Long Weekend + The Chats
So last week, I took the Friday off and we drove up Ohope, stopping on the way in Napier. It was a really good drive, we a gave Beth a motion sickness pill and she was great the whole way, in fact both of them were great. They of course got bored towards the end of the trip, especially about 4 hours in, but they did such a good job! No vomiting, no (excessive) grizzling etc. They're definitely getting old and better at car travel. Seeing as we don't do very long drives that often, it's really good to see how much they've improved at being able to handle the distance. I think giving them both their toys really helped too, thanks Shrimpy and BananaBanana.
Once we got to Ohope we found our AirBnB and got settled in. I took Theo for a quick walk to see if we could find White Island, we did, but not before we found a tyre swing which is what he wanted to spend the most time doing. All good! We waited for Ben and Di to arrive, then we went down to Cauldera for dinner, where we had a brief but nice dinner. The kids were pretty tired after walking all the way there (well, scootering) and then we knew we had to do it again on the way back. Trying to get them all to sleep was fun, Beth was in Jacob's room and Theo was in Abbey's, so there was a lot of talking.
Saturday morning we headed into town to have a look around the Visitors Centre, wander around and get some icecream, then we headed back home to try and get the kids to have a rest, because that night we were doing to go bushwalking to see Glow-worms.
Beth was tired straight away and went to sleep, Theo we thought was asleep but an hour later he came wandering upstairs claiming to have slept for ages (not true) so I went downstairs and laid with him on his bed for 20 minutes, that always seems to make him fall asleep and this time was no exception, he was out like a light. Jacob and Abbey were being driven around by Ben and Di and they fall asleep pretty much as soon as the car starts moving, amazing.
Eventually everyone was fed, it was dark so it was time to go exploring for Glow-worms. We jumped in the car and drove to the park, then got our torches out and off we went walking! 500m in we met a couple with super bright headtorches and we asked them if they'd seen any glow-worms, but they said they hadn't. Another km in, we started to hear the Morepork going! Very exciting. Further in we started to realise we COULD see Glow-Worms, and lots of them! They were everywhere, you just had to turn off your torches to be able to see them easily. We kept walking, past were we could hear the Morepork, until we got to almost the top of the hill. We stopped for 5 minutes to see if we could hear any Kiwi's, but while we heard a few interesting noises we don't think any of them were Kiwis. Back down the hill we got closer and closer to the Morepork noise again and I shone my torch up in the tree. Took a while, but eventually I managed to find it! Right above us, Morkporking it up. Thankfully he didn't move and the four kids were able to see the Morepork up in the tree.
On the way back to the car we bumped into a man who was part of the conservation project, he had a blacklight to make all the kids clothes shine, and he told us to keep an eye out for the "W" tree back near the start because it had a bunch of Weta's on it. Took a little bit of searching, but we eventually did find the W tree and all the Wetas on it, he wasn't wrong because there were heaps and heaps of Wetas! The kids loved it. Adventure over, it was time to head home and get the kids to bed.
Sunday we went to some hot pools in Kawerau for a (free!) swim, then stopped by at Julian's Berry Farm on the way back for lunch and a play. The berry farm was awesome, I mean it was still raining so we didn't really go outside, but the food was great and there was heaps of stuff for the kids to do. Including eating Icecream.
Sadly the next day was packup and go home day, which of course caused a lot of tears. Before we did that though Ben and I took the kids for a walk on the beach and another play on the Tyre swing, before heading back to the house to Celebrate Abbey's 5th Birthday! Then it was really time to go home, back the same way again via Taupo, stopping this time at Burger Fuel for a bite to eat.
Here's a bunch of photos/videos I took in Ohope.
And that was our long weekend away in Ohope. It was a great time, everyone enjoyed it and our nature walk at night-time with torches was certainly the highlight of the adventure. I went and picked up Biscuit from Chesterhope and they told me he'd been very anti-social, which doesn't seem like him. But they said he didn't want to hang out with other dogs or people! He's getting his bits chopped off this week, that will hopefully help him out a bit there.
Right, and this next bit was written on Friday afternoon (11th Oct)
Currently in the back seat of Jordan's car, driving back from Wellington after going to see The Chats last night.
What a freakin' night. We came into town from Sam's place and had dinner at Monsoon Poon. Then we tried to get into the Gig but the 7pm we thought it opened at turned out to be 9pm. So we went and found a brewpub to sit in for a couple of hours, had a few brews (sours, they're all the rage)
Then we went back over to go and in and holy shit if there wasn't a queue to get in the door. So we lined up and got in, I put my Australian cricket shirt with VB logo on it. In we went, over the bouncer made a very stern "You can't come in here wearing that" comment about my Cricket shirt. Took him a few seconds to break into a smile, both Jordan and I thought he was serious at first.
Once inside I grabbed a beer and a T-shirt. Then went and found Jordan again who had managed to get us a spot at the very front. We could not have been any closer. Then we waited. First support act was called "The Uncools" and then a very excellent support act called "Sit down in front" where the lead singer was in a wheelchair. They were awesome, even played a D4 cover (What I want)
Then the moment we'd all be waiting for, 11pm and The Chats came on. They were just as great as I'd hoped, super high energy blasting hard for an hour. They even played VB Anthem for an encore which was a perfect way to end the night. It was hot, sweaty and packed with teenagers. I was definitely the odd one out, I think I freaked a lot of the youngsters out especially because I knew all the words. Damn it was great, the best $25 I've spent on a live gig ever.
The only downer of the night was that Sam couldn't join us, the tickets had all sold out and we couldn't get a door sale or anything for him. So he had to go home instead which was a bit of a bigger, but nevermind.
Then yea, once the gig was over we had to find a cab. Uber was going to charge us $100 to get back to Sam's place, Ola charged us $15 (with some super discount Jordan had). So that was damn handy, nice work Jordan. And of course super thanks for Jordan for driving to and from Wellington.
Ok Right! Sunday morning, time to go to Mitre10.
Tim