become fully immersed and a self declared LOTR geek, I had to drag myself away from the ‘precious’ rings in the gift shop.
Not quite done with LOTR yet we had to go to the Roxy Cinema the cinema owned by Peter Jackson and WETA studios to see the final Hobbit movie. As cinema experiences go, I am pretty sure that they don’t get any better than this. We met Gandalf out front, Gollom in the hall, had the most comfy seats I have ever sat in in any cinema and most importantly every single person sat and watched the entire movie without a single disturbance of a phone or someone going to the toilet or someone just being a general pain in the backside. I don’t think that the Hobbit movies compare to the LOTR trilogy as I prefer the cheap production techniques that Peter Jackson had no choice but to use when he did LOTR, the Hobbit had a bit too much computer aided animation, but don’t get me wrong I still loved it. New Zealand has turned me into a super geek, what has happened!!
With the end of mum and dads holiday fast approaching we needed to make a plan for New Years Eve, whilst Wellington had a party and fireworks planned the weather in Wellington was not looking too hot so we decided to hire a car, book a motel and scoot over to Napier for the night.
We set off early and had a quick pit stop in one of our favourite little parks in Dannevirke to feed the reindeer and ducks, we then pushed on and made it to Hastings for some afternoon chips from Tim’s favourite Dairy in NZ, the Lantern Light Dairy. With a hire car that we didn’t care much about we finally made it all the way to the top of Te Mata peak to see the amazing views over Hawkes Bay.
We didn’t have much of a clue what was happening in Napier for New Year but Tim had found an advert for ‘The Festival of Lights’ in Hastings, so as soon as it turned dark we headed over and were astounded by what we saw. Unlike Tim’s last recommendation that had about 8 strings of lights this place was like Disney land. There were displays of every size, shape colour, animal and scene you couid ever imagine, there was a man with a WWII spotlight which was powered by a carbon rod and was so strong you could point it at the moon. At about 10pm a countdown began for ‘midnight’ and there was the biggest and longest fireworks display I have seen for a really long time. The joy of having found ourselves at the local children’s NYE display meant that we could hop in the car, head to Napier and do it all again at midnight, so we did. It was a very close call as to whether Tim was going to be with us as the countdown for midnight began as he was desperately trying to get the last latte of the year in Starbucks. As the count hit three, he came tumbling towards us with his precious latte in hand. What a great way to see in the New Year with my husband, mum and dad in the beautiful streets of Napier. Funnily enough the kids fireworks were actually better than the adults as the streetlights spoiled the impact, but they were still cool.
Exhausted after such a long day, we said goodnight to 2014!
The following morning I had arranged a quick city tour for mum and dad to really see how beautiful Napier is, the sun was shining and we hopped aboard the Hawkes Bay Express, funnily enough another tractor tour. We were whisked around the city, saw some of the more famous Art Deco buildings and even had a quick stop in a sheep skin factory before we were done.
En route home we just had to stop for a coffee and cake in Dannevirke to see our reindeers once more!
Mum and dads days with us were numbered and we spent them eating, drinking, shopping and managed a short walk in a park that gave them some last minute NZ waterfalls and even a cave full of wetas, if you don’t know what a weta is, it is the heaviest insect in the world and is like a big ugly long legged black stripy grasshopper, it makes my skin crawl just thinking about them. Needless to say my trip into the weta cave was short lived, ended in a scream and left Tim stood in the dark as I had made my escape with the torch. Sadly dad didn’t learn from this incident and when I thought that I could be braver the second time, I couldn’t and left dad in the dark with the wetas too!
Our last sad night with mum and dad, we had one little secret task for them to undertake. After yet another stunning dinner we walked into the city and gave mum and dad a padlock to put on the bridge to leave their mark and lock in their love of the city. With many tears we delivered them at the airport ready
for them to catch their flight home with Smaug. Thank you so much mum and dad for spoiling us rotten and giving us such a wonderful holiday in Wellington. We love you and miss you!
With just under two weeks left of our house sit we had so much to achieve, we needed to play blog catchup, for a change. We needed to plan our route down through South Island and we also needed to plan our departure from NZ. Everything was ticking along well, we were relaxing and working and playing with the cats when suddenly it dawned on us that getting out of NZ and heading east to South America was actually a much tougher challenge than we ever realised. It turns out that unless you are a typical backpacker who leaves home for 12 months with a round the world ticket which easily gets you across this route, you are going to be looking at a one way fare of nearly $3,000 each, seriously, it is insane. LAN are currently the only airline that fly it and to include a stop in French Polynesia and Easter Island would costs more than we spend in 6 months. This was not a good situation to be in. We took a break from planning and headed to the local town for some lunch and to post some letters when Tim discovered a travel agent advertising cruises. Hmmmm, is this our solution? We looked into it and found a cruise leaving Tahiti in April, for 17 days headed through French Polyenesia, to Pitcairn, Easter island and ending in Peru. We have never ever been interested in cruising, but the route fit, the price was lower than if we tried to get to all those places ourselves and we just couldn’t find any alternative. It was still not a cheap way to travel, but it was our only option, so we bit the bullet, found the best price we could and booked it. Fingers crossed this works out, else it is going to be a long 17 days and our most expensive mistake yet.
Our last few days with the fur babies who we were by now totally head over heels in love with went by in a flash. We had a great afternoon out in wellington beer tasting the infamous local craft beers with Sophie who Tim had not seen for nearly 15 years. Her thankfully now ex-boyfriend joined us for a while and thoroughly entertained us with his wild eco activist ramblings before he fell out with Tim in a discussion over air travel and dramatically called Tim a ‘f**kwit’ before grabbing his bike helmet and making a swift exit. It was just too much fun, thanks for a great afternoon Soph.
The fur babies had been getting more and more generous in their gifts over the course of 7 weeks, we had had mice, cicadas and more lizards than I could keep track of, but it was when I was doing the final house clean ready for Gemma and Shanes return that I had my biggest fright. Clinging to the window frame inside the bedroom was the biggest stick insect I have ever seen. Jimmy the Stick as we called him was literally huge and whilst it was easy enough to flick him out of the window, I felt so bad seeing the poor thing fighting the wind that I had to get Tim to rescue him in a pot and put him safe in the trees.
With Gemma and Shane home and as I had suspected all along now happily engaged we went out for a lovely meal with them to hear all about their travels. Poor Shane had not fared too well and had been sick for a good proportion of the holiday, but they definitely had a great time and now had lots more on their plate with a wedding to plan.
Thank you so much Gemma and Shane for letting us be your house sitters, you gave us the most amazing time in Wellington and getting to share Christmas with mum and dad was just so precious. You guys are awesome and I love your fur babies, so hopefully we will be back to see you all again!
With the biggest tears ever saying goodbye to my little Owl and Piglet we set off, South Island here we come!
Beans Around The World 