Yes, we are moving again. First of all, it is not that we don’t like Auckland, it definitely has its pros and cons. But there is a but… We’ve been thinking lately on what we want in the long term and it came down to a few wishes. We would like to buy a house soon, somewhere relatively warm. And we would like to buy a house that we can pay off quickly as travel and flexibility will always be (very!) high on our priority list. This means that Auckland is not a possibility, houses are too expensive. Wellington isn’t exactly warm. But we need to be able to commute to one of these two cities as this is where our work opportunities are.

Continue reading →

During our first few months in Auckland we enjoyed getting out and about in the weekends exploring the areas close by: the Waitakere ranges in the west of Auckland is a favourite of ours, while the Coromandel to the east has some of the most beautiful beaches in the country. We had also explored a little bit of Northland, going as far as Kauri country after a camping trip gone wrong turned into a road trip exploring Northland’s west coast. We were keen to see more of Northland, it being one of the few regions left in New Zealand that we haven’t had a good old road trip through yet. So when Easter came around in April and we found out that ANZAC day was falling only a few days after the Easter weekend we decided to take full advantage of this gift from the public holiday gods and took three extra days off. All of a sudden our Easter weekend became a 10 day holiday! Continue reading →

On the 4^th of January we finally had to face reality again. After 14 months off work, we were leaving for Auckland to get back to work and find a place to live. Our first week of accommodation was sorted, we were going to house sit for a week for a friend of Julia’s aunt and take care of her cat Mister Ted. Mister Ted is a rather large 14 year old ginger male cat with a just as large personality (Unfortunately he died two weeks ago after a massive stroke which left him partly paralysed). It was a very nice place to stay and get all sorts of things sorted, like job interviews for Julia and house viewings for our own place. Continue reading →

We felt a little sad saying goodbye to the Wairarapa, it is our favourite piece of New Zealand and we knew it would be a while before we’d be back. While living in Wellington it was our weekend getaway. The small towns, wineries, good weather and the Tararua mountains have always had a large appeal to us. If only the commute to Wellington was a bit easier… Continue reading →

After landing in Auckland, we were both surprised by the friendliness of both Immigration and Customs staff, very stark contrast with most border crossings in South America. It definitely gave us a good feeling to being back in New Zealand. We had declared some of our stuff (camping gear, hiking boots) as being a ‘bio security treat’ so they got temporarily taken from us for cleaning. When the official came back he asked where we had been as there was quite a lot of manure under Julia’s hiking boots, that he had needed to clean up. We of course thanked him very much for the sparkling boots!

Continue reading →