The long awaited part II

Dear friends, I hope you are all healthy, wealthy, and the rest. 

This weekend I am finally spending a long-anticipated weekend in Palmy. I have worked my 12 days in a row and I am having a break. I am doing nothing. 

Or rather, I am immersing myself into frippery.

FRIPPERY!

I have done internet shopping (all those years of observing Tori on asos have finally paid off! I am now the proud owner of a ridiculous number of tiny skirts all of which I told myself I would just try on and then return the superfluous ones. Oh, Tori. You knew that pitfall well.) I have made panna cotta. I have baked a cake and iced it (with a crumb layer of icing and a second layer. A real iced cake! I laugh in the face of those who would tell me that a revolving cake stand is a necessity for icing. Tim was my revolving cake stand, and he did a reasonably good job, when he wasn't distracted by trying to pick icing off and eat it when he thought I wasn't looking. Also, surely if you find yourself saying things like, "I find a revolving cake stand a real necessity" you should really just take a break from your life and go and live in the Congo for a few years.) 

I would show you how pretty the cake is but I have used up the number of photos I'm allowed to upload at once. Sad but true. You'll just have to imagine it. Or maybe I'll post it later.

I have spent a very gratifying morning looking up recipes on Felicity's Cloake's blog series and decided I'm going to make cheese souffle and tom yum soup. I have done the laundry. I have made a grocery list. I have emptied the bins. I have tidied the house. I have spent a long time on facebook. I have been to a birthday party. I have done my hair. I have read an Agatha Christie murder mystery. I have watched Masterchef - USA. I am planning on - when we have a car, which will be soon (we are buying one from a friend - the car's nickname is 'Sticky Gerald' or 'Stinky Gerald', which I'm going to assume for the time-being is ironic) - on going to the British store and buying more Robinson's fruit squash than I know what to easily do with. I have read an interview with Mumford and Sons, and another one with Peter Jackson. I am, in short, having a very, very, very lazy weekend. 

I am gratified beyond belief.

And now it is time to fill you in on the rest of our North Island adventure. 

***

Stingrays. Did you know that they are cute and cuddly?

I didn't.

To feed stingrays, you must put on sexy waders.

I mean it. They are sexy.

Disappointingly, New Zealand is far out of the way for Vogue scouts, but if they had been on the beach that day, well, let's just say a frenzy of smartphone activity later and the face of modelling would have been changed forever. 

The face of both male and female modelling.

We were given a tutorial on what stingrays look like by Henrick, our friendly German guide. He drew some in the sand and showed us where we should pet them (on their face) and where we shouldn't pet them (on their fins, and on their tail, duh.) He explained that now it was spring they would be hungry and keen to eat some fish and that when they go out in winter often the stingrays are sluggish and grumpy and not up for eating. And then he made a sad stingray face which looked exactly like this :-( 

We waded out with our sticks. The water was superclear and it was very beautiful, though quite slippery on the reef. 

Henrick caught a crayfish, which to me looked huge, but he told me it was too small to eat. Too small! 

Try telling that to a Chinese person (me). 

And we met Pete the eel ("Dopey Pete" said Henrick. ":-O" said Dopey Pete (see illustration above).)

And then the stingrays came.

Henrick had a bucket full of fish which he rattled in the water and all the stingrays came up into the shallow water, keen for fishy goodness. They flapped around in a friendly fashion and hopefully nibbled at our sticks. Stingrays have no teeth. They are also, strangely, hugely inept at eating fish because their faces are so silly; their mouth so far underneath and their eyes on top and to the sides, so I ended up having to put my hand literally in their mouth to give them to fish, otherwise they would drop it and then flap around sadly looking for it, which they couldn't do because of, as mentioned before, the extreme silliness of their faces. 

When I put my hand in their mouths, they gummed me hopefully, in the anticipation that I too was a fish. I rubbed their faces and they flapped their wings in what I took to be an affectionate and gentle manner, but it may  have simply been disgruntlement. Stingray emotions are hard to read.

The stingrays there are all basically tame, though they live in the wild, because they have been feeding them there for 20 years or so. Henrick told us that even wild ones are very gentle and do not sting except when very frightened. Or, presumably, being harassed by someone very, very annoying.

It was a good day.

The next morning, we went surfing.

Surfing is incredible fun.

