A backlog of posts...

Hello all! Halloween night here and I'm very surprised I'm writing this right now. We were settled in at Omana Clifftop and had a huge campground all to ourselves the past day and night and then our host from Whitford very randomly showed up and called us out of our tent (we were cozy in preparation for being cold and rained in). So, we begin work at 8 AM tomorrow. Not quite sure what we'll be doing yet. We've been settling in all evening and our fellow WWOOFers (six I believe?) are out at a basketball game.

I've been writing on paper all of my thoughts to share here over the past four days. I reckon I'll sum that up here in some sort of order.


10/27
We left the busy city of Auckland for Ambury Park which is a bit South of where we were staying. The bus system in Auckland is very well-organized and we only hoofed it for about a mile or so before we arrived at the actual campground. Ambury is a fully functioning farm, shared with the community for picnics, school field trips and general visiting of the many farm animals there. So, imagine if you will (till I get pictures up) our tent (along with many campervans nearby) and cattle fenced up just behind us and sheep all around the campground on almost all sides (though not allowed in). We'd lay there in our tent laughing at all the sounds they would make throughout the day and even late into the night. A sign we read stated that 86 species of birds can be found throughout the year at Ambury, and I believe it. Most common were Pukekos, which I would describe as exotic chickens, and I'll leave it at that.

The weather is wild at Ambury, mostly with wind that would send a small, empty bag flying. It would rain, then the sun would come out very suddenly to scorch you (I'm recovering from some sunburns while adjusting to new ones on my feet from Omana).

Our tent has proven to be awesome, and I'm fully confident no gusts of wind other than those belonging to a hurricane could rip up all the guylines we've used to keep it in place. Here's to a night of rest in the wilderness.

Also, while figuring out the campground at the "information stable," there was a really intense spider that tried to go from his web to Stacy's hair which connected together for a moment. That could have been interesting.


10/28
It's been a full day now since we arrived at Ambury Park, located near Mangare (with the beautiful, though overly-stated Mangare Mountain nearby). I believe the best sleep I've had in weeks was here last night in this little field 50 feet from a cow pasture.

There's always noise going on, which is actually a good thing. It's serene. It's the gusts of wind, rustling of trees in the nearby "tree oasis" behind us, the chirping and twittering of dozens of different birds or the semi-frequent goofy noises of the sheep and goats just outside of the campground.

About a fourth of a mile from our spot is a beach. A volcanic rock beach. It's crazy and in some spots otherworldly. The sheep freely roam the grassy hills that circle the beach.

There are a dozen or so other campers, mostly people with motorhomes or vans. We've left our tent, bags and roughly 90% of our belongings behind on several, multi-hour long occasions now. I think the greatest threat to our stuff is the occasional sheep that wanders into the campground, or maybe an overly curious duck.


10/29
Dr. Braunner's is amazing. We've washed our clothes and our dishes with it, and cows love the smell of it too! They've been trying to get to our drying clothes on our makeshift laundry line near their fence. I've been naming them (the cows, not the clothes), and my favorite is Mavis. She's a soft brown and has mahogany hair and she seems to enjoy us petting her. I've been naming everything actually, now that I think of it.

On the subject of cows, I'd like to note how amazing the fast food is here in NZ. The beef at Burger King is really good. Frosties at Wendy's taste like real ice cream. And McDonald's is even more overpriced than I thought in comparison to these other places. Also on the note of food, I don't recall if I mentioned how awesome Asian markets are and how cheap (and ripe!) avacados are here. Well, they are.

We had a great rainy mile long walk back from a lagoon (not quite as cool as it sounded), and got to see a lot of bird sanctuaries all over Ambury. Most of them are for migratory birds, to my knowledge, though I did see one little island with dozens and dozens of goofy little seagulls on it.

10/31
I write this from an old, bird-poop-stained picnic table, looking out 10 feet to a rickety fence where our recently washed clothes are hanging to dry in the cold, breezy air. Just past this is a well-worn trail, a more battered fence and, well, a huge drop off a cliff onto rocky beach below.

We finished our stay at Ambury - 2 1/2 days and 3 nights and they all flew by. We became braver about leaving our stuff behind, venturing into town for honey, chocolate, chips and a couple other things we "needed" (okay, I really just wanted a Coke--it was all me).

It took 3 different buses to get to Omana and along the way we drove through Whitford and our first WWOOF home, Turanga Creek. Tomorrow morning we set out again and move there for the next two weeks.


....
So, you can see how suddenly packing up all of our belongings in the drizzling rain and hopping into a car and driving off to Whitford came as a very odd, M. Night Shyamalan-style twist in our ever-unfolding story. It's great though. Very warm. I probably won't wake up with a sore throat tomorrow. But not to lead you astray--camping was loads of fun and I will miss it.

