thorndale trekking

After visiting the Pujjis in the morning, Lex, Sabrina and I were picked up in town for a horse trek in Cable Bay, about half an hour east of Nelson.

I’ve probably only been on a horse 4 or 5 times in my life, Sabrina had never been on one, and Lex hadn’t ridden in ten years, so we picked one of the tour operators that catered to the less-experienced. Thorndale Horse Treks ended up being a great company – they clearly were in it for the fun not the money, as they were not only the cheapest option by far but the 2-hour ride we paid for ended up being an hour longer.

I wasn’t brave enough to take my camera along, so I don’t have pictures of Cable Bay from the top of the hill (/mountain) where we stopped for tea, but it looked a lot like the bays we saw on the sailing trip and that I flew over yesterday…blue, blue water over yellow-white sand.

Happy new year!

flight of the micro-light

I woke up way before everyone else this morning, and had to get into a little bit of trouble when I realized how nice the weather was today. See, Sabrina and I were hoping to do this ‘U-Fly Extreme…Pilot A Stunt Plane’ activity up in Motueka this week, but every time we called to enquire about it they upped the price, so we gave up on it a few days ago. When I was left to my own devices for too long this morning, though, I got into all the other aviation brochures we’d picked up, and decided a micro-light flight over Abel Tasman National Park was too good to pass up on a gorgeous day like today.

Described as ‘a motorbike for the sky,’ a micro-light is pretty much a hang-glider with a small motor. The pilot steers with a set of ‘handlebars’ attached to the wings, which appear to be made of plastic sticks covered in heavy-duty Saran Wrap. My pilot, Trevor, was bored with traditional flight by the time it was my turn to go around 3 pm, so every time he wanted to lose altitude, he just aimed the nose of the ‘plane’ into the ground for a few seconds while we plummeted. This, he assured me cheerfully, was not the way it was usually done, but was more fun. It was fun, once I remembered to breathe.

The view from above was absolutely amazing, and it was awesome being up in the sky in a completely open-cockpit craft. We flew along the coast, visiting all the places we went on the catamaran yesterday, and then toward the end of the 40-minute flight we flew over the orchard where I worked for most of December.

sail away

Amy organized a full-day catamaran sailing trip in Abel Tasman for 19 of us a few weeks back, and today was the day for it. We had absolutely amazing weather – clear, not too hot, and just enough wind to keep the boat going without the sea being too choppy.

One of the other girls on the trip organized a pirate theme for the day, which seemed to terrify our skipper a bit, but he did let us on, eye patches and foil-covered cardboard swords and all.

We visited Split Apple Rock (a famous huge boulder that looks like it was sliced in half), spent some time on an island (where, unfortunately, the carcass of a little blue penguin was bobbing up and down in the surf), explored tidal caves, played Frisbee in the water, and just soaked up the sun from the trampoline deck of the catamaran. The water was unbelievable, as clear and blue as the glacial Blue Pools we saw along the West Coast.

(better picture coming soon, we’re collecting ones from the group)

these little fishies went to market

Today was the annual Richmond Market with about 150 vendors filling the main street of Richmond, which is basically a suburb of Nelson. I spent the better part of the day trying to work up the courage to try a whitebait fritter, a Kiwi specialty (I’m not sure if I can say ‘delicacy’) made from tiny little fish stuck together with egg, and fried up and usually served open-faced on white bread.

Despite my eyeball hang-up (with lots of whole little fish in it, eating a whitebait fritter means you’re chomping down on lots of teeny eyeballs), I managed to cross this one off my list of things to do here, and I didn’t even gag until the second to last bite! It actually tasted pretty good when I kept my mind off what it was, and the extra dose of rock salt I asked the vendor to add to it camouflaged most of the eyeball-crunching.

nelson lakes

I drove up to Nelson Lakes National Park with Lex, Charlie and Amy today in search of an adventure, or just a nice place to sit and read for a while. We did two short tramps on the shores of Lake Rotoiti before deciding to call it a day – the weather wasn’t as nice as it was back in Nelson proper, about 90 km away.

Apparently this would have been the place to go for a white Christmas as the mountains surrounding the lakes got a little bit of snowfall that morning.

a berry good boxing day

As usual, things got a little hectic before Christmas, and one of the things that fell off our list was berry picking, so we set off to do that today. We’d seen signs for pick-your-own places between Nelson and Motueka, and the one that was open on Boxing Day was Not The Biggest, But The Best. Haven’t tried any others here, but it might live up to its name – the berries were delicious. I picked a quart of boysenberries (falling off the vines, sweet and nearly 1.5” long) and raspberries (much harder to find the nice ripe ones of these, but I turned over leaves and got a few choice ones), all for NZ$2.