Liz, our instructor, first drew sand boards in the beach and we practised all the things we should do on them - getting up, balancing, paddling, falling off etc ("like a starfish! Fall like a starfish!") and then it was our turn in the waves. We had huge, huge longboards, very soft and comfortable to fall onto. I stood up 4 times, and Liz told me that 95% of the time, men catch on faster than women, and she was very gratified to see me trounce my partner in crime. Tim stood up once as well, at the very end. His only statement was, "I knew you would be good at it, damn it." YEAH. 

Out amongst the waves there were many many tens of surfers, even though it was so early - 8am on a chilly Sunday - bobbing and surfing amongst the green waves. I've never experienced so much physical exhilaration as during this stay in New Zealand. Learning to do something new, in a beautiful new environment, making your body perform actions it never has before, has all been very exciting and wonderful. I now have a whole new set of ambitions and skills to improve on before I leave. 

Then we went to Feast.

Feast was a day long food and wine festival (there's another one this weekend in Martinborough as well, btw. Every weekend is a food and wine festival in New Zealand!) and Tim and I walked around, napped, stuffed ourselves, listened to music, drank cider, and all the rest. Over and over for 4 hours. It was the sunniest day you could imagine and I was the happiest you could ever be. We had our own little wine cups to hang on a string around our necks, and a little map of the stalls. And as we walked in, we heard someone say behind us, "well, hello there, boogie boarders." And there was the family from the Rere rockslide! We told them we had been surfing that morning and stingray feeding the day before and they told us again that we were crazy and hoped we would eat plenty of food today, and we agreed with them wholeheartedly. Then Tim had a crisis of identity. 

Tim: "Boogie boarders! Is that what I am? A boogie boarder?"

Me: "No no Tim, you're so much more than that. Here, have some cider."

Tim: "I....I just never thought I'd be called that."

****

Later that night, we started our long drive through Te Urewera National Park, broken by a stay in Lake Whakemarino, in the most dated little lodging house I've ever seen. Our bedroom had fluorescent lighting and no working lock, and curtains that looked like they'd last been changed in the 1920s. But we hadn't come there for curtains.

We came for the view, and the silence.

Te Urewera is 80km of winding, unsealed mountain road that winds around a number of lakes, the biggest being Lake Whakiremoana, Lake of Rippling Waters, a huge volcanic lake. And it deserved its name - its surface is constantly swept by tiny white waves, incredibly beautiful and immediately recognisable from a distance. 

Imagine living here...

....................

....................................................................................................this would be your view every morning............................................................................

If you lived here, you would need a boat.

What about this one, for a Robson?

Tim particularly liked this one. He could use it to go to choir rehearsal and evensong.

We spent a beautiful morning just driving around the National Park, bumping along, eating crackers and crisps and tinned tuna because we didn't have any food (classic). And on the way down into Taupo, we stopped at one of the many geothermal sites that is littered around the area between Rotoroa and Taupo (no time for Rotoroa this journey - another time.)

This park, Waimangu, was the site of the previously famous pink and white terraces, which were silica terraces containing clear turquoise water exactly the right temperature to swim in, apparently, destroyed in the 1886 Tarawera eruption (though they are probably still there, just under the water- a real interesting video). The eruption also created Frying Pan Lake - as you can see below - and a number of beautiful bubbling hot acid pools. 

What I find incredible is that vegetation can grow so close to the edge of the lake. The pH is 2 or 3, and just 1m below the soil, the soil temperature can be 100 degrees centigrade in parts.  The lake is constantly bubbling, not because it's boiling, but because it is acidic, and little bubbles of hydrogen are coming to the surface. 

But though it's not boiling, that doesn't mean it's not hot. Just look at that steam!

A number of colourful algae and bacteria can grow in such difficult conditions. 

And tiny and large geysers abound!

This incredible blue lake is made of suspended silica fragments, which give it its distinctive colour. It ebbs and flows over the course of months, reflecting the area's geothermal energy. Scientists keep track of its levels because it may help predict future eruptions. During this time, it turns from clear to white to blue again. We caught it during its blue time.

Look at that steam!

What appear to be rocks in the sides of the lake is actually just baked mud. 

This whole place was unbelievably fascinating and beautiful, and Tim reacted to it by putting on his David Attenborough Voice, accompanied by his David Attenborough Face, at all times. (see below)

I just felt you deserved an explanation as to what exactly Tim's face was doing in that photograph.