I'll upload some pictures tomorrow whenever I get a chance. I'm used to being asleep an hour ago (it's 10something PM now).

That is all.

Lazy legs

9:10 pm here in Auckland. So much today! We probably walked about 8-10 miles all over town, buying food for camping prep for the next 5 days. On that note, we won't have internet for days. This post should thus be epic in proportion, yeah? Well. I am sadly exhausted and writing this from our very tiny NZ smart phone, which is time consuming and semi-frustrating.

So, I'll write up the best post ever and share that around 11/1. Enjoy some pictures in the meantime.

Planes that think they're zebras

Hello all! It is 6:30 PM on the 25th here in Auckland, NZ. Yes, we made it safely and all is well. Sigh of relief, right? Right now we're resting in our window-less hostel room at Backpacker Nomads on Queen Street. I have so much to say, but a lot of it is blurring together from a lack of good sleep over the past week. Tonight will be our first night where we can lay down flat and bend our legs in four nights. No more stiff "recliners"! Hurrah! The plane was cramped, but it was still so nice. Very high-tech plane (minus WiFi). There were hundreds of movie choices on the back of someone else's chair (watched most of Monster's University, a few NZ documentaries, and part of the extended edition Hobbit...which we fell asleep to). The best thing, other than getting across the world in 12 hours via the sky, was the food. Wow. I had a Moroccan chicken with cous-cous and Stacy had braised beef with vegetables or something... it was good. And cheese omelettes and potatoes for breakfast at 5 AM!

Anyway, run-on paragraph aside... our plane was zebra-striped, we found out this morning. That was neat.

I took a few low-quality photos from the plane this morning too..

I flipped out.

First halfway decent picture taken upon landing

The ride was great. Yes. I had my minor (Stacy will say otherwise) moment of "panic" as we were zipping down the runway towards the sky...but, it was great. Really. I even played tetris on the back of a some guy's chair. 

Customs in NZ are strict. Not China-style strict, according to Stacy, but still strict. They want to make sure you don't bring anything sketchy into the country. For example. Apples? $400 fine. Noticeable dirt on any shoes, whether on you or in your bag, $400 fine. Okay, that sounds far-fetched. Stacy said they would make you clean them, never mind. Still. But all went smoothly. Or should I say, everything went fine.

We bought a phone in the airport rather promptly. Waited around for a few hours (we arrived at 7AM, and couldn't check in at our hostel till 2PM), using our free 30 minute allotments of WiFi on different devices to get our bearings, figure out GPS stuff and well.. killing time. 

Needless to say, we walked around Auckland a good bit while waiting too, and I'm just gonna upload a handful of pics now... I might get a tumblr to focus on pictures and just link to that. Hm hm. Thanks guys. :]

 

Beard. Reference this in 6 months. 

Five hours

Well, we got checked in. Our bags, with the next year's worth of stuff are now off and out of our hands (rather, off our backs).

We didn't really get to see LA. We kind of just wandered into a very long line at the NZ terminal once we saw that it was open. Next thing you know our passports are being checked, the TSA is giving us threatening looks and we're trapped in a mini-mall that surrounds our boarding gate.

We traded in some of our greenbacks for NZ's pretty, colorful bills that come in all sizes (all the better to bend and crinkle).

We board at 9:00 CT.

reLAX

Hey all. 9:15 AM CT here in Los Angelas. We're sitting in the food court area at LAX, still trying to work out our plans for the next 9 or 10 hours of the day. Our flight leaves at 9:45 PM. The sky is very gray, which took place of all the fog everywhere at 6ish this morning when we got off our train. Supposedly the sun will come out.

Sleeping last night was... well. Imagine trying to sleep on a dentist's chair that doesn't exactly recline nearly as much. And there's an air conditioner blasting your entire body. Forever. And blow-up pillows and tiny sheets of paper blankets cost $8 a person. So, we braved the elements with our jackets and a sleeping bag covering most of our bodies. This is pretty much how the night prior went as well.

We haven't had much of an opportunity to see LA... the train came in so late/early that everything was dark. A bus driven by the world's most talented bus driver took us from Union Station to LAX. Sadly, stupidly, we didn't take any pictures. I think we were concerned for our phones' lives, and I accidentally packed our camera away which was snug under the bus.

I should have figured that my dandy little McDonald's bacon+egg+cheese biscuit would have cost me one of my future children's college funds here in an airport, but I got it anyway. Hunger is as hunger does.

LA has these really goofy-looking palm trees that jut up about 1,000 feet into the sky and are topped with, well, palms. They really look like those stupid things kids put on the ends of their pencils in place of an eraser. Sorry, I'm being critical again. Their trees are lovely. No, really.