Oh, and then there were the couple of kilos of berries that Sabrina, Lex and I ate while we were picking…

merry christmas!

I'm losing a fight with the computer at this internet cafe, it's not letting me upload any of the 40 or so blogposts I have on my iPod (which is currently serving as my USB drive).

Sooo...here are some pictures. You've seen a lot of them already, but there are a few that didn't make it into the blog. I've only gotten August and September up, but as soon as I get a laptop internet connection I'll post the other months, they're all organized and ready to go in my offline Picasa albums.

http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/lotuselise99 Enjoy!

Have a very Merry Christmas! I'll be celebrating in sunny, warm Nelson with Sabrina and 10 or so others...my first Christmas away from home.

It's been quiet around here lately...

... so we bring you a random photo from the family album. I have no idea what's going on in this picture.

- Charles

pupu springs

We ran into our co-workers Bobby, Edith and Elsie at the Pupu Springs parking lot, then bumped into our former co-workers, Americans Kim and Hope, in the grocery store on the way back…guess there aren’t a lot of people, or things to do, in this area.

Pupu Springs, about 60 km from the orchard, is a freshwater spring that kicks out 40 bathtub-fulls or water per second according to the signs. It is also, they claim, the clearest freshwater spring in the world, with 140m of horizontal visibility. At least until didymo, an invasive algae from Florida, takes over the remainder of the streams in the park – it’s gotten to about half of them despite the intensive ‘clean-check-dry’ campaign.

We could see some huge trout in the water – pretty cool. Which reminds me, one more thing to add to the NZ activity to-do list…

tame eels

Sabrina and I set off in search of adventure, heading first a little south of Motueka, to see tame eels at the Jester Café. A couple places in the area advertise tame eels, and I was curious to see what exactly they meant. I think I could have done without knowing.

The eel experience here was almost as traumatic as the one I had about 15 years ago during a visit to Roberecht’s Seafood near Cabin Point...that time, I found myself peering down into tanks of murky water jam-packed full of size-sorted wriggling eels waiting to be ‘airmailed’ live to Belgium. The fact that I still remember it clearly now probably should have kept me away from this one, but no.

This time, we went down into a sunken garden, and in a dammed section of the creek we saw about 20 two-and-a-half to three foot long eels, all at least as big around as my forearm. And, as we discovered when we ventured within a few feet of them, these guys were not happy just staying in the water. The cafe sells skewers of eel food, and they thought we had some so when we came close they flung themselves out of the water and halfway onto the rocks, mouths gaping open.

I don’t have a picture of that, because we ran.

golden bay

Next on the list is Pupu Springs, ‘up over the hill’ past Takaka in the Golden Bay area. It’s a steep, winding drive over the mountains, but the views are great. Unfortunately, there’s no room to pull over to capture most of the vistas, but there are a couple of look-out points, including this one, near a cave system, which give a view out all the way to the ocean.

migrants

We’re on day two of hourly pay, even though we were only supposed to do a day of it. We’re fine with that, since by our calculations we’d be making less than minimum wage ($11.30 at the moment) if we were doing contract. We’re not very quick.

There were about 8 new thinners starting today, and it turns out I lived and worked with three of them at the hostel/vineyard in Blenheim – Bobby, from the former East Germany, and twins Edith and Elsie from Taiwan. I feel like a true migrant worker now…great.

We started talking to/complaining with a French couple in the row next to us, and they told us how they like to cook clams, mussels and oysters they collect from the beaches. We didn’t realize you could do that, so they offered to show us how and where and cook dinner with us.

After work, we waited around for low tide, which Anais and Kevin thought was around 8 pm. Apparently it was around 5, which was when we started waiting, but Kevin didn’t want to disappoint and insisted on diving for the clams despite the cold water. He didn’t find very many, and most were tiny, but they say it’s a lot easier at low tide and you get more.

We had a delicious clam and potato red curry dish that Kevin painstakingly prepared in our ill-equipped kitchen. We’re very excited about our new free meat source…I have a feeling we’ll be sick of clams by the time we leave here.

those fools

Sabrina and I left Nelson around 7 am to go to Motueka, 57km north, to find apple thinning work. The orchards and packhouses advertise employment on the roadside the same way motels & b&bs do, with a removable cover for the ‘NO’ in front of ‘vacancies.’ The first company we found advertising employment was Birdhurst Ltd, and we stopped in to apply. The HR manager took one look at us, and said insinuatingly, “You do know it’s hard work, right? We don’t get many Americans.” We decided to ignore him, and filled out the forms for contract (per-tree rates) apple thinning work and were on our way to the orchard following his rather vague directions as we heard a couple people sitting outside the warehouse laugh and say, “Those fools just got contract work!”

