Hope everyone had a great Christmas and is recovering from all the turkey/ham dinners that seem to keep coming at this time of the year. We spent Christmas with our work friend's family that lives just down the road from us. We had a great feast of ham, pork, salads, potatoes, and in kiwi tradition pavlova for desert. My parents had told me earlier in the day that is was -25 degrees at home and the kiwis could hardly believe it. Here it was about 21 degrees and quite humid, not really the Christmas weather I'm used to so it really didn't feel like Christmas at all.
Roberta under one of the old viaducts not being used anymore.
The coolest part of the trip was the Hapuawhenua viaduct built across the Hapuawhenua valley. Our legs were burning a bit by the time we made it to Ohakune, but the trip was totally worth it.
One other night that week, we went horse back riding with one of our client/friend from the vet clinic. It was a great ride through the hills speckled with sheep. It was nice to get on the back of a horse again. I still need to work on my horsemanship skills, but it's starting to come along. Dave was impressed with Roberta's skills on the back of the horse especially when he had a bit of a freak out.
The weekend before Christmas, we spent at Hanna and Rex's cabin at Lake Taupo. The Friday night we had a supper at little Waihi at a restaurant right on the lake with all of the worker's at the clinic. The presentation of the food was quite classy for this hillbilly, and it tasted great. Saturday morning Rex and I got up and headed out on the lake to catch some trout. We were jigging at depths anywhere from 60-150 feet. My new fishing rod Roberta got me for Christmas proved to be quite lucky as I caught around 10 rainbow trout. Rex caught his fait share as well.
In the afternoon we checked out the trout hatchery and went on a bush walk which was cool.
Roberta came with us that evening to catch some of the action, but we didn't catch a thing. That's fishing for ya.
On Sunday morning we tried to find the fish again. After no luck jigging, we started trolling for them with lead lines that sink down to the bottom. I ended up catching one fish which was work to get the 100 m of line in but it was the only one of the day. We spent the afternoon on the beach and took the sit on top kayaks for a paddle up a nearby stream. Before we knew it, it was the end of another great weekend.
Today we are finishing up our last day of work at the Taumarunui Vet Clinic and are taking 2 months off to tour around the country a bit more. We plan on spending New Year's at Waihi Beach in Corommandel region with some friends we lived with in Palmerston North. From there we are heading north of Auckland to the Bay of Islands and 90 Mile Beach. After taking all that in, we will make our way down to the South Island sometime after the middle of January. We will try our best to keep you updated, but don't know how much we will have internet access. Happy New Year to everyone!!!
Until next time.......
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