Oh, and to wrap up on Texas and the last few states really... I've decided I can't tell a difference, at least from a train, between (most of) Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. But, no. Shrubs are awesome.

From here, we may watch the Hobbit in ritualistic preparation, or hoof it some 4 miles to Venice Boardwalk, provided we can check our 40 lb. bags away with the Air NZ folks and run away from the airport. I'm not sure if this is allowed or if it looks sketchy on our part, but it should make for a unique day.

I'll probably do one more post tonight before we swish away into the skies.

Thank you, that is all.

- Seth

Sightseer

As I write this, Stacy and I are sitting in the “sightseer” car staring at the endless jagged spine of mountains that we have been passing by over and over since right about the time we woke up this morning. When the horizon was still flat as could be, the red sun rose to burn my tired eyes in greeting. It was beautiful.

I’ve typed up posts again and again and failed to have WiFi. So, sadly, this won’t show up until a couple days from now, I believe. I should probably note then, that it is 3:27 MST on the 22nd, in Texas. We’re now looking on towards the Rio Grande and the mountains that are part of Mexico’s territory. It really is beautiful. It’s just... well, those shrubs get so redundant. So does the green-brown-tan of everything in sight in every direction ever. But, no. It’s beautiful. I’m being too critical.

We had a minor stop due to a freight train ahead of us that had stopped moving. Despite a promise of updates from Jerry (that’s our conductor--yeah, we’re on a first-name basis via the intercom now), we never found out what that was about. We just sat there staring some shrubs down for an hour. I believe we passed out asleep for a little while too.

So far, of my many runs to the “cafe car,” I have not dropped any drinks or ramen cups on my wobbly return back. The guy who runs the cafe is cheesy in an epic sort of way. Like, the moon-is-made-of-cheese cheesy. Let me just share this tidbit of a joke he blasted over the intercom around lunch: “The gull that flies over the sea is a seagull. What is the gull that flies over the bay? A BAY-GULL. That’s right. We have bagels in the cafe car! Come on down!” Just an example.

People are nice on the train. Some people are a bit... well. There’s a nice old man next to us who offered up great conversations the first couple hours of our ride. Those conversations have since become one-sided and confusing through his drunken slurs about T-Mobile and his grandkids and working in Alaska. He is a nice guy though.

Next up is a semi-brief stop in El Paso. I think we’ll hop out and stretch our legs and sniff the air before going back to our cozy little nook where we fidget around and try to stretch and eat candy and be productive on our internet-less technology.

That is all.

- Seth

P.S. I posted this at 5 pm MST. I think. Ha. Yay internet!

Houston!

Quick little blurb. I had a post prepared but wasn't able to post it. This is being done from my phone. So far the rise has been great. We're in Houston for about 20 more minutes and we ventured out to the edge of the city. So far that's Atlanta and New Orleans and now here for big cities we've got to set foot in. Heck, we even had pizza in New Orleans (I miss Marco's back home).

I'll try to conjure up my saved post and transfer it over to my phone (we just can't get WiFi anywhere).

I attached a photo of Houston..I'm assuming that will show up before.

Two more days to LA!

Far onward.

It's here. The time to leave. I think everything is good to go. I've found odds and ends and crammed them in unsorted boxes and stuffed them into different closets... that's my packing style at its best right there.

While awake at 4 AM reading and rereading our itinerary I caught glance of something that we had not noticed before: we have an entire night in New Orleans, between trains. That would have been amazing to find that out when we got off down there and were looking for the next train... which arrives 14 hours later, the next morning. Now I'm that much more aware.

My next update might be later tonight, should we have wi-fi. Otherwise, I'll update Sunday night from our...street car inn, thing. Not sure what to expect there yet, but it's within walking distance of NOL.

Wow. It's time.

Now, in honor of the moment, please hum or sing the theme song for The Hobbit once through after reading.

That is all.

TOMORROW!

It doesn't even feel like this is the last night here for a long time. It's just another completely normal evening. Aside from packing, checking off check lists and double-checking everything imaginable. That's out of the ordinary.

Needless to say, we're pumped to be undertaking this adventure. But man, we are going to miss everyone and everything about home. It's not the easiest thing to pack it all up and leave. I am incredibly thankful for the support and excitement of all our friends and families, and even the random people we've met at our bank or restaurants or wherever the subject of our trip comes up.

It's very different. I've always been on the other side, waving goodbye to whoever is going away as they drive away for the last time in a long time. This has been a surreal week. We stopped working (I've always had another job lined up to go right into), which was instantly weird when I woke up and realized I had no where to go, but just checklists to check off. 

