The other two New Zealanders (Nahum and Walter) on my team who work for Vibrant Planet live in Wellington, so, I headed up to see them. Nahum I knew from Ruby circles, Walter I don’t think I’d met before. Janet was over visiting from the US, so, we had a very enjoyable few days hanging out, doing some work, having some food, playing games (Janet’s extremely good!). Good times.
Then Maaike and Anna came up and we hung out with Glynn and Jayne & visited Thomas & Adeline. Wellington is in a bit of a state at the moment, as there have been just massive job cuts in Wellington from this government. I think it’s something like 11% net job losses in the last 12 months. Pretty crazy.
And a nice walk with Nick once back in ChCh, haven’t seen him in an age :)
Oh, and Donald Trump got elected for the second time. Well, ok, the election happened back in November, but, he has taken office. Musk is in and running around causing absolute mayhem… honestly, it’s a total shit show. Here in NZ David Seymour is cutting school lunches (more on that in a future post) and they’re just absolutely uncaring heartless mean cruel people. It’s honestly disgusting. Tax breaks for landlords and let the most needy go hungry. Sickening.
The wonderful Kate & Mark organised a trip for us all to Lake Daniells up in Lewis Pass. It’s a place we’ve been a bunch of times before, as it really is ideal for young trampers. The hut also has the best toilets of any DOC hut I’ve been to. No kidding, they’re really good!
The kids did well, no real complaining and we made decent time. Even went for a dip in the lake. It’s ridiculously shallow for a really long way!
We’d booked the entire hut out, and there weren’t any campers, so we had the entire place to ourselves. Quite rare and really lovely!. Marshmallows were toasted, drawings were made on the massive blackboard which is there. Ice-creams were eaten on the way home. A lovely weekend.
Had a fun play about on the beach with Ian and Ali and Amelie. They have a Blokart which is a kind of land yacht. Super fun.
Had a nice catch up with Glynn who’s in town with his family. Always delicious food when we meetup (and they’re cooking!). My offering was Pimms.
And a couple of outings for Anna and her friend Thor, as Thor (and Mikkel, Berit and Freyer) are heading back to Denmark for a year, perhaps more. They’re certainly going to be missed.
From Te Mahia we headed to Anakiwa to stay at a friends bach (holiday home) for a couple of weeks. I’m lucky enough to be able to work remotely, and, while the internet wasn’t great there, it was just good enough. I worked 1/2 days (mornings) and then in the afternoon took over from Maaike who worked some of the afternoons. Worked out pretty well.
Had a lovely time, swims, bikes on the queen charlotte (just the free part back towards Te Mahia – route below), once you go past the marker you have to purchase a track pass to use the private land.
We were there for Christmas, and it was pretty fun, there were carols in the dining hall at Outward Bound
And Santa came on a boat on Christmas day and lobbed lollies out from the boat and onto the jetty. No drownings from kids chasing after the sweets (some of which fell in the water)
We walked to Davies bay for Christmas itself. We were lucky enough with the weather as it lashed rain the following evening. I admit I’d been feeling lazy, but, Maaike gave us a push and it was actually a really lovely spot to spend the evening. Million dollar view for $25 for the night for the three of us… just brilliant.
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