Reverse culture shock

So I'm back in the States safe and sound and I have to be honest, it's a little bit weird! It seems like I spent way longer than 7 months away. Here is a list of a few things that are strange to me:

-American money. I've realized through traveling that money in pretty much every country than America is a lot easier to figure out. Different values are different colors and sizes, instead of everything looking exactly the same except for the number, like US bills. For example, NZ$20 is larger in size than NZ$5. Makes sense, right??

-Driving on the right-side of the road. There have been a couple times I've been in Abby's car and momentarily freaked out because I thought we were turning into the wrong lane. Ha.

-American accents. I got pretty adept while in NZ at picking out a North American accent from a mile away, because they're so rare. Now I'm surrounded by them! And people are making fun of me because they think now I sound British or something. British?!

-Chain stores. I took the BART from the SFO airport to my friend's house in Oakland, and when we came out from underground, I saw a McDonald's, Taco Bell, Starbucks, Round Table Pizza, Fuddrucker's, TGI Fridays, all in succession. There are a few local NZ and Australian chains, and they have McDonalds and maybe KFC, but that's about it, so it's weird to be so surrounded by fast food chains.

welcome to america!

Australia!

So far since I've been here I have:

-gotten sunburnt by laying on the beach for like 10 minutes (i'm such an Alaskan!)
-wandered around Sydney and sat by the harbour and the opera house
-eaten a lot of peanut butter and jam!
-got a free surfing lesson! and managed to stand up on the board twice in an hour! I'm going for another one tomorrow, I love it.
-Went snorkeling and saw lots of crazy looking fish
-Saw humpback whales
-done lots more laying on the beach
-visited a koala hospital where they take care of koalas that have been burned in forest fires, hit by cars, or attacked by dogs
-went to a wildlife park and got to pet a koala and feed a kangaroo (or maybe a wallaby, I'm not positive)
-drank lots of iced coffee and people watched

I am LOVING it here! I'm sad I only have a couple weeks but it just means that I have to come back someday. Can't believe I leave on Thursday, it's sort of blowing my mind really. I'll be getting back to Seattle exactly 8 months after I left. I can't wait to see anyone but I am so sad to be in the cold again....! :(

More beach time tomorrow!

Reason #451 that I love Australia and New Zealand:

They call all-you-can-eat buffets "smorgasboards". So you see the word smorgasboard on every sign for a Chinese restaurant, which is awesome. That word should be used more often in the States!

austRAIIYYLiyuh

I left New Zealand yesterday and made it to Australia safe and sound. It's not nearly as warm as I would like it to be, but the sun is out and that's nice. My last few days in NZ were lovely, I stayed with very nice people, ate well, played with dogs and goats, and sight-saw. I'm going to be in Syndey for about a week visiting a friend and then will make my way further up the coast in search of sunshine! October 22nd I fly back to the US, crazy! By that time it will have been 7 months since I left the states.

If someone asked me....

how to sum up traveling in New Zealand, I would tell them this story:

Shortly after finishing my last blog post, I went through a wander through gorgeous Kaikoura. I met a woman from Alabama at an art gallery, got coffee, and enjoyed the sunshine. While heading back to my hostel, I heard someone yell out my name. It turned out to be a guy named Marc who I had ridden the bus with through Milford Sound and Stewart Island. We had a chat for a while and since neither of us had anything to do that evening, he asked if I wanted to meet up for pool later. So we went out to the bar, had a few pints, I lost horribly at pool (no surprise there!), and some Aussie guy asked us if he could challenge us, but since he was on his own, he grabbed some random dude from the bar who was watching tv. I got to chatting with this guy, whose name was Cristian, from Chile, and it turned out that he was from Picton, which is where I was headed the next day. He works as a fish engineer, at a salmon "farm" (basically like DIPAC, not an evil salmon farm). He was a really interesting guy, had a degree in marine biology, had just learned how to surf, was buying land in Chile to start a hostel, etc. I mentioned I was going to Picton the next day and he said, "why don't you come over for dinner, I don't know many people in Picton and I have a huge fresh salmon I need to cook". I then convinced Marc to postpone his travel plans (he was going to head to Christchurch the next day), get on the bus with me, hang out with Cristian in Picton, and then I'd drive him to ChCh the next day. He agreed because hey, who doesn't like a salmon dinner and free ride to Christchurch!

So the next day we got on the bus, hung out in Picton, I got my car from where it had been stored, and we went over to Cristian's lovely house by the beach where he proceeded to cook us the most amazing dinner I have had in ages. Salmon seviche with garlic, onion, and fresh-squeezed lemon juice (he got the lemons from his boss' lemon tree and I squeezed them myself!), veggies, salad, and I hate to say it, but the best barbecued salmon I've ever eaten (sorry dad!). Plus lots of wine and beer. He then offered to let Marc and I stay there for the night, he had plenty of couch space and an air mattress, so of course we did.

The next day we had a lovely breakfast, hung out with Cristian a bit more, and eventually hit the road to ChCh. At the half way point in Kaikoura, we decided to stop for coffee. We were sitting in the cafe when all of a sudden, my friend Owen that I had traveled with about a month ago and who I thought was in Australia, walks in! Apparently he had gotten a job in Kaikoura and decided to come back from Oz. Such a weird string of coincidences!

If I hadn't run into Marc, I wouldn't have gone to play pool that night. If I hadn't gone to play pool, I wouldn't have met Cristian. If I hadn't met Cristian, I would have missed out on an awesome night of free food and accomodation and lovely conversation. If I hadn't stayed the night at his house, I wouldn't have gone to Kaikoura that day. If I hadn't gone to Kaikoura that day, I wouldn't have run into Owen.

And that is pretty much traveling in NZ in a nutshell. Just when you're feeling down, a whole bunch of weird shit coincides to make life good again.

Off the island, back to the real world

I left Stewart Island a few days ago, which was nice. I had fun at first but at the end of a couple weeks I was ready to leave. I ended up working more like 6-12 hours a day, instead of 3-5, and I just got really exhausted by the end. I was bummed I didn't have more spare time to hang around the island, but I still enjoyed myself, met some cool people, and made quite a bit of money.

