Rakiura!

After being in Tuatapere we made our way South.  More South.  Through the Scottish-influenced Invercargill to a deep coastal town called Bluff; famous for its self-titled oysters and being the place you go to Stewart Island from.  And the latter was our business.  Still haven't bothered with the shellfish.  I've tried mussels on two occasions so far and felt like I was ingesting part of the alien from Alien.  That movie traumatized me.  So I avoid shellfish.

Stacy wondering where the sun went

We waited patiently in a cozy waiting room lounge just off the dock with a mess of other folks.  I judged most of them to be hotshot photographers based on their humongous cameras with bazooka-sized lenses.  We were going to be down on the island for four days.  Our mission: the Rakiura Track--a 30something km loop from the tiny port-town of Oban.  Checking the weather forecast made our hearts sink: rain with some clouds and a bit more rain.  And maybe some sunshine on the last day?  No turning back though.  We already had our next WWOOF host lined up after the little trip.

This photo was used in a Rakiura Track pamphlet but I hear they photoshopped blue skies and sunshine in. Not really.

We all shuffled onto a boat fit for about 30 or 40 people and listened to the wizened old captain crack terrible jokes about safety on the sea and where we could find life vests and vomit bags.  Then we were off!  As predicted, those previously mentioned pro-level photographers were out on the deck firing photo-shots in frantic unison at birds flying over the water.  All was good and well unless someone walked near them and they would shout angrily about their personal space needed to continue capturing nature's beauty.  Kind of ironic.

Stacy enjoyed the waves and the wind outside while I clutched a table and chewed a gnarly little bit of ginger to avoid seasickness.  On our trip between the North and South Islands I experienced my first ever bout of seasickness.  I puked and didn't enjoy it.  This time I came prepared and put all my hopes and dreams into that awful-tasting raw ginger.  That and I locked myself in conversation with a German couple who were going to attempt the Southwest Circuit (I think...), a 10-12 day hike around a larger chunk of the island.  It was mostly mud from what I heard so we decided we'd get our extremely-South fix on the Rakiura.

The boat bucked with each wave and I'm honestly surprised I didn't fill up that little paper bag beside me like the bags of Halloween candy I used to get as a wee lad.  We arrived in port safe and sound, collected our bags--which were many pounds lighter than they were on our last backpacking venture, and then stocked up on a few last things at the town grocery.  402 people call Stewart Island their permanent home, and it was awesome to see how different life must be down their for them.  There was a grocery, a few restaurants and a tavern and a couple odd shops and tourist agency-type places.  And everything generated from the port itself.  These people were entirely dependent on boats coming in with everything that they would need.  Like the old days.  Or I guess like any island.  I haven't seen much of the world, so this was all a revelation to me.

Dock where we arrived is in the background

There were also tons and tons of B&Bs and backpackers.  Really it seemed like almost everyone's house was also jointly an accomadation business.  I know that's not true, but it would make sense as to what 402 people do for jobs other than the few restauraunts and whatnot.  We saw most of this on our 3km walk from Oban to the start of the track in the national park.  It drizzled rain the whole way, then the sun teased us for five minutes as we began the actual hike, and then I believe it drizzled rain or stayed cloudy for the rest of our stay (except for the last hour or two on the island--that's when it got legitimately sunny).

Not a kiwi-bird! So close!

Also not a kiwi-bird! Gahhh!

The track itself was relatively easy.  I was surprised, but then not surprised, at how many people we met doing half the track for the day then heading back to town, or even one Irish guy who was plowing through the whole thing in a day before he had to get to Australia for work.  32km is not long.  There were three tentsites, and to get our fill of time on the island we stayed at all of them.  This led to a really short middle day.  Overall though, it was nice.  Very beautiful island, filled to the brim with birds.  We were so sure we would see kiwis (birds, not people) here: this was the best spot in all of NZ we had heard, with a kiwi-bird population of over 20,000...  But alas, the closest we got was just hearing them scream in the middle of the night.  Mating season.

