October 18th 2019: Rain

No, this is not the famous Red Light district in Te Horo Beach. It's an infrared lamp keeping our young chickens warm. When we arrived back in NZ there were only 3 chickens left. After a motivational talk by Nienke one of the three decided to restart production again after a year long break (who gets time of that long?). Another threw in the towel and did not move at all anymore. I showed some compassion and it's now filling a rabbit hole. Come on!! It's covered with sand and there is a little stone on it.....

That is why we had to get a few new chickens. We did not want to buy rescue chickens as they have already been laying for a year. These Hyliners usually lay for 2-3 years, and with the rescue chickens from the chicken farms you never know how old they are. So, we bought chicks. 4 weeks old. Kept them warm in our garage until the infrared light broke. We could only get a new one with a much higher wattage. We nearly started a new KFC branch. Had to abandon that idea. After a few days the garage started to smell horribly and we blamed the fluffy creepers. Wrongly it turned out. We butchered a cow when we came back and had to make room in the fridge and freezer. Nienke rearranged a few things in the fridge in the garage and forgot to put one plastic bag back. The one with fish heads, which was waiting there for a good fishing afternoon two weeks later... She still has to apologise to the chicks!

But instead, we moved ourselves to Jane's place for a few G & T's in the sun and with a view! Not a bad place to be.

We've been quite busy on our property. Replaced 20 fence posts, restored the path to the veggie garden so we could get a load of compost in for our new crop. Did quite a lot of weeding. Cut over 10 trees down to make next years firewood. Removed a few big branches of our Macrocarpa trees that were dangerously hanging over the fence of the neighbours and over their cattle. More firewood. Got some new beams to repair the platform where the pig house was standing on as they rotted away. Even though they were impregnated I gave them 2 extra layers of fence finish to protect them even more. Built 2 compost heaps. Planted some new trees and shrubbery. We're ready for summer.

Gareth and Jules missed our empanada evening, so we organised a private session. Good to catch up. Lovely people.

Not so sure about all the attention for the dog at breakfast, is this still an animal?
Nienke makes empanadas so fast now, she could start her own shop. Not necessary though as she got a new job!!!!! It's a completely new manager role for a new team at the Council, Sustainability and Resilience manager. I won't tell you the details as she most likely will explain it herself in the next blog. She starts this Monday.
I have done a few days in Otaki, same old, same old.

As if they knew we were coming back. A South American film festival in Otaki! We just had to go and managed to see quite a few good movies. Brought back fresh memories.
To celebrate we're back in NZ we already bought tickets for the coming WOMAD session, still far away, but really looking forward to it.

Meanwhile the chicks were getting bigger and more active. Time to throw them outside on a sunny day.

Our rhythm is still not completely normal. We wake up early often. That gave me the chance to watch the Dutch football team play the Germans (a 2-4 win in Germany) and later a game against Belarus. Atmospheric disturbances caused quite some disruptions making me wonder why I got up so early. Well, the game wasn't the best either.
In NZ everyone is just busy with the world cup rugby in Japan. Saturday night is the quarterfinal against Ireland. We can see it with an hour delay as commercial TV has been introduced here as well. All this rubbish about competition being better, never really seen the results of it.

Since we're back I shot about 100 rabbits on our property and that of one of my neighbours. It did not seem to make any difference. They pop up everywhere (it only takes 6 weeks for a whole new generation). Heaps of damage to the paddocks (dangerous holes for us and the cows). They even ate our newly planted beans. Our house sitters had used to weed wacker a bit to close to the fence and made several holes in it. The rabbits were happy to use these illegal entrances and started a family home amidst the lettuces. Time for some more stringent action. With all the neighbours of Sims road we discussed a plan of action. Most people did not want to use poison, so it would be shooting. We contacted our friend Dick and he has since joined the ranks of mass murderers. More than 200 in 3 days. And our black pipe! He now knows black pipes do not have pointed ears and fluffy white tails. Haven't seen any hawks in days, they're to heavy now to get airborne at the moment.