After Stewart Island, I caught a bus back to Queenstown for a couple days, and then yesterday headed to Christchurch for one night, and now I'm in Kaikoura, which is gorgeous. It's pretty much the best place in NZ for marine life; there's whale watching, dolphin watching and swimming, and seal swimming. We visited a seal colony earlier this morning, which was cool. But I've seen tons of seals since I've been in this country, so not as exciting as it used to be I suppose. :) I would LOVE to go swimming with them but I don't have an extra $130 to spend on that at the moment (I don't get paid from my job until Thursday). Tomorrow I head back up to Picton, which is where I left my car, and then drive BACK down to Christchurch and couch surf on a farm outside of the city. I'm going to sell my car in ChCh, as they call it, hopefully quickly. Then headed to Oz! For a few weeks of laying on the beach, thank god. I need sun, very badly.

I'm starting to feel quite anxious and antsy and ready to get back to the states. The last few days haven't been much fun, most of the cool friends I met aren't around any more, and the new people I've been traveling with are really lame. It's weird though, because I know as soon as I leave I'll want to come back. I just need a break, I suppose. I'll be home before I know it!

whoo!

Yay, I got the job! I'm working 3-5 hours per day washing dishes, waitressing, house cleaning, etc. It's not super fun but it's manageable. I get paid $13 an hour, get free soup, coffee, and soda, and a $4 staff meal every time I work. Plus free accomodation in the hotel! It's pretty perfect, really. Sad I can only stay for a couple weeks!

New favorite place!

I arrived yesterday in Stewart Island, and I've barely been here for 24 hours but I absolutely love it and never want to leave. It's the 3rd largest island in NZ (after the main two, the north and south), and it's basically the last stop here before Antarctica. It's a big island but only 400 people on it and about 15 miles of roads. It's gorgeous and quaint and tiny and I love it. It's similar to Great Barrier Island, which I wrote about before, but totally different eco system.

I'm staying at a backpacker's right now that is owned by a kiwi couple and is being run by a really cool young South African guy (Mark). Today everyone in the hostel got up at 6 am to go watch the sunrise (phenomenal!) and later in the afternoon Mark took me out fishing for blue cod. He only had one proper fishing pole, so we fashioned another one out of a stick, some line, and a hook. It worked pretty well! I caught two fish right away, but one was not what we wanted and another was too small, so we threw it back. I haven't been fishing probably since I was a little kid, so it was really great. I only lasted about an hour before the sandflies were terrorizing me (they are the most annoying bug on earth, probably worse than mosquitoes!). So I headed home. But as soon as I was walking down the wharf, Mark caught a big ol cod, so we're barbecuing that right now in rosemary and lemon butter, and I'm about to make some rice and also we're going to fry up some mussels and paua (abalone, which is delicious). Jack Johnson is on the radio, and life is great!

Tomorrow I'm heading to the hotel/pub here to see if I can possibly get work for the next couple weeks. They're hiring but I'm not sure if I can get enough hours to make it worth it. Here's hoping! If I can, I'll stay here for a couple weeks. If not, I have to leave tomorrow. :( Keep your fingers crossed for me!

So I ended up staying in Queenstown for a little bit over a week before heading up to Wanaka. I've been here since Monday. This area of New Zealand reminds me a lot of Juneau, actually--it's all on the water (lakes though), and surrounded by mountains (but sorta small ones). This is Wanaka:

It's actually probably one of the most beautiful areas of New Zealand, I think. But sadly I've barely been able to enjoy any of it because I've been sick for the last 10 days. I came down with a cough and a cold while I was in Queenstown, and I figured it was because I was just out partying too much. So I took it easy for a few days and still didn't feel any better. I had one late night and then headed to Wanaka and I've hardly done anything since I've been here, and I still feel like rubbish. It's not that bad, just a bit of a cough, my throat is sore and a little swollen, and I'm really tired and lethargic. But it's bad enough to make me not want to go snowboarding or hiking or anything like that, which is pretty much the entire point of this area of New Zealand. The people I'm staying with are all into backcountry snowboarding, mountain biking, rock climbing, running, etc, and I feel super lame because I'm not doing anything but sitting around at home reading and sleeping. I was supposed to go up snowboarding today and ended up not going because I couldn't sleep hardly the night before because I'd been coughing.

So I finally went to the doctor today because it's been almost 2 weeks and I'm usually never sick for this long. It took about 10 minutes and $85 for him to tell me that I'm pretty much fine, it's just an upper respiratory virus and to just drink lots of water and rest. Ughh. I wanted him to give me something that would make me feel better! I guess I'm basically just going to have to suck it up and do all the shit I want to do even if I feel kind of bad, because there's no way I'm going to let something like this ruin my time here in NZ. I only have a month left! So I'm going snowboarding tomorrow come hell or high water, and on Sunday I'm going to Te Anau and I'm going to hike as much as I can of the Kepler Track before it gets too snowy and crappy.

In other news, in the past 2 weeks I have met a ton of people from the States, which is weird. I think I can count on one hand all the people I met from the US the first 4 months I was here, but since I've been in the South Island I've met at least 5, maybe more. And even WEIRDER, is that 3 of those people know people I went to high school with. Seriously, how fucking weird is that. When I was at the Franz Josef Glacier, I met a really awesome couple in the hot tub from Oregon who knew 2 people who were a few years older than me (Callahan Dillon and Eric Tollefson, who I know by name but couldn't pick them out of a line up). Then just last night I met someone from SEATTLE (!!!) who went to Whitman and was in the same fraternity as Stefan Ashe, who I've known since I was like 5, and James Voelckers, who I went to high school with. Pretty crazy, eh??

"i'm not gay, i just want to touch your nipple"

Woowwwww, what a crazy week it's been. Bus tour is turning out to be amazing, made some fantastic friends through it and had an absolutely hilarious week. Did some hiking in Abel Tasman National Park (beautiful golden beaches), went to a Monteith's Brewery Tour (they make my favorite NZ beer, flavored with lemon and lime), where they basically told us: "you have 40 minutes. drink as much as you can." haha. ridiculous night, that was. Carved a bone necklace in Hokitika. Went to Franz Josef and did a 7 hour guided hike on the glacier, through ice caves and crevasses. Had the most amazing night ever in a tiny little town called Makarora with my tour mates (that's where the subject quote come from...one guy saying it to another). Now I'm in Queenstown and I'm couch surfing here for the next 4 or 5 days or so, before heading to Wanaka to meet up with some friends of a friend of a friend, who I think might actually be throwing me a party to welcome me. Haha. Maybe they just want an excuse for a party. Queenstown is basically the adrenaline capital of NZ---anything you can possibly imagine to get your blood pumping is done here. Today we went to the site of the very first commercial bungy jump in the world, and at the last minute my friend and I decided to go. I hadn't wanted to do it before today but once I got there and saw everyone doing it, I just decided and pressured her into going with me. So we jumped 43 meters (quite small, actually) together over the river and dunked in the top half of our bodies. It was amazing. And I'm going to go skydiving again on Thursday with 3 people from my group. I shouldn't because I really can't afford it but I can't help it, I lovvveeeed it and I just want to go all the time.

