Thursday, August 18, 2011

A lazy week

This is probably the most unfortunate week for me here in NZ. After the ski in Mt Ruapehu, I fall sick immediately. Must be the cold and snow, my body cannot keep up with the extreme temperature hence it decided to give up on me.


It is really horrible to travel when your head feels heavy and hot. Your whole body felt like weighed a ton and your energy just seeps away. All you want to do is just to sleep and will the fever to go away. Not just fever, I even caught the cough virus. Double trouble!


Seriously, I took nearly a week time to recuperate. Not just me, Dinosaur and Godzilla too succumbed to sickness. Our room was like a viral quarantine room where all are patients. Only Twister who's immune system is strong enough to counter any germs and virus. She even survived nearly scratch-less having been living together with 3 sick patients. Thumbs up to Twister!


The fever was not the worse case. I could just lie on bed and sleept. The worst would be cough.


In. The. Middle. Of. The. Night.


Numerous night I woke myself up due to sudden cough. It was so bad that I can't sleep and keeps me awake. To avoid waking others up too, I had no choice but to eat a sweet every night the moment I started to cough badly. Probably not so good for my dental hygiene, but at that moment I couldn't care much.


In between sleep, I also managed to explore the town of Hastings, Napier and Havelock North. Briefly.


Maybe because we were all sick, we really haven't got much enthusiasm to explore our surroundings. Personally, I think Hastings is nothing to shout about. Nothing much worth exploring here. The only exception is the Rush Monro's Ice Cream Parlour.


For your information, Rush Monro's is a premium ice cream here in NZ. The first ever ice cream parlour is here in Hastings. A charming little place but the operating hours in winter is short! Thank god we were right on time hence we got ourselves a nice tub of banana ice cream.


oooh la laaa~ It was heavenly! I absolutely loves it. It's rich creamy texture with the wonderful aroma of bananas are heavenly. I wouldn't mind finishing the whole tub myself ngek ngek ngek;p


Next, we went to Napier. Not what I expected either. Apart from walking at the beach coast, which was lovely by the way, we wanted to go visit the old prison. However, the charges were exorbitant thus we decided not to enter after all. A visit to Napier is not complete with some wine sampling^^


We tried wine sampling at two different winery estates and the experience is really quite nice. From here we learn a little bit more about wine making and stuff like that. Some wines we liked, some we don't.


After some tasting, I finally understood my preference in wine. I prefer midly sweet wine like chardonnay and sauvignon blanc. I don't quite fancy dry, sour wine like merlot. However, there's an exception though. There's a wine that mixes merlot and something else's which I quite like.


As for white wine or red wine, I think I prefer white wine and champagne. Call it sparkling wine if you like^^


Lastly, we visited Havelock North for the Arataki Honey Centre (the honeys are real cheap here! can't beat the price anywhere else's in NZ I reckon) and Te Mata Peak.



Te Mata Peak was really unbelievable. The wind I mean. The wind was so strong that it almost blew me off. If people says Wellington has really strong winds, wait til they are at Te Mata Peak. The wind here is 10x stronger than Welly's. I'm serious when I said I almost got blown away. In fact, you can see cars are shaking from the wind itself. The gushes of cold strong wind are definitely a force to reckoned with.


So that's it. That's the sum of my lousiest week in NZ. My health I mean.

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