Christmas at the other end of the world

Before we went to bed we had to wrap up our little gifts in gift paper and put them under the Christmas tree. And as it is tradition in New Zealand we celebrated Christmas in the morning of 25th December with Paul, Kathy and Mike, almost as if we were part of their family. Wow, it had been a while since we had eaten so much and so good. 🙂

with Kathy, Mike and Paul

Mike and his new game

mmmmmh

also a Christmas tradition: Christmas Crackers

Afterwards we had to exercise a bit, so we went to the beach for some walking. When we arrived down at the beach a seal descended the waves and was moving towards us. 😀 And when we walked back home it was still laying in the sun. Very funny, those animals!

After another fancy breakfast on 26th we went to a horse race. Kathy had proposed to go there with us as it is a family thing during Christmas time and we had never been there. We had a really amusing afternoon, had a picnic and watched the horses running.

For the evening we were invited at Mikes friend Nik to watch a cricket game – while enjoying some beers, of course. After some rounds of dart we wanted to walk the eight kilometers home on foot. Mike stated that he knew a shortcut, so it wasn’t a problem. The first six kilometers were really nice: From the hills we could look down at the nightly lightened Dunedin and coast, we saw some cows, sheep, a cat and a horse and the night was nicely clear. But then the shortcut begun: We had to walk down a steep hill and cross seemingly thousands of fences, while we were all in flip-flops / sandals. After some swearing and an almost broke toe (Alexandras, of course) we finally reached Mikes home. Still it was really funny, somehow. 😀