Best week ever!

I have so many funny stories to tell about the woman I was WWOOFing with, but as usual I don't have much time so I'll just sum it up like this. This woman believed the following things:

-Global warming is not real, it's just an excuse to make money (I agree with the money part, actually, but I do think global warming is real).
-The best laundry detergent is your own urine.
-Cancer has nothing to do with diet, exercise, genetics, or pollution: you get cancer because you suffer from a shock.
-She has a friend in Germany that made a machine which from moment to moment measures the "female energy of the universe".
-The universe is steadily becoming more female (interesting).
-She believed whole heartedly in parthenogenesis, which is virgin birth. But not the Virgin Mary.

She was quite a winner, this lady was.

So anyway, after leaving Kiriwai I went back to Wellington, stayed with Tara and Ben for a few more days, went back to the huge free museum, then took the ferry over to the South Island. It was a gorgeous, calm day, which was really nice. I'm in the South Island now and I managed to find a job working in a vineyard pruning grape trees, which was lucky because the pruning season is almost over. But I've actually only worked like 2.25 days out of the last 4 because it's been raining and they don't actually have very much to do. This kind of sucks because I'd rather go traveling somewhere else than stay in this little small town not working, but it's worked out okay, really. I met some really cool people through the vineyard and I'm currently sleeping for free in a spare room of a house with a bunch of other people: 4 guys (Scottish, Tongan, Samoan, and Maori) and two Welsh girls. It's been a lot of fun, quite a lot of drinking (although not really for me, I have to wake up at like 530 to go to work). Also met some really nice Brazilian people and I'm going over to their house for dinner tonight and then they are taking me to Lake Tekapo on Saturday. There isn't really a whole lot to do in Blenheim, it's mostly just vineyards and wineries, but I like it because it's soooo much more multicultural than the rest of NZ. I've seen more people from other countries here in this town in a few days than I think I did the last 4 months. It's a refreshing change from the white bread North Island. Plus people seem a lot friendlier down here, I think.

So I'm here until Monday and then I'm taking off on a bus tour throughout the rest of the South Island, for about a month or so. I would really rather do it on my own in my car, but I want to give her a rest for a little while, and since I only have a couple months left here, I want to make sure I see everything as quickly as possible. So I'll do the one month tour thingy, and then probably do some more WWOOFing somewhere that I liked when I passed through. Then selling the car, off to Australia, then San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, and Juneau! Ah! It's getting so close to going home, it feels strange. The first few months really dragged on but the last month flew by, and now it seems like I'll be leaving before I know it. But I am excited to go home, to have a permanent bed, and mostly to see my friends and family.

Okay, time to go! Love you all.

delicious!

So I'm currently WWOOFing at Kiriwai Women's Farm, in the Wairarapa region outside of Wellington. I have some really funny stories I can tell about this place but that will have to wait until next time. I just wanted to share what I did yesterday and today:

Yesterday I dug two HUGE holes and planted Phoenix Palm trees along the entrance way to the farm. While shoveling some compost to fertilize the newly planted trees me and Marlis, the WWOOFer host, discovered a patch of purple potatoes, so we harvested them. I got to play in the dirt and it was like finding hidden treasure each time you found a potato. We then gathered up some stinging nettles to have for dinner that night, and we roasted the hand-dug, purple potatoes, had a salad with lettuce and tomatoes from the garden, and made stinging nettle soup with onion and garlic. I also ate a bite of aloe vera for "dessert" (that's a joke, aloe vera tastes horrible but it's good for you and it's fun to eat it). Oh and then we watched The Bachelor all night. Weird, but true.

Today, Marlis decided we weren't doing any work (yay! I'm really sore from digging yesterday too), so we took a road trip to Cape Palliser, which is the southernmost part of the North Island and it has a seal colony along the water. So we made cheese sandwiches and drove an hour and a half to the tip of the island, found the mama and baby seal colony, sat and watched them in the sunshine, ate our lunch, and drove back to the farm. Along the drive we could see all the way across Cook Strait to the snow-capped Kaikoura Mountains on the South Island. Tonight we will probably eat more potatoes, some kumara (Maori sweet potato), and more delicious veggies from the garden, along with mint tea (also from the garden). I am in hippie heaven!

the New Zealand All Blacks perform a haka before playing against S. Africa

A haka is a genre of Maori traditional dance. There are lots of different kinds of hakas, but the most famous is the war dance which is used to intimidate other tribes. "War haka (peruperu) were originally performed by warriors before a battle, proclaiming their strength and prowess in order to intimidate the opposition." (wikipedia.com). Generally, the people performing the haka open their eyes really wide and stick out their tongues to look bigger and more frightening.

Rugby is definitely NZ's major sport, and the All Blacks are the national team. They perform this particular haka before every game and I have to say, it's probably my favorite part of the entire thing.

things that are weird about new zealand:

• No one in NZ has a dryer, except for people in the center of a big city. Everyone hangs their washing out to dry, year round, even when it's cold and raining. This is strange to me because it takes days to get your clothes dry, and since I'm traveling, I generally don't have extra clothes to wear while waiting for my clean ones to dry.
  
• Driving on the left-hand side of the road isn't that weird, but they have this really strange right-of-way law that means that if you're making a left into on-coming traffic and someone across the intersection is making a right, they have the right-of-way. Basically, it's opposite to everywhere else in the world.
  
• People are obsessed with "hot drinks" here! Whenever I'm at someone's house I'm getting asked every 10 seconds if I want coffee, tea, or Milo (kind of like hot chocolate), and they always look at me really weird if I turn them down, OR when I have tea without milk or sugar, people act like I'm committing a crime against the Queen.
  