This was the closest thing we saw to a real kiwi-bird..

Weird bird

We did see plenty of other cool birds though.  Tons of different species of bird reside on Stewart Island and no where else, in addition to all the other migrant birds or birds you'd find on the main islands.  It was a real birds' paradise.  Their words, not mine.  And the landscape was very much that of a jungle rainforest.  While popping into one of the fancy huts on the track, we read up on how the English settlers duped Scots into moving to the island to work in fishing only to find themselves in some bitter end where it didn't work out.  I don't remember exactly how, but it had to do with how much it rained.  That's too involved of a story for me to tell here.  So I'll move on.

There were tons of old lumber mill artifacts on the track

Arriving back in Oban after a few days, we pigged out on some of the best bread we've ever had while waiting for our ship to arrive and return us back to Bluff.  I had been fantasizing about good artisian bread while we hiked, so that's how that came to be.  The weather was pleasant.  Everyone that we had met on the trail and in the town had been so friendly and talkative, and it was honestly a bit sad leaving such a unique place so soon.  But, we had a crazy lodge to work at in Te Anau the next day, so the waves carried us back and away.

Until next time.  That is all.

The Old School

Towards the latter end of January we found ourselves in a tiny town called Tuatapere (too-ah-tap-ah-ree. I called it a lot of things before I figured it out).  We were here to do two things: live in a gymnasium and work with plants.  Odd combination, yes.  

Not the gymnasium.

Our host called it "The Old School," which was his project of taking a rather decently-sized school and converting it into a living arrangement of some sorts as well as home for his plant nursery and gardens.  I was overloaded with inspiration here.  It wasn't finished yet, but we were deeply impressed by how cool his house looked inside.  Sadly, we never got pictures of the inside, as that might have come off as kind of weird and intrusive.  Not sure.  We, however, lived inside a gymnasium which was partially converted.  So, we lived separately, had our own cozy room, a lounge area with some old couches and an awesome kitchen, which meant one thing: 

Also not the gymnasium.

COOOORNBREAD!  Stacy worked her Appalachian magic and whipped up some mean ol' skillet-baked cornbread.  This was the highlight of our stay.  Among many other highlights.

Work was often monotonous but good.  I had been wanting to pick up some plant knowledge, and I found our host to be overflowing in this area.  Which I should hope so, since he ran a nursery.  It was a great experience, but alas, much of my time was spent harvesting and planting potatoes.  This was due to my red beard and stocky Scotch-Irish demeanor.  Stacy did many other things, most related to harvesting seeds from different kinds of trees and such.  But I made a deep and lasting connection with my ancestors.  I still have a few potatoes left over... not sure if they're still good.

This is a guinea fowl: the world's creepiest bird.  And not the gymnasium.

One of the other awesome highlights at the Old School was getting to help with beekeeping and honey extraction, the latter being a real treat for us since it's only done twice a year (in our host's case), and since we got a large tub of some of the richest honey in existence.  

Not the gymnasium, and I don't entirely remember who's in those suits.

The processes involved in beekeeping are overwhelmingly intricate.  Not the gymnasium.

Our host was new to beekeeping by two years, yet her knowledge of the trade was astounding.  I had considered, on down the road some day, "Oh, we'll have some hives and bees and get some honey--that'll be pleasant."  But, to completely sum up what she taught is, in a very real way, I would now say this, "Oh my goodness, beekeeping is crazier and more complex than any level of mathematics!"  I still would like to tackle it some day.  Maybe after I finish college algebra.

Can you see the QUEEN?  It's the one with the little painted red butt. Also: not the gymnasium.

