Central Otago Rail Trail

Just outside Alexandra we had a first okay2stay' experience. We stayed on John's premise of his Como Villa winery. He was expecting to wake up at three to protect his baby grapes by spraying water and freezing them in. We understood we would have to get ready for another cold (freezing) night. Apart from some electricity for the heating, we also choose a bottle of his good wine to face the cold. Pierre bought it after some wine tasting. He has a little museum aka tasting room. The ideal place and time (bedtime) to ask the kids to keep quiet,  don't touch anything and wait for mum and dad to be ready with tasting the pinot ;-) in one of the world's most southern wine regions.

The next day, carefully picked out as the sunshine day of the week, we had made the reservation with the lovely and well organised people from shebikeshebikes to 'taste' a small portion of the great Central Otago Rail Trail. This 150km trail follows the trackbed of the former Otago Central Branch railway line and, quoting the rough guide, "includes modified Rail bridges and viaducts, beautiful valleys and long agricultural plains."

So we did the 30km round trip to the Poolburn Gorge and had a great day. First sunny day, first full day outside! This is what I expected and I enjoyed! Amélie played the little motor to Pierre s bike, complaining with humor that it is the world upside down that a five years old had to push her dad on a bike...
I had mat and bill behind me in a kind of croozer  (with luckily an extra seat for the inevitable eye-grabbing and arm biting twinmoments). Carrying the 40/50 extra kg of kids, was making me by times philosophycal about why women get the heavy tasks in life (because we are stronger than men, says Amélie) and by times just simply regretting a little electrical motor to the bike. It didn't help that, returning the bike at the shop, the lady said they had a brand new electrical bakfiets in the office ....

More otago peninsula

So after Williams Castle we went down to the little village of Portobello and camped overnight. 

On the next day - hurray sunshine!!! - we booked a boat trip at the peninsula's tip with Monarch tours and happily saw some royal albatrosses flying in and out of their nests as well as one resting on the waves.

 Some seals and cormorants, but the real highlight amidst the beautiful setting was the company we got from 4 dolphins wanting to play with the boat! It even woke up William who s a bit sick and almost made him smile! Amélie and Matthias where as enthusiastic as everybody else on the little fishermen's boat! 

After another night on the Portobello campground, we took off for a short walk in Allan's beach where the access was blocked by a sleeping sealion! 

Spot the animal !

There where three more on the beach, but after a few minutes of wind and rain we went back to our campervan to drive inlands, to Alexandra, where we will sleep on the grounds of a winery with the 'okay2stay' network. You pay a fee and then can sleep on the grounds of members (farmers, producers,...) The idea being of course that you buy something... Ow, well, if we have to.. We ll buy some wine! (Hoping we will get electricity though cause temperatures and ill William still don't make for real wild camping context! )

Touchdown New Zealand

recent events in Paris add to me feeling uneasy with some luxury-travel-questioning I am currently having. E.g. I regret the title post "surviving the flights" ,  for I do feel there was nothing survivor-like to it. We are a healthy family travelling by choice for our pleasure. We have the luxury to think about our luggage, destination, occupation,.... And then make the best out of it. No rushing out of the house, leaving everything behind, ignoring with pain in the heart the terrified looks in your kids eyes, taking essentials in one bag, then running for your life... Risking your life and that of your most precious ones... Hoping for better, safer,... Now that would be worth a post headline 'surviving flights') , we are - should I say I am - having the luxury travel questioning in our campervan on a cold Monday evening, with my four roomies asleep, at least three of them snoring - crazy enough the 3 male roomies of the family ;-)

We arrived in rainy Christchurch Wednesday evening and picked up our campervan next day.

We spent our first night just a bit out of Christchurch in the little town of Akaroa on thé banks peninsula.

 We drove 2-3 hours discovering low but almost continuous light urbanisation, good highways, badly closed rear doors of our van (we probably lost more than just a few big bottles of water there on the roundabout, but I prefer not to think about it now. We are 600km away from that roundabout were we first realised the door didn't close that well) a lot of sheep, green green gras, me not liking the driving left thing when on high mountain passes,... 

The kids fell asleep right away on that first trip, and we thought it was the best jetlag-tackling thing to do to wake them up on arrival around 7pm to go and have dinner in the little  town.... We were still hoping it would be OK when entering the first restaurant, but even a promised hot chocolate couldn't wake them up... 