• No hipsters! Weird, but glorious.
  
• Phone numbers can be anywhere from 6 to 9 digits, for no discernible reason.
  
• The language, of course. The accents aren't that hard to get used to, but they say some interesting things. Eg, "eh" at the end of every sentence (used to agree, disagree, or inquire); "d'you reckon" (also at the end of every sentence, also used to agree, disagree, or inquire), "heaps" instead of "lots", "she'll be right" for "it's okay", "toilet" instead of "bathroom" (a bathroom signifies a room with a bath in it), "I'll ring you" instead of "I'll call you", "brekkie" for breakfast, "tramping" instead of "hiking", etc etc. So here's an average Kiwi sentence: "D'you reckon we'll get in heaps of tramps before brekkie, eh?" Sorta Canadian, sorta Australian, pretty much weird. But endearing. Oh and lots of different names for vegetables! Aubergine, courgette, capsicum, for eggplant, cucumber, and bell pepper.
  
• They put beets on a lot of things, although not as much as my mom said they did. But beets are generally on burgers, sandwiches, and salads, so basically everything tastes like dirt a little bit. Mmm!
  
• Bacon is in everything too. New Zealanders really like to eat lots of meat, all the time.
  
• No Mexican restaurants!!!!!!!!! Utter tragedy.
  

Nothing too exciting to report since my last update. I hung out in Wellington for a couple more days because the weather suddenly turned beautiful. Then I drove up to New Plymouth, which is quite a bit north...about 5 hours or so, I think. I couch surfed with someone who was about half an hour outside the city, on their huge dairy farm. It was pretty nice although a bit annoying being so far outside of the city. But they fed me tons of food, which was a big plus. I'm really getting into this whole couch-surfing thing--so far everyone has been really great, and a lot of times they do things like give me food, drive me around, tell me cool things to do, or put me in touch with other people they know in NZ. It's been really great so far.

So I ended up staying almost a week in New Plymouth, at a couple people's houses. NP is a really cute city of about 50,000 and it has a great feel. Tons of cafes, art galleries, & gardens, and it's right on the waterfront. I was only planning on being there a couple days but I got sucked in. :) The weather was okay for most of the time during the day, but there were some intense thunderstorms at night and even a tornado about half an hour away. I had planned on doing lots of hiking while I was there on Mt Taranaki:


However, the weather on the mountain was pretty rough. I finally ended up going one day and only made it about a half an hour up before there was snow on the trail, and it started raining/hailing/snowing with lots of wind, and there was absolutely no visibility. As soon as the track became more exposed to the wind and not as sheltered, I turned around and headed back. Which was a bummer, because it's a beautiful mountain and is supposed to have some great hikes.

After NP, I drove down south to Wanganui and I'm couchsurfing with someone here on their TWO THOUSAND acre sheep/cattle/horse farm. It's amazing. The guy is a super cool traveling hippie and he's house sitting here for his parents. He bought me a beer last night and we went out to meet a couple of Canadians who he'd met through couch-surfing, who also live in Wanganui. It was cool to talk to other people who have the same accent as me, haha. Today Robbie the couchsurfing dude took me on a big tour of his farm, which was awesome. We rode on an ATV all over the place AND we took along his two 2-month old mutt puppies, so I basically got to ride on the bike of an ATV over immensely gorgeous farm land, in the sun, whilst cuddling puppies who just wanted to lick my face off.

On Tuesday I head down south to WWOOF (finally!) with a woman on her farm. I'm not sure what it's going to be like...she sounded a little weird when I called. But oh well, it's only for a week and I need to do it again, I haven't WWOOFed in well over a month. After that, I'll hang out in Wellington again for a few days, and then it's off to the South Island! I'm excited to go to the other half of NZ but not looking forward to the cold. I've basically had winter for the last 9 months and I'm ready for it to be done. Which isn't actually going to happen, since by the time I get back to the states it will be the start of winter again. Sigh.

"are those penguins?" ".....no, they're cows!"

so, since my last update I left Gisborne with my friend, Laurence, and drove down to Otaki, which is about 6-8 hours away. I was hungover on the drive and ended up needing to pull over once to throw up my delicious McDonald's breakfast. But then I felt better. We took a long detour to go to Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu, which is the longest place name in the world (duh). BUT when we got there, the sign with the name was gone!!!!!!! such a tragedy, we took a big long windy road detour for nothing. boo.

then I spent about 4 days or so in Otaki with Laurence, his mom and his grandparents, which was great. They made tons of food, we hung out on the (cold) beach a lot, went walking, and it was all in all a very nice and restful time. His grandparents are hilarious and super sassy, and they loved me, so it was fun.

After a few days I took the train down to Wellington to meet up with Tally, my friend I've known since I was about 8 (Houston's Hoop Camp, holler!), and her older sister Tara who is living in Wellington right now teaching Montessori. We met up and then hit the road for a big long road trip up to Tara's friend's bach, which is like a holiday home. On the way up we ended up getting stuck in a big blizzard for TWO AND A HALF HOURS. we were also on empty and only about 20 km (12 miles) from our destination, so that sucked. We turned the car off, played guitar, talked about our favorite books, and anxiously waited for the road to get cleared so we could go. finally we made it to Turangi, gassed up, and then headed to Lake Taupo and found somewhere to stay for the night.

The next day, we did something I've been wanting to do in New Zealand but have been way too chicken to actually DO, and went skydiving!!! AHHHHHHH! It was probably the best thing I've ever done in my life and I'm so glad that Tally wanted to do it because if she didn't want to, I probably never would have. It ended up being perfect, too--we were supposed to go in the morning and they canceled it because the weather was bad, so we just headed over to the place a couple hours later because it got nice out and asked if we could do it right then, and we did! From the time we decided to drive there to the time we were driving out was less than an hour, it went soo fast. We went up to 12,000 feet and...that was it! Our tandem instructor told us to smile, took a picture, and we were falling to the ground at 200 km/h. My face was frozen and I just screamed a lot of bad words. Then after 45 seconds of free fall he pulled the parachute and we floated around the biggest lake in the southern hemisphere, over cows and fields, and I was in heaven. I want to do it every single day of my life, it was the best feeling I could ever imagine.

