In an effort to save money, as well as get my sister to come to Wellington, we drove home with her after our few days in Hamilton. It’s real long drive, about 8 hours without stops! But the scenery is beautiful even if you’ve seen it all many times before.

The Desert Road is one of my favourite stretches. It’s desolate, covered in tufty grasses and rocky creeks. It’s often misty and the three volcanic mountains hold snow on their peaks. Tongariro National Park is a dreamscape.

Mt Ruapehu // Desert Road // Mt Ngauruhoe // Bulls // Blossoms // Mt Ruapehu // Lake Taupo

I’d love to be a food people. Unfortunately I’m better at eating food and squeeing over cute plates and good service than I am at actually cooking. I leave that to talented boyfriends and flatmates.

Thankfully I didn’t have to do any of the cooking this weekend. We drove out to the food mecca that is Petone in the morning and visited a bunch of new (to me) foodie places.
The Dutch Shop where we picked up chocolates and licorice bullets.
On Trays where the small isles are full of delicious looking jars, drinks, cheeses, olives, and a whole lot of South African dried meat. Brend and I chose a bag of delicious Biltong, but it didn’t survive the day.
An Indian store full of spices and dried pulses and ready to eat curries.
And finally the supermarket where we picked up salmon and ribs and capsicum to smoke.

Back in town the boys got the smoker going while I headed to Martha’s pantry for some girly high tea with Jo, twitter friend Selina (Jo’s IRL friend), and Selina’s daughter Shannon. On entering Martha’s Pantry I started kicking myself for not having been earlier; it’s a wonderfully girly heaven. Full to the brim with cute cup and saucer sets, frilly aprons, delicious looking sweets, and a million kinds of tea. The furniture is painted white and paired with kitschy table cloths, ours had cross stitched flowers.

I topped off all the high tea goodness with a walk home in the unusually warm Wellington weather; (almost) a bottle of bubbles; and smoked ribs, salmon, and salad.

Unfortunately overly sweet bubbles give me hangovers so I spent Sunday eating pie sandwiches, microwaved sausage rolls, custard squares as big as my head, and drinking orange cordial. I watched 5 movies as well.

But there’s no such thing as climate change right?

Paula Bennett is definitely a kiwi chick, with a strong accent. She came from humble beginnings – leaving school at 17, pregnant, and with no qualifications. Paula found her way from Taupo to Auckland, she was in and out of trouble and seemingly going no where until she started working at a rest home and finally got to mingle with some strong women who encouraged (or pushed) her to go to University.

Now Paula leads some of the most important and controversial Ministries in New Zealand’s Government. The Hon Paula Bennett is Minster for Social Development and Employment, Minister for Disability Issues, and Minister of Youth Affairs. Despite being a National Party member she seems personable and has come a long way through her own hard work, all while raising her daughter single handedly. Paula also has a killer sense of style, all of her pictures demonstrate an ability to dress well for her age and shape. The shoes she wore tonight had me pretty distracted.

One thing that really stuck out in Paula’s talk was the differences in our attitudes towards workers, hardly surprising as I’m left wing and she’s a right wing politician (note for the Americans – New Zealand’s right wing is probably equivalent to your left, there isn’t a huge amount of difference between our two main parties). Paula referred to the current economic recession as something that is likely to change the way people look at work as a whole. That it is going to make people more protective of their jobs, and that finally people will start working hard instead of thinking they can get everything handed to them on a plate. She referred to a young client she had while working as a recruitment agent. He had just finished university with top marks and she thought he sounded great and asked him to come in for an interview. His response was something along the lines of I don’t do interviews. She thought this was hilarious, and seemed to think that kids these days wouldn’t know hard work if it smacked them in the face.

I’m all for hard work, but you can’t expect your employees to be interested in making your business amazing if you treat them like shit. A salary is not enough anymore, people are not willing to be worker bees doing their 40 hours loyally for 40 years. If you really want great staff, you need to work with them and offer a stimulating environment. If, however you’re fine with hiring machines carry on with the I pay you so now you’re my bitch attitude.

Paula’s a Westie, but she’s still a National Party member. Actually the more I read about her and think about her, the less I like her.

Wow!

Had to open with that because man was it good! The scene is set as we pull onto the gravel road at Pourerere Beach in Hawkes Bay. There are plenty of parking spots available up the driveway because we’ve taken the day off in order to enjoy the weekend to its full potential. The tent is the only thing taken out of the car until we find a camping spot, and soon I’m glad we didn’t lug the suitcase around the hill to start with.

For camping we are instructed to find a spot and huddle together so there is room for everyone. The land has been flattened in pockets up the hill. The spots are all pretty private, surrounded by trees, it’s insanely cute and I want to stay there forever.

We are first met with the sight of a bach with a huge deck, there is a large tent pitched beside it with a sign saying it’s the girls powder room “No Boys Allowed”. It makes me groan that some girls can’t go two days without needing a large mirror to apply their makeup, but then some girls are just like that.

Behind the house is huge marquee, with a stage for the bands, and behind that the hill extends upwards. When the owners bought the land 15 years ago they were told nothing would grow on it, that didn’t stop them from covering it in trees though. Now it’s the only place on the hill with bush land. It’s truly beautiful.