Consider this one scenario (in layman's terms, because...that's how I have to write it): the current queen, of one hive, has been in charge for a while.  She's laid thousands of eggs and led her society of loyal-ish workers, soldiers and disciples through a successful 4-6 week season of making honey.  She's seeming kind of old, coming up on her second month now, and so the other bees do a dance of insubordination and mutiny.  Ironically, she knows and must oblige them by laying some special eggs.  Now, if the workers give "royal honey" to these special eggs, a new queen will form.  The current queen knows this, but allows it to happen.  Then, this scenario can go in one of several directions.  The queen may insist she's still boss and go and murder the new almost-hatching queens.  Or, she may get scared, gather up a loyal few and swarm off into the wilderness where she'll become friends with wild bees and make new babies and start a new hive and kingdom.  Or she may dilly-dally, allowing the new queen(s) to be born.  Then the new queen will find the old one, stab her with her stinger a dozen times (the only time they do this), and her new followers will eat the old queen.  Lastly, to secure her right on the throne, the new queen makes sure to stab and eat the other new queens, regardless of if they're born yet or not.  All of this happens within a few minutes of being born.  Sure makes you look back on your first few years of life and think, "Gee, I didn't do anything wild or exciting like that." And that's why we live for 80ish years and bees live for 6 weeks.

Stacy using a "hot knife" to burn off the cells holding the honey.  This was in the gymnasium!

The process of extracting the honey was less interesting than the life and time's of a new queen bee, but it was more straightforward and involved us, so I actually understood it.  We used a hot knife to scrape away the gunky cells on a frame, thus free the honey that had been collected underneath.  From here, we placed two-to-four similarly-weighted frames into a big metal tub with a crank on the outside.  One person steadies this device while another cranks it in a rhythmic fashion, splattering the honey onto the walls of the inside of the tub via centrifugal force (I think, I don't know.  Look it up on Wikipedia).  The honey then casually drips down and out of a faucet where it flows like liquid gold into a bucket (with a strainer to catch residue).  And that's how honey is born!

Look. At. That.  Tastes great on cornbread.

Well, that seems informative enough for now.  Next time: Stewart Island!  Thanks for reading.  Like it, comment, share, whatevs.  I'll upload more pictures later, too.  

That is all.

Sunshine and dinosaurs

Night before last, Stacy and I pulled into a "campsite" part way between the cities of Blenheim and Nelson. The area was an old motel-tavern combo called the "Trout Hotel," just off the main highway.  Over fish 'n chips, Stacy went through in some sort of order of all the amazing highlights of our journey thus far. Penguins, a castle, edgy sea lions, snowball fights on top of a mountain, the world's only alpine parrots, and a trip to Stewart Island, to name a few.  Part of me wants to tell of every little bit right now, but that would either make for too long of a post, or too few details to share.

I think I'll just dive in and try and find a middle point.

To pick back up where I really left off... Way back in December, we had a Kiwi Christmas in Golden Bay with some of the nicest and most generous people we've ever met.  We worked on their dairy farm most afternoons, helping with the milking of their 270-something cows, doing 40ish at a time.  There were some days where we got to drive their quad-bike over to the milking shed and help with rangling the cattle up from some far off paddock.  Don't think of lassos when I use the word rangling--though they did take us on a horse trek to see the Farewell Spit, the world's longest natural sandbar.  Sorry, that last bit may have come off as really cheesy.  Let's continue.

We always had plenty of amazing food and lots of great laughs, and it was pretty easy feeling like part of their family in their tight-knit community of the chillest Kiwis we've ever met.  A month was spent in beautiful Golden Bay much in this way.  During our fourth week we hiked through Abel Tasman national park.  In the words of one of my best buds, "It looks like you road ponies from Middle Earth to Hawaii."  It was gorgeous and the weather never let us down.  Our mutual highlight was probably walking a kilometer through waist-high water during (almost) low tide in order to get to the other side (sorry, I just thought of all those terrible chicken-crossing-the-road jokes).

It was hard leaving the near-endless sunshine of Golden Bay, but it had to be done--there was so much more to see.  The West Coast was next.  Ironically, many Kiwis and other travelers have told us it's the rainiest part of NZ.  They did not lie to us.