After that, we spent a night in the bach, drank boxed wine, ate pasta, and laid by the fire. then we headed back down to wellington. last night we went and saw Harry Potter 6 (wahoo!) and yesterday we went to the HUGE museum. it's been a lot of fun. Tally leaves tomorrow and I think I'll head out as well, go up north a bit and hopefully do some WWOOFing before heading to the South Island. :)

i don't even know what's happening anymore!

Ah! I feel like so much has happened recently, I don't know where to start. And I only have a few minutes on this computer, plus I'm starving. So, long story short:

Went to Waitomo Caves after Raglan, went caving, abseiling, rock climbing, and "blackwater rafting" (floating down an underground river on an inner tube).

Went to the East Cape, one of the most isolated parts of NZ for a week on my own. Got a little bored by myself, but it was one of the most beautiful places I've ever been. Ate too much hummus and cheese.

Now I'm in Gisborne couch surfing with some really super cool dudes right on the beach. They've fed me delicious food and the main guy I'm surfing with even made sure that one of his friends would hang out with me when he wasn't around. They're so nice!

Leaving tomorrow with one of the couch surfing dudes to go on a road trip towards Wellington, I'm going to stay at his family farm for a couple days before heading to Wellington to meet up with Tally and her sister.

FUN FUN FUN!

"i don't like pears, bitch."

Right before I left Sydney I managed to get a massively annoying headcold/swine flu combo, which was really fun while being on an airplane and all that. Ian and I have decided to do some traveling on our own, so when I got to Auckland (the city I loathe), I had to buy my own car (I task which I abhor). Combined with my nasty illness, this made for an unhappy few days. But I knocked that thing out less than 24 hours after arriving in Auckland, so good job me. I got a '92 Subaru Legacy that's been "camperized"--ie has a mattress in the back over the seats. Her name is Rachel (not my choice), she has less than 200k kilometers on her and I paid around US$1400 or so. Not toooo shabby.

I drove down to Raglan Friday to meet up with Ian and sort out our stuff, and we ended up staying at a motor camp and not going more than about 200 yards away from our cars the whole time. I was too sick and didn't want to do anything but recuperate. So I read, watched crappy tv, slept, used 19230483 tissues, ate Tim Tams, and finally got better. It was actually rather nice. Ian left today and I met up with Enfys, a ridiculously kind person I met at the Buddhist Centre who lives here in Raglan, and I think tonight will be more sleeping. Raglan is a famous beach/surfing town--The Endless Summer was filmed here--but since it's the middle of winter it's pouring down rain. I do want to go drive around and at least look at some beaches, but I just can't make myself go outside and walk around too much in the rain. Hopefully the weather will be better tomorrow. I won't be so naive as to actually think it will be sunny, but less rain would be great. Or maybe I'll just have to walk along the beach in the rain! It wouldn't be the end of the world. :)

bye bye kangaroos, hello kiwis

I'm headed back to NZ tomorrow morning. My time in Australia (more specifically, Sydney) was great. I think that in some ways I like it better here than NZ, although I can't really say that since I was only in one city for a week. :D But it seemed like the people over here were much friendlier and easy to get to know, which was nice since I was traveling on my own. But I'm still happy to go back to NZ; either way, I can't complain.

The other highlights of this week were getting to see Lara lots, which was awesome. I also met some sorta cool enough to hang out with people from my hostel and went out drinking with them on Thursday night...which I don't remember at all. Oops. On Friday, I went to a wildlife exhibition here in Sydney and I got to see kangaroos, wallabies, wombats, and got to pet a koala! I know, it wasn't in the wild so it wasn't all that cool, but I knew it was my only chance while I was here so I just took it. They are very soft and cute. :) Over the weekend I went to my friend Shannon's house, who I met in Vietnam, and went out to a great lesbian bar with her friends on Friday night, then spent the rest of the weekend walking around Newtown, the gay and lesbian district of Sydney. On Sunday we went to Bondi Beach with another friend we met in Vietnam, Emma, and that was great. It's one of the most famous beaches in Australia (although I'm not sure why). It was raining off and on but we walked around, got great food, and watched cute surfers. Today I finally got out of the city and went on a tour of the Blue Mountains, about an hour outside of Sydney. It was a really small group and we had a hilarious, dread locked, high hippie tour guide, so it ruled. We walked around a bit, smelled tea tree leaves, smooshed eucalyptus, and rode on the steepest railway in the world. I met some sweet girls, ate my first meat pie (even though mine was veggie), and got to see a little bit of Australia that isn't covered in pavement. And luckily enough, we had awesome weather today, which is lucky since it's been raining all week. So, yay!

I'm not sure what I'll do when I head back to NZ. I might stick around in Auckland a couple days, and if I can I'd like to head to Raglan and Waitomo..but I need to WWOOF soon cause I'm broke so I might do that farther south. I hope to be in the South Island by around August, which seems really soon! There's still lots I want to do and no time to do it...which is amazing since I've been here three months now. :P

Wonderful world of Oz

I love Australia so far. I'm staying in a party hostel, kind of, on the edge of Chinatown. There is good food everywhere, I got a free box of red wine from some random girl the first night I got here, Lara is here and we went to the aquarium yesterday and saw dugongs! This weekend I'm staying with friends I met in Vietnam. Before I go back I think I'll take a day trip to the Blue Mountains and do a wine tour. I'm going to see a koala and a kangaroo even if it's in a zoo, I don't care. It's raining and I don't think I'll be able to go to the beach but I don't care. Maybe I'll just go in the rain.

I've managed to lock myself out of my room twice already and last night some British guys I met and was hanging out with laughed at me because I ate carrots and hummus for dinner. They also didn't believe that I've only spent $1600 here in 3 months--they've spent FIFTEEN THOUSAND DOLLARS EACH in five weeks (that's about $12,000 US). They called me hardcore.

I wanna stay here forever.

"perhaps today, we will call it the Not-So-Great-Walk."

So Ian and I got back yesterday from doing our first of the nine "Great Walks" in New Zealand. I'm not sure exactly what the criteria are for being a Great Walk--pretty scenery, I guess? I think it would be hard to narrow it down. This one was a 47 km (about 22 miles or so) walk halfway around the perimeter of Lake Waikaremoana, which is a bit inland from the East Coast of the North Island. 

