{"id":4532,"date":"2010-12-25T10:08:00","date_gmt":"2010-12-25T10:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.followthatfireengine.com\/news\/?p=4532"},"modified":"2017-07-22T14:33:30","modified_gmt":"2017-07-22T13:33:30","slug":"day-161-a-very-merry-christmas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.followthatfireengine.com\/news\/expedition-updates\/day-161-a-very-merry-christmas\/","title":{"rendered":"Day 161 : A very Merry Christmas"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Merry Christmas to everyone, I hope Santa has been good to you this year!<\/p>\n<p>Being on the other side of the world at Christmas time feels funny.\u00a0 They don\u2019t really do it like we do.\u00a0 If you didn\u2019t know it was \u2018the season to be jolly\u2019 it might feel like any other summers day.\u00a0 All week we\u2019d been trying to make ourselves feel Christmassy; tinsel in the cab, Christmas songs on the radio and even a little Christmas tree from the 2 dollar shop.\u00a0 Nothing seemed to be doing the trick.\u00a0 We still missed our family and friends, the cold, crazy Christmas shoppers and even brussel sprouts.<\/p>\n<p>On Christmas day we decided to trade in the traditional turkey and trimmings to do Christmas how the kiwis do it.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>We were up and on the beach by 9 to get a water taxi from Kaiteriteri to Abel Tasman National Park.\u00a0 It seemed everyone else had the same idea, the ferry was busy busy.\u00a0 We would like to think we brought a little Christmas cheer dressed in red and wearing Christmas hats.\u00a0 After a couple of hours sailing we arrived at our destination, a secluded beach.\u00a0 A cheeky snooze on the sofa was replaced by a snooze on the sand.\u00a0 Instead of charades we played cricket on the beach.\u00a0 A walk to the local pub was exchanged for a tramp through the forest which hugged the coastline.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t such a hard life after all\u2026<\/p>\n<p>Once we were back home in the lovely house James and Cat had kindly lent us the Christmas day jobs were dished out, this is a well oiled expedition after all.\u00a0 Girls were Directors of Dining whilst Steve, Chris, Jamie and Dan headed up entertainment, meat, BBQing, table setting, refreshments and decoration.\u00a0 Big gigs.<\/p>\n<p>Just before dinner we had a surprise visit from an FTFE follower, Viv.\u00a0 She\u2019d heard we were in Abel Tasman and tracked down the fire engine to say Merry Christmas!\u00a0 Brilliant.<\/p>\n<p>The rest of the day was pretty similar to Christmas back home, eating and being merry, but in the sunshine.\u00a0 That I could get used to.<\/p>\n<p>Amy<\/p>\n<p>[flickr album=72157625572253743 num=30 size=Square]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Merry Christmas to everyone, I hope Santa has been good to you this year! Being on the other side of the world at Christmas time feels funny.\u00a0 They don\u2019t really do it like we do.\u00a0 If you didn\u2019t know it was \u2018the season to be jolly\u2019 it might feel like any other summers day.\u00a0 All [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-expedition-updates","category-stage-5-new-zealand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.followthatfireengine.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.followthatfireengine.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.followthatfireengine.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.followthatfireengine.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.followthatfireengine.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4532"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.followthatfireengine.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4532\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5941,"href":"https:\/\/www.followthatfireengine.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4532\/revisions\/5941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.followthatfireengine.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.followthatfireengine.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.followthatfireengine.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}