Great.

Anyway, we drove through town to stop at Warehouse and pick up some sunhats and granola bars for lunch, and then tried to find the orchard. We drove far past it the first time, and didn’t end up getting there until 10 am, so the guy who was supposed to be waiting for us had already left and we had to wait a while until he came back.

Steve, one of our new bosses, found us eventually and we followed him out into the fields where we were issues special apple-thinning ladders and given instructions. We’re to remove all apples smaller than 26mm and thin any remaining clumps of larger apples down to three or four apples depending on size. We’re also told to be very careful to throw the apples into the center of the rows so that they don’t bruise the others on the way down – if we’re caught just dropping them, we get docked $1-2 depending on the price of the tree. We’re starting out on an hourly rate, but once we’re on contract we’ll be making anywhere from $2.50 to $5.50 per tree. Sabrina and I will be working together so it’s less boring, but that means we have to remember to divide the proceeds-per-tree by two when we’re counting how many we’ve done.

We wanted to get started right away on work, so we didn’t check into a hostel beforehand. I asked our bosses if they had any ideas on accommodation, and they mentioned that we might be able to get a ‘bach’ (generally a vacation home, but I guess maybe it means anything you wouldn’t want to live in 365 days a year…) on the orchard. The only one they could come up with was horribly dirty, but it’s very cheap ($35 each per week) and since we’re here to make money before Christmas it’ll do. We spent a good four hours scrubbing the walls, floors and stove before we felt like it was clean enough to sleep & cook in, and we have a lot more to do tomorrow.

i'm baack...

Just got back from a two-week North & South Island roadtrip with Sabrina, Natalie and Christina, blog posts coming soon! I'm less than one month behind now...

farewell friends

Sabrina and I dropped Natalie and Christina off at the Christchurch airport for their noon flight – sad! We had a great time with them, and hopefully we didn’t wear them out too much…it was definitely a jam-packed two weeks. We took Sunny back to Nelson, stopping for a little while in Kaikoura to see the seals. The tentative plan is to leave Nelson on the weekend and head ~40km north to find orchard jobs until Christmas, when we’ll be back in Nelson. Neither Sabrina nor I is really convinced we’ll be able to last doing apple thinning, so we’ve also been picking up the job sections of the local papers to see what Plan B could be.

christchurch

We arrived in Christchurch last night, and discovered that the one time we consciously decided not to book a hostel ahead of time was the only time we’ve ever run into one full hostel, let alone a city full of them. So, we finally ended up in a kind of run-down motel/hostel, centrally located but without much else going for it. Obvious solution: spend as much time in the city as possible to avoid hostel. We spent today souvenir shopping at the Arts Centre and a couple other shops near the central Cathedral Square, then went out to a ‘farewell dinner’ at an English pub (after striking out at several other restaurants which looked better on paper than in person…).

gutbuster

On our way out of Dunedin, we stopped by Baldwin Street, the steepest street in the world with an average gradient of 1:3.41, and the steepest section at 1:2.86…for all you engineers out there. After a few minutes of deliberation, we took poor Sunny up the hill – there wasn’t even any debate about us walking up! She just barely made it…it was one of the free adrenaline rushes to be found every now and then just a tiny bit off the beaten path in NZ. Going down was just as interesting as up, and turning around at the top probably takes top prize. Somehow Christina’s managed to pull the short straw on driving – the one-way rail/car bridge, the one-way one-kilometer unlighted rock tunnel in Milford Sound, Baldwin Street…

There’s a ‘gutbuster’ foot race up and down Baldwin Street every year. It’s not on my fairly lengthy NZ to-do list.

speight's

We booked a Cadbury’s/Speight’s tour combo package, so our next mission after chocolate was beer. Speight’s is the unofficial beer of the South Island, and the main factory’s been in Dunedin for ages, as they’d say around here. We miscalculated the time/distance factor w/Cadbury’s, and arrived halfway through the tour, but still got to see the only commercial kauri wood gyles in use today – beat that! Oh, okay, so maybe the sampling at the end was the highlight, especially since we got to pour out own.

cadbury world

We arrived in Dunedin last night and rested up for today’s activities. First up: a tour of Cadbury World, guided by purple overall-clad workers, very Wonka-like. I’m fascinated by any kind of assembly-line factory viewing, so I would have been satisfied with just that, but we also got lots of samples along the way. We also saw a 2-story chocolate waterfall – impressive, but kind of messy.

jetting around qtown

We stopped in at Queenstown on our way from Milford Sound, and Christina and I went on a jetboat ride on the Shotover River. I’d wanted to go on a jetboat for a while, and it came pretty close to living up to my high expectations. We bounced around on the surprisingly rough lake for a little while, then headed out to the river and maneuvered around sharp curves and through ankle-deep water for 50km round-trip.