Overall, our experience was really great. I'm not sure if this was actually my favorite hike in New Zealand so far, but it was very beautiful. It kind of ended up being a very expensive ordeal, with some annoyances, but it was worth it in the end.

The first day we caught a water taxi from our motor camp to the starting point at around 10 or 10:30 AM, and did a 5 to 6 hour uphill trek to our first hut. This day was definitely the roughest, as it involved the most climbing. Plus, our packs were the heaviest they would be (all the food!). We took a LOT of breaks, took quite a few awesome pictures on Panekeri Bluff overlooking the gorgeous lake, and subsequently arrived a bit later than planned. We were lucky that we had greatweather that first day--that can be rare in that area during the winter. But it couldn't have been better. All blue sky, not too hot, and amazing views--it was great that we had the best weather on the day we were at the highest point, so we could see forever it felt like. We got to our hut around 4ish and amazingly had it all to ourselves, which was fantastic. We made a delicious dinner of top ramen and instant mashed potatoes, played a lot of Speed Scrabble, and saw one of the most beautiful sunsets over the lake I could imagine. 

The next morning was really really foggy--we could barely see out our hut door, we were so socked in. This was our easiest day, so we had a bit of a lie in and didn't get moving till after twelve, once the fog had cleared. Then we did a 3 to 4 hour walk through "undulating" forest. Calling something "undulating" makes it sound so pleasant and peaceful, but basically this meant going uphill just to go back down, about a billion times. The path was also VERY muddy, so it made for some slick downhill. The day was a lot harder than I expected it to be--I figured it would be a piece of cake because it was so short, but I was pretty sore from the day before and there was more uphill than I was suspecting. We stayed in an absolutely beautiful hut that night, impeccably clean, and shared it with one really nice French guy who was also WWOOFing. 

The next day was our long day--about 7 hours of walking. Luckily, it was also the flattest day. We walked right along the lake bed for quite a bit of it, and saw lots of bird life, including tons of black swans. This was a realllly muddy part--at times it was basically just marshland. It had also rained all night before, so that made it a bit worse. The day was mostly cloudy, with some rain at parts, and also some sunshine breaking through the clouds here and there. I was okay with it because I had amazing hiking boots, plus two layers of Smartwool socks, but Ian's boots didn't hold up as well, so his feet were pretty soaked. We stopped about 5 hours in to have lunch at a little hut, and then made it to the last overnight stopover, Waiharuru. This hut was something else. Seriously, people in New Zealand have no idea how lucky they have it--their hut system is ingenious and every one I've seen has been impeccably clean. This one was huge, and very new. We had a family of 6 kiwis and one German guy with us, and one of them snored, but it wasn't too bad. Supposedly you are able to hear kiwis (the bird, not the people) from this hut at night, but I have no idea what they sound like, so if we heard them I couldn't tell. :) 

The next day started out promising but ended up being pretty shit-tastic. Despite my awesome hiking boots which I've been wearing pretty often on this trip and which I thought were broken in, I got 4 massive blisters the size of quarters--one on each of my heels, and one in between my big toe and the next toe on each foot. It hurt pretty bad at first but once I got used to it and adjusted my pace, it was okay. My pack was pretty light, too, so that was nice, but I was really worn out from all the walking, and hadn't slept well, so I was feeling really sluggish and slow. We had started out early because we thought we had a 4 and a half hour walk to our water taxi pick up point, but it turned out it was only about 2 hours. This was nice in that we didn't have to walk as far, but also sucked because we were about 3 hours early at our pick up point with not a lot of food and anxious to have a real meal and get showered. 

But alas, it was not to be. We waited until 15 minutes after our water taxi was supposed to be there, and they hadn't shown up. We managed to find cell phone service and call them up, and some lady who had no idea WTF was going on told us that we were supposed to be at the end of the road, another 45 minute walk away. Apparently even though we took a boat over there, we were getting picked up in a van, and even though our ticket said to wait 45 minutes from the last hut, which is exactly where we were, in actuality we were supposed to be another 45 minutes away. So I decided to stay where I was and Ian booked it as fast as he could to the road end. Right after he left, I saw a van pull into the end of the road (you could see it from the beach I was waiting at), honk its horn a bunch and flash its headlights for a couple minutes. I waved over to them, thinking this might be our dude, but he just took off after about 5 minutes. I waited for a while and then a hiker and his kids came by and when I told them my predicament, they said they had just gotten a ride over with the guy picking us up and that we need to be over at the end of the road. So I took off, busted my ass through the mud with my blistery feet and made it to the road end in about 20 minutes. Eventually ran into Ian and he had found out from some fishermen that the van was for us but that it took off since we weren't there. We were pretty annoyed at that point and kinda worried that we wouldn't have a way to get back to our car, and had no food left. Luckily, the van came back for us, so we didn't have to cannibalize each other (which wouldn't have really helped, Ian's too damn skinny).

Although I was really happy to see the van and was trying to look on the bright side of all this, I just about flipped my shit when the van driver dude berated us for being so stupid as to not realize we were supposed to go somewhere completely different than what our ticket said. He insisted that we were told to go to the road end, not the water taxi pick up, because duh, didn't we realize that they only do the water taxi if they have 10 people? Umm, no, we didn't, because we got the fucking taxi over there (with less than 10 people, I might add), so we ridiculously assumed we would get the same one back....you know, like the ticket said. He said we were "the only two people out of 7,000" who hadn't figured this out all season. Umm yeah, maybe because you told everyone else and forgot one time?? I know I'm a forgetful person but I would have remembered if they had told us where to get picked up in a VAN, not a BOAT. He also insisted he had waited for us half an hour at the end of the road, then driven all the way back to the motor camp, talked to the DOC about us, and then gotten home and was about to leave for a fishing trip when the company called him and told him to come back. Which is complete and utter bullshit because I SAW his van at the end of the road, he only waited for 5 minutes, he didn't see me waving frantically for him, and there's no way physically possible that he got all the way back before having to turn around, because the timing doesn't work at all. I didn't even call him on that point because I didn't feel like arguing anymore. But the real shittiness is that after already paying $35 each for the round trip pick up (plus $25 per night for the huts), we had to pay an additional $50 because we weren't at the correct pick-up point. So basically, the 4 day hiking trip in the woods ended up costing us $155, not including food or the gas that we used to get out there in the middle of nowhere. A bit spendy for slogging through the mud, dontcha think? 