It's lupin time again. Lupins are not my best friends as they spread quickly in the paddocks too. If you don't pull them out right away the roots will be so thick you have to use the saw. They do colour nicely against the ocean and Kapiti island though.

And then it was time for wood splitting. A joint exercise by Nienke and me. Nienke came up with the term 'no double handling'. So instead of throwing the splitted wood on a big pile (like men would do) I had to stack it in a wheelbarrow. Nienke then took the wheelbarrow into the woodshed while I filled the next one.

Great little machine, love the power of it. Still don't understand how people manage to get their fingers split in there. All the chain sawing and lifting does cause some lower back pains (can't blame too much enthousiasm on the tennis court for that of course).

But we have a perfect solution for that. A nice movie in the hot tub. Done that several nights in a row now. Very therapeutic.

Look at the nice stacking in here. A perfect job by Nienke. Old firewood to the sides, new ones in the back. This was halfway. The shed is fully loaded now. Ready for the coming 2 years.

And then, rain, heaps of it. You know that it's a lot when ducks start wandering through the garden. We  don't have ponds you know in sand dune country. It will continue to Sunday, so I've finally got some time for our holiday pictures!

23 september 2019: Back home

Our last photos of 'the Beast', the awesome 4 Runner who had been our companion and 'home' for the past year. We did 36000 km in a year which is roughly from Amsterdam to Auckland and back.  So yes, even though it's just a car saying goodbye felt a bit sad. We left it for the French couple that bought it to pick up and have already received their first traveling photos from gravel roads and white snowy mountain tops of the Andes. In our last few days in Santiago our thoughts were going back to how much we've seen and learned about the countries that we've visited and the people we have met, 'life enriching' captures it best.

Typical South America for us is now; casa de plasticos (shop with only plastic packaging - terrible!), tienda da limpieza (shop with only cleaning products) and the Congelados shop (shop with rows of deepfreezers, selling only frozen food). Toilet paper cannot go into the toilet only in the rubbish bin - in Argentina and Uruguay you also get the warning not to put mate tea leaves in the toilet :-). A Submarino is hot milk with a piece of pure chocolate et voila hot chocolate. A Terremoto is typical Chilean festive drink, too sweet for our taste but boy did we love the Pisco Sours in Chile and Peru and Carparinhas in Brazil!

Breakfast exists of eating lots of sweet cakes or toast with dulce de leche (caramalised cream). Lots of religious programmes and football on tv, every night. Uruguay has legalised marijuana - in Chile everyone smokes and you buy weed cake on the street. Tannat wine from Uruguay, Malbec from Argentina and Carmanere from Chile, beautiful! Forget about having good coffee in Chile, Argentina and Peru - for good coffee you have to be in Brazil, no mate to be seen, only coffee. The gap between poor and rich is staggering, visible in every country when you drive in or out of a town or village - shacks surrounded by rubbish. On election days no alcohol can be sold until the ballot boxes close (Peru, Argentina). High fences in front of each house, barb wire on the top and a dog behind the fence. If you ask why they say it's safe but we need it for prevention. The exception was Uruguay and the Dutch settlements in Brasil. Speed humps - gone over thousands of them! - they just love them. Since the police doesn't do much, putting up signage is useless and the only thing that works is physical measures and wow they are very steep (would not meet any NZ standard here and get 100 complaints on day one in Kapiti). People in every country we visited we great, 99 out of a 100 people are friendly and can be trusted if you treat them like you would want them to treat you - speak their language for starters :-).

Our goodbye dinner with our lovely new friend Coco (expat in Santiago working for H&M) who we met a year ago at the Dutch pub quiz. We had some good times together in Pichelemu and doing the cooking class. She took us to this awesome restaurant that had just amazing food, now we need to remember what it was we ate again....oh yes seared tuna with ....? uh

Our last couple of days we spent looking at all the stuff we would need to be packing into the same amount of bags as we arrived with a year ago, so I decided to bring two bags to the local salvation army store :-). The French couple was inheriting all the camping stuff etc. and our warm long socks which they have already thanked us for haha, the weather changed when we left. Santiago is brimming with street art everywhere, how cool are these benches.