***

Post Hot Springs, Tim and I wandered into Taupo. That evening, we went for a soak in some natural hot springs in a spa close by. The water was super super hot - 41 degrees, and I was dying of heat. We cooled ourselves down by going down a children's dragon slide quite a few times. 

The sad thing about going to the spa was that after we came out, it was 9pm, and by then it was impossible to find anywhere to eat. Everything was closed, man! Taupo was dead. This, we would find, was a recurring theme in New Zealand, and something that I do miss about the UK. Nothing is open when you expect it might be open. Every place we rang up was like, "awww, man....I was thinking of closing up. I sent the staff home early cos there's no one here. I could probably do you some chips if you're desperate." No, thanks, we said, which in hindsight may have been a mistake. Our hotel receptionist suggested we might be able to go to KFC, "but hurry, because they close at 10pm, and then there really won't be anything." I declined. So I had an apple for dinner. Tim had the KFC (which he enjoyed a lot) but then wondered if there was anywhere to get a beer.

There wasn't.

We wandered the streets, feeling like disconsolate alcoholics ("Just one beer! Just one!") and finally went to bed, beerless, at 10:30pm. I suppose maybe it was wise, because after all, the next day was our skydive. We needed to get some rest.

****

The next day actually dawned wet and rainy and we couldn't skydive in the morning as we'd hoped (I'd picked 10:30am as a good time - long enough after breakfast so I wouldn't sick it up again, early enough in the day so I wouldn't be thinking about it all day). Instead, we decided to go to 'the most kitsch attraction in New Zealand' (and remember, this has Hobbiton to contend against) - the Huka Prawn Farm.

Huka Prawn Farm is the world's only geothermally heated prawn farm. We went on a little tour which told us all about the life cycle of the prawn (vicious, involving cannibalism), and got given little fishing rods to fish for prawns (which we could then eat). But best of all, for Tim, was the opportunity to play  Killer Prawn Golf.

You don't actually kill any prawns in Killer Prawn Golf, you simply tee off over the prawn beds and hope to hit certain targets for cash. 

Tim had an amazing time. 

We didn't win any cash.

We also didn't catch any prawns when we went fishing for them. Our technique was clearly off. And the birds ate all my bait. 

But we still had fun! We had fun on the nature walk - 

Guide: "It's...it's really kind of for children. But I guess you could go on it if you like."

Oh yeah.

Tim had the time of his life. 

The place was filled with dangerous obstacles....

This one tipped water on your head unexpectedly from various little buckets....

but Tim did it. Well done, Tim!

Intrepid!Tim.

Too old for this?

I don't know, I didn't want to say.

****

By this time, we felt we'd earned a lunch break. 

"Best of all, you can have prawns all ways in their restaurant," said Lonely Planet.

Lonely Planet is always right. 

Even though we hadn't caught any prawns, we got to buy some.

Money. So useful.

I had a huge mulled wine, which helped cheer me up from my dreary, wet, and prawnless state.

And we also shared the biggest cheesecake I've ever seen outside of the USA.
It came with cream AND ice cream.
That's the way I like it.

I look happy, but in reality, the cheesecake was a mistake, a heavy mistake I felt very strongly as I was being strapped into my jumpsuit for the skydiving. Very strongly.

"I'm afraid," said Tim.

"You're the one who got us here!" I said.

"Yes....yes...." said Tim. "Yes."

There seemed not much else to say.

So we went in.

***********************

And that's a story for another day!

Along with our last ski trip to Ruapehu.

Until next time!

And I've really got to get the laundry out.

Happy Bonfire Night everyone!

From Palmy North, 2012.

Tea, a drink with jam and bread

Despite not getting onto the next instalment in my epic saga of North Island love (I know, feeding stingrays, surfing, skydiving, there's so much to come! So much!), I am going to fly ahead in time and write a post on what I have just done this weekend. Why? Why not. Damn right.

This weekend, Tim and I met up with some friends in Auckland, Sarah and Matthew, for some delicious food and wining in Hawkes bay.

How many food festivals is too many food festivals?

We don't know, we haven't found out yet.

