The end of summer

A while back we went out to a restaurant called Hia Kai, which serves modern versions of traditional Maori food. Some of the flavours were a bit out there, and I wasn’t a big fan of the mussel-flavoured ice cream, but it was definitely a new experience. We got three dessert courses – here’s the last one.

We checked out the terracotta warriors exhibition at Te Papa museum. I didn’t know much about Chinese history so it was an interesting topic to learn more about.

We got a free pass to the zoo through our friend Hayden. As well as all the standard animals, we saw the Kea (a parrot native to New Zealand) and a Dingo. The signs warning children against climbing over the fences were pretty hilarious. 

Next up was the Newtown festival, a street party across ten different streets, with all sorts of crafts, food and drink on sale. We managed to come away with gin, port and limoncello.

Finally, we checked out a concert in the Wrights Hill Fortress, which was built in the Second World War as a gun emplacement to protect Wellington from invasion by Japan. The acoustics were pretty unusual.

Cricket and a penguin

 We began the year with a visit to Levin for our friend Hayden’s birthday, which we celebrated with a barbeque and boardgames. In the morning, we went to the A&P show in town, which is a kind of showcase of farm animals, machinery and crafts. Here are some of the prize piglets:

The winning entries in the baking competition:

And the results of the wellington boot decorating competition:

The next weekend, we caught the ferry over to Somes Island in Wellington harbour. The island was previously a quarantine zone for sick immigrants and was also used to house prisoners of war. It’s probably about half a mile across, so it only takes a couple of hours to walk around, but it was nice to feel like we were out of the city while still getting fantastic views of it. We even saw a penguin on the way back.

Next up was the fair in Martinborough, a little town that was a 90 minute drive out of Wellington. While we ended up buying some handmade mugs, we just enjoyed soaking up the atmosphere. When we finished having a look around, we headed over to a winery for lunch. Ash got into the spirit of it and ordered a tasting tray – suffice it to say that there’s a lot more alcohol in one of these than a beer tasting tray! She made me try some wine, but as you can see from my expression wine is still wasted on me.

The following Wednesday was Waitangi day, a public holiday that commemorates the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi between the British government and the Moari chiefs. This treaty is considered the founding document of New Zealand. As having a day off in the middle of the week is a bit awkward, we decided we would stay in town, so we bought tickets for the New Zealand vs India twenty20 cricket match. I’ve never been to a cricket match before but I had a great time.

Nest up was the Makara mountain bike park with my friend Adrien. Visiting a proper mountain-biking area was another first for me and I’ll definitely be checking out some of the other rides around Wellington. I rounded off the day at the Chinese New Year celebrations in town, where I caught a performance by an acrobatic troupe and watched the fireworks on the waterfront.

Christmas

Another beer-themed post this time – there’s just a lot of good beer in this country!

We started off December with a trip to Beers at the Basin, a festival at Wellington’s cricket ground. About 20 breweries set up stands where you could sample their beers, and there was live music throughout the day. We had a great time and would highly recommend it.

You might remember a while back that Ash got me a ‘brew your own beer’ voucher for my birthday. It has now finished brewing and we are drinking our way through it. I’m really happy with how it turned out – I wouldn’t feel mugged off if I payed for it in a pub.

Next we went for a walk with our friend Harriet to Orongorongo. This is only ten miles out of Wellington but it feels like proper wilderness. 

We have driven up to Ash’s family in Tauranga for Christmas. To break up the journey, we stopped at the NZ army museum, which was surprisingly good. They had this model of New Zealand’s attempt to manufacture a tank (the short story – it wasn’t very good) and these examples of art that soldiers made in their spare time out of old ammunition cases.

We had taken our friend David along with us for the drive as his family lives in Hamilton, which is the same general direction that we were going. 

On Christmas day, we sat outside and drank a lot of champagne and beer. Ash’s parents gave us some folding camp chairs, a gas cooker and a kettle so we need to start planning some camping trips.

Brewing and walking

Our next stop was the airforce museum, which included some interestingly unusual exhibits, like this 1940s flight simulator.

That night we had booked to stay in Kaikoura, a little seaside town halfway between Christchurch and the top of the South Island. New Zealand in general is not densely populated, but the south island is something else. In 100 miles of driving we probably went through 4 towns.

Kaikoura was very pretty – here’s a shot of the beach and the mountains.

The view from the airbnb wasn’t bad either! Randomly, this was a spare room on a crayfish farm.

After driving through a lot more of nothing, we arrived at Picton for the ferry back to Wellington.

In other news, Ash had bought me a “brew your own beer” class for my birthday – you get 70 pints for £120 so its pretty good value. The beer is brewing for now, we will pick it up in a couple of weeks and post an update on how it turns out.

This weekend just gone, we walked the 10km Paekakariki Escarpment track, which runs along the top of steep hills looking over the coast to the north of Wellington.

The sheep simulator

There’s a few weeks to catch up on so I’m starting a while back with Te Papa, the national museum of New Zealand. Ash and I have been there before for a special exhibit but we didn’t get a chance to look at the permanent ones. So here you see the sheep simulator in all its glory.

This is what it says on the tin really - you push a button on the display and get a sheep's eye view of various environments. I'm pretty sure this was meant to be a joke, but maybe they do take sheep that seriously here. I haven't got to the bottom of that one yet. 

Then there was also this art installation that I thought Looked cool.

I found another one of those poems that are hidden around the city. Putting it under water seemed like a nice idea.

The weekend after that, we went to our first gig in New Zealand. We went to see a New Zealand band called Shihad (I hadn’t heard of them before I came here, but apparently they got quite big in Europe). This was a pretty fun gig, even though I didn’t know the words.

Next, I went for a bike ride with Ash’s friend Mark, out to Pencarrow Head. This is on the other side of the harbour from the city, but you feel like you’re out in the wilderness. Mark took his drone along with us and got some pretty sweet footage.

Next up, some exciting news – we have bought a car! This means we can do a lot more with our spare time, as you really are a bit limited here if you have to rely on public transport. We bought the car from a seller in Christchurch as that was the best deal we could find. Because Christchurch is on the South Island, we had to fly down to pick up the car. 

I enjoyed these bollards at the airport that were painted to look like like rugby players.

We had a quick look around the centre of town, where we saw some cool street art, the city’s original trams and the cardboard cathedral, which was built after the original one partially collapsed in the 2011 earthquake.

Some cats, some giant jandals and a gin tasting session

A couple of weekends ago Ash had to take some street photos for her course, so we went over to the other side of town to see what we could find. We took a look at Old St Paul's cathedral, which is made out of native timber.

We stopped off at the parliament building, more popularly known as the ‘beehive’.

We booked in for a gin tasting session, where we received 8 half-shot samples of gin. Some of them were better than others, but the hosts were very informative.

Last weekend we checked out the Great War exhibit, which was split into two parts. The first was a sort of chronological tour of World War 1, taking you through various set pieces including this Belgian village and a cavalry charge.

There were also some excellent model dioramas.

The second part was all about the experience of Australian and New Zealand soldiers at Gallipoli in Turkey. This included some really interesting colourised photos and an ‘immersive trench experience’. I usually think these kinds of things can be a bit cheesy but this one was really interesting – we couldn’t take pictures in there though!

A collection of random things:

There seems to be a lot of stray cats around where we live.



Here’s a nice view of the sea from a little park near our house.



And finally, a pair of giant jandals [that’s what they call flip flops here].