Tintin in New Zealand: Easter Weekend

Here’s finally some news on our trip to Wellington during the Easter weekend. When Scott saw my excitement when I got back from my weekend away from home three weeks ago, he thought we should all go for a long weekend with Easter to see what the Wellington area has to offer. Because we were a bit worried about the windyness of the city we decided to check out the Kapiti Coast, where Branka and Pieter live, just 45 minutes north of Wellington, where it is usually 3 degrees warmer and less windy too.

Here's a little map of the North Island to show you our itinerary: from Tauranga on the East Coast we drove to Hawera, in between New Plymouth and Wanganui and then down South to Wellington.

Ilias and Jacob hadn’t been out of the city for a long time and therefore we decided to take them first to cousin Jim’s farm in Taranaki, a 5 hour drive from here, making only a 2 hour detour to Wellington. The area is dominated by the impressive Mount Taranaki, which resembles Mount Fuji so much, that The Last Samurai with Tom Cruise, was filmed there. We arrived quite late at night and got up early to see how Jim and his neighbour Tim prepared the plane they share to fly to Wanaka on the South Island for the Air Show. Ilias was really impressed when he got to sit in the cockpit while Tim taxied the plane to the airstrip in the paddock accross the street. This plane is twice smaller than the plane Jim previously built himself. He’s clearly one of those Kiwi’s that are capable of building just about anything themselves.

As I’ve mentioned over a month ago Jim and Marilyn consider themselves hobby farmers, having ‘only’ 40 ha of land. To be able to call yourself a big farmer in NZ you apparantly need 400 ha! I wonder how these farmers remember which paddocks belong to them. I think I would already have difficulties with memorising the boundaries of my 40 ha.

Anyway, Jim and Tim took off in their plane and we helped Marilyn a bit with shifting the cattle. It was so great to be back between the cows and fresh cow shit. Jacob also enjoyed eating a little sheep poo. Around lunchtime auntie Jean, Jim’s mum (the painter) showed up with some yummy looking treats for the potluck lunch(*) that Marilyn had organised for the whole family and a bit later the rest of the family arrived with even more food. This way Scott unexpectedly got to catch up with some of his cousins which he hadn’t seen in twenty years. For me it was great to meet some more of the Bayler family members. Now I only have 23 of the total of 30 cousins to go.

After lunch we drove down to the Kapiti Coast and had some great views on the ocean on the west coast. We enjoyed Branka and Pieter’s hospitality for a second time. This time our kids seemed to behave a little bit better than last time, but we still admire our friends for the patience they have with Ilias and Jacob, when they’re thrashing their place.

As New Zealand is a bit out of the way for the Easter Church bells (coming from Rome)we had to count on the local Easter Bunny for our easter eggs delivery (with some assistance from the South Island by Gran). Following Croatian tradition(**) Branka sent us out into the garden, on our bare feet, to find the easter eggs.

During the weekend we tried to see as much of the area as possible and Scott also managed to test out the local golf courses with Pieter. Next to poker the boys seem to share now a second hobby. Branka, her friend Michelle and I got on the bike and explored the bike tracks. Thanks to the flatness of the area cycling is pretty easy, what would make it perfect for us. On Easter Sunday I took the kids to the beach at 7 o’ clock in the morning to prevent them from waking up the others after the daylight savings (now there’s only ten hours of difference between us and Belgium). Even at that time of the day many people were walking and running on the beach. What a great place to live! We enjoyed the sunny autumn weather all weekend long until a strong wind hit the area. At night Scott and I were convinced that the roof would blow away. Our hosts didn’t think it wasn’t anything worse than what they usually get in the Kapiti Coast. These winds are actually something that worry us. We’ve noticed that all are friends who live there don’t take any notice of the wind anymore and have just gotten used to the extreme climate. When we arrived back home, where it was 27 degrees at 7 o’ clock at night and windstill, we realised in what a great place we live and suddenly we were not that convinced anymore that we should move. I guess we will know after we’ve spent a full winter in boring Tauranga and wherever we live it will always be a compromise.

(*) Potluck lunch or dinner: everyone brings something to eat
(**) It might be interesting to know that Croatian gardens are often covered in snow this time of the year. We're lucky that we don't have this tradition in Belgium.

Here's a selection of the pictures of last weekend:

At the Taranaki farm:

Early rise for Jacob, here with Jim's wife Marilyn