Experiencing our first cyclone

New Zealand has quite extreme weather conditions compared to back home. One day it's the height of summer and the next it's freezing and pouring with raining. There's been a big hype around a cyclone coming to the country and on Tuesday this week it finally hit. It came from the west so luckily for us the mountains provided a good barrier that broke up the storm meaning we only really had a couple of days of torrential rain with minimal wind. The rivers suffered the most coming down from the hills. Many were overflowing and on the highway to Fairlie one bridge was washed out by the current. It's a main route for tour buses so this has caused a huge dip in our passing trade so work for the rest of the week has been very quiet. Amazingly they had the bridge repaired and open again by Saturday which I thought was rather impressive. We have finally made the decision to give up on trying to buy a campervan and to rent one instead. Nick has been using his lunch breaks to research all aspects of the next chapter of our travels and has chosen a good company for us to rent with. This means it's now time to sort out our visa extensions before we hit the road. This week we were rather fortunate to have a day off together so we headed down to the farm cafe near where we live to fill out our applications. It would of been rude to not order some lunch as well! Within a couple of hours we had our forms completed and Nick had rung to book in appointments for our medical examinations and chest x-rays. We never really considered how much money all these things cost when we first decided to extend. This week saw Cassidy turn 3 so after work on Saturday I headed over to the old farm. I missed her birthday party but still got to see her for a couple of hours. She loved the scooter I bought her and I loved the cheap price tag it had too! It was so amazing to see her and Eliza even after only a few weeks apart. Eliza is walking so confidently and all of a sudden just has this strong personality and level of interaction that wasn't there so much before. She's really changing so quickly now a days and you can't help but feel sad knowing we will miss out on these changes with Zephyr. I took Cassidy over a gingerbread man from the bakery which she enjoyed rather a lot, so much so that said gingerbread man went on an adventure with her and climbed up onto the bath then the sink to un-hook the shower cleaner from the top of the shower and proceed to spray the whole bathroom to "help mummy clean the bathroom". Drenched in shower cleaner, unfortunately, the rest of Mr gingerbread man ended up in the bin and Cassidy straight into the newly cleaned shower.Læs mere