Wandering the streets again we also saw a lot of benches with 'real' sleeping people on there - homeless people. Art representing sadness.

Don't really know why I ordered this but I did, and enjoyed it for lunch on our last day in Santiago. Just people watching in the streets around the Plaza des Armas.

Heading over to Bella Vista neighbourhood to meet with Leonie and Andre, lovely new friends that we are going to miss as well. Bella Vista is a very cool neigbourhood, very hip and happening just loaded with cafes, bars and eateries.
And great street art, just love it. Hope one day they'll get the hang of it in New Zealand.

Another reggea music bar, maybe with some Dutch roots as well :-)

Maestra vida - Master life!

On a perfectly hidden roof terras with beautiful views we spent a lovely afternoon with Andre and Leonie - we hope to welcome them one day here in Kapiti or maybe we'll catch up when they will be back in Valencia in Spain in about a year from now. Explorers and immigrants, just like us. So maybe it is a Dutch thing?!

End of the afternoon we headed back home to do the final pack and head to the airport. Hmm the blue suitcase was probably a few kgs too heavy, but no scale so that would have to wait until the airport. Good thing we did not bring the one extra small backpack to the salvation army. And yes, it weighed 29 kg, 6 too many. A quick repack in the extra backpack solved that problem and wrapped and all we were ready to go. In Auckland it went all pretty smooth so we were just within the time limits for catching our local flight to Wellington....and then we could relax and doze off.

Dick was awesome to pick us up from the airport and ferry us to Te Horo - it was a bit surreal recognising all the familiar bits driving home. Tired, but this familiar view from our deck made sure we felt at home straight away. Home sweet home.

First days were filled with early nights, unpacking suitcases and boxes to find 'stuff' and get that in order so we can find things again. A bit of car trouble with our two 23 year old cars that had to be WOF-ed again - not that smooth so we got stuck at home a couple of days without transport and had to pay up to get on the road again. By the end of the week we had at least the van back up and running and a week later Hans his good old Nissan was up for it again too. Bit of change after our very smooth and only 10 year old 'beast'.

The galloway that had roamed our paddocks for well over three years now had become quite big and was cleary hungry all the time over winter. Despite being fed lots of hay and watercress by our housesitters she pushed over the fence to get to the grass next door, breaking about 15 fencing poles. So that decided her fate pretty quickly.

Last week the home kill guy came (while I was not at home) and took her to the butchers. Always a bit sad.

And Hans had his work cut out for him, so he did about three days of digging out remaining bits of pole and putting new ones in. Very grateful for that hot tub in the evenings - soothing the back under the milky way.

As spring has sprung lots to be done and in the war against the very severe 'rabbit take over' Hans cut down bushes hiding large holes and while he was at it cleared up a bit of bush that we should have done a long time ago. So Thursday it was fire day - took him the whole day to burn everything, hot hot!

We decided to replicate our lessons learnt in the cooking class in Santiago to treat our friends to some good home made Chilean food plus pisco sours (of course). Started chopping veggies on Friday and early Saturday it was time to tackle frying the sopaipillas and making empanadas. A bit more stressful than during the cooking class as even though in the cooking class I had already adjusted the water in the dough recipe (as cups in Chile are not the same as cups in NZ) - it was still too much water and way too sticky. With the third batch I nailed it and the next three were smooth sailing.

Hans also got better at filling and folding the empanadas, so as the day progressed they were coming out looking very professional. All of them tasted good though! Here is Hans frying the sopaipillas (pumpking puree with flour) that you eat as a snack with pebre (tomatoes, onion and coriander). Very favourite street food in Santiago, they sell it everywhere. I am taking out the next batch of empanadas - how many should we make....? Too many as always :-) lucky some went home with our guests.