After the boat, I met up with Trish (from the Lemon Tree in Blenheim) while Sabrina, Natalie and Christina tried to go on the gondola/luge, but it was out of order for the day.

milford deep

Included in our cruise was a visit to ‘Milford Deep,’ an underwater observatory. We descended 10 meters of stairs, starting from a floating platform, and ended up in a room with 360-degree views of the sound, including gardens of endangered black coral – that’s what’s in the picture, even though it looks whitish. The gardens are on pulleys, so if the salinity gets too low from rain around the 10m mark, they drop the gardens down.

moody, magical milford

When we arrived at the wharf to catch our cruise, it was rainy and gray. We were lucky, though – shortly after boarding, the first patch of blue sky started to peek out, and by the middle of the cruise it was mostly nice weather all around. We cruised around the sound, and out by the opening into the Tasman Sea.

sea lions! dolphins!

The Milford Sound cruise lived up to its expectations – in addition to the penguins, we saw a sea lion colony and a bunch of dolphins. Unfortunately we were all so excited about the dolphins that none of the pictures actually came out, but we did see some.

penguins!

I got to add to my penguin checklist today – species #7, I believe, after the Antarctica/S. Georgia trip earlier this year. This one’s the Fjordland Crested Penguin – the rarest penguin species in the world, with only about 2000 left. We saw two of them in different locations, and this one put on a show for us, hopping in and out of the water and diving close to shore.

go chasing waterfalls

I think I’ve seen more waterfalls in the past two days than I have in the rest of my life put together - really. On our way into Milford yesterday, there were waterfalls every few hundred yards for about 15-20 kilometers. Today, we went on a Red Boat cruise on the sound (with, incidentally, an excellent barbeque lunch!), and saw even more…very, very close up. Close enough to get quite wet, but at least they warned us ahead of time.

wanaka

We’re covering some serious ground today – we made a mid-afternoon stop in Wanaka, where we booked Milford Sound cruises for tomorrow and called to warn our hostel we’d be arriving late – they weren’t thrilled, but we can’t exactly stay anywhere else since Milford’s far, far removed from all civilization.
So, we’re off to Milford now, passing by Queenstown and Te Anau en route.

one-lane rr bridge

There’s a ridiculous number of one-way bridges here, which are scary enough on their own. But here’s a new twist – a one-lane car AND train bridge. Oh, and just to make it more exciting, it should be pretty long. Long enough so you can’t see to the end to see if another car – or, God forbid, a train – is coming in the other direction. And just for bonus points, let’s not have any signals/gates either!

Welcome to Kiwi-style driving, Christina…

bluebridge

Next stop: the Blue Pools. This is the only place I actually stopped last time; I saw the signs for the two waterfalls we just visited, but was on a mission to find a campsite before nightfall (status: failed). Anyway, after some serious convincing that it would be worth the 25 minute return walk, we headed out to see the Blue Pools. We conquered the swingbridge, but unfortunately the rain made the pools kind of murky, spoiling the effect somewhat. Still, the colors were nice.

fantail falls

This is Fantail Falls – I actually know the name for sure this time. As you can see, it is now raining even harder. We were already soaked from the first stop, so the subsequent ones aren’t causing too many complaints…and these falls are only about 2 minutes from the parking lot, so that’s nice.

Anyway, Objects In Picture Are Larger Than They Appear – as mentioned, it was raining, so we weren’t really up for the trek across the flats to get closer to the falls.

thunder creek falls

The girls are being good sports – I’m driving this stretch, and I warned them in advance we’d be stopping at all my favorite photo op spots along route 6…this one is, I think, Thunder Falls. There are a ton of roadside pull-offs with great views just a few minutes down a trail, and this was the first one we encountered. It’s raining pretty hard today, which is not great for the walk, but it does makes it look like we’re trekking through real live rainforests.

fox glacier

No, that’s not the glacier – just an ‘iceberg’ melting near the parking lot. We just stopped by here on our way out of the glacier region, and I was once again amazed by the brilliant blues and greens of the…puddles in the parking lot. Seriously. Okay, so they’re a little big to be considered puddles, but they were definitely in the parking lot. For a picture, see my Picasa albums (lotuselise99).

franz joseph

Sunny coasted into Franz Glacier Township on empty, and we filled up just in time at the exorbitant price of NZ$1.92 per liter. We had enough time to do the Peter’s Pool walk to see the glacier before it got dark. Everyone’s kind of on strike about walking after Tongariro (Sabrina’s vicariously sore), so I ‘might’ have underestimated the distance when I told them about the walk, but it only took about 10 minutes and I think everyone agreed the view was worth it.

