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.