Palmy!

We pretty much abandoned the theme of naming posts after the date because as you've noticed, we can slack sometimes.

So we were promised "a wicked time" and we definitely got that. Over the weekend we got to see what life is like at a kiwi batch (beach house). We had to pick up a crate of Tui for crate day, then made a stop at the Tui brewery for pics. We found ourselves on the longest driveway EVER on this windy dirt road and stopped off at "Gorgeous" George's house in the wop-wops (middle of nowhere). They had all these chickens with their chicks roaming around the yard with the dogs.

We drove back out to head to the batch. Together there were 16 people there, family and friends (10 were under 26 years old). We made a giant tee-pee that we unfortunately couldn't set on fire.. watched them ride dirt bikes on the beach, and drank crates all night. Tess sat by the bonfire for a bit while I played spoons with the rest of the family (I have the scars to show for it!). I chose to sleep inside, Tess slept in the yard to watch the stars (and saw over 10 shooting stars).

Next day Brad ditched us and left us with his friends and relatives to go dirt biking. We went jet skiing! Tess went on her own but I chose to get a ride from George. He gave me a sweet ride!!

We all got in wet suits to collect some food in the low tide, but only found Paua and one Kina. The road to get there was pretty borderline.. it wasn't even a road really. We pretty much thought we were going to die. For reals. Anyone that knows anything about me knows that it was probably the scariest moment of my life. A few braved the Kina tasting (including tess). They cracked open the spiky ball with a knife and the inside was just a mess of unidentifiable yellow and black goo, the yellow parts were edible (supposedly). Tess said she wouldn't eat it again.

On the way back we went into the wop-wops again, ie. George's house. We saw some smoke on the hillside downwind of their house and asked.. "Is that ok.. over there?"
After eating a bit we looked back and there was a LOT more smoke and we saw some flames in the nearby brush. We asked if we should call the fire department, and the reply we got was something like "It's supposed to rain tomorrow." Apparently it's the 4th brush fire they have had. The flames at one point were at least 25ft tall.

We went back to Brad's for bbq and homebrew. The Paua was tasty to eat but was reeeally chewy. Next stop for us: Couch surfing in Wellington!

Be excellent to each other