Top of the South

settling down under

By Heather & Pravin

May 8^th, 2019

House Sitting in nelson

After parting ways with our friend Dan in Christchurch, we decided to make our way back up towards Nelson and see about finding work. Initially, we had hopes of finding professional work at least somewhat related to what we had been doing back home, but we quickly realized that Nelson was far too small to offer any such opportunities and that we were going to have to take what we could get. We spent just under a week freedom camping in our campervan at various sites around Nelson, sitting in cafés for wifi to job hunt in the mornings and moving to the public library for wifi in the afternoons. We also built a housesitting profile and reached out to a few people looking for sitters in the area, and to our delight, we had a family want to meet with us almost right away! They invited us over for tea and a chat, and we ended up committing to looking after their dog, 2 cats and 4 chickens for 10 days while they were on vacation. We couldn't believe our good fortune - after living out of a 24-year old campervan for the last 6 weeks, now we would get to stay in a big, beautiful, ocean view home with a bunch of animals to play with! Not to mention a full kitchen, heat and hot water - simple luxuries that we no longer took for granted.

One house sit turned into a couple more, including multiple stints for the same family (with an adorable labrador retriever) and so from mid-July to the second week of September, there were only a couple of nights that we didn't end up with free accommodation. In the meantime, I had started working at a muffin café (who would have thought my university-days barista skills would ever come in handy again!), and we had both purchased second-hand bicycles. Petrol is incredibly expensive in New Zealand, so it was definitely to our advantage that there was a great cycleway linking the neighbourhood that we were housesitting in to the area that I was working in. Once I had a job, we started looking for a flat of our own, but vacancies were few and far between in Nelson and everything on the market seemed to be very poor value.

Given the less-than-ideal job situation and the difficulty in finding a flat to rent, Pravin had started expanding his job search and landed an exciting and career-relevant job offer in Auckland. We were torn about what to do, as we had purposely picked Nelson (population ~50,000) as a place to live because it was so very different to our life in the city of Vancouver. After much deliberation, we started to lean towards moving to Auckland, but just in time, we got an exciting call from the property manager of a cozy ocean-view flat that we had applied for. That same week, Pravin landed a job working in a mussel factory that processed raw shellfish into powder used in anti-inflammatory nutraceuticals.

A Flat with a view

Everything came together quickly with our decision to stay and work in Nelson, but it meant that we had a few days to furnish our empty flat while finishing up our last house-sitting commitment. The flat was small but felt very spacious to us as it was a one-bedroom plus den with a deck, and it was located in the bottom of a house owned by a lovely Kiwi couple that we were very happy to get to know over our time living in Nelson. The best part of the flat was the mountain and ocean views from every room, and we never tired of watching the colourful sunsets. Since we had signed a six-month lease and only wanted to stay in Nelson for that period of time, we found almost everything we needed in terms of furniture and household items second-hand, in thrift stores and via Facebook Marketplace. It cost us very little to get set up and we were thrilled to have a place of our own again after being on the move for the last 18 months!

goodBye Silvia, Hello Subie!

Once we were settled in the flat and both working full-time, we realized that we no longer needed our campervan, but that we did need a vehicle that sat more than three people as we had visitors lined up over the next few months! We started looking around and found the perfect vehicle, a 2003 Subaru Outback that gave us the ability to transport family and friends, but was also perfect for our out-of-town adventures and weekends away. The added bonus of a smaller, "newer" vehicle was that it was much better on petrol. We found it hilarious that for a week or so once we had purchased the Subaru and put the Estima on the market, we were a two-vehicle family - even though we were both exclusively cycling to work. We didn't have any trouble selling the campervan quickly and actually made money on the sale, since we had purchased it in low-season (winter) when most backpackers were leaving and desperately looking to sell, and then sold it in high-season when there was lots of demand as many backpackers were arriving in the country with plans to travel over the summer.

Life In Nelson

Although neither of us were thrilled with our jobs, the wages are high enough in New Zealand that we were able to live comfortably enough while saving money and getting out for lots of adventures when our days off aligned. We lived on a hill about a 10-minute walk from Tahunanui Beach, which is a lovely long public beach whose waters are beautifully warm in the summer. We went out for bike rides and hikes as much as possible, and since the hilly area we lived in was incredibly scenic with beautiful views all around, I was motivated get out running lots and trained for a half-marathon in which I achieved a personal best!

