A journey south and a wedding

So finally I have a chance to catch up a bit. Sorry about that.

We took the ferry from Wellington to Picton on 11th Jan (which, I've just realised, is over a month ago, so that makes me feel very ashamed I've not blogged about it yet) at the crack of dawn. A slight lack of preparation on my part (which is unlike me) meant that we got a bit lost finding the ferry terminal and ended up driving about 5km past where we needed to be, but arrived at the ferry with whole minutes to spare. I knew from good ol' facebook that my friend Denise, quite by coincidence, was booked on the same ferry as us so I kept my eyes peeled for her as soon as we arrived on board and parked Jaffa up among the much larger and flasher motorhomes, amid the smell of diesel. The journey takes around 3 hrs and the boat was very similar, if a little smaller, than the one we used to take over to Denmark on holiday. It has a bar, a cafe, a 'posh' restaurant, even a cinema! But we didn't want to waste our time sat in the dark when we knew we were arriving on the South Island past the Marlborough Sounds, famous for their beauty. After indulging in a huge breakfast, we headed to the stern of the boat to find Denise sitting in the bar with some people she knew from the coach tour she'd been on. It was great to catch up, though Isaac took some time out to see the sights while we nattered on.

Eventually we arrived in Picton, where Ian & Debbie had come to pick Denise up. After a nice lunch and a lovely catch up with them, they headed straight back to Nelson while we took the scenic route - and in NZ this tends to be very scenic - on the Queen Charlotte's Track around the Marlborough Sounds. We drove up as far as Okiwi Bay, where we stopped at a campsite for the night, before winding our way leisurely into Nelson the following day.

We liked Nelson immediately, which was just as well, seeing as we'd planned to make it our home for the next few months! It's not a huge town but big enough, and seems to have everything you might need. We went to the home of some of Debbie & Ian's friends, Debbie & Brian Heaphy, who had offered to let us park our van in the driveway of their parents' farm for a while. They are a lovely family who have around 50 sheep, 20 chickens, a handful of ducks and ducklings, a pig (they had had two pigs till Christmas ahem) and a gorgeous dog. I'm not usually fond of dogs at all, but she was a real sweetie, very well trained, which was probably due to the fact that she was there to help with the sheep, though Brian & Debbie's kids, Connor & Luke seemed to be very well trained too, so maybe it was just the way of things in that family...

A few days later - during which time I'd been ill with some sort of viral infection - we went on a fishing trip with Ian as a pre-cursor to his stag do. As is so often the case, I was rather outnumbered by men (including Brian Heaphy and Simon, my friend Suzie's ex-husband, who was out there for the wedding with Suzie and their son Joey*) but I had been really looking forward to doing some sea fishing and hoped that we'd have more luck than when we went on The Rock cruise. A huge quantity of beer had been brought aboard and Isaac got stuck in along with all the other blokes. Once we got out to the Marlborough Sounds, up around French Pass, we found each grabbed a rod and tried out luck using squid as bait. Almost immediately the first fish was caught, to huge acclaim, and one by one each of the gang raised their rods to find one or two blue cod sitting on there....all except Isaac and I that is. We were fishing in the same spot as the others, using the same rods, the same bait and the same technique, but for some reason the buggers just avoided our rods like the plague! A couple of hours went by, the boat moving on to 3 different spots, and we still hadn't caught a thing, despite Simon next to us having caught around 17 fish by now. Isaac wasn't speaking to anyone and I threatened to disembowel the next person who asked me if I had definitely let out enough line, or if I knew how to strike when I felt a bite. Then, finally, around 3 hours in to the trip, joy! Finally Isaac raised his line to find a blue cod and shortly thereafter, so did I. Our dry spell was broken and during the rest of the day we each caught, if not anything like as many as old 'crack bait' Simon, a respectable haul nonetheless. Phew!

Of course by now, Isaac had had plenty of beers to make up for the ridiculously hot weather. I did try to tell him to pace himself a bit, given that he'd started at 8am, that the sun was beating down and he still had the stag do to attend that night, but boys know best, don't they? The other lads on the trip had a few years, and thus a few drinking years, on Isaac, who is rather slight of frame and light of weight, but he seemed determined to try to keep up. Nevertheless, as I predicted, when we began our journey back to shore, Isaac decided to take a little, ahem, nap.


