Hans en Nienke: July 2023

Let's do some damage repair. The last you heard from us (I know, A year ago) was that we bought a new home. Well, actually, that is only if you read the post I published last week after it had been sitting there as a draft all that time. So as a quick summary; we bought a new home, about 1 kilometer inland from our old house. In fact, we have seen it being build from our kitchen window on Sims road.

So these great fires I always so enjoyed, are now a thing of the past. That is because we now have neighbours. Neighbours we can hear, neighbours with dogs and mowers. Neighbours we can see (and therefore neighbours who can see us), even when we walk through our house. And the other thing is we now live high up a dune and would probably land a few ocean liners if I made fires like we did.

So we've been preparing the house for the sale, filling cracks from a recent earthquake and painting the wall again.

Our new house seen from the kitchen window of our old house. It's the black one on the hill.

But we were still able to reserve some time for a bit of entertainment. There is a group of artists here in New Zealand that tour the country performing famous records. They are called after the famous Beatles song 'Come together'. I saw them in Wellington performing David Bowie's 'Ziggy Stardust'. We had a great night. Neil Young's Harvest and Fleetwood Mac's Rumours are to follow.

The climate is changing. We never had floodings on our property, not in the paddocks nor near the road. Of course when you will have prospective buyers coming, the sky opens and tears from the sky came down in buckets.

More entertainment, a local restaurant tried to make nasi goreng. Mmmm, nice try, but mine is much better,

Why a picture like this? I can't really say it's the most used item in our house. In fact, it was a lot lighter after we dusted it of. Made the pic so that I can put it back together in the new house, as the manual seems to have disappeared. Still has quite a low milage I'm afraid. Hopefully the new house will give us more time to actually do something in the gym other that using it to hang the wash to dry on it.

Nope, not a cow flattened by a falling tree. These two were the last ones to be butchered by us. The last time we could make a few friends happy with half a cow each and for our self the last time to fill the freezer with cows we cuddled. Of course I had to bury the skins again.

Moving house was going to be easy, we thought. Only a few hundred meters and we had build up quite some experience. I guess for me the 15th time, and I do not count moving rooms in my old student home. Slowly the hall, garage and one guestroom filled up with boxes full of what we deemed essentials.

We respectfully declined an interview by the local 'Hoarders' TV-program.

Instead of getting rid of stuff I managed to win the ugly cup again. Nienke agreed to let it move house with us as long as it would end up on a bookshelf. Right behind the books that is......

Build some storing racks in the new garage, 6 meter wide, 2 meter high and 60 cm deep. We thought we could easily fit most in there. Indeed, very naïve.

The 'old' house looks almost like when we moved in.

The last night and our last meal on Sims road. Camping in the media room. The moving companies we approached proposed to pick the stuff up, bring it to Wellington for overnight storage and bring it back to Te Horo the next day. Because of the carbon footprint (an excuse for being skimp, as we are Dutch after all) we thought we'd do it ourselves. Rented two trucks and asked a couple of friends to help. Easy job we thought. Turned out there we had to drive up and down quite a few more times than previously calculated. The pizza's and wine afterwards for the friends were well deserved.

Breakfast two days later in our new home. Great view. I am not going to show you how the garage looked like, after we moved. That was too embarrassing. It was absolutely chokka. We are so grateful to all the people that helped us move. And also to not make too much fun of of us for all the stuff we thought was necessary to bring with us.

There was a small issue with the house that needed to be resolved. A massive sliding glass door had 'flat wheels'. A design mistake by the architect. They had worn out (you think the door maybe a bit too heavy?) and needed replacement. In order to do that, part of the wall had to come of. A small army of friends needed to help us to lift the ridiculously heavy door out. No one died luckily, but only because of pure Dutch ingenuity. The original plan was to lifting the door out and then tilting it on it's side so the tech man could replace the wheels. That would have resulted in a shattered door and one or two funerals.

Nice to have the first mini party in the new house. Underneath the new lamp we bought for the old house.

Doesn't this look like a picture for a real estate magazine. No, we are not moving again. Next time I move will be in a coffin.

In October I went back to the Netherlands again. Not very handy after having moved house just a week before, but it was already planned. Not only did we have a nice family get together (without Nienke unfortunately), but there were two other events I had been looking forward to as well.