The first event we went to was called Tea, a drink with jam and bread. It was a pastry and jam and tea tasting session, which Tim and I arrived ravenous at, having not had any breakfast beforehand. We imagined a sort of jolly, wonderful, tea jam pastry cake bread free-for-all where we would casually eat as many pastries as humanly possible within 5 seconds while mumbling through a mouthful of crumbs "mmmverynicemmmyes" in a semblance of dignified tasting.

In fact, it was quite a formal lecture type setting where two women slowly made jam in front of us while withholding pastries. Have you ever watched jam being made? While being ravenously hungry and desperate for pastries? While the hob on which the jam was being made was malfunctioning and therefore the jam was not boiling? While being desperate for pastries? While sitting in a pavilion, looking at pastries, which were  being withheld from you, while jam was refusing to boil?

It was, in its own way, a first-world form of torture.

Anyway, we did end up tasting the pastries.

We tasted them and tasted them and tasted them.

I must have drunk about 6 cups of tea in that pavilion. I tried green earl grey, and french earl grey, and rooibos with vanilla and creme caramel, and a blend of green, red and black tea, and green chai, and all sorts. And then I went back for seconds. 

And then I was desperate for the loo for the rest of the day. 

Not helpful, since we were going on a cycling wine tour.

My stamina clearly has decreased since Uni, since that day we cycled only 36km and we did stop for wine at two places on the way. But whether it was the wine that made me slow and tired or the head wind or the fact that no matter how tasty pastries are, damn it, they cannot sustain one for 36km, or the fact that I really, really needed to pee, that 36km really did feel like a hell of a long way. 

Still, the wine made up for it. 

We went with two doctors from the UK, Sarah and Matthew, who I worked with in Newcastle. Sarah's a med reg and Matt is a GP trainee, and they were very, very delighted with how their day was going (see above picture.)

It was so nice to meet up with some old friends in the new world. And fairly surreal too. So far away....and yet here we are. Scoffing wine. As usual.

I tried a lot of delicious wines and tried to expand my personal favourites, though I'm afraid I'm still stuck in the aromatics and the Marlborough sauvignon blancs. Any good riesling or semillon or pinot gris gets a big thumbs up. But I did try a good red - a cabernet franc, which I had not heard of before. I recommend it. It is a luscious grape. And also a red dessert wine, which was very special. 

We bought several bottles.

Tasting is $5 per person, and you taste as many wines as you like, which is a very good deal. And also now look! I sound as if I know a tiny bit about wines, which is not true, as the only thing I know about wines is how tasty they are and the names associated with the tastiness. Which I suspect is all anyone actually ever truly knows about wines. There you go. Tastiness and culture, all in one big bottle. How good is that? 

We also took the time, as we were by now both famished and extremely tipsy, to have a picnic in the vineyard, where they gave us a platter of food and a bottle of their Malbec, and we had a generally lovely time. Tim and Matt and Sarah all had to put their napkins on their heads because the sun was so hot. It's NOVEMBER! My body is so so confused.

Inside is nice, but outside is nicer. 

The nice lady helps us get as much wine as we need for a good day out.

It was really a long, long road back, and I was tired as, man. We had to face down some cows as well on the way. It was frankly terrifying, but I stepped up to the challenge. I was brave as, despite having a full bladder and a very sore bottom. 

Well done me. 

In the evening, we had a date at the oyster saloon. Sarah and Matthew had only just started eating oysters (beer battered ones, naturally), and were excited, yet apprehensive, to try the raw wriggly ones. 

Side note: when you think about it, so many of our acquired tastes really are just disgusting, aren't they? Oysters. Black pudding. Rare steak. Runny egg. Cheese. What is wrong with us as a species?

I don't know. But I love it. 

Eating oysters with dignity is a very tricky skill, and I...well, I'm going to share the pictures below as a cautionary tale of what happens if you let me photograph you doing anything and then don't censor where I can post the images afterwards. And also because they are brilliant.

I was looking at this series of pictures, and thinking, what does this remind me of, and then it came to me. This is even better than Kirsty eating ginger cake! (You need to scroll down slightly for the eating sequence. It is wonderful.) Also - clearly I have a history of doing this around eating people (why? eating is so funny!) 

I am going to start making a collection called When You Eat You Look Funny. 

Question: can anything (edible) battered and fried be not tasty?

Answers on a postcard please.

(The Scottish, btw, have clearly made their decision on this already. It's a good one, hard to argue with.)

So disgusting yet tasty!

