So, this post and the several after are going to be a bit dated due to... well.. life in a new country and all of the challenges that go with it (to give a time reference, we left Bombay at the end of march.)
We are now settled in our more permanent home and I am completely obsessed. I promise I'll post pictures and fun facts about house hunting here, but that'll be in several weeks, hang tight.
For now, lets talk about Bombay, our second home in beautiful New Zealand. When I originally booked our airbnb's back in Oklahoma, as I've mentioned before, I used the good old google machine to calculate travel distances, commute time, proximity to the motorways and overall idea of the land (rural or city). When I found the place in Bombay, it looked fairly close with about a 30 minute commute and was pretty rural. Turns out, the google machine is a liar...again....or it could be that when I was google mapping things in Oklahoma, it was the middle of the night in New Zealand, thus the quick travel times. Whoops. But, this gives you an idea of the distance to my office and our spot. That tiny caterpillar of orange grows into an anaconda of red really quickly and fairly predictably.
But you see my point, it doesn't look far, right? Well, it's not, but when thousands of people (who have flocked south of the city) try and commute in every morning, it's a straight up log jam. Add your normal everyday Auckland traffic to extremely slow road works and wrecks and you have the makings of either road rage or very long podcasts. (I'll let you figure out which one of us had the rage and which one of us finished 7 audio books in a month...)
Side note: everyone is flocking to the south and outer suburbs of Auckland because the housing is astronomical the closer you get to the city, but that's an entirely different story and requires, yet again, another blog post to explain. But if you're really curious, check this link out: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11622922
Okay, back to Bombay and our new place. It was super appealing on airbnb, complete with an outdoor kiwi hot tub. This picture is straight from their listing and I am pretty sure that girl is photoshopped in, but the bird is very real. He was always around and enjoyed pecking at my toes every now and again.
The place looks a decent size, but it was actually really small. And by small, I mean true hobbit style small. We had one room, no kitchen and an outdoor bathroom (you can see the bathroom door in the picture). Another fun fact, that door looks like it's "frosted" glass - it's not. I learned this when I walked by to hang the laundry and could see Sean's butt, plain as day. Too bad we learned that later in the stay, whoops again. Another valuable piece of knowledge was learning how to cook everything on a very small outdoor grill, including pancakes....gaining so many skills.
Anyway, Bombay was nothing short of beautiful. A rural area with gorgeous rolling green hills and sunsets, it was natures eye candy. Plus, the property we were staying on was immaculate. The grass would rival nearby golf courses. It was complete with hiking trails, a tennis court, stables and even a pet deer.
This was our view. Pretty freaking spectacular.
Another plus: Bombay is in the south, allowed us to get to other areas rather quickly, like the Coromandel and Hamilton. I'll talk more about what we did there in a later post, but it was pretty epic.
Until then, here's a sneak peak:
Cathedral Cove