So what have we learnt in our first month? Well:
- People purposefully walk on the left-hand side of the pavement. On busy streets it can be quite hard to cut across to go into a shop or office!
- People are also very reluctant to move out of your way if they're approaching from the opposite direction to you.
- Anything is an excuse for coffee and any spare shop or bit of pavement is an excuse for a coffee vendor (yes, there are plenty of mobile trailers parked up all over the place!). It's almost like the coffee is the equivalent of the ice cream van over here!
- Wellington is very hilly - as Ian found out to his cost on his first job.
- There are some extremely friendly people around who are very trusting (more on that later).
- Don't always believe what you read in the paper - compared to the UK or USA it's probably been blown out of all proportion.
- Football is rubbish. But you can't beat the quality of the rugby.
- The wind is actually bearable, but who knows what winter will bring!
- Don't believe any of the weather reports - they're worse than the UK!
- Don't bother unpacking any decent crockery or glasses coz they'll all fall off and break at the first sign of an earthquake!
- Weekend TV is rubbish. Unless you're really into rugby!
- We love Anzac Cookies!
- The Sunday farmers' market is by far the cheapest place to buy fruit and veg, fish and lamb.
We've also learned that people from Middleton were in New Zealand a long time ago, and apparently were quite significant as well!
Well, this is just a small snapshot of probably the more extreme things we've learned. You'll have to come and find the rest out for yourselves ;-) Well, they are saying the number of British tourists is down, so anyone fancy helping to reverse that trend? ;-)
This weekend was our first bank holiday weekend since arriving. It was Labour Day - which is something to do with celebrating workers! Why don't they have that in the UK??!
As we are still without four wheels, we decided to venture out on the public transport again. This time we decided to hit the Wairarapa Valley - a prominent winemaking area, about an hour's train ride outside Welly to Featherston, and then a short bus ride to Martinborough. Pinot Noir is the name of the game here, but there's also a good selection of Sav (Sauvignon Blanc), Chardonnay and other reds, such as Merlot, Cabernet, Syrah etc.
The town's "tourist information" - or I-site - rented us bicycles for a couple of hours, although many of the wineries are within walking distance from the town centre. But as we were on a strict timetable to catch the bus/train back, we opted for the faster form of transport!
With very quiet roads, it's a really easy trip to do. And most of the wineries are fully expecting you to wander in, sample a bit and then bugger off again. Some don't even charge! For those that do, they won't charge you if you buy some. We did buy one bottle of Sav at Tirohana, where we also stopped for a lovely spot of lunch overlooking the vineyards. It's a very pretty area with a lot of good wine! You can see some of the pics through the Picassa gallery link on the right hand side.
On the train on the ride back to Welly, we ended up sat across from a lady originally from London but who now lives in the Wairarapa with her Kiwi partner. As we believed the train would be stopping outside Welly and replaced by a bus, Louise offered us a lift with her partner who was picking her up and driving them back into town. Now, in the UK you might question getting into a car with two strangers! But over here, we thought nothing of it and Louise was very hospitable and has even invited us to stay with her any time we want to escape the city!
On Sunday there was the weekly trip to the farmers' market for the shopping, then we decided to visit the Te Papa Museum for their "Earth Rocks" exhibit. We'd visited Te Papa last year when we stayed in Welly, but we'd not been since arriving this time. Most of the museum is free as well, and there's loads to explore. We should probably spend more time there.
Anyway, Earth Rocks was an educational and interactive exhibit aimed at getting you prepared for a disaster. With the earthquakes that have been occurring in the Christchurch region for the last six weeks, disaster preparedness has been pushed up everyone's agenda. As NZ newbies though, it seemed like the ideal opportunity to go and learn about how we should get prepared once we're in our own place. It was a bit of an eye-opener, especially seeing the scale of tsunami waves that have hit the region in the past!
The SPCA were also there to talk about how you can help prepare for the care of your pets in the event of a disaster. A real consideration that we just take forgranted in other parts of the world where you don't live on a fault line and have to consider such eventualities as a quake or tsunami. We got talking to one of the girls who works in Marketing for the SPCA and it turns out she is originally from Macclesfield! She's only been here a year but Ian is heading down to the charity on Tuesday to do some volunteering, so meeting Vanessa was useful!
There were also displays from the local rescue teams, Fire service and helicopter ambulance - Life Flight. We entered a couple of competitions to win "survival kits" to keep us going for the first couple of days, should disaster strike - touch wood we'll remain safe and stable for many years to come. But it certainly brings home to you the different concerns over here in comparison to your concerns in the other countries that you've lived.
You may be wondering why Ian is planning to volunteer at the SPCA when he started a job last week. Well, the job he got, advertised as a driver, turned out to be more of a labourer-who-can-drive job. It wasn't what he expected so he decided not to pursue it. He's going to get back in touch with the BP guys at the airport and do some volunteering in the meantime. It will keep him occupied and also doing something useful that can go on his CV.
And talking of competitions, we've booked to go to Hong Kong at Easter :-) The competition was related to the release of Air NZ's new safety video - see it below!
Although we'd seen it on the internet, we were travelling to Welly on the first day it was used so we were some of the first to see it for real :-) And the other video below gives you an idea of what we're missing by not being able to see the ABs!
How's that for a great start to our time here?! A free holiday to kick it all off!
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