13th Dec - Waimate

Had an awesome day exploring Waimate and NZ culture and countryside.

I spent the morning on the internet sorting out my visas for India and Nepal and also doing my blog and photos, emails and planning my route round the south island of NZ etc.

Pat took me into town to post all of my Christmas cards and some things home, pop to the bike shop (bike shop come fishing shop come mechanical things come everything a small town wants) and a couple of other things for my visa applications. We then went on the school run (he drives the primary school children from all of the farms back and forth to work). It was a real insight into NZ rural culture. The children were discussing who's farm was biggest. The farms are all quite big and accessed by gravel roads. The hills at the back of Waimate are rolling and very pretty. It was a lovely sunny day - cool though. My body is not used to the change in temp from Aus yet.

This is a photo of an old petrol pump - they used to all have petrol stations on the farms as they could not transport the petrol.










This lovely lad showed me his new puppy when we dropped him home from school.











There are loads of bee hives all over the hills..... I have not seen so many like this in the UK.







This is the flour mill in the middle of town.











We went back into town to pick up my passport photos (not from a photo booth but an actual person taking the photo and post processing) and then visited the best coffee shop in the world!

http://www.southisland.org.nz/Waimate/Waimate/Cafes/ARTrio-Art-Cafe_ov=2353_.html
http://www.artrio.co.nz/

It is owned by the most welcoming Malaysian chaps ever. We ordered 2 coffee's and some Malaysian warm sponge deserts to try. By the end of the time they had bought us free green tea, crunchy biscuits to try and a curry pastry (which they were going to throw out as they were closing) - all for free. They were so lovely. The walls are covered in their art work and photographs. If you are ever in NZ you HAVE to go to this coffee shop :-)

Pat then took me up to the waterfall walk at the back of town and we then went for a long run up the hill to the white horse (which over looks the town). The views were fab and it was good to stretch my running legs rather than just bike all of the time :-)







We then went back and I decorated and cleaned my bike - Pat was not so impressed with the decor......

We then had a very late night trying to get computers working so that I could print out everything I needed for applying for India and Nepal visas in NZ (could not do before I left the UK as they would expire too early).


The thing about New Zealand is that people do not have the same issues as in the UK where we have to update everything however fully functioning the old stuff is :-)

Pat's home is very cosy and welcoming.