Merry Christmas !!!
Merry Christmas !!!
Merry Christmas !!!
We hope you have all had a very jolly Christmas and are enjoying the festivities through to the new year.
We've had a very different Christmas this year.We spent Christmas at the beach in Whitianga, wearing shorts and T-shirts!
Santa managed to find his way to TinTin and managed to get the stockings into the van without waking us, pretty amazing as TinTins door is rather noisy!
In the run up to Christmas we had been playing a game called 'guess whats in the Christmas stocking'. This entailed asking 3 questions to which we had to answer yes or no. Nat really didn't want to find out what the presents were so asked suitably vague questions like "is it bigger than the moon?" Nat realised that there was something fishy afoot after she was shooed away from a phone call but all was revealed in her stocking. We had decided to cook something as far from traditional as possible and had chosen a Thai meal, but Jonny had secretly booked us into a swanky restaurant as a Christmas surprise from his Mum and Dad. What a lovely surprise - Thank you Mum and Dad! We ate a delicious four course meal which was very arty. Nat even had a pansie on her turkey!


We went to a small Church in the morning and were invited to tea by a lovely lady called Ann. If you're reading this Ann, thanks again for your lovely hospitality. We spent the evening watching the Queen's speech and chatting to Ann and her family. They had a stunning house with the beach at the bottom of their garden. Oh and the traditional New Zealand Pavlova was very scrummy. Yum yum. We hope to get the recipe soon so we can cook another dish for you when we get home. Their neighbours had a house lit up like a Christmas tree. Even the garage was decked out with signing reindeers and santas ...


Boxing day morning we took a boat trip out to see the Cathederal Coves and some of the bays of the pennisular. This was fab. Speeding over the water in a little inflatable was fun and wet. The scenery, in typical New Zealand style was stunning. Nat was in her element looking at the geological features including lots of evidence of past volcanic eruptions. We'll bore you with the photos when we're home!

We're now in Coromandel having taken a tortuous road through the mountains. TinTin really struggled but did us proud! We only annoyed about 10 Kiwi cars behind us - oooops. We're hoping that these bendy roads are something of the past and that the run to Auckland is a bit smoother now.


Anyhow we are gutted that we are going to miss Tony and Caroline here in Coromandel but we could do with selling the van pronto.