A bit of catch-up - New Zealand

Hi everyone, welcome to my blog. I am going to use this first posting as a way of catching you all up on what I have been doing the last few months.


So lets start with my December trip back to New Zealand.

It was a 5 week trip and I spent the first 5 days with Dad, wandering into town, eating Fish 'n' Chips, drinking Bundaberg ginger beer, you know all the stuff you crave for while living in the states.


Very soon the call of Elliots beach was to much and I persuaded a very busy Dad to run me up and drop me off, which he was only to happy to do. This left me with 10 days of complete solitude, surfing, collecting seafood for dinner, writing, praying, and reading.


One nice little event while there was the securing of my new job with NOAA fisheries on the West Coast Groundfish Observer Program (WCGOP). I actually had the farm managers wife walk down to my tent one evening to say that Dad was trying to reach me, as Mum had called about being contacted by someone wanting to give me a job. A very weird occurance when you are on the other side of the world, living in a tent, and having not talked to anyone for 5 days.
Anyway so the next day I hiked up the hill phoned them up and got the job.


So after 10 magnificent days I headed back to Auckland and started helping my Aunt Bid, get her 42ft yacht ready for a few weeks of sailing and the day after Christmas we were off.

We sailed in fantastic conditions that first day and night to Elliots beach of all places, and then spent the next two weeks day sailing through the Bay of Islands, exploring 8 different anchorages in that time, and hiking to waterfalls, swimming, reading, you know, just total lazy time.

OK so that was New Zealand, as after the sailing I was only in the country for another 4 days. Oh yeh, my sister Debbie was home during some of this time as well, but she was off with Dad in the South Island and has her own blog about that.