I didn’t hide anything... neither had time to make one. It’s not mine, it’s my nephew, Louis ;-) My sister and her husband, Tijn, came to spend almost 3 weeks around Christmas and New-Year with me in New-Zealand.

You can imagine that the van I bought wasn’t too much for all this family traveling because we had: the baby bed, baby clothes & co, baby seat, my sister’s & tijn’s stuff, mine as well, tijn’s kitesurfs, kiteboard, wetsuit, harness, and the same for me, the full camping set with chairs, stove, cooking set... And we had to squeeze all of it between the bed and the 4th seat in the back. Each day it got a bit better organized and by the end we were pretty quick to set up the camp or to leave in the morning, as well as to find what we were looking for.

We spent the first week and new-year with friends in the Bay of Islands, north of Auckland. It’s such a nice place, and their house is somewhere you wish to spend always more time. The view over the bay is just ... like this!

And even when you’re cooking in the kitchen which is in the opposite way of the bay, you just have to look into the window to have the reflection of the bay... priceless

It was hard to leave the place with the great time we had with all the Jack family

but we had to SEE NEW-ZEALAND, or at least I had to since my sister and Tijn were already here.

To make it short we drove northern up to the cape Reinga and down the west coast to Wellington, and here are some of the great places we’ve been

Maitai Bay

Ninety miles beach

Cape Reinga

Raglan

Mont Egmont

Sunset & Fire next to Cape Egmont Light House

And of course some kitesurfing

In Wellington... I saw the IBM building, but I didn’t feel like going in to check my emails ;-) And then we took the ferry to the South Island

Cape Farewell

Wharariki Beach

Pupu Springs

Last but not least... how were these 3 weeks with my nephew you will ask since I didn’t say much about it. Well I have to admit it was pretty hard at the beginning to get into the baby pace of life and to get use to all the stops and things to do for him. Can’t he just get a beer for the apéro instead of his warm milk which implies to set up the stove and everything? ;-) I guess it was also hard since we were just driving everyday and not making more than short walks. So after the first couple of kite sessions and a few days seeing Louis starting to smile when he kind of recognized me, I must say that it was really nice.
Thank you Elo, Tijn, Louis & the whole Jack family to set me on the rail of my New-Zealand adventures :-)

More pictures as usually on http://photos.shakeyourlife.com/New-Zealand/