OMG HOLIDAY!

Miracle of miracles I managed to get a few days annual leave. Julia was already on leave as she gets something like 53 weeks a year and has been asked to take some by her employer. So off to Coromandel we go to visit (sit in spa pool and drink) with the mum and dad-in-law.
It's approximately a 2 1/2 hour drive from Hamilton to Cormandel but with torrential rain, mad bus drivers and general driving lunacy going on around us it took 3 hours. The Thames coast drive is one of the most beautiful in New Zealand but when you're on one of the narrowest major highways in the world and a bus comes around a corner a good foot over the central line and you are already 6 inches from plunging in to the sea on the other side...
I think my fingerprints are permanently imbedded in the steering wheel. Julia was very good, no screaming or anything. She inhaled once quickly, held her breath for the 2 seconds the incident took and then let it go. Sterling effort really considering we both thought we were history. It's funny, the cat didn't seem to notice at all. Isis (the afore mentioned feline) came with us and just for fun we didn't put her in the cat box. Instead we put her little cat harness on and she spent half the trip on Julia's lap in the front passenger seat and half the trip on the tallest bit of luggage she could fine precariously balanced between refined diginity and embarrasing slap stick. All in all an eventful but successful trip.
The evening meal was a delicious steak and kidney pie with potato and pumpkin mash cooked by the mum-in-law, congrats it was fantastic. However I thought I'd show you the scenery from their house rather than the meal tonight.





The remnants of the storm made for some pretty wild scenery. Oh and just by the way this blog post was written on a Mac and the photos were edited using iPhoto (which I've never used before). Hey don't blame me I told her to buy a Windows PC but the Apple was so pretty, what are you going to do?