I tried all of the oysters on the blackboard, and then I tried them naturel, and then I tried them beer battered, and then I tried them again.

To be honest, I couldn't tell the difference between them. 

Maybe it was the amount of wine I'd tasted that day. 

After tasting and tasting and tasting the oysters (and more wine), we went on a very drunken wine shopping session in the wine store where this was held, where a very nice lady came and helped us choose wines. (This is what it was like: me: "I LOVE MARLBOROUGH SAUVIGNON BLANC" her: "ME TOO! BUY THIS ONE!" Me: "YES! Also, I love The Doctors Riesling." Her: "LOOK! I have a bottle." Me: "I LOVE YOU." Her: "Have you considered buying more wine?" Me: "YES. But which ones?" Her: "let's run around the shop and I'll choose some for you! What is your price range?" Me: "I don't know, I'm too drunk to think of a price range." Her: "That's the best kind of price range.")

Anyway, so I bought some wine (and actually it was very reasonable, we bought 4 bottles for 30 quid, and they were all very good too. So clearly she must have inferred I had some kind of price range, even though by this point I was just running around the shop randomly pointing at things and trying to link arms with her while skipping) and we had a good chat about how much we all loved wine, and was 4 bottles too much for 7 people (answer: no) and then we had to ask her where we could buy a kebab, because after a full day of eating nothing but oysters and very cultured slices of salami and pate, and drinking like I've never drunk before, we were famished. Like, STARVING, MAN.

Doesn't she look nice? 

She gave us very good directions to a Turkish restaurant aka kebab shop.

And we bought a kebab and we ate it with our Marlborough sauvignon blanc and our Hawkes Bay Cabernet Franc and Pinot Noir and we had some Riesling to end off and also, chips with BBQ sauce.

It was divine.

The next day, I felt a bit rough. 

(This is starting to become a bit of a recurring theme in my NZ travels.)

Luckily, there was a farmers' market on where we could eat delicious things and feel better about ourselves.

There was more wine tasting at the market too, but I wasn't really up for it. I'm not sure why. 

And this is our haul from Hawkes bay: from the left: some good old Marlborough Sauvi, which the nice lady in the shop recommended: some Noble Sauvignon Blanc from the Beach House - an amazing little place which was a lot of fun to taste at, very unpretentious and run by the cheeriest man in the world, who had a glass to taste each time anyone had a glass to taste (no wonder he was cheery), and the Doctors' Riesling (some great, great Riesling there, my friends. Doctors know best), and more Beach House Riesling, and the red dessert wine (a strange beast), and two pots of damson jam from the jam tasting, and a bottle of damson vinaigrette which Tim bought at the jam tasting before I even had time to say, "gosh that's quite tasty". That Tim. And I'm really looking forward to the jam tomorrow on croissants, which I have also bought today. I have been busy. Busy stuffing my face (as usual.) I'm just so good at it, that's the problem.  

Also, guess what.

It's our anniversary!

5 years together!

Shameful to say, I kind of forgot about it. that is, I kept on remembering in the weeks coming up, and thinking, "oh, I mustn't forget it's our anniversary!" because man, it does not feel like November. It feels like July. And then naturally, I forgot about it. And so today while Tim went to work, I had to go and buy him a present.

I bought him an awesome present. 

The below is not it, but it is something else that I bought him. 

That's why they call it business socks. (2.33)

Business socks!!!

A flight of the conchords reference that I never knew I hadn't got. Turns out, business socks are a kind of sock everyone wears in New Zealand, for business! And I do not mean sexy business. I mean, just normal office business. Business that requires sock wearing.

Who knew?

Love from Connie.

Our friends in the North

Dear buddies! I've missed you! Have you missed me?

There's no need to answer that.

Man, it's been a little while since I updated. I've been busy. Busy discovering things about New Zealand. And every time I put off updating a little while longer, MORE STUFF WOULD HAPPEN. And then I'd get overwhemed by it all and go to bed and read Hilary Mantel for days at a time and wonder if that would solve all my problems.

It probably would solve many problems. She is an excellent writer.