We’re staying in a nice self-contained unit at a hostel here called Glowworm Cottage. We’re too tired to go check and see if we can find any of the little namesake critters, though.

nelson market

We rolled into Nelson around 10 this morning, and I took Christina and Natalie to the Bead Gallery (10,000+ kinds of beads!) to get bone pendants, paua, jade, greenstone and other NZ souvenirs. I dropped them off at the city market after the bead gallery, and Sabrina and I worked on getting rid of some stuff from our backpacks – we left some stuff at her friends’ place, the same ones who are car-sitting for me.

Sabrina & I picked up Natalie and Christina on our way out of Nelson. Our plan is to drive down the West Coast to Franz Joseph Glacier tonight.

sunny

Our rental car is a Nissan Sunny, and since we need to talk to her to encourage her when she’s trying to go up hills or passing other cars (she apparently doesn’t have a very big engine, and is very loaded down with all our stuff), we’ve taken to calling her by her name.

Check out Sunny’s packing job – it’s one of Sabrina’s hidden talents. In the back seat, we have two more daypacks, plus all our travel books & brochures and maybe even a bag of food.

We got super insurance on the car – anyone can drive it, and there’s no deductible for any damage – so we’re all set for a very big adventure!

wining in marlborough

We picked up our rental car in Picton this morning, then lost about an hour trying to get the back window fixed at the rental agency’s garage (no luck). Today’s plan: wine & food. I volunteered to be DD for the day since I lived in the area for about a month when I was doing vineyard work. It turns out Sabrina knows “Winery Row” better than I do, but I did score points as a tour guide with the boutique chocolate factory (w/samples, of course) and Prenzel, a distillery with unlimited tastings of liqueur, dessert sauces and various flavored oils and dressings.

We hit about seven or eight of the ~25 wineries along Rapaura Road, then I drove my sleeping passengers out to the vineyard where I worked in Seddon. Natalie woke up to see it, and feigned interest – I’ll admit it, it looks just like all the others. It’s crazy to see the difference from August; the fields are a fluffy spring-green blanket of new leaves now.

After a pub meal, we relaxed at Watson’s Way, a great little hostel in Renwick, and shared a bottle of Summer Riesling from the Wairau River winery – my reward for driving!

movin' on

I’ve had a lot of fun on the North Island, but I’m really excited about showing off ‘my’ South Island to the girls. We went back and forth about ferry vs. plane (they’re about the same price) and settled on the ferry at the last minute. We were pretty lucky with the weather, and the crossing wasn’t too rough, but it was a little too cold and windy to really enjoy the view from anywhere but an inside lounge.

We’re planning to spend our first day in the Blenheim area, then head around the island counter-clockwise, heading as far south as Milford South and then up to Christchurch. We’re picking up a rental car in Picton, so we’ll be on our own schedule and plans are pretty loose – it’ll be fun to see what we end up doing!

Happy Thanksgiving to all those back at home! Enjoy your meal – we tried to get a turkey to make our own US-style feast, and the cheapest one (smaller than your average chicken) was $55!

te papa

We spent this morning at Te Papa, the national museum in Wellington. I’m not really big on museums, but it was still pretty interesting and I could even have spent some more time there. It’s well done, with interactive exhibits on a wide range of topics – natural history, Maori culture, arts and industry.

welly

Our bus pulled into Wellington in the late afternoon, and we checked into the Base Wellington hostel (associated with ACB in Auckland). Sabrina knew one of the people working at the front desk, so we got upgraded to a ‘girls-only’ floor with an Aveda gift pack, hotel linens and free champagne…not the hostel experience we’ve been used to for the past week or so!

