bigfella ren

We have had a bucketload of rain over the last few days and apparently tropical cyclone Funa is west of the northern islands in Vanuatu. Although it is very wet and windy in Vila apparently we should miss the brunt of the bad weather which is likely to pass through pretty much the middle of the Vanuatu islands. The radio is telling people who live on flat areas or near rivers in SANMA and TORBA provinces to move away. We've brought a few extra tins of food and bottles of water as instructed by our cylone preparation guide. In Port Vila we are currently at a cyclone situation graded yellow (so not very much risk of a cyclone). The best line in the guide is what to do when a cylone hits your house (a situation coded red), it says, "if your roof blows off, anchor yourself to the ground and keep very, very calm." (a very useful instruction)

The BBC 5-day forecast for the rest of the week is "Predominant weather is forecast to be heavy showers." That’s with an average top temperature of 30° and minimum temp of 28°, humidity today is 82%. Lovely. Apparently this is what it'll be like for the next couple of months. (anway the good news with the bad weather is that it means Zac's still here!)

guess who popped in to see us?

My cousin Zac is here in Vila - it is so exciting to see some family here, seems quite amazing that we have managed to bump into each other in Vanuatu. Zac is working on a boat, I should probably say superyacht, a J-class called Endeavour and because of a bit of lucky bad weather they are stuck in Vanuatu for a week on their way from Japan to New Zealand. We were really worried they would leave before we got back from our trip but luckily a dodgy weather pattern meant they stayed a bit longer than planned.

Its been so lovely to see him and he has taken us on a tour of Vila's nightlife which up to last Friday we had managed to avoid. We spent sunday afternoon on the boat with him and I went up the mast in a sort of sling seat, I didnt get quite to the top of the 140 foot mast but close enough to be worried I'd get stuck on one of the spreaders (one of the horizontal bars on the mast). It was fantastic and we quite enjoyed sitting on the deck drinking wine and jumping in the sea, (we were hoping some of our volunteer friends might see us from shore). And last night we went over in the dinghy to pick him up to take him home for dinner and the dinghy engine failed so we had to spend the evening on the boat again which was a shame. Its quite tempting to stowaway on the boat back to new zealand.

back to being sweaty

We arrived back in vanuatu on wednesday to a tropical downpour and a wall of heat. We had a really great trip to New Zealand and my camera is now full of a stupid number of incredible views and nearly as many photos of the lovely ella, here are a couple of both.

The climate, countryside and comforts of modern life all seemed like such a treat. We had a lovely few days being looked after by kate and grant and really felt quite spoilt. Then we had about ten days in the south island which wasnt nearly long enough; we usually had a day in places where we could have easily spent a week.

We spent a few days walking the Queen Charlotte track and in the Abel Tasman national park, because these are such popular places to go in the kiwi summer holidays we'd been warned they might be really busy but we ended up seeing a couple of people an hour at most and loads of the time it felt like we had the place to ourselves.

kia ora

Happy new year!
Just a quick one from New Zealand. We arrived in Auckland on the 22nd December to spend Christmas with kate and grant. We had a fantastic time with them; Ella was the perfect baby and auckland was sunny and gorgeous. we can see why kate and grant have decided to make it home for a few years. As a christmas present kate and grant took us to Waiheke - a little vineyard island in the bay which was beautiful and very hot. It was so lovely to spend christmas with friends (and also we hadn't realised how much we had missed tasty food, good wine, not feeling sweaty the whole time, carpets and sleeping under a duvet.)

We've been in the south island for just over a week having a great time. We've been whale watching (and throwing up on the boat), wine tasting, and we spent a couple of days over new year's kayaking and hiking in the Abel Tasman national park. We are currently in the northern most point of south island on the edge of Farewell Spit which is a 30 km sand bar bird sanctuary. We have another few days on south island before heading back to Auckland for two nights with kate and grant before we head back to Vanuatu next wednesday.