Finding our feet & planning a wedding in 3 days!

Well this has taken a while to get around to but I thought I'd better write a blog about our life here in New Zealand so far!

It's all been a bit of a blur and my vow to write a journal for each day travelling has been broken - it just gets mundane so fast when you're finding a house, work getting tax numbers etc- not the most thrilling of reads!!!

our hearts sinking as we ticked 'yes' to every question about whether we'd been near animals/farms, were carrying 'wood or bone' items, food

To begin at the beginning we arrived in Auckland on the 1st October having had a day cruelly stolen from us when we flew from Chile on saturday evening ad after 14 hours in the air arrived in New Zealand on Monday morning! Very odd. We got in at 4am and went through the mandatory customs form with our hearts sinking as we ticked 'yes' to every question about whether we'd been near animals/farms, were carrying 'wood or bone' items, food etc...we fully expected to be in there for hours whilst they combed our luggage for natural products we'd brought from South America! Thankfully they just checked our walking boots but after a quick look seemed happy and off we went - phew!

We had to wait for the car hire place to open as we'd arrived at 4am and so we whiled away the time in arrivals by sampling a lamb and mint pie (as we were to discover NZ VERY good at pies!) which was an unconventional but tasty breakfast! Then we picked up our hire car and got straight onto our first mission - sorting out the wedding - by driving ourselves 3 and a half hours up north to the lovely Paihia in the Bay of Islands. We arrived after successfully escaping Auckland and then passing through countryside which was much like Devon but for the lovely tree ferns.

Once we arrived we got straight to work interrogating the ladies at the Tourist Information Office and then started our search for 'the venue' and 'the place to stay' which combined perfect with cost effective! By 6pm the jet lag was really setting in and we just about made it to 8pm before slipping into jet lag comas!

The next day we were up and ready to hunt! We had a meeting with our Celebrant, Tom to get to but that didn't stop us from checking out a few possible venues in the morning beforehand! He pointed us in the direction of Te Ngaire beach so we headed up there to check it out and instantly were convinced this was the place for us. A lovely private beach overlooking the Bay of Islands and surrounded by lush NZ countryside.

We also found the beautiful 'Crisdon Castle' luxury B & B where we negociated to take over the whole place for the weekend of the wedding and which had the most amazing view and lovely rooms. The hosts, Chris and Donna, were so welcoming and relaxed that it just 'felt' right.

So with all that settled in 3 days we headed back down to Auckland ready for our next mission!

We found ourselves a cheap place to stay and commenced our search for a room to live in! We quickly found a few options and went to have look around. After seeing a few very dodgy places we settled on a house in Kohimarama (5 mins from the beach!) with 2 housemates, Yvette (from Uganda) and Sam (a Kiwi). We moved in 2 days later!

We have a lovely big room which has no furniture - thankfully it does have a bed so we don't have to sleep on the floor!!!

Then it was time to focus on work and getting ourselves some cash!