First blog, first post! It’s been a while since we have been on a big trip and seeing that blogs are the way to keep family and friends up to date on adventures these days, we are now also entering 21^st century with our own blog! So welcome to kiwiandcheese.com! I am sitting in our fancy apartment in Herne Bay/Ponsonby in Auckland at the moment, where we are staying for three days before catching our flight to Santiago.

It’s been a busy few weeks preparing for our South American roadtrip. A lot of things are not possible to do far in advance and had to be left till the end. It was really good that Julia’s job ended a little bit earlier as she really did a good job on the preparations. We decided to sell all our big stuff, furniture etc and store the ‘little’ stuff at Julia’s parents (although not so little if you see the pile in the sleepout!). It’s crazy actually, seeing that both Julia and I arrived in Wellington five years ago with only a backpack and how we had a house full of stuff, luckily most of it second hand! Lots of time was spent listing the 60 odd TradeMe ads and answering the questions of people with way too much time on their hands. No we don’t have a buy now, no our heater doesn’t have borer and no we are not on Mt. Cook the mountain! Pretty much everything got sold though, including motorbike, car and bicycles. Owning not so much anymore means our futures are very flexible again.

The last couple days in the house were weird. We did a two day trip up and down to Rotorua to drop off some stuff while still having our station wagon and when we came back people started arriving and taking our furniture. That was a weird feeling and Julia shed some tears. The last few days we ‘camped’ in our house. Good thing that we are taking camping stuff with us to SA.

Best (only) seat in the house

Ipadding in empty house

We also had time to do some fun stuff.  We had goodbye dinners, goodbye drinks, goodbye Dance Central games and goodbye coffees.

Dinner at Hazel with friends

It was also the week of the world premiere of The Hobbit. We didn’t line up but took our chances and showed up just when it was all about to start and managed to find an ok spot along the red carpet. We saw Sir Peter Jackson, Elijah Wood, Cate Blanchett and some other actors who will no doubt be more famous when The Hobbit is released on December 12. It was the warmest day in Wellington so far for this ‘summer’ and the crowds were out!

World Premiere of The Hobbit at Embassy Theatre

Everything that was now left had to fit in a small rental car, with which we were going to leave Wellington. Shock horror though when we put all the remaining stuff in one pile and realised we still had a lot of stuff in the house, slight panic! Good to know that Darcy had offered to store anything that wouldn’t fit. On our second to last day in Wellington we sold our purple Primera to DNA (aka Diane and Aled) and they dropped us off at Omega, the place to rent a car cheaply. I had asked for a car with a boot, not a hatchback and that was a good thing as they offered us a free upgrade to a station wagon. To the amazement of the guys at the desk there was jumping and fist pumping going on from Julia, who was extremely happy that we might be able to fit all our stuff. The fact that we got a Mazda Pregnancy… or was it Premacy and that most people would expect us to unload toddlers and babies from it, well, we took that in our stride! I spent about two hours loading the car and managed to fit everything in bar the ironing board. Since I hate ironing rather much anyway, we decided to donate this and some other stuff to the recycle store.

Pregnant car, almost ready to pop

Our landlord came around and once again confirmed how lucky we have been with them. After a quick inspection and a chat he was happy with everything. He didn’t care about the broken lights in the garage or the toilet seat that I had broken in some unfortunate accident with a bottle of rocket shower gel.

So on Friday the 30^th November, after a final coffee with Julia’s brother Ben, we left Wellington in our heavily packed Pregnancy. We stopped overnight in our favourite motel in Taihape, a king size mattress beats sleeping on the floor! The next day we continued on to Rotorua where we stayed with Julia’s parents for five nights. Still lots to organise from there, but we did manage to finally see Skyfall.

Thursday we said goodbye to Julia’s parents and drove to Hamilton where we stayed with Nan for a night and took her out for dinner at her favourite foodcourt restaurant Taylor’s Fine Roast. Not something I would normally pick, but it was actually really tasty.

Friday we drove up to Auckland and even at 12pm ended up in a traffic jam, guess that’s AK for you! We’ve got a great deal on a beautiful little apartment in Herne Bay, 5 minutes from Ponsonby and walking distance to town. We saw Ben again for lunch in the CBD, and said goodbye properly. On Saturday we had a look at the drifting championships, and then caught up with Aunty Kaye over home-made lamingtons and iced coffees before saying goodbye.  In the evening we visited Martin and Aenslee in their apartment on the Viaduct. Aenslee and Martin cooked us once more an amazing Italian meal!

Auckland skyline

Boyracer, ehm… Drifting championships

This brings us to the present, our last full day in New Zealand for a while. We just drove out to the Waitakere Ranges for a longish run through the forest. Beautiful weather for it. Going out for dinner in a bit and then tomorrow there is nothing left but catching our 4pm flight to Santiago.  Not ones to travel lightly, we have brought all our camping gear with us, and clothes for four-seasons, so getting our luggage on the plane without going over the one piece 23kg limit is probably going to be our first challenge. Let the adventures begin!