Anyhow, today is a character-building day. Tim is at work, having buffed the house to a degree of cleanliness which I have never yet encountered - he washed the sink and the bath and put Toilet Duck down the loo (for all those who don't yet know (read, all those whom I've not discussed this at great length with (read - very few of you))Tim is obsessed with Toilet Duck. Whenever we go shopping he stands in the cleaning aisle, looking wistfully up at it until I cave and let him buy it. Me: "It's just overpriced bleach, for pity's sake!" Tim (enraptured): "But it makes the toilet so fresh.") and he has shamed me into sorting out piles of my paperwork (including South Africa, the details of which I shall go into in the future, when I can bear it. Man oh man there is paperwork. I wonder if I'm not perversely excited by paperwork in some subconscious way because I certainly seem to seek out a lifestyle that involves a good deal of form filling. F1 has much to answer for) and, finally, into updating my blog.

That was a long sentence.

I would like to add a disclaimer here before this post: I realise I write a lot about exciting adventures etc etc etc yawn boredom, and I wonder if you find it all a bit dreary - one exciting thing after another. It's all a bit sensory overload, isn't it? I'm really not trying to boast or be unbearable, though I'm sure it seems like it - it's just this place is so unbelievably wonderful I want to do everything, and then I want to photograph it, and then I want to tell you all about it while showing you the photographs. Which is, in itself, unbearable. So I'm sorry. And to make up for it, I am going to start off by telling you some gentle, mundane things I have been discovering. Unlike sky-diving.

We'll get onto that in a moment.

I would like to add also that it's lovely when you write back to me and tell me how you are, and I love it. I love it! And I am in the process of composing replies as we speak. Faith, my friends. Faith.

Anyway, 3 gentle, non-sky-diving related things I have discovered about New Zealand:

1) I love vegemite. Dang! In fact, I prefer it to marmite. What does that make me? Correct. The answer is it makes me correct.

2) They don't call buffets buffets - they call them smorgasbords! That is perhaps the single most exciting thing that has ever happened to me. So much more exciting than a buffet! And inciting you to eat so much more, in a Scandinavian mead drinking, foe-slaying, flesh-chomping way. Delightful.

3) Nurses wear shorts here. I find it hard to take them seriously when they do, because they look like boy scouts. I'm sorry, but there it is.

So last week, I did this:

I find the line a bit disconcerting, as if perhaps we were attached to something up above. But we were not. And I've got the DVD to prove it. I've literally been there, done that, got the T-shirt, and a DVD. Some would see this as another example of the corrupting effects of capitalism. I see this merely as a great example of how funny a human face can look when falling towards earth at 200kmph.

But it's not time to talk about that yet.

Friends, I have discovered the only way I can approach updating my blog about the holiday is by doing one day at a time, or perhaps two at the very most. It upsets me, psychologically, otherwise. IT'S TOO BIG A PIECE OF WORK. So to wit, we are going to start at the very beginning. We are going to start in Napier.

Guided by our Lonely Planet, Napier is a little east coast town that was flattened by an earthquake in the 20s, and was rebuilt from scratch, making it the most art-deco town in NZ. We stayed in a very lovely hotel with only 3 guest rooms - one Turkish themed, one Chinese themed, and one Indian themed. The guesthouse owner, who was Turkish, was very friendly and enthusiastic and talked to us at great length over breakfast about his theories regarding gay men, speedos, and public nudity, to none of which we had anything intelligible to say at 8 in the morning. 

While we were there, the weather was unsettled. 

I tested out my new camera.

It's not bad, eh?

On another note, I realised that I'd posted the wrong link regarding the NZ accent earlier. So here I present it again, for your delectation. The only thing they fail to note is the constant use of 'eh' at the end of sentences. Otherwise, it's strangely and endearingly accurate. 

The other thing about Napier is that it's surrounded by vineyards.

And that's where we had lunch. 

We had some pretty tasty lunch at The Mission winery.

Note that neither Tim nor I had showered that morning, because we were too sleepy. I don't know why I'm sharing this with you, perhaps because I was so entertained by how decrepit we looked and how generally unimpressive we were in this very nice environment. 

Tim had asparagus and poached eggs and new potatoes with hollandaise sauce - a very spring meal!

It was tasty as.

Fig. 1: Unwashed!Tim contemplates his lunch.

I had the pappardelle with wild mushrooms and rabbit, innit.

I was just as unwashed as Tim.

Look at us! Look how disreputable we look. Would you let that pair into your vineyard to drink your wine and eat your tasty food? We look as if we might have made a dash for it without paying. But maybe they knew that anyone who'd eaten that much pasta wasn't going to be dashing anywhere soon. Wise, wise Mission Estate.