But anyway, I'm totally not bitter about this at all or anything. It's all over and it was a good experience on a whole, it was just the last day that sucked. And now I'm in the Auckland airport, waiting for my flight to Sydney. It's about 9 PM here and my flight doesn't leave till 5 AM, but I have books and snacks and I am a pro at sleeping in airports, so I don't care. I get to see my good friend Lara who I haven't seen in 2 years in just a couple days, and hopefully it will be sunnier there and I can go to the beach!!! I plan to do nothing but lay in the sun and not go on any hikes all week. 

please note for future reference:

If you spill powdered milk all over the inside of your backpack, it will NEVER COME OUT. 

the big question: will spilled powdered milk eventually curdle in the backpack? tune in next week to find out. 

(and before you berate me for having such a disgusting thing as powdered milk in the first place, let me just point out that when you're hiking for a few days at a time, it's the least gross option you have to put on your cereal in the morning.)

Ian and I are heading to do our first Great Walk tomorrow--Lake Waikaremoana. We'll be hiking for about 4 days, and then I'm leaving out of Auckland for Sydney on the 16th to visit a friend from college until the 24th. I'm not sure where we'll be after that--I might go down to Raglan and couch surf with someone I met at the Buddhist center. I would really like to find some temporary work somewhere, but so far haven't had any luck with that. I think I might need to WWOOF for quite a bit more over the next couple months in order to make my dollars stretch, but that's okay. There are some pretty cool WWOOF families in our book that I think would be fun to hang out with, so we'll see. For right now I'm really looking forward to our 4 day hike, and the weather on the eastern coast has warmed up quite a bit, so that's great. And I can't wait to see Lara in Sydney, so yay for that!

Hey yo, people. Nothing too exciting to report. After I got back from GBI, Ian and I drove to Rotorua and spent a few days there, which was fun. We went mountain biking through a Redwood forest, hiking, and to a Maori hangi (feast) and concert, which was lovely. We then spent a couple days trying to find jobs packing kiwis, to no avail, unfortunately. i would really like to make some extra cash to pay for my trip to Australia to see my Lara, but I guess I'll just have to make do. Then we went on a nice multi-day hike in the Kaimai Mamaku Forest Park, and then we spent the last week WWOOFing for a pretty sweet family in the Bay of Plenty. I chopped a ridiculous amount of wood, got covered in scratches from pulling out blackberry brambles, baked my first scones, and played with a very cute 4 year old girl who told me I was her best friend in the world. So, that was cool. We're leaving today and actually don't know where we're going yet. Oops. We might head inland to go to Lake Taupo, but I'm not sure if I'm feeling that at the moment cause it's fuckin cold. In fact, we saw our first NZ snow outside of Rotorua, and sleeping in the car was absolutely not fun at all. I had on 3 pairs of pants, 3 shirts, a hoodie, my fleece, two pairs of socks, a beanie, and gloves, in my Mountain Hard Wear 20 degree sleeping bag, and still froze. So the idea of heading into cold weather doesn't sit well with me. But we'll see, it's only going to get colder here throughout the next couple months, so we might want to just do it now before it gets worse.

That's it for now. xoxo!

just a regular Sunday on the Barrier.

It's about noon on a Sunday. I'm tired and hungover because I was up late last night watching rugby and drinking beer at the Irish pub I'm working at. In spite of said hangover, I have been coerced into going and "playing" golf at the local golf club, cause that's what everyone does on a Sunday on the island. So I'm hanging out with my friend Henry (a girl, and probably my favorite person on this island...except for JP, but we'll get to him later) at the golf club, with my "boss" from the pub, John, and we're the only 2 females around, probably for miles. This island has a serious lack of ladies. We're drinking beer, as you do at noon on a Sunday, hanging out with Archie, Gibbo, Dave, Wop (not Italian at all), and various other men, including one wearing a shirt which says, "I'm not a gynocologist, but I'll take a look anyway!". Nascar is on the big screen tv. Next to us, there is an entire sheep roasting on a spit, which is covered with rusty corrugated tin (I'm sure that adds to the flavor). And off we go to play golf, beers in hand still.


Ah. Life on Great Barrier Island is something else. I might never leave.


Oh and about JP--my most favorite person on the island. He's at the pub most every night--he has a special seat with its own cushion and he always has a Waikato beer in front of him, except for when he goes outside to roll his own cigarette and smoke for a while. He's about 5 feet tall, is 72 years old, has the most gravelly voice I've ever heard, and the other night he told me about the time he went to the Virgin Islands during Carnival last year and got his body painted by all the ladies, and then went wakeboarding.

I can't decide if I want to marry him or if I want him to be my grandfather. Seeing as how Ian's gone for the weekend and left me alone on the Island, he suggested the first one.

Notes from a very small island

Ian and I have spent the last week on Great Barrier Island, a remote place with about 500 people or so that's 90 km from Auckland. It's been absolutely gorgeous and a lot of fun as well. The local cast of characters includes lots of drunks, ex-pats from Ireland and England among other places, super friendly locals, some dirty old men and some not so dirty. We're currently WWOOFing at an Irish pub, which basically rules. We do a couple hours of gardening in the morning and a couple of hours of washing dishes at night and get to stay and eat for free. In our downtime, we've been visiting the beaches, going on hikes (and getting lost on said hikes), and today we rented a car and drove to the other side of the island, where we then broke down. That sucked but we managed to get it fixed and make it home in one piece. We didn't bring our car over cause it's too expensive, so we've mostly just been hitching, and then rented the car just for today.

When I originally wanted to come to New Zealand, I was sort of unsure about coming during this time--I wanted to be here in their summer, when the weather is nicer. But now that I'm here, I'm so glad that I came during the off season. There's hardly any tourists around, stuff is cheaper, and people are more friendly and talkative since they aren't innundated by tourists like they are the rest of the year. Today we went to a gorgeous white-sand beach, and the water was crystal blue, the sun was out--it was perfect. And we were the only people on the entire beach. I cannot imagine going to a beach like that anywhere in the states and being the only person on it, it just doesn't happen. Maybe somewhere in the dead of winter when it was snowing, but not when it's still 60 degrees out. And it's like this all over the country! Going on multi day hikes where you don't see another soul, not passing a car for miles and miles on a road...fuck I love it here. :)

a few quick pictures

Scrabble: 99. Ocean: 1

So the other day Ian and I decided to play Scrabble on the beach. We've been playing a lot of Scrabble here in New Zealand, because we are old. So the weather was really nice and we had time to kill so we headed to the beach in Whangamata and busted out the handy travel edition of Scrabble that Ian had. We started playing and it was a really crappy game. I'm talking words like "kit", "tan", etc. Nothing over one syllable, just total shit.