Amélie slept against her chair, mat on his chair and William on his dad' lap. We admitted our loss, we paid for the bill and left without eating, carrying out three kids back to our campervan. The freezing night got really chilly when the battery of our van decided to stop heating. Wild camping versus van Meerbeeck 1-0. I made Pierre promise not to do the wild camping again unless night temperatures are above 15 (they where and are around 5) and battery is at least able to heat (and keep the fridge going). We have been sleeping on campingsites ever since. ;-)
Don't ask why, but the boys and myself are slightly 'resfriado' since we arrived; I can't stand the 'we never had such a cold spring' kind of sentences anymore or anything that alludes to it being to cold for the season (no, we don't have soup, it is supposed to be summerwarm!) on the little market in town we made the monthly figures of the lady, buying 4 beautyfull and above all warm and comfy "petits paquets tout chaud" every woman's Dream, every man's night mare ;-)) here showed off a few days after buying, in Portobello.

So after the historical French settlement of Akaroa, we took of to the Victorian history crazy town of Oamaru. 

We where lucky to arrive on their biggest weekend of the year, the Victorian Heritage Celebrations, walking trough the streets with all the people dressed up Victorian style and witnessing their big parade in the street amidst the beautiful buildings and nice (oh good luck traveling with three) people. We took the historic little train and at night we sneaked out to watch the little blue penguins come out of sea, cross the road into their nests. We didn't stay long because of it being late and cold, but it was a nice evening nature show for all!

On the next day we drove to Dunedin, southern island's second biggest town, stopping over at Moeraki beach for some jumping on and off the million years old boulders over there. (Well, the process of formation started 60millionnyears ago , says the rough guide!)

After a night close to Dunedin town, we head into the city for a real Belgian rainy Sunday - day. We went to the local technopolis, aka otago museum, good for an hour or 2 activity ending with the highlight for Amélie: the release of the new butterflies in the tropical forest! (See, you come from Iguazu to visit the fake tropical forest in New Zealand...)

After that we went up the hill in the otago peninsula to visit the Larnach Castle. William Larnach by his full name. So needless to say we said it was Williams Castle, so he showed us around as if he had always lived their, explaining in details the use of every room (ici c'est mon bureau pour travailler, ici c est la salle de bain des  enfants...)

 The gardens are also beautiful and the ideal place to try out Pierre's (shared) new gadget, the one and only selfie stick.

 It is quiet fun to see the kids walk around with it! William with a serious face manages to take himself with different background and things to see ; Amélie as a real princess should be, is more focused on her own beauty and transforms the selfie stick in a kind of portable close up mirror; matthias who keeps on hurting his foot, uses it as a walking stick ....

Falls and Family - the pictures

So three kids, three months? The packing

I got the question a few times from friends and I  had the question for myself during months and months prior to departing. Then I asked around, read a bit on specialised fora, then packed, bought, packed, bought again, asked around, unpacked and packed... Etc... Then I let go on my Ideal Plan to have just two pieces of luggage, and decided that having three pieces of big luggage was for us and given some of our irrational but hard to get rid off fixations , our forced destiny.

In two big scout-backpacks we have mainly clothes : toiletries  and a dozen of ziplocked bags of the vacuum kind a type. We all have (well Pierre and I with some slight variations) more or less two trousers, two shorts, two short sleeves shirts and two longs sleeves shirts, a short and a long pyjama, underwear (5 or 7 - have I told you it had been challenging starting the trip with potty training - gastroenteritis sick twins??) A sweater. Kids have a jogging outfit we call the airplane-uniform...
Add to that for every person a hat, sunglasses, swimgear (full for the kids: t shirt uv, brassards et maillot) , a fleece and a (damn.... Not that  waterproof) rain&wind jacket.

A bag of cables and chargers, a heavy pharmacy and first aid kit (thanks to the valuable advice of a sister in law emergencies nurse and full-of-good-sense-mum-of-3 as well as from my favourite pharmawhatsapp friend pharmacist! Now given the weight, is it OK to say I am almost happy every time I can use it? Mat got burnt by boiling water on our first day. Flamazine check. Some #cousinswirtz needed cortisone cream. Check. Long flight and need of Antihistamine sir... Sorry, nothing. Didn't say anything. ) an umbrella (still hoping to use that one). Bedsheets 2 pairs a boy and a coton sleeping back for Amélie (with the clothes drawing stifts as suggested by travelling mum Caro to draw her main souvenirs) and our own travelling sleeping bags.

