Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year everyone!

So Christmas...

Me and Mark spent christmas morning at our appartment seen as though its the first christmas we`ve had our own place! I actually woke up at 6.30am because I love christmas and was very excited to open my present under the tree! I stuck to tradition and followed the rules like mum and dad use...nobody was allowed downstairs until everyone was up and dressed (and used the toilet in dads case) and we had to take turns to open presents, one at a time. I also made Mark have a rubbish bag to collect the wrapping paper, just like dad does. After the excitment of opening our presents, we spoke to mum, dad, anne and chris, then we drove to Timaru to have dinner with Marks family. All 10 of us went out for our crimbo meal, we did well, we didnt get too homesick (well not at this point at least) we exchanged wonderful gifts and enjoyed a slap up meal then headed back up to Christchurch to spend the evening with Marks extended family where we ate even more excellent food!!

Boxing day came and we were away for our (new) adventure. It couldnt come sooner, we were more than ready to get out of Christchurch for a few weeks as much as we love it, we were thrown from our slumber on boxing day morning after another earthquake. We were having plenty of aftershocks following that so we packed up and got out - I think everyone else had the same idea looking around our street and seeing packed up cars. So we picked up our campervan aka.. home, for the next few weeks and we were ready for our great kiwi road trip!

We set off North to Nelson, which is at the very top of the South Island of NZ, to stay there for a few nights before we got the ferry to the North Island. We drove for a long 6 hours. It was a very long drive but we took it in turns and saw some amazing scenery which helped. We arrived at our campsite in Kaiteriteri, Nelson, and had a look around. We discovered we were right on the beach!! We parked up and went to a beachfront restaurant for some tucker and enjoyed the ocean view. We stayed there for a few drinks then retired to our humble abode for an early night after the long drive!

So we had our first night in the camper, its very enclosed to say the least. I think Mark had the raw deal, his side of the make shift bed kept breaking, which I thought was hilarious but he offered to keep that side because he really is a true gentleman. We slept suprisingly well but I think we were exhausted from the drive and all the sea air! We decided to have a good old kiwi bbq breakfast which sounds simple enough...it took us a while to get the thing started as it was a charcoal bbq and kept dying out, but we got there..Mark said he`d watched his dad do it loads of times so its a good job he`d paid attention!! We tucked into our sausages then low and behold Mark couldnt find the keys - the only set of keys!! We re traced our recent steps around then campsite asking people if they had seen our keys, we decided they must be somewhere in the van because we`d managed to open it up. We unloaded EVERYTHING outstill no keys, and after about an hour Mark suddenly ran round to the back of the van where the boot was wide open (opened by Mark) to find the keys safely in the lock, they were actually dangling down for us both to see!! After that morning of fun we packed up and headed out to explore Nelson.

We wanted to do a treck in Nelson or around the Abel Tasman so we asked in an conservation information centre. We were greated with the news that a massive downpour was headed for Nelson (probably coming from Australia) and they werent letting anyone treck anywhere! His advice to us was to go to the cinema! We were not best pleased but decided not to treck anywhere, instead we had a walk on the beach, then headed into the Abel Tasman and walked on the beaches there. So far no showers so we were questioning if it would actually come... how wrong were we, we tucked into bbq burgers (homeade) and then the rain came, and came and came. We cut our losses and went back to the waterfront restaurant at our campsite for pudding and shelter!

The next morning the rain was still thrashing, Mark drove the camper round to the showers and we both dived in for a wash and headed out to Picton to catch our ferry to Wellington and hopefully escape the extreme showers. Its a good job we set off early..after an hour and half drive we came to an abrupt halt as the road was closed due to heavy rain fall..what is it with us and freak weather, earthquakes, flash floods.... we informed our trusty tom tom which redirected us to a white knuckle driving road, but, all was well. We reached Picton with an hour to spare so we grabbed a quick lunch, which turned out to be the best seafood chowder I`ve ever tasted!!

Onto the next leg of our NZ adventure!!