The Land Of The Long White Cloud

We just spent 3 weeks in the Southern Hemisphere.

The first week we were in New Zealand for my Nana's 80th birthday (aka family reunion). I haven't been to NZ since I was ~15yrs old and it was interesting to meet all the rellies again.

Mum, Dad, Liam, Jesse and Jimmy arrived in NZ a week earlier. They had hired camper vans in the south island and travelled around, finally meeting up with us in North Palmiston. Then we headed up to Lake Taupo.

We stayed in Taupo at my Aunty Nancy and Uncle Stoney's place. Stoney took us trout fishing on Lake Taupo in his boat. I actually caught two trout but neither were big enough to keep. Liam caught one and Jimmy two, all but Jimmy's last fish being too small to keep. Stoney cooked up our catch that night (plus a frozen one from an earlier trip) with kiwi fruit and it was quite delicious.

Next stop was Napier and hordes of relatives. Tanya and I were able to borrow a car and duck away to see some wineries. We managed to get to Ngatarawa, Te Mata Estate, Craggy Range and Te Awa, in no particular order.

We had lunch at Craggy Range's restaurant Terroir, which was spectacular. Then next day we went to Te Awa's restaurant for lunch and it was excellent but somewhat overshadowed by Terroir.

After lots of drinking, barbeque's, dinner, drinking, photos, catching up with relatives and more drinking we headed to Sydney.