After checking in, we followed our tour guide (Sabrina, who spent August & September in the city) to Mac’s Brewery and took the cable car up to the botanical gardens. We had dinner at legendary Burger Fuel (I liked the fries, but the burgers weren’t as amazing as I’d heard) and headed out on the town later on with some of Sabrina’s friends and people from our bus.

gumboot throwing

We had a long drive from National Park to Wellington today, with a ‘cultural stop’ along the way. Every other town in New Zealand tries to lay claim to being the World Capital of _________, and today we stopped at the World Capital of Gumboot Throwing. I don’t even remember the name of the town, so it’s not really great branding. Anyway, we each had to try our hand at gumboot throwing before our driver would continue on.

tongariro tramping

Natalie, Christina and I decided to do the 18-km Tongariro Crossing hike despite (or, in my case, because of) the warnings of the guide that it would be a grueling one. When Sabrina, Lucy and I were on our road trip down to Wellington, we drove up the mountain roads near the park, but it was in the dark so we had to make do with a photo in front of a poster of the park at our hostel. This time, we went for the real thing.

The first half of the walk – the uphill part – wasn’t too bad. At the top, we had a great view of the Emerald Pools (photo – note all the teeny tiny people by the pools, and you might get an idea of how steep parts of the trail were!), which we enjoyed for a few minutes until we discovered there was no good way to get down. We had to half run and half slide down the steepest part of the mountain. After that, we trekked through some snow while sweating in shorts and t-shirts, then pulled out our extra layers when we got soaked with cold rain a few kilometers later.

Then…about 5K of gradual downhill track, just steep enough to really screw with our knees. We realized halfway through this section that we’d misestimated the distance left, and had to really book it in order to get back before the bus left us there. We arrived just as it was pulling away – good thing, since the only place we had cell reception was up at the peak and no one wanted to run back up there!

Sabrina did a short sightseeing flight over the crossing, and looked for us while her pilot told her how crazy we were to walk instead of fly.

We’re staying at an awesome brand-new hostel which was built as ski staff lodging. The main building has, appropriately enough, a cozy alpine ski lodge feel to it, and a big flat-screen TV which is currently being used to show off all the Stray skydiving DVDs.

skydive taupo

Sabrina and Natalie are still buzzing from their skydives six and a half hours ago – Natalie was the first to go at 12,000 feet and Sabrina jumped out at 15,000. They both sprung for the DVDs, so we got to live vicariously through them without spending all that money! I’d love to go skydiving sometime, but in the middle of a three-month unemployment stretch is probably not the time to do it.

Christina and I stayed behind in Taupo and went for a walk, got food for dinner, and just relaxed at the hostel.

Small world: on the Stray bus to Taupo, I was talking to a girl from Nottingham whose boyfriend was a lawyer at Capital One’s UK office up until a few months ago.

mud monster

The first half of today was spent in Rotorua, where Sabrina and I wandered around town and went shopping while Natalie and Christina went Zorbing and to the Polynesian Spa just as Sabrina, Lucy and I did on our visit in late July.

I stopped by the town’s central park, which I’d missed last time since we got here in the late afternoon. It’s a great free activity, with thermal soaking pools, bridges over steamy lakes, and bubbling mud pits. The boiling mud was hypnotizing to watch.

hangi & hongi

After Waitomo, we headed to the much-hyped Stray Maori Cultural Experience in Maketu, hosted by a Maori man known as Uncle Boy. We’d heard great things about it from our driver, so everyone on the bus opted for the overnight activity which would include a hangi (traditional earth-oven feast), haka (war dance/chant ) lesson for the guys and poi lessons for the girls (the white ball-on-string things in the picture are poi), and an overnight stay in a ‘marae,’ or Maori meeting place.

Things began alright, with Uncle Boy demonstrating the hongi (‘sharing breath’ nose-touch greeting) and welcoming us to his place. Then it all went downhill. He told us how we weren’t really at a marae, we were just at his money-making tourist accommodation! Uncle Boy shared all sorts of gems throughout the night – how he tries to talk anyone considering any sort of multi-cultural marriage out of it, why he thinks Maoris should stop wasting their time learning their ‘dead’ language and go for Mandarin or Cantonese instead, how he threw out all of his wife’s belongings when she went to Australia on vacation and doesn’t understand why she’s angry, how he evades taxes, and that he makes all the dancers volunteer their time each and every day without providing them any part of the NZ$65 each of us paid.

The scary part was that it seemed like everyone except the four of us thought the whole experience was great and loved Uncle Boy. I’d love to chalk the group’s obliviousness up to translation problems, but since half our group is from the US or UK, I don’t think I can.

spel(l)unking

We arrived in Waitomo, in King Country, around midday. Natalie, Christina and I opted for the ‘Spellbound’ walking & boat tour while Sabrina went off to wait in vain for the quadbike adventure people to show up.

The first cave we went in was a glowworm cave. We turned off our headlamps, and constellations of blue glowworms appeared on the ceiling of the cave, then we went on a silent, dark ‘boat ride’ on the underground river. I’m not sure what I was envisioning, but it wasn’t an inflatable boat propelled by our guide moving her hand along a rope strung across the ceiling of the cave. It was cool, though, and an unseen roaring waterfall somewhere ahead of the boat’s path added some suspense.