One was the presentation of the book we had been working on for a year. A 350 page book on A4 format. Weighing 1.7 kg (so I could not bring a load back to New Zealand). Quite an achievement. I had 6 co-writers. Apart from me here in good old Aotearoa, one in Brussels and the rest in the Netherlands. Zoom and WeTransfer came in very handy. It was amazing to see what you can discover on the internet, even on the other side of the world. Found amazing stories and heaps of pictures in old archives, going all the way back to 1882.

A lot of old Sphaerinda board members were present at the very well attended book presentation in Utrecht.

All the writers were honoured with the title of Honorary Member.

We even got something nice to remember the occasion.

Had time to do some maintenance with my mum on the graves of our sons in The Hague. Covered in nice autumn leaves. But that was OK.

The last event was the yearly reunion of my old student home. A couple of 50++ guys pretending to be young again, at least for one evening. With the group of men that lived there in my time we went away for a weekend. A necessary catch up. Rob had arranged a typical NZ activity. A young lady arrived with a border collie (a common farm dog) and a couple of sheep. She demonstrated how she could use just a whistle and the dog to let the sheep walk a parkours and end up nicely in the pen. We thought that the most difficult thing was going to be to use the whistle the right way. But we were not even allowed to use the whistle! As a group of 4 we had to play the role of the dog. Needless to say that the dog beat us easily. Big fun though.

Good to see the old friends and room mates again. Like we still lived there, only our kitchen/diner was a bit smaller then.

Back home it was time to get settled, find out how everything worked, unpack the boxes, etc. Just one of the two panels hiding hundreds of wires. We now live in a smart house. I can switch on the towel rail, water parts of the garden or open one of the garage doors from my phone. We do not have a key anymore, we have to type a code into a panel on the door to get into the house. Still getting used to all of this. Not sure if I like it. It is like with cars, I prefer to have an old fashioned key.

Back in Hawkes Bay for the birthday of Louis. A quick stop over in Havelock North for lunch on a winery, as you do.

His brother and wife were visiting as well. Great evening/weekend and I love do that fireplace.

That birthday in Hawkes Bay was a too good opportunity not to add a few days and enjoy a short break. So we packed the campervan and took it on it's maiden trip.

Did a great walk to Bell rock, north west of Napier.

Pretty windy up there, but an amazing view.

Not for the faint hearted. I guess one of those spots where people get themselves killed making daring selfies.

We did not stay at the nice bush camping in the middle of nowhere that Nienke had found. There was no internet connection and therefor no opportunity to see the football world championships, so I had to kindly put my foot down. But the camping we found in Tangoio was great. Instead of the one night we even stayed 3.

And did a few really nice walks.

Yep, we're old now, and most importantly, we don't care!

Spent a few nice days with Nienke's niece Hannet (and later with her mother Titia as well) who'd been travelling New Zealand.

Team building at our place. Nienke's whole team was here for a day. Hard work and fun as well. Of course well organised by the lovely manager.

Pohutekawa's (also called Christmas trees) on our golf course.

Visit from an old colleague from The Hague, Ronald Schouten.

New Years eve was a bit different this time. No big fire, no barbeque and the sound of the waves were barely audible. I even had to turn the music down as 'the neighbours might hear us'.

Still, a great night. The tradition continues.

Nienke is all into pottery since a few months. This tower of orange creations got a prominent spot in front of our house. Balancing it was quite an issue, especially as it turned out a few pieces were missing (arrived later).

One day, while I was working around the house, I noticed that my croc was sticking to the floor. Looked down and there was blood running down from a wound on my shin. I had bumped into the tow bar of the car. Our local practice was already closed so I decided to help myself. Cleaned the wound with gin (could not find alcohol wipes) and closed it with two stitches (could not find an anaesthetic either, so had to use the rest of the gin). Unfortunately ACC would not cover the treatment to myself. A few weeks later I was called by a Cathy, who bought our house. She is a GP as well and she was visiting her friend, another GP, in the village. This Elisabeth had been putting the long-line out and got a fish hook through her finger. Neither she or Cathy had the right equipment to get it out without causing intense pain. If I had a solution, as the Medical centres were closed again. By then I had found some expired wipes and stitches, but my medical set was up to date. Now a fish hook that is stuck you have to push the tip through, then cut it of and pull the hook out. I tried some pliers on one of my fish hooks before I left. Not an issue. Arrived on the scene (a nice sun bathing beach property) in my Sunday work clothes and was handed a beer immediately by the victims husband. I gave her a ring block, pushed the fish hook through and then discovered they did not use the same Chinese fish hooks I have, but decent thicker ones. The ones my plier could not handle. Luckily her husband had a big bolt cutter. Cleaned the thing with some gin and proceeded with the operation. Afterwards Cathy bandaged the wound (it's a good thing no nurses were present) and the patient was happy again. So glad nobody filmed this. At least we have three doctors here in Te Horo Beach now with a fully up to date medical set, lessons learned.

