A happy holiday, indeed!

Tom and I finally found work at the Rhythm and Vines festival in Gisborne.  It started ten years ago as a relatively small music festival in a vineyard and has been getting bigger and better ever since.  A few weeks ago we signed up to volunteer in exchange for admittance because we had heard it will be loads of fun, but knew there was no way we’d be able to afford the $200 tickets.  We got emails saying that there were enough volunteers, so they wouldn’t need us.  Thanks to Tom’s experience at See Tickets in Nottingham, we were able to score paid work instead.  So far we’ve been working 12 to 14 hour days, but we’ve been told things will slow down and we’ll be able to celebrate the New Year.  The live music the night of the 31^st goes ‘til 8:00 a.m., so if we manage to stay up that late after a full day of work we’ll be some of the first to see the light of 2011.

Our Christmas Eve camping site

We worked Christmas Eve and Boxing Day, but managed to have a really lovely Christmas in between.  We drove back down to the Mahia Peninsula to celebrate, and camped on the sea, surrounded by Pohutukawa trees in bloom.  It was really strange to be wearing a bikini and loading on the sun screen instead of spending the day out in the snow or in a warm kitchen.  We went for a walk on the beach, then met up with our friends John and Angela from Taranaki.  The four of us went for a surf and then had some really nice food.  We had New Zealand mussels, sirloin steak with portabella mushrooms, nice salad, and ham from the pigs we helped feed a month ago.  After fishing and a small bonfire we sat around a picnic table with our lantern, drinking beer and wine and having a good laugh.  Boxing day we got up early, went for a quick surf, and got back to Gisborne in time for work.