I had a glass of merlot, I think. It was quite nice. Do you know what's really nice? Framingham Riesling. Framingham Riesling is the most delicious Riesling I have ever tasted in my entire life. It is sunshine and happiness in your mouth. It tastes of joy and rainbows. And New Zealand. This is because Riesling has terroir, the Guardian informs me (I love you Guardian), which means it heavily reflects the soil and region in which its grown. Which explains why it tastes so much of happiness. Because it's grown in New Zealand! 

I'm not sure how I got from merlot to riesling and wandered so far off the topic, but there it is. A piece of information to guide your way in this rocky winey world. Don't ignore it. Trust. Best Riesling you've ever tasted. Fact.

Anyway. That day, we drove to Gisborne. We were staying at a very swanky hotel which was at a very reasonable price, and it was really the largest hotel we'd ever been in. Our room had 2 double beds in it! And the biggest shower in the world - easily fittable for 4 people. 

No, we did not invite another couple back to the room for shower fun times. 

I just wanted to make that clear.

Tim has another habit, which I'd somehow never discovered before, perhaps because our hotel rooms had always been too small: but here it is - he likes to go around the room when we first get there, opening all of the drawers and wardrobes and looking inside. And then finding things and being ecstatic with joy. Like a penny. Or a dressing gown. Or some Toilet Duck.

I'm joking, of course. If Tim had found some Toilet Duck in one of those wardrobes I'd never have heard the end of it. You'd probably never hear the end of it - he'd probably call you all up individually and tell you about it. It would probably be one of the most exciting moments of his life - not because his life lacks for exciting moments, but because, as I say, Tim is obsessed with this particular form of toilet related hygiene product. True story.   

We had naturally neglected to buy any breakfast or indeed scope out any breakfast places and so our breakfast the next day could only be described as haphazard. You may be able to see a blueberry pie skulking in the corner. 

And some rich tea biscuits behind the central mug.

It was sunny as (note: not sunny as anything, just sunny as - as I heard one annoyed Aussie remonstrating with a Kiwi in Ruapehu - "But what is it as sweet as?" - "Nothing, it's just sweet as, bro!") in Gisborne, which is another 3 hours or so up the east coast. Lonely Planet describes it as 'Lively Gisborne, surrounded by miles of Chardonnay on the one side and miles of surf beaches on the other, boasts it's the first city on Earth to see the sun, and when it sees it, it hogs it and takes it to the beach. Gisborners describe life here as "not bad", which in New Zealand speak means, "unbelievably good.""

That's more or less it.

Lonely Planet also told us that one of the Things To Do in Gisborne is the Rere Rockslide - a 60m natural rockslide formed by cascading water. People go down it on mattresses, sacks, boogie boards....

But first, we went to the Arboretum for some inner peace.

The Arboretum is the biggest collection of imported Northern Hemisphere trees in the Southern Hemisphere. When we told the German dude who hired us the boogie boards (more on the later) where we were going first, he looked bemused. And it's pretty fair. Why would you go all the way to the Southern Hemisphere to look at Northern Hemisphere Trees?

But man, it was unbelievably beautiful. 

If you sat in any place in the park, all you could hear was birdsong - exuberant birdsong - and see trees. And the occasional sheep.

It was splendid. 

We sat, and contemplated.

And after we finished contemplating, we hurled ourselves off a waterfall. 

We hired some boogie boards and wet suits from a suitably laconic German dude, whose only comment was, "wear some knee protection, guys" and, "some say it's pretty cold out there right now."

Tim's wet suit was backwards zipping - a mysterious and very difficult suit to put on. 

Observe the knee protection. 

Don't worry, I had some too. I was just posing without them so you can catch a glimpse of my knees as they used to be. Whole. Healthy. Fresh. 

Sigh.

The Rere Rockslide. Facedown, headfirst, boogietube down it is. 

We were watched by a large Kiwi family who shadowed us all the way to the top and couldn't stop laughing and saying, "you're crazy!" They videoed both me and Tim going down. I like to think we provided a little entertainment in their lives. 

If you would care to view the video, it is on facebook. Naturally.

And the view from the bottom. 

And after the Rere rockslide, we dried off and we went to the beach and we fed stingrays.

But that's a story for next time.

To be continued...................................