Our new home

After doing LA —> [Iceland] —> Moscow —> Delhi —> Kuala Lumpur —> Auckland we finally landed in New Zealand. The immigration form includes a lengthy questionnaire about all the stuff that might be in your suitcases such as trekking boots or anything that has been used with animals. Given that about 2/3 of our suitcases are full with polo and horse riding we had quite a lot to declare. We went through a special queue to a table with an immigration officer who asked to see all our material. She looked pretty depressed when she realised just how much of it we had. She sent our boots, mallets and a few other things to the laboratory to check whether we were harbouring any diseases, I guess. When we got the stuff back, the lab guy told us he was amazed how clean the boots were and that they were all very grateful for it. Now anyone who knows me will know that I am certainly not the type to keep my boots clean but Manjeev definitely is, and he remembered reading a while back that an Indian cricketer got fined for bringing muddy boots into the country so he made sure ours were impeccable. 

Incidentally, we also had to declare all the duty free cigarettes we had and since the country only allows you 2 1/2 packs per person we ended up having to throw away 25 packs. This was all the more painful when we found out that cigarettes cost an amazing $30 PER PACK. Now if that’s not an incentive to quit, I don’t know what is. 

After this interesting procedure, we proceeded to take our domestic flight and funnily enough we didn’t even have to scan any of our bags on the domestic flight. That’s how little they cared / how relaxed they were. We liked that very much. 

Anyways, after spending some 5 days in airplanes we finally made it to what will be our home for the near future and we are happy to say it looks absolutely amazing. It’s a farm owned by two kiwi brothers, Dan and Nick. Their main business is to breed and school polo ponies (as well as to play of course) but since they have quite a big chunk of land (in our terms anyways, not sure whether it would be considered big in local terms) they also have bulls and lands grazing all around. 

We are staying in a beautiful farm which overlooks a valley. The view is stunning and the silence…complete. We are surrounded by grassland, trees and animals. And that’s it. Paradise. 

view from the kitchen

our bedroom

the terrace

our little garden

and the house