Shoes! Forseen: one pair for the kids - but water resistant, all ground, protected toes and... Machine washable ! (At the end of week 2, surrounded by two barefoot kids of mine, I am already #thankyoukeen for that and looking forward to it!)
Reality check in cold new zealand; we bought some cheap rainboots...
Pierre and I are more lucky. Pierre has and wears his all time docksides (#decathlon à fond la forme), havaianas and keen sandals. I have comfy walking bailerines (decathlon bis) , keen sandals and wedding-havaianas. I received from Mary an extra pair of Argentinan i-forgot-the-name-and-have-no-internet-to-check-it-nor-a-husband-who-knows-anything-about-it espadrille-type of shoes that I am gratefully wearing.
Macgyver also brought a few Colson bandjes (un-used so far) different kind of tapes, a leather man knife (greatfully used to make those needed extra holes in the boy's 'ceinture' at the wedding) a kitchen knife. We already bought and added to the 'varia-bag' a bottle opener, different kind of soaps (vaisselle, lessive et special peau excema). The rainboots. The fleece sleepingbags  / petits paquets tout chaud.

We carry around - but don't tell anyone - an iPad and a small portable computer , a few phones and my fotocamera. The kids have three little #deuter bags with a drinking can and some things to play with or draw, read,... which, when un-used or whilst in transit, are put in a light weigthed little bag (#decathlon) . a winner in this category is the no-mess and re-usable draw with water wow from Melissa and Doug.
we have a day backpack which content changes regularly but usually contains a mini version of the farmacy, food, water, drinks, inflatable football, spare underwear for the boys (did I mention they where ... Sorry... Repeating myself again) hand washing alcohol (nope. Not the alcohol for the parents) , some drawing stuff and usually a little ziplock bag with some treasures (read: shopping tickets or stuff like that from matthias).

The third big bag contains the books we haven't had the time to read yet (argh... Those social and family obligations.... ;-) ): a travel book of new Zealand, the book of ex-colleague Pieter stockmans for me about jihad and understanding multi-perspectives in the actual context and the one of Pierre's cousin Veronique Lobert for Pierre himself. The mayor space of that third bag is occupied by bulcky kids stuff which wouldn't necessarily be necessary to any kids travelling, but which we decided to take along and haven't regret yet (the fact that we spend 3 weeks in a camper van, or travel by and then fly back to Bangkok and so have the option to leave un-used stuff there, did influence our choices) two deryan tents for the boys. Comfy, fast, anti-mosquito. Kids know it s their fixed place, no fuzz going to sleep. 2 manducas, baby wearing backpacks going up to 20kg so even when Amélie is the one falling asleep in the evenings, we can carry her in there too. If we had a third back, a third one would come in handy. A pram simply wasn't a go, and  twinprams are just by definition not the kind of thing you want to travel with, and bringing a Singleton one might just have been the most efficient way to start figths between the kids (should the kids ever experience a lack of inspiration to start one by themselves... Which I sincerely doubt would ever happen) and at last, we also carry around three in-between-solutions for our obsession about car seat safety. Looking for a decent safe way to travel, jump into a taxi,... , but not to bulky  Amélie has an inflatable boosterseat and for the boys we carry around and have been at the source of mixed "oh great / oh freaky parents" looks with their imported (and officially aproved ) USA car-jackets. All that, together with the tents and the books, fits in the third bag.

So that s it: two backpacks and one baby gear aka irrational stuff / typically us duffle bag. Then on the go a day pack for us and sometimes a second one with the kids backpacks.

See, everyone can do it (and without our specific obsessions, you could do with less!!)

Leaving argentina via chile

Was a trip on its own!

 Flying out from Resistencia, into Buenos Aires, taxiing back to the Babel suites hotel in San telmo where we had been two weeks before. It sure helps to go back to places the kids know, and for us, it was nice and easy as well, and the presence of David and Val (in their very particular way)/was a plus as well! We spent the evening in a cerveceria downtown before wearing our sleeping kids "home", re- pack our bags a bit more seriously and more in honour of my Mertens-genes, and then have a short night of sleep. Taxis out at 5:45 on Monday and flying out to Chile around 8. We were warmly welcomed by ground floor customer care people, which I thought was great and incredibly good from qansas, until I understood the special treatment was due to our flight to Sydney being reprogrammed 24h later. 

So poor us, we were forced to sleep in the hotel across the street, for the first time in two communicating rooms, forced to have all meals taken car of and so we forced ourselves to go to downtown Santiago for a 2-3hours express trip.

 On the good advice of our verrrry friendly van driver, we where dropped off at the funicular after having driven around a little (kids fell asleep immediately and I have to admit I had a hard time not to... ) funiculars and high cityviews did the perfect job for a great afternoon, finishing in a student bar just a few streets away, where Nice Van Driver picked us back up. 

