Happy Birthday Nickie!

Sunday 1 February

A fabulous dawn chorus at Jackson’s Retreat - we woke to speckles of sunshine and single digit temperatures! Got a wiggle on and we were heading west again by 8ish.

Out to Kumara Junction then south on SH6 first to Hokitika (breakfast, wild pies and biltong) then retracing our route back to Franz Josef via Whataroa where I was finally able to buy some more pounamu earrings from my favourite carver.

Back at Banjo we wished Nickie a very happy birthday with a rude card and a bottle of toilet fluid! Reheated the wild pies and shoved a sparkler in birthday girl’s wallaby pie in lieu of a candle!

Quiet afternoon - having slept some of the way back, I took a walk in town to get my Fitbit steps while the others snoozed. Tootled out to the chopper airfield, via the disc golf, stopped at the church (appropriately for a Sunday) and followed the glow worm walk at the Terraces (no glow worms at this time of day though).

We got scrubbed up, Nickie in her birthday pounamu earrings, piled into the Pajero and wound our way through the hills to Fox Glacier for birthday dinner at Betsey Jane’s (best restaurant on the West Coast in our opinion). We arrived quite early so had cocktails in the garden (uh oh! Martini espressos) then nabbed a table on the deck for dinner and a quick game of "jaunty or wonky" with Louis' hat! I reckon we had 3 jaunties and 1 wonky... can you guess who modelled the latter?!?

Lovely evening with fabulous food - baked brie starters, venison, lamb, fish & chips and a burger, chased down with a delicious raspberry chocolate brownie, one between two! I then drove back slowly and cautiously through the winding hills, upset a couple of crazy locals by not making the speed limit, but at least we arrived safely.

Happy birthday Nickie!