We're now in New Zealand working in a vegetarian and organic food cafe situated in the beautiful surroundings of the Coromandel peninsula. Back in the day a couple of brothers discovered gold here which precipitated the New Zealand gold rush. Now a days it boasts a thriving community of artists (potters especially) and plenty hippies. Our work is laid back and whilst fi has been confined to the kitchen jay has been working his back in the garden (and learning some stuff so that we can become self-sufficient when we come home
The scenery here is unbelievable. There are pine trees which very much remind me of the sweet Scottish highlands but the sea is turquoise blue like the Mediterranean and there are palm trees, banana trees, passionfruit...It's a hill-walker's paradise. I'll try and get some photos up soon.
The coffee at the cafe deserves a special mention too. It is out of this world and so strong after a month of serious tea-drinking in Fiji. And, our host used to work in one of Edinburgh's California Coffee boxes- small world eh!
Coffee was one of the highlights of our Australian adventure too (I notice we've not written anything about that part) Why can't coffee in the UK be as good? The food too is very good (though that's based on only one meal at the restaurant and a few dinners with Aussies) On Christmas day we treated our selves to some BBQ Red-snapper and tried Kangaroo steaks, which were delicious.
The Australian people we met were incredibly friendly. Gary provided us with our first hitch-hiking experience in his enormous truck (see photos) and then invited us to his family home in Melbourne for the day. Australia was also the place where fi drove her first automatic car, well van. I was so nervous about driving a van it hadn't even crossed my mind that it would be automatic. I was gob-smacked when I saw that 'abnormal' gear box, as per Jay was there to save the day and show me how to put the thing into 'drive'. The beaches were nice, with the exception of Melbourne where the art galleries compensated for this. Some of the street art was pretty awesome too, in both Sydney and Melbourne.
Australia was also the first time we saw a snake in the wild. In fact we saw three and fi spotted them all and didn't scream or faint. Carpet Pythons apparently. Admittedly they had a really nice skin and didn't look too frightening all curled up. We didn't see any sharks, though when we were in Byron Bay there were sightings of Great Whites (one was apparently 4m long!) and we spoke to surfers who had seen sharks. On our wee road trip I also saw a Kangaroo! The birds in Australia were beautiful, they had the most colourful feathers I've ever seen and some of them had the strangest of calls. There was one in particular which sounded like R2D2.
Well, I leave it there as we have an evening of Amelie ahead of us!
A bientot, love fi and jay
Mum xx