Dinner. Bedtime (thank you deryan tents to provide for those secure recognasible 'own spot' sleeping places for the boys - no matter how bulky you are, I m sure it has saved us already numerous nervous breakdowns in the evening with kids getting overexcited with the (to us) well-known "new place - new nightly party" sindrom!). Wake up. Pack (Pascale) have breakfast with the kids (Pierre) then cross the streets and now for real, lets get boarded for that 14hours of daytime flight to Sydney!!

We got to see the cockpit from our 747, but Pierre and I where more excited about it than our kids who decided to play "lets see who can be the most shy" and definitely ended up sharing the highest step of the podium on that game... 

Seated in our seats, all our friends of the plane from Buenos Aires  whom we had shared the last 24hours with as well, where glad to see - and not to shy to mention - that Matthias was seated at the window... That would avoid the nervous breakdown that lasted for 40minutes on the bue-chile flight. 

(It is William on the pic) Talking about nervous breakdowns (after all they are still in the terrible twos ... The two of them) and the 14h flight, I did take the bottle of antihistamine sirop out of my 5kg pharmacy into my hand luggage this time. The pharmacist had told me " quidado, da sueno" so I figured that might be just a perfect escape plan this time. But don't tell our paediatrician, nor the doctors among our friends !

The 14 hours flight went fine, oh, well, went OK. Once in sydney we had to wait an hour or two before flying backwards to Christchurch. We got into a lounge with a creditcard membership. It is a very efectif way to have the launch for yourself, to get in with three kids... Oeps.. 

Although seriously they where OK. Amélie sleepy in a couch, mat and bill enjoying the luxury of the prams and playing control tower at the window.
We arrived at midnight at Christchurch. Cold and rainy. There was some suspense to know if they would get asleep... After all, they slept in the planes and it was 8 o clock in the morning for their biological clock... At around 2 they 'magically' fell asleep..... ;-) no comment.

Next day Pierre picked up the campervan, we went to the supermarket, bought some rain boots as well and Pierre an extra sweater. It was after all, really really colder than expected!
Off to 3 weeks of new Zealand adventures! Starting off with the southern island!

Fairytale wedding - The script

Of course, marriage is all about two persons bounding and engaging. So was the Tom and Teffi Van Meerbeeck - Verellen wedding. And it had a plus (one of many plus's!) It was also the highlight of two families celebrating generations of close friendship, finally culminating in a perfect match! Bonpapa and all the other grandfathers certainly had their little party up there. On the floor we had three days of incredibly good moments in an amazing surrounding of natural beauty and human warmth! (Pling pling pling)

We and the kids enjoyed seeing the friendly and familiar faces of the Verellen de tandil again, some of them we hadn't seen again since 5 years, others we had had the chance to cross in Europe in their trips. and it is nice to see the kids get away quiet well in Spanish to familiarise even better. Of course, there where also Belgian attendees who made the whole trip to downtown Paso de la Patria. We got to see some very good friends again and also good part of Pierre's cousins! I couldn't name them all, so I ll just #sunsnacks #wirtzenargentine ?!

Now if you know Paso de la Patria and the house of Gigi and Dana is located just at river the Parana, you can already imagine how great it was to be right at the beach, with beautiful views and even better sunsets! Add to that the warm welcoming of Steffi's family and then hours of preparation to give nature a hand and decorate every single corner of the already lovely place. 

Then put the groom in a nice suit, let him be overwhelmed by some emotions and a tidy bit of nerves. 

Let the proud brother of the bride row on a little boat to bring a stunning bride to the pier.

(Stolen from gigi Verellen's Facebook)

 Be sure to have the perfect light of a generous sun going down and filing the sky with 50 shades of orange. 

(Spot us all 5 ! - by Esteban Verellen)

Have family and friends gather around the proud parents and let the fairytale wedding unwind all night long, drowned in caipitinhas and quilmes, on the ritmic beats of latin musicuntil the sun comes up again(*) ! Bravo Teffi et Thomas! Merci aux parents Verellen et Van Meerbeeck pour la belle fête et le beau séjour/voyage!

(*)we had our kids waking us up at 7:30 so at around 4 we did go rational and went to sleep, just after the carnival dancer, but unfortunately before DJ Thomas taking over (or completely losing) the controls !

I have to add that the six van meerbeeck cousins looked also very cute in their enfant d honneur tenues. The girls in their flower dress - and fresh flower hair attributes! And the boys like real little gauchos argentinos in their bombachas!