Eating out in restaurants in New Zealand is generally quite expensive, but fish and chips (or chicken and chips) is cheap and delicious, so we usually ended up at our favourite local spot about once a week. Once summertime came around, we made sure to visit the Thursday evening market in Isel Park most weeks, where we found the most delicious and friendly Sri Lankan food stall and ended up ordering the exact same thing every week because it was so good! Most often though, we were happy to have the luxury of our own kitchen again and so we had a lot of fun being creative in the kitchen again. Pravin started baking bread and got very good at it, so we often had fresh bread to enjoy. We found that supermarket produce prices were very high on the South Island, but a retired farming couple that we had housesat for had alerted us to find an excellent farm market, so we were able to do most of our shopping there once it was open for the season.

The downtown area of Nelson was quite small and not particularly full of things to do, but the surrounding area offered endless activities and we were constantly adding to our list of things to do. The area is renowned for beaches and wineries, and we ticked off many beautiful hikes in the surrounding mountain ranges. Abel Tasman and Nelson Lakes National Parks were both within 90 minutes' drive, and we visited each one several times to camp, hike and paddle. Even just within our neighbourhood, there were a number of gorgeous lookout points that made the perfect destination for an evening walk to watch the sunset over the ocean. Winter in the town was very quiet, but once summer came around, the beaches were definitely busier and town was always buzzing with tourists and backpackers.

visitors from home

We were able to make good use of our Subaru Outback and take it on a proper road trip once my parents came to visit! We were overjoyed to have them visit and spent lots of time catching up over good food and New Zealand wines. Their visit started off with a few days in Nelson, and then we all headed up to an Airbnb in Golden Bay for a night to explore the area and have a meal in the cozy Mussel Inn, famed for its generous portions of NZ green-lipped mussels. From there it was back to Nelson for a couple more nights and then we all set off on a road trip.

We spent a couple of days at a beautiful resort in the Marlborough Sounds, where we had yet another mussel feast, and while my mom and I went paddle boarding, Pravin and my dad went fishing and caught some delicious fish for dinner! Next, we headed to Blenheim, which is surrounded by wineries famed for their Sauvignon Blanc. We toured a few and made sure that my mom had plenty of wines to bring home. Our next stop was Kaikoura, where we strolled the waterfront and watched the fur seals, and then we spent a night in a beautifully cozy cabin in the ski village of Mount Lyford, on the way to Christchurch. We had a few days together in Christchurch and had lots of fun walking around the city, but the time passed far too quickly and before we knew it, it was time for my parents to board their flight back home. It was a wonderful visit and we were so happy that they could get a taste of New Zealand and see what we had been raving about!

more visitors!

Our next set of visitors was Pravin's brother Amesh, his wife Jessica, and their new baby, Anjali, whom we hadn't had the chance to meet yet as she had been born while we were away! We were beyond excited to see them and Anjali was even cuter in person than we could have imagined. It was so much fun to catch up with them and it was shocking to think that it had been almost two years since we last saw Amesh and Jess! In that time they had become homeowners and parents, so there was plenty to catch up on.

Amesh and Jess and Anjali had flown into Auckland and then spent some time exploring the North Island, and then we flew over to Wellington, at the bottom of the North Island, to meet them on their way down to Nelson. It was our first time on the North Island and we had a great time exploring what was a fun and artsy city. Wellington felt like a giant metropolis to us after spending so long on the much-quieter South Island! Although the city is renowned for bad weather, we lucked out with three days of sunshine and warm temperatures. Heading back to Nelson, we hung out for a couple of days and showed them around and got lots of play time with Anjali, and then we all set off for a couple of nights in Golden Bay.

christmas in the southern hemisphere

Just before Christmas, our final visitor of 2018 arrived - my sister, Nicole! She flew into Nelson to join us for the holidays, and overlapped with Amesh, Jess and Anjali's visit for a few days. It meant that we had a fun and full house over Christmas, and since it was summertime, we planned for a meal on the beach to celebrate. The weather had other plans however, and Christmas Day was wet and rainy. Instead, we had a cozy day inside and exchanged our Secret Santa gifts for each other, made cinnamon buns for breakfast, and rather than cooking a big meal in our tiny kitchen, we did a big cheese and charcuterie board for dinner paired with local wines and a special-edition magnum of beer from our favourite craft brewery.

It was so much fun having some of our family around for Christmas, as it was our second consecutive Christmas away from home! Although it was strange for all of us Canadians to celebrate Christmas down under at the start of summer vacation time, it meant the world to us that Amesh, Jess, Anjali and Nicole had all chosen to come spend the holiday with us and we had an unforgettable time together.