The sopaipillas.

First batch of empanadas, the less professional ones..

One of the later batches, see already looking very stylish with a C for camaron (shrimp).

And of course a very big bowl of Chilean cheviche, just beautiful and lemony.

Lovely catch up as always, some had not seen each other for a year so there was lots to talk about.

The Te Horo season was declared open - so bring on summer!

Hans even felt optimistic enough to start the fire bowl in the garden and  a few joined him for a fire and whisky - before the All Blacks played their opening game against South Africa in the World Championships in Japan. It was quite a good game to watch, but Hans and Dick slept through the whole game thanks to Jim Beam. Good thing Maraya and Roger were still around to watch it with me.
So how does it feel to be home? Definitely like home and awesome to be able to hug everyone again but also a bit two fold; after a year of experiencing change every day, having new input every day - rural life in Kapiti feels very stand still - we will get used to it again no doubt and start enjoying the peace and quiet once work has started. Job hunting is underway so better enjoy freedom while we can :-)

August 31st; A year has passed

The music with this last blog from South America is a compilation of the music we encountered in Santiago this month.

Looking at fun things to do in the weekend we found a cooking class on line that sounded really promising so we decided to go for it together with our friend Coco. We were hoping to make good Chilean fare so that we could confidently cook up a storm in Te Horo! The class included a visit to markets that we had already visited quite a few times during our stay here. Nonetheless the visit with 'our' chef of the day Gerardo proofed to be very interesting. It's great seeing the food through Chilean eyes, learning about the origin of lots of exotic foods like this seafood that looked very alien...

We haven't bought meat in any of the markets we have visited, walking in halls that smell of raw meat and looking at all these very recognizable animal body parts makes me want to go vegetarian every time. The 'lard' that you see above the trotters is used a lot in the Chilean kitchen as cooking butter.

The colours and exotic fruits (lots of fruits now from Venezuela as more immigrants move into the area) are just lovely. It's clear when you walk around here that most Chileans do not work at the markets, the majority is from Haiti, Venezuela, Peru and Brasil.

And here we are getting underway with the first task of the day; chop chop chop! We were just with the three of us which was actually nice as it gave us lots of time to chat with Gerardo and with the sommelier that would join us later. They were both lovely and as we were really interested in learning about food, culture and wine, we had a great time together.

After the chopping we started further preparations to make ceviche with leche de tigre (tiger milk, a very nice dressing for which we now have the secret recipe). We prepared the filling for the empanadas de pino and learned that raw onions are always covered with some boiling water for a few seconds to make them less 'sharp', we'd never done that before but have to say the filling turned out yum.

In the meantime it was also time to learn how to make a decent Pisco Sour, and basically any 'sour' with this recipe. Gerardo doesn't use the raw egg white on the rop as most eggs can't be trusted and he doesn't like to buy the fake egg white powder. Shake shake shake your boogie :-) Turned out really nice our Piscos! We've bought two 1L bottles of a nice pisco and stuffed them in our backpacks ready to go home, so we're good to go for welcome home drinks at Sims Road.

Another lovely lady who was helping clean up our mess had already prepared some Sopaipillas, one of the most sold types of street food anywhere in Chile (together with moto con huesillo, a very sweet drink with dried peaches and freshly cooked husked wheat). The sopaipillas are made with pumpkin and definitively will try it at home too. With the sopaipillas, but also with empanadas or bread you eat Pebre in Chile. Pebre is like a condiment made of tomatoes, lots of coriander, raw onion and merken herbs.

We can't take the merken back home so we'll have to improvise a bit on this one but with lots of coriander and garlic who will know :-)

After making the dough and filling the empanadas we felt we deserved that toast, they looked great.

And even better after the visit to the oven.

