On to the Next Adventure

After lots of time searching for cars around the Auckland area, we had almost given up when Eric said his friend, Bob, in Wellington found one he thought would work for us. It had low mileage and was in our price range, so we decided to travel down to Wellington to pick it up. We ended our wonderful two week stay with Robyn and Eric with a classic Kiwi dinner- snapper fish and chips before they drove us down to the bus station to board the overnighter to Wellington. I was so excited when I saw that the bus was a double-decker and insisted we sit on the top level. Not our smartest idea, as I got pretty car sick and we each only slept about two hours. We got our energy back though when we made it to Bob's shop to pick up the shiny red beauty. Blake is getting used to driving Heinz (car's name since it looks like ketchup) and is even starting to get comfortable driving through countless roundabouts on the left side of the road.



 

We spent the day exploring Petone (town right outside of Wellington) where I had the best chai latte of my life. They have a beautiful coastline we walked up and down until it started to rain. Good thing we have Heinz to keep us dry now! We stayed the night with Adam's parents, Karen and Bruce, and enjoyed a delicious home cooked meal and arguably the most comfortable bed I've ever slept in. After fixing an alignment problem on Heinz the next morning, we started our five hour drive up the coast to Opunake. We will be spending the next two weeks working on a dairy farm here. Working on a dairy is completely foreign to me, but I've told myself I can do anything if it's only for two weeks to make us a little money. We got all bundled up in some work gear they gave us and we went to work putting up some fencing. I actually think I will really enjoy working here and it will definitely make me good with a hammer. (Yeah Dad, can you believe it?) They have 400 cows here and 300+ acres of beautiful New Zealand land with Mt. Taranaki in the background. Hopefully the weather clears up so we can go explore and do some hiking around the mountain, but the spring weather here isn't looking too good. Alright, well we are off to go watch the afternoon cow milking!

Caroline