Last month NZ!

Well I’m nearly there..at the end of my New Zealand adventure. I’ve had a great last month! I ended up staying in raglan for nearly two weeks. Basically my days consisted of going for coffee in town in the morning, reading a lot a surfing in the afternoon. The weather changed after a few days luckily because Shaz and I shared a tent the first days and it rained constantly! But then the sun came out and it finally felt like summer.

One night we tried to go out dancing. There was supposed to be a reggae band in one of the café’s but when we came there it was just a dj and they charged $10,-! We decided to go for a drink in the pub and see if the party would get started because there was no one there at that time. When we came back they had made a smart move and got rid of the entry charge so now people were actually dancing. The dj didn’t seem to interested though because he just put on some music and went outside for a smoke. This meant that between every song there was silence oh well so much for our plan to have a wild party night. Or at least that’s what we thought when we drove back to the hostel….

For the second night in a row we could here loud music and a lot of people on the other side of the hill so we decided to go look for the party! Yes we found it and we ended up crashing someone’s 40th birthday party! Back home people would look at you and say “what are you doing here” but not in New Zealand. We congratulated the birthday boy, got offered a drink and within 5 minutes we were all dancing like we had known them for ever. Had a great time!

After leaving Raglan a spent 5 days on the coromandel. The last time I didn’t get to see much because of my tooth problems. It was really nice. I stayed in Colville on a farm. Did a hike, sat for an hour in a little bay where there was no one else and went for a swim. The next day I went for a horse ride, first time ever and I was pretty sore when I came of. But good fun!

With little over a week left I drove down to Wellington. For the first time in ten months my no planning strategy caught up with me…the ferry was fully booked so I got stuck in Wellington for a night. Decided to take the hostel closest to the ferry and that was a whole new experience for me too. I normally stay in little hostels, 20 beds, nice little cottage. This was a huge old art deco building that used to be a hotel. There was an actual reception where you had to check in, you got an electronic room key and my room was on the 5th floor! There was even a bar and restaurant in there. Can’t say I liked it much but at least now I’ve seen that too.

Back on the south island I spent 3 days relaxing in the Marlborough Sounds. Hopewell is 2 hours into the sounds over windy gravel roads. It’s paradise! You can kayak, do a walk, lay in the hammocks and just read or go a fetch your own dinner! At low tide you can walk on the flats and collect as many oysters, muscles and scallops as you want. Only thing is that I don’t like any of these…

I also met up with Micheal and Jason, who I had met there back in june. Was good fun and my last night they invited me to a party at Jason’s place. The view from his deck was amazing! After that I went to Nelson for one day, caught up with Julia, who I worked with and on Saturday morning went to the market. This is a kind of arts and craft market where all the people for the golden bay area come to sell their hand made stuff, it’s really cool. I finally bought all the things I liked but never bought because I told myself I didn’t have the money. Still don’t but who cares!

Now I’m back on the farm. Taking care of all the last minute things like canceling my bank account, selling my car, getting hep a and hep b shots for south east Asia and a lot more so better get going because I’ve only got two more days!

Next blog is for South east Asia, hope you all keep reading!