Hello everyone!!!

It’s the happy wanderers back again! We thought it was about time we provided a pre Christmas update on our whereabouts.

Well despite having some strange days in September which involved spending our mornings up on the volcano in a foot of snow, hiking & launching snowballs at fellow hikers followed by the afternoons on the beach paddling (and rockpooling :O), things are now hotting up here, you’ll be pleased to hear, as we rapidly approach summer time in New Zealand. The flowers are blooming, our volcano is looking decidedly less snowy and Chris has donned his shorts!

Since our last blog update, Chris has run the New Plymouth half marathon, a gruelling course involving several hills which he managed to complete in a record (for him) time of 1 hour and 21 minutes, slashing his previous best by 7 minutes!! He came 7th out of over 500 runners so was really pleased. Spurred on by this, Chris is now attending the weekly Athletic meets in Taranaki, and has been placed 2nd at 1500m, 1st at 800m, and 1st at 300m over the last few weeks so he is in great shape for the season ahead. In light of my very athletic comrade, I have had to put aside my chocolate muffins, sacrifice Shortland Street (Don’t ask- more Dodgy NZ tv!) and hit the road for the start of my new fitness regime!

Chris writes: After several painful weeks of moaning…I mean running and feeling like she needed new legs, hips and feet, all the hard work came together and Jue took part in a 5k race and achieved a fantastic finishing time of 31 minutes, which involved out sprinting several other runners. Since then, you can’t get Jue out of her lycra and the only time you see her is if she’s running up a hill, sprinting round the track or her favourite …. running on the beach (pretending she’s Pamela Anderson!!!!). Jue’s second competitive outing was for the PwC Round the Mountain Relay team. This was a 150km relay, consisting of 21 legs being covered by a team of 16 people. The event started at 23:00 and we were on the road from 23:30 driving out to the start of my 1st leg of the night/day (some people were required to double up so surprisingly I ended up doubling up then doing a 3rd leg). At 01:30 I set off on a 5.1km leg in the pitch black dark, with only the stars, a headlamp and a stream of red flashing lights on the other runners to guide me. It was the most surreal experience but really good fun. We then drove on to Jue’s leg which started at 5:30 and involved 6.1km of long gradual uphills. Since you all had a good chuckle to yourselves at Jue running up and down the netball court (and be honest, you know you did!!), I feel it necessary to point out that after all her training, she no longer turns bright red and dies after 5 mins. Instead, she determinedly dug deep and battled herself through the leg in a very good 39mins after setting off in darkness and having the privilege of seeing the sun illuminate the mountain by the time she finished. We then managed 2 hours sleep in the car before I covered a further 2 legs of 8.3km and 11.8km by which time we were ready to go to bed and sleep for the next 24 hours. The team finished at 15:00 and after 38 hours awake we finally got to bed!!!

(PEOPLE OF A NERVOUS DISPOSITION SHOULD NOT READ ON AS THIS MAY SCARE YOU………..). The next morning, the first sentence out of Jue’s mouth was ……”do you know where the course map is for next weeks race? I want to map it on the internet to see if it’s flat!!” Scary!!!!

Despite all this running, we have managed to travel around and see more sites in the fabulous North Island. In October we visited Wellington, the capital of New Zealand and spent a long weekend taking in the sights and exploring. Wellington is known as the windy city and it certainly lived up to its name. Whilst we were in Wellington we visited Peter Jackson’s (Director of Lord of the Rings) studios, know as Weta Caves which were amazing. We saw how they create all the creatures, models, armour, etc for films such as Lord of the Rings, Narnia, King Kong etc. They were also starting work on the Hobbit which is due to be filmed here in New Zealand shortly (we attempted to get on the books as extras for this (no jokes about us looking like hobbits- mind you after all this running my feet are looking quite hobbity!)…anyway, unfortunately we were too tall…haha just kidding, the list is huge and unless you live in Wellington there is no hope in hell!

We had a nerve racking weekend last week as Bindi Sue went for her WOF (that’s Warrant of Fitness for those who don’t know). This is similar to an MOT and well unsurprisingly she failed :O( …but not too badly! 3 tyres later, a patched up exhaust, the old bolt here and there plus a new light bulb Bindi was back on the road with a vengeance and a few more rattles!

Next weekend we are off to hike Mordor! That is, we are off to hike 18k across Tongariro National Park, the landscape of Mordor in Lord of the Rings. If we manage to survive the Dark Lord and the many Orks we will report back on this walk which is considered one of the best 1 day hikes in the world!