I'll try to do a post tomorrow with a picture of our completed packs (yeah, believe it or not, I'm still not done packing...). We're so thankful for your support. Next-next post should be a lot more interesting than this and the previous. Haha. Sadly, we won't have wi-fi for our laptop on our train... but we'll be in contact via our phones. We'll arrive in LA on the 23rd, we'll kill about 12 hours, then hop on our plane (I'm sure it will be that easy of a process--right?) and arrive on the 25th after a 13 hour plane ride. The first two nights we'll be sleeping in a hostel in Auckland, and I'll update then with a lot of pictures (I'm assuming).

So! Here's to tomorrow (really today, since it's 1 AM)!

One week from today...

Next Sunday morning, this time, we will have been on the Amtrak train leaving Atlanta for a total of about 10 minutes. Unless my (lack of) math skills has proven me wrong and I've already messed up the time zone difference. Probably.

So, all that said, we're in the home stretch obviously. Packing away things, washing our clothes we're gonna take, testing out gear and packs and poring over maps and itineraries (more of Stacy's thing than mine). It's all hard to believe that we're about to be gone for a year. My longest venture prior has only be 2 weeks to Sweden when I was 19ish. It's all starting to set in now.

I've been handing out dinky little mini-cards with our blog info on one side and blurry bits of fields, grass and sunsets on the other. I know I could have just spread the blog's existence by word of mouth, but I have always wanted little business cards. So, if you've made your way here via entering in the link from one of those little guys, then... congratulations, I didn't spell anything wrong when I had those made.

Well, unnecessary update down. Thanks for reading!

10 days tomorrow!

Oh man, just a little over a week now and we'll be departing for Atlanta, and ultimately New Zealand. We're still waiting on our last few things to arrive in the mail. We've decided to get a phone and GPS over there--setup here just seems too complicated. We also got a huge, nifty double-sided map (pictured below).  One side shows the North Island, and the other the South Island. I have a feeling we'll become well-acquainted with this map...

If you look on there, right in the center where it says Manukau, there's a little red airplane just above that. That's where we'll be flying in. We're going to camp the first night just 5.2 km (oh snap, goodbye miles!) away from the airport. We'll be at a hostel in Auckland the next night, run around the city and some, and then we'll be hopping between four different campgrounds to the west for a week before heading to work on Turanga Creek Vineyards in Whitford. 

I suspect that we won't have much access to internet whilst camping (duh), so I won't really be updating during that first week, nor will we have too much contact with friends and family at home. After that though, I expect to upload a barrage of photos of everything we've seen up to that point.

I'll make it a point to update again before we leave. Ha. Thanks for reading!

15 days!

Fifteen days and we depart!  That is two weeks and a day!  It's crazy that we're almost there--nearly ready to leave on this adventure that we've been talking about, planning out and so on so forth for a year now!

We've been doing something every day this Summer in relation to preparation for a trip.  Or at least that's how I feel.  I know I'm at least a little wrong and that we've taken a handful of carefree days and kicked back.  It's no comparison though to the past month.  I've been repeating to myself and my wife since September 1st that it is "Crunch Time."  I know what I mean when I say it, but I can't help thinking of cereal or cartoon sharks.  

A good bit of our stuff

With just a few weeks to spare we finally obtained every piece of gear that we had planned on purchasing for the trip.  Convertible pants (shorts and pants in one? Why, yes please!), nifty water filters called "Life Straws," sleeping pads (they go under your sleeping bag to provide both comfort and added warmth on colder nights), and moisture-wicking shirts that we'll be wearing while working out in the New Zealand sun. And a lot of other odds and ends, too, obviously. 

More stuff, a bit more in depth. SPORKS!

65 liter pack, with sleeping pads

 We'll be hauling all our stuff in two packs--one a 65 liter, the other an 80 liter.  Some time in December we'll hopefully be buying a car on the South island, so we'll end up keeping our packs and other stuff in there.

It's been a bit of a challenge thinking in terms of packing enough stuff for a full year. Obviously we'll need to restock on things like shampoo, vitamins and toothpaste at some point, but we've tried to plan out enough clothes and such to bring. We're really not going with too much. And what we are taking is all made for the work we'll be doing. I think I'm taking one t-shirt made of cotton, and everything else is polyester/nylon because of their properties that make them ideal for work.

We'll be taking an 11.6" laptop with us to blog and skype from in order to keep in contact with everyone back here at home. It's my goal to update as often as possible. I think every day will be some kind of awesome, crazy new experience, and I'm sure I'll be trigger-happy with snapping photos, so expect to lots of beautiful mountains, beaches and all that other good stuff.

I'll throw in another update in the coming days and add some more pictures. Feel free to comment and ask questions! Thanks!

- Seth