The second cave we went into had a bunch of bones in it from animals that had fallen through the tomos, or holes, from the land above. Some were domestic animals, but we also saw the remains of a moa, a bird about twice the size of an ostrich, extinct about 2,000 years ago.

Unfortunately, we got back too late from our adventure to see the angora rabbit shearing show down the road, but we got to see some videos of it later on from members of the bus group who made it there.

flying fox

We’re staying at the Raglan Surf School Hostel, and since none of the four of us are doing a surfing lesson or wanted to do the walk (we’re tired from yesterday’s hike), we decided to play on the hostel’s flying fox and ropes course. This flying fox (zipwire) is a little more impressive than the one Sabrina, Lucy and I found near Taupo. We’re practicing it now so we can try it out later on tonight – it’s apparently fun in the dark, too, especially since there are glowworms here.

After several rides each on the flying fox, we headed up the hill to the low-ropes course. We beat all of the segments except the telephone-pole-suspended-by-wire one…grr.

hangin' loose in raglan

Today’s main destination was Raglan surf beach, apparently home of the or a world-famous left-hand surf break. A surfing lesson is on my NZ to-do list, but it’s still cold out, so I will not be finding out what that means today.

in hot water

Stray is definitely living up to its claim to be a company for active travelers…kind of not really the best thing at the moment, since none of us got much sleep last night, but I guess we’ll appreciate it later. After Cathedral Cove, we headed to Hotwater Beach, which is apparently one of several beaches with the same name and, presumably, similar thermal properties.

We all pitched in (some more than others, I was one of the lazier ones) to dig a big hole in the sand, which filled up with water so hot we had to add buckets upon buckets of cold seawater to make it bearable, and even then only parts of the pool were ‘habitable.’ Sabrina tried to verify the bus driver’s claim that you could cook shellfish in the hot water vents, but no luck there.

Back at the hostel, our bus driver cooked us all a delicious barbeque. Not surprisingly, the four of us crashed earlier than most of our busmates.

cathedral cove

We stopped at a fresh fruit & vege stand along the way, one of the benefits of being on the North Island – there’s a bigger variety of stuff grown here, and it’s ready earlier in the season.

In the afternoon, we reached our hostel in Hahei, threw our stuff in a room, and Natalie and Christina and I set off for Cathedral Cove.

The cove is named after a huge natural limestone arch, but the weather wasn’t great when we were on the beach, so this picture from the (rather strenuous) walk down turned out better than the ones down below even though it doesn’t show the arch.

strays

Sabrina managed to win all four of us free North Island bus passes with Stray, through a weekly trivia contest in Wellington. She’s won it six times in total, and I’m pretty sure the company will be looking for a new location soon so she can’t continue her streak!

Stray’s one of a few ‘hop on, hop off’ backpacker bus companies, where you can stay on the same bus for your whole trip if you want to do it in the minimum number of days, or just catch the next one if you want to stay longer anywhere. We’re relatively short on time - Natalie and Christina have exactly two weeks for both islands – so we’re staying on, and doing the North Island in seven days. We’ll be going to some places Sabrina and I have already been, and some new ones. Today’s first stop was Mt. Eden, an extinct volcano that affords 360-degree views of Auckland. The weather’s not great today, though, so the collapsed volcanic cone itself was more impressive than the urban panorama.

visitors

Natalie and Christina were confused when they saw us at the airport at 5 am this morning – we’d given them very careful instructions about where, when and how to meet us in downtown Auckland. They got through customs so fast we almost missed them – guess we’re used to things taking a bit longer in the States.

We took the SuperShuttle into downtown Auckland, sharing it with several very chatty examples of the type of American tourist that makes us tempted to claim Canadian heritage more often than we already do.

The shuttle dropped us off at ACB hostel, which, if you’re a faithful Counting Sheep reader, you’ll remember as my first ‘employer’ in New Zealand – where we started our housekeeping jobs on my 26th birthday.

We camped out in the TV room to repack our bags (Natalie was playing Santa Claus, bringing us stuff from our parents and things we’d ordered online) and catch up some more sleep, then we had breakfast and headed outside to meet our bus.

cheapskates

On our flight up to Auckland, Sabrina and I were debating the merits of various area hostels when one of us jokingly proposed just staying in the airport to save money. And that is why we are sitting in the nearly-empty Auckland International Airport at 1 am. Our flight from Nelson arrived at 4 pm, and we wouldn’t have made it into the city before the IEP office and most stores closed, so given our general aversion to Auckland and aside from the bed/shower thing, there wasn’t much of a reason to go into the city.