The majority of the West Coast looks like Jurassic Park.  If you stray more inland, it's pretty much tropical rain forest, which amazes me because it borders along the Southern Alps, which are home to several glaciers and rather permenantly snowy peaks.  That doesn't seem possible to me, but I didn't pay much attention in my science classes and I dropped out of my college Biology class.  So.  That might have something to do with my way of thinking.

Even if it was raining though, you just can't help but stop and pull off the side of the road into the gravel at 60 mph in order to stop and run down to a pebbly beach and take pictures of other-worldly rock formations and spires that jut out of the water at high tide and look even crazier but often more explainable at low tide.

Sorry, that last paragraph was just a huge sentence.

Our drive out of the West Coast and into the Southlands was halted one late evening by the only road going down being closed due to landslides and the road itself crumbling apart.  I think dinosaurs had a part in this, but I've been told that's not possible. We were forced to wait it out till the next morning. The night was filled with wonderings of when the dinosaurs would get us.  For the first time, I understood the two kids in Jurassic Park, when the water in the cup is rippling and they're getting ready to freak out.

The next morning, the sun shined as a goodbye present from the rainy West Coast, and we made our way to Queenstown for the first time.  And little did we know we would go back five or so more times and that it would be a pivitol thread in the unravelling yarn of our tale.  I'm gonna stop there for now before I embarass the English language again.

Next time--because I know exactly what happens for right now--the deep South where we live in a gymnasium, Stewart Island and the search for kiwis (birds), and the interesting hilarity that was Takaro Lodge!

That is all, for now.

Change in the pockets

Hello all!  It's been too long.  I write from a cozy plastic seat in a Burger King in the city of Blenheim.  The last time we were in Blenheim was back in early December (sounds like the last time I posted, also).  This is funny, because picking up from here leaves out our zig-zagging, backtracking tour of the entire South Island.
I don't have it in me to go through it all.  At least not right now.  Some memories and events will be brought up in discussions with friends and family, others years down the road when looking through journal entries or then-old photographs.  Needless to say, it's all been too eventful.  There are just too many funny or amazing things that have happened, and even my attempts to record those in my personal journal fall to the side due to the randomness of life.

In this time I've come to realize that living in the moment makes life move so slowly, yet pass too swiftly. Psychologists, doctors and other people of the sort have found that switching up your routine, learning or experiencing something new every day, as often as possible, "slows down time" for a person.  Your brain adjusts to the norm of the day and "fast forwards" things like morning coffee, showers, teeth brushing and the commute to work.  In this way, when we as people are dictated by rigid daily routines, it feels like we're losing our lives: the day just slips away because we're used to everything that happens.

New experiences stop you and make you think.  Time slows down.  This is the basis for why we adults look back on our childhoods and think, "Gee, Summer-time lasted forever..."  Life was new back then.  We knew nothing of the world, and couldn't coldly predict what was in store for us.  So, looking at things this way, people should be encouraged to experience new things regularly so's to not let life pass them by.

It's funny then how the idea of sleeping somewhere different every night and seeing new sights every day almost becomes normal if you do it enough.  Mind you, normal is used loosely here.

There's been a lot of change happening in our minds with everything lately.  It's strange thinking back on our original plan of WWOOFing for an entire year throughout New Zealand.  I remember telling people we would be aiming to have worked for 30 hosts by the time we were done. We've been here nearly half a year and we've WWOOFed 6 times.  The reason for the change is that the actual idea of traveling took over. We reunited with some old (and new) friends from our first host back in Auckland.  We met in Queenstown on March 1st and to this day we've continued traveling around, mostly by ourselves.

People come and go.  Our old group has disbanded now.  Some returned to their home countries and a few moved their travels to Southeast Asia.  Almost immediately after we all parted ways for good, Stacy and I bumped into and traveled with three of our German friends from our last host, Takaro Lodge.  I can't wait to talk about that place in another post... heheh.  I've got some gold there.  Then we bumped into them a couple other times. It's actually really cool seeing the same people again in random (sometimes very random) other places in New Zealand.  We're all here with the same purpose, so there's this unspoken commonness that we all share.  I like it.  Usually.  

