No more homeschool!

Our days at Aroha cottage have settled into a pattern of hot sunshine and pure laziness. I've read 4 books in 6 days and am now lying in the shade of a tree in the garden listening to the crickets and a download from 2fm and dammit, an ant has just crawled under the shift button. The hot weather is making us all browner and Mick is starting to look like David Dickinson.
The others have left to walk to the general store about 2km away to get an ice-cream to celebrate the end of homeschooling. I will celebrate later with a vat of wine. This picture is of Emma finishing her very last sum and Matt with his 'new hair'
Once we get over to Takaka on the 1st of Feb we will have a week to get settled and then Jan will come up from Invercargill with Holly and Charlotte and stay for a week. Sam will come just for the weekend because of work. A couple of days after they leave Catherine will come to visit this time with Jill and Steve who are on a 4 week trip to NZ. We're looking forward to seeing them and hope the good weather holds up for their visit.
to add .. I'm posting this from Takaka where we have come for the day to meet matt and Emma's principal and have a look round the school. It's lovely and they're both quite looking forward to Tuesday when they start. The principal was in bare feet as seems to be more the norm than not in Takaka and told M and E that we were very mean sending them to school on their holidays.
Here are some photos of the past few days on Kina Beach.

Aroha Cottage

We arrived in Aroha cottage, Kina Beach on a hot, sunny day and instantly loved the place. Kina is the Maori word for sea urchin and the beach, which is about 100m from the gate of the cottage, is covered with urchin shells.
Kina Beach is about 25kms from Nelson which is at the north of the south island and about 60km from where we will spend the last 6 weeks of our trip. The cottage itself is lovely and has a big garden with a trampoline which has been great fun for Matt and Emma.

It also has a large deck and barbeque where we've been eating all our meals. The cottage itself is sweet but can get very hot at night. We've been leaving windows open which then leads to mosquitos and sand flies using us for a midnight snack and we arrive into the kitchen in the mornings comparing new bites. The day after we arrived Mick came back from a run to tell us that a dead whale had been washed up on the beach so we all went down to get a look before it was buried.
At Christmas a pod of about 120 pilot whales had beached in Golden Bay, about 60km away, and the Department of Conservation (who were on the beach to do the burial) told us that it was probably one of that pod who hadn't washed up with the others but had been floating about in the sea since then. A few other sea creatures had taken bites out of it including octopus and shark and the size of the shark bite marks on its tail were enough to make me think twice about going for a swim out too far here.
Catherine arrived over for the weekend to spend her birthday here and on the day of her birthday the weather was beautiful so we travelled a short way up the coast to Kaiteriteri where there is a long beach with lovely golden sand where we spent the day lolling about in the sea. While she was here we also visited a local vineyard for some wine tasting and very nice lunch in the sun and also travelled a few kms south and fished off the wharf in Mapua where Mick caught an almost dead spotty that he threw it back in where it floated on its back out to sea. There was a small aquarium at the harbour where you were allowed to touch whatever you could reach. Matt and Emma (who is terrified of the tiniest spider) were stroking giant biting eels, starfish, stingray and some of the slower moving fish.
Yesterday as we were leaving Catherine back to the airport in Nelson I took Matt for a haircut to tidy him up before school next week. It's strange to be able to see his face again but he likes it which is good because we had such a fight to get him to agree to it. We have another week here before we drive over Takaka hill to our house in Clifton and the day afer we arrive Matt and Emma are due to start school which they are both nervous and excited about. I have finished all of the curriculam that was set from Ireland with them which hasn't always been easy. I don't know how teachers manage to teach an entire class when it's such a struggle to get anything done with just two.
This last picture is one of them at school outside the cottage.
I have used up all my monthly MB allowance on my simcard (which is how I generally log on) so for the next few days I will only be able to log on at the library.

Whale watching in Kaikoura

We had a really successful whale watching trip this morning. We were told that the trips are often cancelled because you have to go out into the open sea and it can get choppy so we were prepared for disappointment.
Luckily ours wasn't and we headed out at 8.15am. The water off the coast of Kaikoura gets very deep very quickly. Tectonic plates meet 1km off the coast creating a 1km deep gorge which allows huge sea creatures to hunt very close to the coast.
We were out for only about 30 mins when we spotted the first sperm whale. We watched it on the surface for a few minutes as it spouted from it's blowhole before diving. We were told that it would then go pretty deep and we wouldn't see it for a while so most of us weren't looking when it suddenly breached the water before diving again. It was a very unusual thing for sperm whales to do so it was a real shame that all four of us missed it. We then travelled a short distance before seeing another and watched that dive too.
We also saw two large groups of Dusky Dolphins that swam and played around the boat and plenty of huge albatroses flying over the surface.
All in all a great excursion.
I'm posting this from the car as we head towards Nelson to stay in a cottage by the sea for two weeks. We willbe able to unpack for the first time since we left Ireland. We're all looking forward to that I think.