Time to plate up the ceviche, all very professional of course like on Masterchef with lovely large freshly made croutons. During our work we had already tasted a fresh bubbly wine that you drink before you eat, to help clean the palate. We should remember that at home..... The ceviche was accompanied by a very nice sauvignon blanc from the wine area close to Santiago, Casablanca. Normally not our favourite as we don't like the acidity, this one turned out to be a nice surprise. After the ceviche it was time for our empanadas with a very nice dark carmenere, a typical Chilean wine. Very tasty empanadas and the wine was just beautiful. As we had already learned during an earlier winery visit, this carmenere is unique to Chile as only Chile has old carmenere vines that survived a bug that killed all the vines in Europe (mostly in Portugal and Spain).

Here we are plating up the dessert which was also very interesting. A non bake merengue that we prepared earlier with boiling hot red wine, put in a glass and covered with a red sauce also containing wine and topped with a crunchy walnut topping.

I may even try this non bake one at home, a merengue that you actually have to bake in the oven is not my thing (no, no home made pavlova, even after 12 years - I have friends that are really good at that!). After the cooking class we were feeling very energised and relaxed at the same time so decided to have a walk around in Barrio Italia. Just a very cool neigbourhood where we of course did find another nice hangout for some Aparol spritz to end a very lovely day with Coco, we are really going to miss this great girl (yes, she is only 33 :-)).

On Sunday we hit the town again to check out a large art fair where 150 Chilean artists were exhibiting and selling. Similar to the large art fair in Wellington. Canada Dry was clearly a sponsor but had at least asked artists to design some great original can work.

We both loved this concept of using black and white images and using colourful threads to make it an unique art piece.

There was also a competition going on where exhibiting artists were paint large letters. We loved this one with Chilean wildlife.

And the king pinguins we visited on Tierro de Fuego.

Just walking through the neigbourhoods of the city lets you soak up the atmosphere, colours, people that live there. This is a side street in the arty Lastarria neighbourhood.

On your way to the markets walking along the river that runs through Santiago you see lots shelters, tents and cardboard structures where large numbers of homeless people live. Most of them are men and most are (according to our Chilean friends) mentally ill. Chile simply does not take care of the mentally ill, no places in institutions and not affordable if there are places. It makes you feel sad and bad at the same time. Especially if you watch how indifferent most children already are to them, it's just a part of city life that you have to ignore...

On our way back home we listened to some great music which is also included in the little clip Hans made. A group of red nosed clowns were having their picture taken on the steps of the modern art museum. Parks in Santiago are full of people in the weekends, just spending time with friends and family, playing games, sports, making music - very nice. A bit further down we saw another clown, trying to round up kids for his next show. He wasn't that successful which may have had to do with the fact he was playing Michael Jackson music...? We thought is was funny anyway :-)

Hans had been challenged again by Andre his new tennis mate so went for another game and even for a third yesterday! It's lovely to make new friends that feel like you've known them for years, if only NZ wasn't a 10 hour flight!

After we did all the 'car stuff' that we had to do to have the title transferred to the French couple that bought (and already paid!) for our car we had more time to revisit some areas. So we went back to the Bio Bio area, a large messy market area which we love - little shops everywhere and all the weird things you can find here. Also a market hall again with lots of pig heads...brrr. We bought dough cutters for the exact right empanada shape, we are professionals now!

An evening visit to the modern art museum that was closed last year. Some nice stuff and also some ??? stuff

One more night to say goodbye to our Chilean friends Anto, Ivan and Jaqui. Last year in September we visited the fundas for the Fiesta de Patrias with Anto and Jaqui and had a lot of fun. We also spend a weekend with Anto and Ivan at her parents place in Curacavi, just outside Santiago. I still have to laugh when I see the clip where I talk to the turkeys. Lovely people and great new friendships. Who knows they may visit us in NZ someday. To share between the 4 of us we ordered the famous Chilean pub fare (this was a very fancy version) to combine with our 'chop'. Lovely night and another goodbye .. Tonight we have dinner with Coco and Saturday our last lunch with Leonie and Andre - and then we're off home. Wow, a year has passed - a year we will never forget with so many awesome experiences and adventures - a Sudamerica nos encanta!!!