Happily in Hamilton

Well, our road trip has landed us now in the city of Hamilton at the home of some mutual friends (thank you Joe and Judith) and we are quite excited and appreciative of the home environment! Hamilton it turns out is the perfect location to settle for a bit because it's pretty centrally located and there are quite a few exciting day trips within the radius of a few hours drive time. We showed up and our lovely hosts Julie and Quentin showed us around the extensive gardens they have here in Hamilton, with different sections in the style of different corners of the world - New Zealand it turns out is a places where almost anything grows and thrives which makes gardening fun and weeding overwhelming! Between home-cooked meals and a comfy bed, Clare and I love Hamilton - plus Julie and Quentin kindly offered us the use of their house while they were on vaca for the long weekend, so we've had our run of the place taking full advantage of a kitchen to cook in! :-)
One of the first day trips we took was to a small surf town on the west coast called Raglan, which is only about an hours drive (though it looks much closer on a map, the 'highways' here are tiny and run through many a town center - aka there are tractors driving down the highway.) Raglan was a great town to putz around in because it's a hub of artist cooperatives, so there were tons of artsy handicrafts to drool over and some cool black sand/rock beaches to watch surfers (who ranged from entirely mediocre to pretty impressive) ride some BIG waves. All in all, highly entertaining and relatively nervewracking (reminder: ROCK beaches.)