Fear loves company

We said good bye to Arrowtown and headed back to Queenstown on Friday morning and thankfully the weather had improved 100% by the time we'd parked in the campsite. We decided to take the gondola up to the hill that over looks the town and do another Luge which was great fun. We then hired bikes and cycled through the park and wandered along the wharf enjoying the unfamiliar sun. The following morning we went straight to the lakeside to start our paragliding. Matt, Emma and I were strapped to the parachute and all headed up together.

It was a fantastic day to do it because the sky was a clear blue and we could see for miles. Matt and Emma loved it and decided that paragiding should be a daily occupation.
After lunch we said good bye to the campervan and packed up our car to start heading North and to the the AJ Hakett Kawarau bridge for the bungy. The Kawarau bridge bungy is the first commercial bungy in the world. It's a 43m drop into the Kawarau river which is a strong turquoise colour. Mick was really starting to sweat bricks at this point as he really doesn't like heights but when we got there and watched a few people doing it he felt a bit more comfortable and flew off the platform with no
hesitation. He loved it and would definitely go again.

We got back into the car and were heading out of the carpark when he suggested that I should do it. I wondered would I regret not doing it after leaving NZ so I thought I would go for it. I queued up and for the wait I wasn't that nervous. Even when I was getting the straps on I still didn't have butterflies but when I was standing on the edge and looking down into the valley I was so terrified!!
It looked so far to jump and seemed such a completely crazy thing to do. You're supposed to dive out away from the platform if you don't want to go too deep into the water which I thought I had done but ended up going into the river up to my waist anyway. I have to say I hated it. I can't imagine doing a higher one like the one a little further up the road which is 140m. In a way I'm still glad I did it even if I am getting flashbacks every couple of hours still.
We left the bungy and headed north towards Lake Tekapo where we stayed for the night and passed by Geraldine, a small town with the biggest jumper in the world. It was knitted by the owners of the wool shop that the jumper is in. In the back of the shop 'de husband' and knitter has recreated the Bayeux Tapestry in metal mosiac. It took him 25 years to complete. He is also a mathematician and puzzle maker. Geraldine isn't the most inspiring town in NZ but if you want to recreate the days you pulled sickies from school and watched Open University you have to visit this place and hear this guy talk.

We left Lake Tekapo early the following morning to meet Mum and Ettie in Methven, south of Christchurch. They have been travelling through the north Island for the past 10 days and are on their way to visit Jan in Invercargill. It was great to see mum again and hear stories of an unlikely friendship between Scruff and Mum's cat as when we left they were sworn enemies.

We said our goodbyes this morning they headed south and we headed north. We are supposed to be staying in our bach in Nelson tonight that we have for 2 weeks but decided instead to stop in Kaikoura and see if we could see some whales. It will probably be the last of our treats and excursions till we leave. We've done so much, especially recently, but when Emma was emailing a friend from school today I told her to put in some of what we'd been doing and she was going to write 'We've mostly been driving' GAH!

Freedom camping

The day after we left Glenorchy we drove a little way north towards Paradise (actual place name) and stopped to do a trek on horses along part of the LOTR film locations.



It wasn't raining but was a little cold so we were provided with warm coats and gloves. Emma was allowed to ride without being lead which was great and Matt got to trot which was exciting but a little sore he said :) After a 2 hour ride we were all a little sore and I still can't cross my legs without wincing 4 days later. I must be very out of shape having not done a jot of exercise for 6 weeks.

We left there and drove to a more remote place called Lake Sylvan where we could freedom camp. Freedom camping basically means a place that you can park and sleep in the campervan overnight without having to be in a campsite. We parked beside a river and all looked very picturesque so we decided to go for a walk in the woods beside where some of Middle Earth was filmed. By the time we got back it had started to rain. The rain steadily got heavier and heavier until it was almost deafening on the campervan roof. We wondered idly about moving the van off the grass in case we got stuck in the morning but thought that it probably wouldn't rain all night and we'd be fine. Well, the rain didn't stop and all night Mick and I were awake listening to a violent thunder and lightning storm fretting about rising river levels while matt and emma slept peacefully. When morning finally came we heard that 30mm of rain had fallen and the river had risen about a foot! Thankfully the campervan made it off the site without problems and we headed bcak to civilisation still in our pjs.
Queenstown and Arrowtown




Unfortunately the weather didn't improve when we were in Queenstown but we thought we'd stay the night and decide where to go to next. Queenstown is a beautiful town and I'm sure it's lovely in hot weather but in the rain it's hard to make the most of it. We left on Monday morning and drove 20 minutes to Arrowtown which is an old gold mining town.