So, quite a few juicy details and interesting bits aside, we're on our way into the Tasman region again, where we're going to try and work and live for a few months.  I also intend to begin weekly updates once we have a flat and regular, predictable internet access.  This stint of long waits between my posts is coming to an end, I promise that!

Next update in a couple days!

That is all.

Oh, that was ages ago...

Oh, hi there.  It's been a while since I've updated the blog.  Internet has been a hard thing to come by since December, hence lack of posts.

We did our time in Picton, working odd jobs (mostly weed-work and painting) while living in a pioneer cottage that was a bit secluded from our host's house.  It was definitely pretty fun as well as interesting living there, having no electricity or plumbing.  We kept our milk and similar items cool by plunging them in the stream that bent around the back of the cottage.  There was also a pristine little swimming hole further up the stream, but.. c'mon, if you can keep milk cold in that, it goes without saying that you'd get instant hypothermia from dipping your toe in it.  That said, I jumped in one blazing hot afternoon after work.  I could barely choke out a scream as I scrambled back up out of the water.  But, hey, at least I tried.  Stacy got halfway then chickened out on me.

I won't go into too much detail about our outhouse, but I will say that we had a chemical toilet. And we were responsible for cleaning it.  And if you've never used a chemical toilet, you should give it a go.  And also, if you've never cleaned a chemical toilet... you should give it a go.  I think I will require our future children to do this as a rite of passage into adulthood.

Actually, no.  I think it would be entertaining (for me) if I did go into detail about that ol' chemical toilet.  You should know.  So, imagine a brief case with a toilet lid on it.  And, y'know... it gets full. Unless you don't use it.  But I think it's illegal to go out in the forest and set up shop.  In New Zealand.  Anyway.  So, we had to take our nifty briefcase to the marina (fancy talk for "where all the boats are kept") and make use of a giant sink behind the public bathrooms.  Let me just say I'm thoroughly glad that no one ever came around back or waited in line for me to finish up (chemical toilets are all the rage with boat-folks).  I'll save all the nasty details for my closest friends when we have dinner with them upon returning to the States.

On another note, the critters were really interesting.  Our hosts had a handful (not literal) of cows and a few goofy-looking alpacas with names like George and Edwin or somewhere in that range. Birds sang all day long.  I saved a chicken from a huge golden hawk by accident.  In hindsight, it would've been interesting to see them fight.  Ahem.  We also met Wekas for the first time.  Imagine a chicken-esque creature, incapable of flight and having no wings and all brown and with an odd, long beak and a hurried, prancing kind of run.  And it's as mischevious as a raccoon or an ill-mannered child.  Apparently they're keen to go inside people's houses and steal clothes or shoes if you leave them out.  I'm assuming they use these strange human items for bartering amongst other animals in exchange for potential nesting areas.  Moving on.

We quickly became acquainted with sandflies in Picton.  They're probably my most-hated flea-category type of insect now.  It looked like I had chicken pox on my feet and legs from all the bites (Stacy chose to be smart and use bug spray more than I did).  They bite you, and it's sudden and annoying and you have to scratch.  You.  Have.  To.  Forget regular mosquito bites.  At least mosquitos had a habit of buzzing around my ears, warning me they were interested in my blood.  Sandflies are the ninja version.  Okay, I look like I'm complaining.  It's all in fun.  Really.

We set out for Collingwood on December 21st so we could spend Christmas with a family that actually cared about it (ahem).  Collingwood is located on the top of the left side of the South Island.  We’re very close to the ocean, and on the clearest of days you can supposedly see one of the big mountains at the bottom of the North Island, across the Cook Strait.  Forgot what it was called.

I feel like it would be wisest, in the interest of your time (and waning interest), to summarize these past few weeks in Collingwood in a different blog post.  This will probably be in three more months, and then I’ll be even more behind.  I will say, that Golden Bay has proven to be one of the most beautiful regions we’ve experienced in New Zealand so far.  It will be hard to leave it in a week.

Till next time, whenever that may be.

That is all.