Our good friends Guy and Liesbeth unfortunately moved back to the Netherlands. They had to get rid of a lot of stuff and we were the happy recipients of a lot of useful materials for our new property. We put windbreaks up for the trees on either side of the house to protect them from the southerlies and the northerlies. Those trees have really taken of after this. It'll look great next year.

Oh what a day. We went out fishing and for some reason we were the only ones out on the water. To our surprise fish were jumping and birds diving. All we had to do was aim for the turmoil and throw out a line. We caught 5 albacore tuna. Could have caught a lot more but we did not know where to leave them anymore on board. They did not fit in the bin and it was too warm to leave them lying on the floor in the boat.

A happy sailor. Many meals with tuna to come. I stuffed the fish heads and the frames in the rabbit holes on the property. Image being a rabbit going out for his morning walk and finding a tuna head in the hallway.

A view into the front garden. There where the grass is really green, a garage will arise. 8 by 11 meters, enough room for the boat (taken into account that it will have to be replaced with a bigger replacement in the future), the campervan, the trailer, ride-on mower, etc. Was going to do it myself, but a clumsy accident made that unrealistic. I was helping Guy and Liesbeth preparing their house for the sale. I was weedwacking on a steep hill, right foot up high, when the ground under my left foot gave way. My right foot was a bit slow to react and when I was tumbling down I felt a painful pop in my knee. Ruptured my medial collateral ligament and luckily (as it turned out later) not my meniscus for the third time. Anyway, enough to make me limp around for a while again. And miss a tennis season.

Meeting up with our good friend Jane and her son James with his girlfriend Sasha who we met in San Martin de Los Andes in Argentine during our trip in South America. Great to share memories again. Tuna on the menu of course.

Visit from Theo and Christine Lam who ended up in Palmerston North for a while. Hope they had more fun there than John Cleese did. I know they had a good time and we gave them some nice tips too.

We've had quite a few visitors from the Netherlands this year. A nice young doctor called Fleur, who stayed a few days with us while visiting the Medical centre. Ronald and his wife, a colleague from The Hague. Theo, an old friend from my university years in Utrecht. Nienkes nieces Hannet and Titia and Rik and Louise Kwaak (here during a beach picnic), the parents of a school friend of our son Tristan. Did you guys know as well we had two guest bedrooms in our new house? And we are part-time travel advisors!

One moment you see a lot of fish on the fish finder.....

and the next moment the bin is almost full. Have not been out with the boat that much, but this good catch did us think about starting a business..... Unfortunately the maximum catch per fisherman is 10 nowadays.

My new outfit for the upcoming trip to the Far north, where we were going to hunt yellowfin tuna and marlin. Apparently these facemasks help to protect you against sunburn. On the water that is even worse as the sun reflects in the water. It may scare the fish as well.....

Great to be back on the warm waters of the Far north again. Going a bit faster than my tiny tub too.

Spectacular views early in the morning while leaving the harbour, a bit of sea fog with the sunrise in the background.

Spotted a humpback whale close to the boat.

Smiles all around. No sign of marlin or tuna yet, but enough crayfish and snapper for a good dinner.

This creature (the one on the left) is called a pack horse. It's like the obese version of the normal cray fish. We put cray pots out everyday and caught quite a few of them. Still have a few in my freezer.

What is the chance of getting that big fish? While you cross the waters in one straight line, the fish are doing the same thing under water. Those lines will cross each other at some point, but you both have to be at the same point at the same time to make it work. For us that is. Didn't happen today, so we decided to get us some bluenose instead. Hoping we would not catch a big shark like last year.

Back to the harbour, loaded with fish, but not the ones we were going for. You think bringing banana cake on board may actually bring bad luck?

We decided to go north for once. Toured all along the beautiful white beaches in The Great Exhibition Bay, amazing. As this is protected Māori land you can't visit them from the land. So it was a real privilege to admire them form the water. We passed the North cape, the most northern part of New Zealand and went fishing in Takakaupura (Tom Bowling's bay) for a while.

