Sunday 25 May 2008

BILTONG

Phil was talking about making Biltong for ages and one day he came home with all those instructions. He changed our boiler cupboard into an drying cupboard including Petra's reading lamp. He bought 3kg of good quality beef and all necessary ingredients including spices from the South African Shop. There was a certain smell in the house for a few days as you can imagine when all that meat is hanging up in the cupboard to dry. The end result was delicious and more than 3/4 has already been eaten.

Hopefully Phil will make more Biltong soon and as much as we laugh about his determination of making things, we do always enjoy the end result...

Sunday 18 May 2008

KAKAS IN THE WILD (OPOUTERE BEACH)

We both had the weekend off and we were out of town again. We drove along Karangahake Gorge and visited two batteries which all closed down in the early 19th century. We stayed the night in Waihi and had an awesome night drinking in the local pub. As we entered, everyone was staring at the TV screen watching horse racing. The landlord was pretty stressed as we didn't choose a kind of beer within 2 seconds. There was even a TV screen turned towards the window so people standing outside smoking didn't miss any of those important races. Two drunken woman playing pool decided then to play the jukebox. Instead of turning one or the other off the volume of the horse race got turned up even louder. We didn't think the atmosphere was going to get any better in the next couple of hours and we decided to leave and get cosy in the van.



Next day we hiked up to Wentforth Falls and stopped at Opoutere Beach-Wharekawa Habour Wildlife Refugee afterwards. The pine forest was full of Fly Agarics and while Petra was trying to get some good close up shots of them Phil spotted a Kaka. First of all it just looked like a black bird but indeed it was a Kaka. He did not care about us at all, minding his own business of eating and dropping things. First of all we thought he may broke out somewhere as he seemed so calm, but 30 min later we actually saw 2 other Kakas flying over the pine forest. Wasn't that a beautiful ending of our little weekend trip?

Monday 5 May 2008

WELLINGTON

Phil's birthday present this year was an extended weekend trip to Wellington. We landed on a sunny morning, walked around town exploring the tattoo museum, Te Papa and various second hand shops. We went to bed early to be prepared for a good Saturday night out in town.

We already heard of a good rock club and we were also lucky to get tickets for a small comedy show which was already sold out. She was English and surprisingly Kiwis seemed to accept her swearing on stage. To safe money we went back to our hostel to enjoy our homemade whiskey before hitting the town. Unfortunately not being in training anymore, Petra passed out after about 2 glasses and even worse was not up for much the day after.

Even our $5 breakfast placed was closed on Sunday! At least we were lucky to see Kakas at Karori Wildlife Sanctuary instead of Tuataras which were all hiding on such cold cloudy day.





Our last day in the capital we walked up to Sinclair Head where there is a male NZ Fur Seal colony between the months of May to August. having a delicious branch on the way back we got told by the waitress there had been not long ago an Orca sighting just 5 metres of the beach. By then Phil decided that's where he wants to live.........