Night one

Alone in the tent, I’ve “showered” with baby wipes, I’ve got my bright pink PJ pants and the blow up bed makes sleeping in the bush more comfortable than I ever would’ve guessed. It’s 1.30am and I can hear people having fun to 60s music in the distance and crashing waves setting the scene. I’m warm, there’s fresh air all around and I’m reading Angels and Demons.

That was how night one of Super Summer Started ended for me. It’s been a fantastic day, starting at 9am from Wellington with my partner in crime and two mates and arriving at the beach just after 3pm. The next few hours were spent ferrying gear to our chosen campsite, drinking, and reacquainting ourselves with freedom. The water is just “warm” enough to paddle in. I’ve been trained in how to throw a frisbee properly by two Ultimate players but I still can’t do it very well. I can catch though :D

We enjoyed girls against boys soccer game for a short time, running on the beach uses a whole different set of leg muscles!

Dinner is green salad, potato salad, sausages and bread. By then we’re all starving and most are drunk. The sun goes down and a bright red full moon comes up. We drink to the moon.

Tonight is amateurs night in the marquee. The musicians are bloody fantastic and manage to get the crowd dancing and singing (when we know the words). The final act is Afternoon Raj, a Wellington five piece which have been on and off since 2005. They pull out three awesome originals and a fantastic cover of Britney Spears’ …Baby One More Time. I really hope they carry on with the band because I can’t wait till they have their songs recorded and I can share them with you.

Night two

In preparation for the final night the tables were moved under the marquee for speeches and prize giving. Dinner was burgers with green salad and potato salad again. Making it two nights in a row of salad sandwiches and potatoes for dinner because I don’t eat meat. Thankfully breakfast and lunch was hot food; hashbrowns, eggs and english muffins (and bacon for the omnivores) at breakfast, and nachos at lunch. There were woodfired pizzas all through the afternoon too. I’m not exaggerating when I say these pizzas are the best I have ever had. So simple! Some mozzarella and herbs and hey presto, mouth orgasm. If you’re in Wellington look out for the guys with the portable woodfire oven, red base and white oveny bit. They’ll be starting up business soon.

My day had been spent reading in the tent amongst nature and listening to the boy spew about 7 times. He got so drunk on Friday night! After all the spewing and 4 naps he was becoming human again.

A waterslide was set up and we got to see a lot of guys blind themselves with detergent and scratch themselves up by sliding off the end onto the grass.
This video pretty much sums it up.

After dinner and speeches it was down to the beach for a bonfire and sparklers. I discovered our cameras fireworks settings for slow shutter speed just in time. By now the boy and I didn’t feel like drinking and went back to the tent for a 20 minute rest before the Thomas Oliver Band played. I should’ve realised that with the boy’s lingering hangover that we were never going to see the band. He was snoring a few minutes later, leaving me to lie awake another night with the bass pumping through the ground unable to sleep. Thankfully the bass was good.

Morning two – Final day

Sunday morning was pack up time. Traipsing the hills with rubbish bags collecting bottle and cans. The marquee now smells like a long established bar with the disgusting smell of warm spilt beer. Urgh.

Breakfast was quite late so we were starving by the time it was served at 11.30am. No one went hungry though with the mass piles of hashbrowns and bacon left over, people were either too hung over to leave their tents or had left early to go back home, perhaps trying to avoid the Toast Martinborough traffic down the road.

Thanks SO much to all of the organisers and especially to the Masons. It was so nice to see a large group of young people looking out for each other making it a fantastic and safe weekend despite all the booze and drugs :D

Looking forward to the next one already.

The rest of the photos and videos

Although the outcome of the New Zealand General Election on Saturday was not what I desired, consensus among friends is that if we had the choice to change the outcome, but in order to do so America had to give up Obama and have McCain, there’s no way we would do it!

Obama benefits everyone and New Zealand is pretty centre aligned anyway with the two main parties barely left and right of centre.

I’ve been pretty disgusted with all of the recent comments left on Stuff in relation to election articles. Right leaning citizens accusing lefties of having no brain, accusing beneficiaries of being lazy dole bludgers who don’t deserve to be able to vote! It makes me sick, I didn’t realise we had such creeps here.

Anyway, this is what I wore to vote

• V neck t-shirt – Ezibuy
• Satin skirt – Country road
• Bag – Thrifted
• Boots – Demonia, Gravel 20

After voting I headed to my BFF Benhi’s to make cupcakes. The master plan was to copy Ems naughty penis cupcakes, but in brown instead of white to honour Obama. We were rather tipsy (ahem, drunk) when we came up with the plan! But we stuck with it…(stop scrolling now if you are at work or somewhere where it would be equally embarrassing to have a big penis made entirely of icing on your screen)

Obama, Made Of America

Note the extra large penis. That’s one stereotype I’m assuming black men don’t mind.

This is why I love New Zealand so much. Amongst all the PC talk there are still a few people out there with a sense of humour and some great marketing skills. A bit like Hell Pizza and Burger Fuel.

Murder Burger staff wanted