We caught some snapper and trevalley here and admired the white-faced storm petrels dancing on the water. They do that to sniff out the zooplankton from the water. They are also called Jesus birds for seemingly being able to walk on the water.

These guys left the Houhora harbour just before us and basically stole our fish. A 283.4 kg blue fin tuna.

I haven't told you yet that when I left for the Far North the weather turned really foul. Huge storms and loads of water. I only just managed to get through. It was literally bucketing down and several slips closed the highways. I had to make a big detour and after passing Matakane they closed all the roads behind me. Luckily Wouter Jan and his son made it through too. While we were fishing up north in very reasonably weather the rain caused havoc in other parts of the country.

Huge slips caused unbelievable damage on the east coast. Especially Hawkes bay was hit very hard. Several people lost their lives and many their houses, cars, their whole livelihood.

The wine and fruit industry were hit hard. Silt from the mountains destroyed whole crops.

Years of bad management in the forestry (leaving slash and trees lying around everywhere) now took it's toll. Huge amounts of trees and slash were washed down by the rain and destroyed infrastructure and houses everywhere.

Around Gisborne you could not even see the sand on the beaches anymore, they were just covered with trees. It will take years to recover, cleaning up the silt and the wood, and then what? Rebuild? It may happen again.

Anyway, feeling quite guilty that I had been enjoying myself while others lost almost everything I packed the car full of stuff, from a huge tent, to shampoo, gloves, rope, shovels, clothes, etc. And took of to Hawkes Bay to deliver them. A few friends and colleagues donated stuff as well.

There was just enough room for myself. Yes, very observant, a few trays of beer for the hard workers! Driving through Hawkes bay was just unreal. On one side of the road life was as normal, while on the other side of the road cars and trucks were lying upside down in paddocks full of silt. Houses torn of their foundations, animals drowned, etc. The resilience of the locals was amazing, everywhere around the disaster area people were helping each other to try to clean up.

Did I mention that it was raining? On my way back to Kapiti my car suddenly just gave up. Stopped in the middle of nowhere. To save space, I had not taken a raincoat with me. My only luck was that I had reception. Minimal, but enough to send a text to the AA. And an hour later they came to the rescue.

After all these years our AA plus membership paid of. They brought me and the car all the way home. Well, we dropped it of at my garage where Nienke picked me up. Turned out the alternator had broken (don't ask me what that is, but it is apparently important). Not so expensive that the Terrano had to be euthanised.

Talking about forestry, our neighbours have taken down almost all trees around our house. One of our neighbours is busy here taking the last trees on the north side down, just above the entrance of a mine (which he built there for fun).

Time for a holiday again. WOMAD was coming up, so we decided to visit the one area we still had not visited in New Zealand, the coast between New Plymouth and Raglan. On our first stop with our still unnamed campervan we made some beach art. By the way, it's quite common here to name your campervan, names like 'See y'all', 'Gone fishing', 'Adventure for dementia', 'Rust in peace', 'Roam sweet home' and 'Old fart and his Tart' give you a bit of an idea what the average age of domestic motorhome owners is. Custom is by the way that you greet each other on the road. I suddenly have 250000 new friends. Although, we have discovered a hairline crack within the NZMCA (New Zealand Motor Caravan Association). Campervanners/motorhomers do not greet caravanners or the other way around. Not sure what that is all about. For now, we just keep on waving as we do not want to get a bad name for ourselves. But when we travel with Trevor and Janet with their caravan we'll ignore them as is custom. Until 5 o'clock of course.

Mount Taranaki popping up behind the clouds in the morning.

Found another amazing spot in New Zealand, the Three Sisters and the Elephant rock.

Our subscription to the nice weather paid of again, it was indeed very nice. And because of the low tide we could walk a long way over the beach.

Spectacular picture of the Three sisters (well, one decided to lie down) and the Elephant rock with Mount Taranaki in the background.

Me, being a man, I always want to go as far as possible. We reached a point where I could not pass anymore without getting completely soaked. I did put my phone in a plastic ziplock bag and tried anyway. But I had to give up. Then Nienke discovered a tunnel around the corner. Although it looked a bit small, I could see light and beach at the end of the tunnel. I walked in with Nienke behind me. Suddenly I just disappeared, completely submerged in a salty pool of water. Because it was dark I had not seen how deep it was. Unpassable therefore and I was soaked. Of course there was not much sympathy from my better half who could hardly keep standing up from laughing.

