a new year, and a(nother) new plan!

We planned on spending New Years with some Argentinean friends of ours in a town nearby.  Being older and lazier than in the past, we decided to rent a car to get there rather than try and hitch, the bus is more expensive than a rental believe it or not!  Unfortunately we missed one important detail… our credit card expired at the end of 2012, and being a New Zealand credit card, it was already 2013 as far as it was concerned so we were shot down at the rental counter, where of course they don’t take cash!

Time to rethink our plans…

Another friend of ours had also invited us over for dinner, so we got in touch to see if it wasn’t too late to join them.  We managed to make the cutoff time and after some running around town for supplies, we headed back to the boat, dinner wasn’t until around 9pm, so we had time to get changed, snack a little and come back ashore.  When it was time to head back in, our usually easy to start outboard picked now to be difficult, it had been running a little rough, but still always started… well not this time…

So all dressed up and ready to go, I pulled the cover off and started tapping and turning and generally trying to figure out what was up.   Got it running and we were off!

The New Years tradition here is a little different to back home.  There, we tend to have a bbq in the afternoon/evening, and then continue drinking till the sun comes up, pausing to count backwards from 10 when somebody points out we should, and maybe stop and watch some pretty lights and things going bang in the sky, or fireworks depending on what you’re into…

Here they have a big family dinner starting around 10pm, which carries you through till midnight and then you head out, or stick around, bringing in the New Year with family and close friends.

New Years dinner with Karla and her friends and family

I was a little surprised at first, I wasn’t expecting our friends parents, and grandmother, at dinner, or her best friends parents at that, but it was a great night.  We kept up with the conversation – all in spanish of course – and had fun explaining a little about NZ and Holland and our travels…  yup, looks just like Lord of The Rings!

no little plastic cups of beer here!

bringing in the New Year with a little Mexican banda

We left there a little before 1am and headed into town, which wasn’t as busy as I was expecting, but our local friend who gave us a ride said that the party people don’t come out until later !  Now we are used to going to bed around 9/10pm, not much going on after dark with out TV, so by 2.30 we were done… well the boss was, and I agreed enough rum had been consumed for the night and we headed back to our dinghy and home….

Flat dinghy…. not what I expected to find tied up to the dock, but luckily it was only one side and as its a hard bottomed dink, it still floats ok, well ok enough to get us out to the boat and a pump anyways!

So that was New Years dealt with and it now its time to try and figure out what to do with ourselves this year….

As I mentioned a post or two back, our initial idea of starting a business here and sticking around a few years, kind of got shot down when they changed the immigration rules.  I think with the right approach, it could be made to work here, there is great diving and fishing right out of the harbour, but the foot traffic isn’t that steady and there are so many local boats doing day trips around here, you would have to market and approach it right….

So now we have a new plan!

One that will possibly change the direction of the blog slightly, but one that will definitely change the direction of Sea Raven and her crew!  Our third crew member is officially on the way, and due to arrive in July!

the beginnings of a bump!