End of holiday - boo hoo

Kia ora koutou
The holiday is almost at an end. Term 1 2009 starts lumbering off on Monday, though it will take over a week for College to really get going. It will take more than a week for us all to readjust to getting up early, being in structured classrooms all day and then returning home in the evenings.

This has been a most excellent holiday in terms of chilling out.

We have had a good mix of being at home and pottering about, combined with a couple of trips away and with Richard’s visit thrown in and a whole lot of little day-trips. The boys claim to have been bored, proving that they are teenagers!

Our main holiday to Rotorua and Leigh was not really what I had expected. I thought that Rotorua would be full of casinos and be really tacky, smelly and touristy as I remembered it from my visit 20 years ago. Not a bit of it. We stayed 10km out of town in a pleasant holiday park Ngongotaha Holiday Park if you want a recommendation. We had a little 2 bed unit that was art deco in style but really comfortable and functional. Good well-equipped kitchen, was a stones throw from the lake, with an on-site swim pool and nearby park for the boys to disappear to. All for about $75 a night. While there we realised that our budget would not allow for trips to the major Rotorua sights, so we spent on good food and found activities for free from an excellent book called New Zealand for Free.
The picture below shows one such place – Kerosine Creek. Way up a metalled road, with no signs until you got there, but what a find. Steaming hot water as a river runs through forestry. The pool itself was shaded by huge trees so fine for bathing even in the heat of summer. It would be even more amazing in the winter with snow on the ground.
We also enjoyed the Ngongotaha Trout Hatchery – free and very interesting, looking at the different sized trout and talking to one of the workers there. They strip trout of their eggs and grow them to a size that they can be released into streams and lakes for people to catch.
We also delighted in the takeaway from The Indian Star in Rotorua, yumm mango lassi, butter chicken, lamb madras mmmmm….
Rotorua itself was huge compared to Kaitaia and we enjoyed window shopping. The boys were not that exciting in making a beeline for the Wharehouse, but they were also quite taken with a FairTrade shop and Eric and Patrick spent some cash there. It was quite warming to hear them explaining to me the importance of Fair Trade!

Then we hot footed it up to Leigh, just North of Auckland. We stopped en route at Candyland - a shop and museum full of sweets and really quite unwelcoming.

I had expected Leigh to be the best part of the trip. The accommodation was $155 a night at the Cottage of the Leigh Motel. The owners were friendly and the views of Little Barrier and Great barrier Island were pretty stunning. The mozzies were fierce and kitchen not as good as the Rotorua place. No park or pool. Otherwise fine.

Leigh is an old fishing village that sits on top of a cliff with a grid of suburban type villas. A road leads down to the harbour where commercial and private boats moor and refuel. We enjoyed the night time fishing using handlines, catching mostly small snapper. We got one that was legal and had it for tea.
Spent one morning at Goat Island marine reserve and enjoyed a trip on the glass bottom boat, looking at all the fish swimming about.
The fish and chip shop in Leigh is one of the best I have ever visited in the world. Cool sounds and the cleanest tasting batter you could imagine.
The Saw-mill was another cool place. An old Saw-mill (who’d have thought it!) that had been converted into a music venue that attracts some big names – Billy Bragg plus some NZ groups that are big … Plus there is a micro-brewery making several beers. I sampled "The Doctor" in the bar 6.5% and unlike any NZ beer I have tasted in its complexity and nutrition – like a liquid meal! Not like Complan.
The other place I really liked was Matakana - a small village between Leigh and the Main highway. Not sure how the place has evolved into what it is, but what a place. Good shops, including a fantastic delicatessen selling really good breads, cheeses and proscuttio which all tasted even better than the Indian takeaway! There was also a cinema there doing about 4 different films a day, including Arthouse and World Cinema. It was like a small piece of the best bits of Cambridge UK dropped into NZ. Not cheap, but very good.

We lost 2 chucks when we got home, probably to Salmonella transferred by wild birds. The water pump also packed up, so that needed fixing, and the water tank had not been replenished by some good rain storms while we were away, so we are now on extreme water conservation measures and considering buying in 10,000L for the first time since we moved here.

A few days later I took the boys camping at Diggers Valley at Ruth and Stephan’s farm. Hence the pic of Eric with his first rabbit. We lived in a field for 4 nights this time, cooking over a wood fire and sleeping under a tarp. Just trees and grass to look at all day, plus our hosts and some cows.

Stepan took us on a trap run high into the bush. I lugged an old .303 rifle round in case we came across wild pigs. There were signs of them high up in the bush, but none of them showed. It wa s arelief in a way as I did not have the strength in my legs at the end of the walk to be carrying out a dead pig!

The rest of the time has been spent getting the garden straight. It is cropping well on account of the irrigation it receives. The sun has been relentless and so lots of photosynthesis is going on. The pumpkins are swelling and we have made pasta sauce and soup out of them. We have even had a few meals of corn from plants that are as tall as me. Beans and peas are good, toms getting ripe. I screwed up with the water melons by giving them a too strong soup of rotted fish guts – killed them within 24 hours.

Eric and I killed the Pitt Island ram lamb last night, so we have just 5 sheep walking round now, and we are planning to re-home these as soon as we can. I have realised finally that sheep and trees do not mix. While at Diggers I had left a gate open allowing them access to the orchard. They stripped apple tress to the bark, that had spent 2 years recovering from the last sheep attack! Curses – the only solution is to get rid of the sheep and concentrate on having just trees. I will get a scythe and use that and chickens to control the grass.

So that’s about it. One summer holiday almost over. Back to the mad rush. Til next year!