Because we had to wait for visitors-time to see a friend in the hospital in Hamilton, we visited the Hamilton gardens. We always thought Hamilton was quite boring and that may still be true, but the gardens were just beautiful. All of them had a certain country as the theme. Holland was not yet presented by the way. But amongst others Japan, India, Italy and England were. Even the Arab world.

We had a good time in Raglan and found some great places to camp on remote beaches.

Some nice walks to eh.... Forgot the name of this waterfall.

The good thing of camping, where our new friends camp as well, is that you give each other great tips. One nice man had told us about a small remote road from Raglan that would bring us to the Kawhia inlet. A stunning road and our brave motorhome managed the bends and hills with ease. It should not have been a meter longer though. Anyway, he also mentioned a great free camping spot (hey, we're Dutch) on the south side of the bay. With the warning that there was not much out there though. But, lucky as we are, when we arrived at the Te Waitere boating club a rowing event was on. Organised by the New Plymouth rowing club. So the clubhouse was open and they even had enough burgers and beer for us. The locals were so enthusiast to see us that they spontaneously invited us over to see their house. Funny people. We had a great evening.

Nienke in front of the Te Horo stock tunnel. In the old days farmers had to move animals from the north to New Plymouth. Over the roads and the mountains would take a long time, so they thought let's take the beach. Of course then you have to deal with the tides. So the dug tunnels through the rocks so the animals could be moved into a nearby paddock during high tide. At low tide they would continue their journey until they reached the next stock tunnel. Amazing ay?

Not a stock tunnel, but a big cave carved out by the sea.

And another stunning beach just meters from where our trusty vehicle was parked for the night.

Not a lot of restaurants along the way, zip actually. And somehow 'Uber eats' did not serve this area either. Nothing wrong with our own Thai creations though. Especially not with our handy camping tables. OMG, we're getting old......

While we were walking on Wai-iti beach a farmer in his car stopped next to us and he started talking, and talking. Nienke could not get a word in edgeways! Only briefly, when he took a sip from one of the beers out of the already half empty sixpack on the passengers seat. After about one and a half hour listening to his stories about his Dutch friend, his work, working in Africa and Canada, the land he had just bought and his stock transport company, he decided it was time to head of to the pub. But he had to go home first. He must have thought we were hungry as on his way to the pub he decided to drop of some snapper, so we could make breakfast for us and the other two motorhomes there. So I did. And that is how you meet people in New Zealand!

Later that day we did the White Cliffs walkway, were you walk north over land (well, climb a hill) and walk back over the beach at low tide. Our luck was that the sunset started about the same time so the colours of the stunning coast made it even more spectacular.

Next was a more challenging hill, Mount Taranaki. Just a bit higher than 2500 meters.

Yep, clouds. They came in fast. Gave us a good excuse to not walk all he way to the top as soon after this the top was not visible anymore. Instead we walked back to the visitors centre where we had an ice-cream with one of the bands that was going to perform at WOMAD. The German band 'Meute'.

WOMAD was good again this year. Some really good bands. The guys we met on the mountain were probably the only band I did not really like. It was like they were stuck in the intro. You constantly though 'ah, now it's really going to start', and then it didn't. I might be a bit biased though.

Fantastico Negrito is an American blues singer song writer, and he was fantastic (see, not so biased after all). The best performance by far was from the Scottish Langan Band.

The whole entourage was great and we did enjoy it again. Are we going again next year? Who knows. For those who like it we have put some music video's of WOMAD Taranaki 2023 at the end of this blog.

We were briefly home for some maintenance but the travel bug had gotten to us.

We took the campervan out for a long weekend to the east coast of the Wairarapa to do some walks and visit some geological sites. These are the Matakonai rocks, build of sandstone that is compressed by the weight of the ocean floor.

They formed amazing structures, some looking like dinosaur tails, like here.

How come the one on the right is so grey/white and the one on the left looks like a young(ish) lady?

A typical native Kiwi landscape back road with lots of bends, buts, holes, climbs, slips etc. brought us to our next destination, the Honeycomb walkway. These rocks are called like that because of the cell like weathering pattern that make these rocks look like honey combs.

Nobody there, which was understandable, as it was quite an effort to get there.

The artist in Nienke got huge inspiration from these rocks and she has already made some new pottery with patterns based on these rocks.