We arrived back at the Heaphy's, which was where the stag party was starting proceedings. I was getting ready for the hen do but not feeling too good by this point, on which I blamed a combination of mild sunstroke and the left over of my virus. I left Isaac telling me he was going to have a bit of a nap before the stag do started and drove with Debbie Heaphy to the hen do around 10 mins up the road. After an hour or two I decided that I was not really feeling up to the high jinks involved so I decided a refreshing walk home and early to bed would be in order.

When I got back to the Heaphy's, I suddenly panicked. Brian had told Debbie that under no circumstances should the hen party crash the stag do and I worried that if he saw me, he'd think that I was there to spy on them, or that I'd brought all the girls with me, and get angry. However, I was also worried that if I just sneaked into the van, that if Debbie Heaphy spoke to Brian or came home saying I'd left early, that Isaac would worry that I'd not made it back, so I did the only thing I could do and hid in a bush in the garden, trying to spot Isaac and call him over. Eventually, after around 10 mins and feeling not a little bit silly, I spotted Isaac wondering on the periphery. "Isaac!" I tried to both shout and whisper at the same time. He saw me and came over, looking puzzled. I explained the situation and that I was planning to go to bed in the van, and he looked relieved. As it turns out he'd drunk nothing but water since returning home from fishing, and had been throwing up at regular intervals behind the van. I blamed the sunstroke ;-) We both sneaked away from the stag do, who were all preparing to go into town to visit a few bars and a rather dodgy-looking strip club, and cuddled up together in bed with a ton of drugs instead.

Two days later we found ourselves getting dolled up (traveller stylee, which basically means fairly casual but not jeans) and waiting with Brian, Debbie & their two boys for a big red (ex-London) double decker bus to pick us up for the wedding. Suzie, Simon, Joey & Denise were already on board. Isaac, of course, had never been on a double decker before, so was as excited as the kids, but I was more excited to see all the old Travelcard and Vodaphone advertising billboards inside! The weather was overcast but dry, but all the talk was of the rain predicted. Nelson, famous for having the most sun hours in NZ, had had no rain for over 2 months by now, so we were sure it would be fine for the wedding. We arrived at The Gardens of the World along with everyone and waited for Debbie to arrive, looking gorgeous in her hourglass dress. As she and her parents walked down the, for want of a better word, aisle, her mother, clearly relieved, made a remark about the lack of rain - BIG mistake. Naturally, as soon as the ceremony started it begin bucketing down and, though Isaac & I stood, silently getting drenched and pretending not to have noticed, we eventually turned round to find that everyone else had legged it under the trees, seeking some sort of shelter. Though the ceremony continued under the cover of a couple of huge umbrellas, eventually the celebrant and the bride & groom retreated to a small gazebo, where the promised readings were abandoned with promises to read them at the reception, and the required parts of the ceremony were completed out of earshot of us. Ian & Debbie had been together for 18 years and planning the wedding for the past six, but Sod's Law says she had to choose the one day in 'Sunny' Nelson it pissed down! Such a shame, but made a good story at least. The bus took us back early to the reception where a much anticipated feast awaited us; everything on the table, wild boar, venison, ham, paua, whitebait patties, crayfish and steamed hoki fish, had been caught or harvested by Debbie's family. We were on a table with Debbie & Brian, their friends Dan & Sarah who we'd met and liked enormously, and Emma (one of my former midwifery colleagues from Queen Charlotte's) and her husband Mick. We had a good night - I got one of Ian's aunts to approach Isaac and offer him work as a male stripper, which he almost bought - and headed home, now dried off, shortly after midnight.

Hope that makes up somewhat for my blogging slovenliness, and I shall try to bring us completely up to date as soon as possible, I promise.

*yes, ex-husband. She has a boyfriend back home, also conveniently called Simon, but was travelling with (old) Simon so he could spend time with Joey. They are definitely contenders for the title of most odd, new-age family unit, but it works for them, which is all that matters...