We killed the first hour visiting every rental car agency at the airport, searching for deals for the South Island. The next hour was spent at the iSite calling all the little rental agencies. We people-watched for a few more hours, then I made a McDonald’s cheeseburger & seaweed wrap (better than it sounds, actually) since it was the only place still open. TV watching and DVDs on my computer came next, and I think it’s finally just time to try to get some sleep, so we’ve staked out a place in the lounge behind the sushi restaurant. There are a couple of other backpackers sleeping there, and nobody’s even pretending they just happened to drift off – we’re talking sleeping bags and all, here.

flatting

I went over to see Sabrina’s friends’ new flat today. It turns out it’s right behind a set of flats that Arvind owns – if only I’d known that, I wouldn’t have gotten so lost trying to find it!
Their flat is great – two stories, and backing up to council property so it’s all open space behind it. They even have a little waterfall and pond on their back deck. Only problem is, it’s unfurnished, right down to the lack of a refrigerator (at least the light bulbs are still there).

halloween part 2

As I was leaving the hostel, I realized I’d lost my car keys. I wasn’t sure if I’d taken them with me when I went into town, and thought it was easily possible that they’d fallen out of the fairly shallow pockets of the hoodie I’d been wearing. We searched the room and didn’t find them, so I called Jane and told her what was up. Fortunately the first thing I did when I got my car was make a copy of the only key, so the original was at Pujjis. I was more upset about the thought of losing my keychain and the luggage/computer keys on there, but nothing was irreplaceable, I just felt bad about making Jane bring the key by. She was coming into town in the early afternoon, so I decided to wait until then to get it from her.

Sabrina, Anne and I went for a walk in town and stopped by the two bars we’d been to last night to see if they had the keys, but they weren’t open.

Jane came by, dropped off my key, and I headed straight for the locksmith to get another copy made. Of course, right after I got back to the Pujjis Sabrina found the keys underneath the bunk bed…but it can’t hurt to have a couple of spares.

halloween

Jane’s book copies – 94 cartons of them! – arrived from Auckland this afternoon. I helped move them into the house, but missed out on the book party because I had plans with Sabrina and her friends.

It was great to see Sabrina again, and we decided to recycle our construction worker costume idea from 3 years ago, except this time it only took us 2 hours to make them instead of three weeks. We missed Heather, our traditional third partner in crime – the three of us have had the same costumes for the past three years, including the year we celebrated Halloween twice with two sets of costumes.

Sabrina is staying at the Paradiso hostel in Nelson with her friends Lex (England) and Ann (Ireland) from the hostel in Wellington. They’re planning to get a flat in Nelson for 6 months or so. The hostel is great – it has a pool and spa, and little ‘cabanas’ for rooms. The hostel had a costume party until around 10 pm, and then ordered taxis so they could ship all of us off to town and prevent neighborhood noise complaints.

I haven’t been out in Nelson before, and I don’t think I’ve been missing much – it wouldn’t have been much fun to go out with just one or two people, but we had a good time since everybody from the hostel was there.

homecoming

I’m back at the Pujjis after a long day of traveling. I had a blast on the road trip, but it feels good to be ‘home.’ I’m excited about seeing Sabrina, too – it’s been so long since I’ve seen her that it’ll be like having another visitor from the States! Tomorrow’s mission: get through the giant pile of laundry I generated in the past 10 days.

fox glacier

The next stop was Fox glacier, maybe an hour or so away from Franz Joseph. After hiking the main trail to the glacier look-out (10 minutes return), I decided to follow the signs to Peter’s Pool, another 10 minute hike. I’m glad I did – the main look-out was impressive, but the placid pool made a great reflecting surface for the glacier and surrounding mountains.

After the glacier, I stopped in Hokitika for an early dinner, but was turned off by the busloads of tourists shopping for jade and bone carvings. Next stop: Greymouth, where I enjoyed a huge roast pork, pumpkin and kumara sandwich on the water before hitting the road again.

franz joseph

All the cafes in the glacier regions seemed too touristy, so I settled on trail mix for lunch and decided to do a few shorts hikes to the glaciers. Franz Joseph was the first stop, and I was rewarded with this view after just a 3-minute walk from the parking lot just off the highway. I was as impressed by the clear blue mineral water pools and waterfalls next to the parking lot as by the glacier itself, but I know that you need to do the longer guides hikes to really appreciate the beauty of the glaciers – it’s on my list!