Lots of seals here as well. And they had young ones. So much fun to look at these acrobats.

Nienke standing next to the vertebra of a sperm whale that was just lying around in a paddock.

After this we went to a place where we could free camp next to the river. It was recommended to us by some friends. We arrived just before darkness started to set in. Unfortunately some youth had set up a local discotheque there which kind of took the serene feeling of it all away. So we moved to another camping spot a few kilometres further along the river. On the other side of the river was a pub which seemed OK for a visit. Turned out there was private function, a wedding. The music went on till deep in the night. Later we learned that the wedding was from the daughter of a friend of ours. We should just have joined. Anyway, I played the disc jockey on our iPOD in our campervan for the evening.

On Ocean beach on the Wairarapa south coast we did find the rest we were looking for. Parked the campervan right on the beach and had a great time there. Just reading books, listening to music and stroll along the beach.

On our way home we visited a nice reserve where parts of Lord of the Rings were filmed. Nienke here under ~~the famous ....~~ a famous arch.

Last dinner with Guy before he leaves for Amsterdam, where his lovely wife already is. We'll miss them. Last treat for him: Thai fishcakes made of fish we caught ourselves the day before.

Ended up in the local paper. We have friends that run a local day-care facility for people with early onset dementia. In the shed the men make thinks like tool-trays, birdhouses, etc. As it was quite dark in there and I had recently bought some LED bars for a good price for our new garage, I said; 'why don't we make it a bit lighter in here? I have a electric spray painter and will first paint the ceiling white on my own in a morning'.

Well, that may have been my early onset dementia. The job did not go as fast as I thought. So in the end we did it all with a paintbrushes. Took us 2 days as there were many beams and corners, nooks, etc. We dropped some paint at times, even on the constantly present dog. He had a bath a few times.

Looks great ay, so much light. As these people are so kind and hard working for the patients we said that we'll not only donate the time but also the paint and the lights. An electrician had offered to fit the lights in for free. But he did not mention he'd turn up with a journalist. Bright sparky.

We do not have trees on our property now. So to get wood I need to help out the new owners of our old property. We have become good friends with them by the way. While I was chopping up some trees at their place I saw the rainbow over our new property.

Good load, that'll keep us warm for a few days (next year that is).

Our new house was called 'The Pavilion'. A name we did not like at all. Sounded a bit too pretentious. So I took the sign of and planed the engraved letters of so I could start again. We have renamed the property 'Ngā karoro rere' what in Maori means 'Soaring seagulls'. The sign is OK, but the proportions are not completely right. So we will get an improved sign.

I could show you heaps of these pictures. Under our lawns lie hundreds of meters of pipes. And we do not have a map. Well, there is one map, from the Council, but that does not reflect how it is done in reality. Even the plumber who did it doesn't know anymore. And the previous owner, who project managed the whole thing, forgot to make pictures. The thing is, we get 3000 litre of water from a local bore somewhere, but that is non-potable water. Unfortunately the previous owner and/or the plumber had connected those pipes to the water tanks. So our water is somewhat polluted. It gets filtered and UV-treatment, but anyway. We wanted to change it. We've got our own bore now, with good quality water. So I needed to do some rearranging of the pipes and put a new one in. After a few weeks I found all the pipes I was looking for and about 50 other ones. In a few weeks time, when the new garage is up and the bore pump installed I can reconnect everything.

Yes, Nienke said 'yes' to us going to the Te Horo quiz night. And as Kiwi's like to dress up and we did not have much fantasy, we went as pirates. I think we came third. In the quiz that is.

Here is Nienke honey comb rock inspired pottery creation. The baking process (not done on the picture yet) did not completely go according to plan but that gives me the opportunity to contribute a bit to her art piece. A bit of silicon and some white paint will do the trick.

While I was away on the Rotorua conference Nienke made a big amount of Indian food.

And I added a whole lot of Mexican food to that so that we now have two bulging freezers. By the way, the local Indian and Mexican restaurants could learn something from us.

Right, that was a year in a nutshell. Of course I missed several parties, concerts, visits, etc. Like our recent visit to Mozarts opera 'Così fan tutte' with an amazing lunch before in a Mediterranean restaurant. But we can't cover all. We'll soon follow up! Nienke may have some exciting news, the garage will have been build, we booked a holiday to Vanuatu where we'll climb an active volcano, etc.

Enjoy the music.

Fly my Pretties with Hollie Smith