The Fat of the Land

We arrived yesterday morning and spent most of the day driving up to the Bay of Islands.  After an afternoon of lounging around and an early night's sleep, we awoke this morning ready to begin our journey.  One of the prophetic words we received before setting off on this trip was that we were to, "eat of the fat of the land."  Since that time, we have prayed and talked through the possibilities of what that might mean for our time here in NZ.  Today opened our eyes to what this opportunity could really mean. 

For those of you who cannot relate to having food allergies, let me break it down for you like this... Eating at home is hard enough, eating at your house-pretty difficult, but traveling across the world and trying to figure out how you are going to eat 3 square meals a day is next to impossible.. The best I can explain it is that it truly gives me some understanding of what it must have been like to be a hunter and gatherer, going out on safari 3 times a day, hoping you'll be able to kill something before it kills you!  Could that be an exaggeration? Possibly, (some of you accuse me of such) but I only exaggerate to give you a better understanding of what I'm talking about! Any ways, back to the point I was trying to make, which was that eating over here in New Zealand was expected to be a huge challenge.  On top of that, as many of you know, Gina has had an extremely challenging time with her health these past 10 months, much of it centered around food and a whole list of things she has been unable to eat due to how her body would react to it.

So flash forward to this morning, we head downstairs to the hotel restaurant for some breakfast to start our day.  We begin with our normal routine of informing the server that we both have food allergies and blah, blah, blah, and then he proceeds to tell us that the chef is completely fine with handling that, they even have gluten free bread and it will be no problem to accommodate us with anything that we want on the menu.  Incredible!  The best part was that as we began to eat and enjoy, Gina began to try various things that she has been unable to eat for a long time.. Things like fruit, potatoes, various other carbs, all without any reactions, which is completely unheard of in respect to our last 10 months of life. 

Afterwards, we headed up to a little town along the coast called Kerikeri.  We parked the car and began walking down a little strip of shops and stumble upon a Gluten Free Restaurant and Cafe!!  So, needless to say, we have begun to see what it means to "eat of the fat of the land," as numerous opportunities have already popped up for us (especially Gina) to simply sit back and enjoy whatever is on the menu!

Beyond the eating, (yes, we did do more than that today!)  We rolled along the coast and saw some of the most spectacular views ever!  Green rolling hills that go on for days and make you feel like you're in Ireland, until you get to the other side of those hills and realize that there are white sandy beaches, Islands and cliffs which appear to be undiscovered, accept for the occasional simple little house or paved road running through it.  Today was truly a day to just enjoy and we did a whole lot of that.  I also tried fishing in the surf with my fly rod, but only came up with a fish stick, not worthy of a picture!