Next up: sheep!

Rose’s favourite was Chippy (the puppy of course), Thijs loved Coby (who gave the best cuddles on the sofa), TJ and me both loved Lu (reminded us of our dog Janne ❤) but all 9 of the dogs at Tim and Chloe’s place were adorable. There were Lu, Grub, Tony, Bert, Ernie, Mac and Chippy the working dogs and gorgeous Roodie and Coby the 2 pointers who lived in the house.  Our only task was to care for them and take them out for walks over the surrounding vineyards – oh it was a hard life! 😜

The house was right up our street and we felt very much at home.  After a week of house sitting it was time to move on again when Tim and Chloe returned from their holiday on the Cook Islands.  Once again we have said farewell but gained a couple more friends 👍🏻

We headed south on Saturday heading towards our next adventure, this time helping out a sheep farmer in Methven (near Ashburton).  On the way we decided to stop over in Kiakora, the famous town for whale watching and one of the great memories from our honeymoon 9 years ago (throwing up on the boat was my personal memory 😖 but I did have a baby in my belly 😊). The coastal road was unrecognisable, due to a huge earthquake in 2016.  It measured 7.8 on the Richter scale and was considered the “most complex earthquake ever studied”.  The South Island moved 2 meters closer to the North Island and some parts of the east coastline raised by up to 14 meters! Kiakora was completely blocked off and some of the roads took over a year to be repaired/rebuilt.  There are still a lot of road works continuing and also structural rock works to protect the roads from rock slides.  It’s fascinating to see and read about the force of Mother Nature and the impact it has had on Kiwi lives.

We stopped at a lovely little campsite just outside Kiakora in Goose Bay.  We had the campsite to ourselves!  It was the first time we were sleeping all 4 of us in the trailer camper and it felt like a new adventure 😊.  We had hamburgers for dinner and Rose finished off some schoolwork (proud of her!).  We slept really well and this morning we popped the tent back on the trailer and off we went.

We drove through Christchurch and headed back out towards the snow capped mountains, arriving at our destination this afternoon.  We briefly met Ben and Chiara, and are now settling in to our very cute hut ❤ we already like it here!  Tomorrow the work begins, helping out with the sheep…..no idea yet what kind of work we will be doing but we will see!  We have our gum boots ready!

We are back off the grid again which means no wifi nor TV….. but we do have a very warm log burner and a pack of cards somewhere…..

Laters!

Kelly