Arrowtown is very pretty with a smart 'oldey worldy' main street. It's what I imagine Avoca Handweavers would design if they were to plan a town. The shops even sell Avoca type products to the many day-trippers that come up from Queenstown. The weather suddenly improved dramatically and was much warmer which made a nice change.
We decided to do some panning for gold as we were assured that there was still gold in 'dem dar hills' but no luck after panning for an hour so we cheated and panned in a 'guaranteed' trough where Matt and Emma each got about 8 flakes of gold. We're thinking of opening a jewellery shop when we get back.

Mick has very bravely decided to do a bungy jump in the original Queenstown bungy on Saturday. He goes a bit white when we talk about it so hopefully he'll go through with it. Matt, Emma and I are going to paraglide together in Queenstown on the same day.

Happy New Year!

I'm not sure when I'm going to be able to post this because we seem to be in a dip of zero internet connection. We left Laidback Lodge on the 27th and said good bye to Catherine, Ceri and Nina. Thank you again Catherine for making that great few days possible, we really appreciate it. As we headed south the weather got cooler. We hit Greymouth in very bad weather and after spending the night there moved on quickly. We decided to try and do the drive all the way to Invercargill in as few days as possible so we did a very long drive all the way to Wanaka that day only glancing out the window at both the Franz Josef and Fox glaciers. The scenery on the way was amazing. Tall, tall mountain ranges with snow on the higher peaks. We finally arrived in Wanaka and were blown away by how beautiful it was. The following morning we walked along the lakeside in the hot sun and then visited Puzzling World. Puzzling World had a Labyrinth that was really tough. Matthew and Mick managed to find all 4 towers but Emma and I bowed out after the first two and escaped the fierce heat in the cafe. We left then to drive the last few 100 Km to Invercargill and arrived in time for a barbeque at Sam's aunt and uncle's house. It was great to be see Jan, Sam and Holly again after not having seen them since they came over here in October. Luckily for us a friend of Jan's had very kindly offered us her house to stay in while we were in Ivercargill and we had plenty of room to spread ourselves out. It was a nice change to be able to watch a bit of TV after Matt and Emma had gone bed instead of all having to go to sleep at the same time like we do in the campsite cabins. Jan was fit to burst with her due date only days away and as luck would have it her waters went the second day we were there. She very kindly said that I could go with her and Sam for the birth and for the first time I really got to see a baby being born as Charlotte arrived safely at 5.10pm on New year's Eve weighing a healthy 8lbs 6ozs. She is absolutely sweet and looks very like Holly did when she was born. Since then she has been an absolute model baby only waking to feed.
We spent the next few days being treated like royality by Sam's parents, Cath and Tony, and eating like kings too. Thank you both so much for making us feel so welcome and part of the family. Mick and Sam went on a men only fishing trip to the Mavora lakes and caught 3 big troutand got bitten alive by sandflies. They arrived back triumphantly and the fish were gutted, smoked and enjoyed by us all. We had a fair bit of wind and rain in Invercargill but nothing that stopped us doing anything we wanted.

Doubtful Sound
After 7 days of being spoilt rotten we left and headed north to Doubtful Sound for a day trip. Doubtful Sound has the most incredible scenery that somehow doesn't look possible even though you're there looking at it! We got a boat across Manapori lake and a bus 220m below ground to Manapori hydropower station which is concidered to be NZ's most sucessful engineering project. The bus then took us over the mountain to Doubtful sound where we took another boat through the Fiord to where it meets the sea. Unfortunately the rain was absolutely flogging down for the entire trip and in our infinite wisdom we had decided to leave all our wet weather gear in Wellington so we were completely drenched but we did get to see a group of bottle nosed dolphins swimming alongside the boat and fur seals. The guide also said that there was a crested penguin behind us at one point but it was hard to see it through the teaming rain so we had to take his word for it.

Glenorchy
We stayed the night in nearby Te Anau and the following morning headed towards Queenstown and more settled weather to pick up our campervan. Queenstown is beside lake Wakatipu with high snow capped mountains all around it. Queenstown is where lots of Kiwis come to spend their holidays and there is no shortage of money around here! Our campervan is great. Lots of room and comfortable to sleep, eat and drive in. We drove from Queenstown to Glenorchy which is an hours drive from Queenstown and stayed in a caravan site last night. We will stay here again tonight and then try some 'freedom camping'. There is more impossibly beautiful scenery up here and we even woke up to some fresh snow on the nearby mountains here this morning.
Glenorchy is a small village with zero phone coverage or wireless internet connection but on the plus side it has a comprehensive possum fur shop selling everything from cushion covers to belly button warmers all made from possum fur. Possums are a pest here and are a danger to Kiwi birds so are trapped and killed. Tourists are also encouraged to run them over if the oppurtunity arises :)