So we had noticed earlier that the tide seemed really high, and we placed our towel accordingly very high up on the beach, almost to the grass, thinking we'd be safe (I'm sure you can see where this is going). One wave seemed really close and I commented, "Hmm, maybe we should move further away", which went as unnoticed as most of my suggestions do to Ian. All of a sudden while pondering what word I can make with the letters Q, U, D, I, I, E, E, I turn to look at the ocean and HOLY SHIT THAT WAVE IS ON US. Being the quick thinker I am (and remember previous experiences), I grabbed the camera first while yelling at Ian to get up. He grabs Scrabble, I get my shoes and the towel, and we just barely make it to.......okay, we're soaking wet and Scrabble is covered in sand. Fuck.

It seemed like total disaster, but we managed to recover EVERY SCRABBLE LETTER except for one--a stupid I, which we really don't need anyway because there's 9 of them I think, and that gets a little excessive (especially when you get ALL of them in the game, which seems to happen to me quite a lot). It took quite a bit of foraging through the sand and wading through the tide, but our Scrabble game is mostly intact.

Not the type to be deterred by mere water, and thinking, "That was a totally shite game anyways", we decided to start again. I made some silly comment about how the ocean may have won the battle and gained one letter, but it has not yet won the war. Right after I said this, we picked our seven letters, and what does Ian get? TIDE ONE. I shit you not, my friends. The ocean was fucking laughing at us. Jerk.



So, anyways. Other than fighting with the ocean, mistaking lighthouses for UFOs, climbing lots of rocks, doing belly flops into the sand, squashing moths, etc, we've been spending lots of time on beaches over the last couple weeks. After leaving Dharma Gaia, we did a quick 2 day hike to the top of Coromandel Peninsula during which we scared a lot of cows and avoided a lot of poop, got harrassed by ducks, and saw some dolphins in the ocean. On the 3.5 hr hike back it was pouring and we both got soaked, so we decided to stay in a hostel that night. Good thing to, because Ian ended up getting really sick and throwing up all night. But don't worry, he recovered, and we're vaguely certain that it wasn't a case of swine flu. We spent the rest of the time going along the East coast of the Coromandel Peninsula. We spent about 4 days in the tiny coastal town of Hahei, and did some swimming, surfing, boat riding, sunbathing, and also went to Hot Water Beach, where you can dig a hole in the sand and find a thermal pool. That was pretty rad.

Now, we're back in Auckland (ugh) for this night and the next, and we take off for Great Barrier Island on Friday to our next WWOOFing job. It's at a backpackers lodge and Irish pub, and we do garden work for a couple hours in the morning and then wash dishes for a couple hours in the night. It should be sweet, and GBI sounds fantastic. And after that...who knows. :D

Yesterday, it was exactly one month that I have been in New Zealand. In a lot of ways it feels like way longer than that, but at the same time, there is absolutely so much more to see that I don't know if I'm going to be able to get it all done in time. A lot of people said that I would get bored in New Zealand after 9 months, because it's such a small country, but I definitely don't think that's going to be the case! If anything, I think I'll wish that I had more time.

Ian and I spent a total of about 2 weeks WWOOFing around Warkworth, about an hour north of Auckland, with 2 different families. I got a lot of experience pulling weeds, and also did some other things like painting a hot tub, feeding chickens and lambs, and playing with an adorable 4 year old girl named Holly, from the last house, who fell in love with me immediately, and also the bet cat I've ever met, a tortoiseshell named Chi Chi who slept curled up right next to me all night. Oh man, I loved that cat.

After we left Michelle, Nigel, and Holly's house, we headed to the Coromandel Peninsula, which is southeast of Auckland. It's a pretty rugged and undeveloped part of NZ, with lots of regional forests and protected land. Once we got there we spent 4 days camping in the Kauaeranga Regional Park, which was really nice. We went on our first multi-day hiking trip, which was great in all the right ways. I was sore for about a week afterward but it was definitely worth it! The first night we just camped at a drive-up DOC site, and then the next day we headed up to Pinnacles Hut, about a 3 hour trek mostly uphill. We didn't stay in the hut, but stayed in some backcountry campsites next to it which we had all to ourselves, but we still got to use the Hut facilities (running water and stoves!). The next day we did a 2 hour side trip up to the top of Pinnacles, which I wouldn't really call a mountain, but I guess it kind of was. It was steep enough to be a mountain, that's for damn sure. It was completely unlike other hikes I've done, but it was so worth it. A thousand-step staircase led to 20 minutes of climbing up ladders and scrambling through rocks, and then you reach the top and you can see almost all of the entire peninsula. We went up on a foggy day, so we couldn't see that far, but it was just as cool to have the fog there. It was really beautiful.

After Pinnacles, we hiked back the way we came and then took a detour to go to Billygoat Basin, another backcountry site. And I do mean backcountry. Once we got past the hut and made the turn to the Basin, we didn't see anyone for the rest of the 2 hour hike. Our campsite was a clearing with an outhouse. It was perfect. We made an awesome fire and cooked a real camping meal--baked beans and Spaghetti-O's, word! The next day we did an easy one hour hike back to our car, and then illegally camped in a motorcamp on the way to our next destination.

We made our way a little bit further north up a lovely seaside drive to our new WWOOF house, which is Dharma Gaia Peace and Mindfulness Center. I know, I know, you can start throwing granola at me right now. But it's actually been pretty amazing. It's a Buddhist center based on the teachings of Thich Nhat Hahn, who I really love and have read a lot of. We attended a Mindfulness Weekend retreat, and did a lot of meditating and ate incredible vegetarian food. We're WWOOFing here for a couple more days and then we're off to...somewhere else. :)

My Internet time has run out so I have to go! Love you all as always. XOXOXOX.

Milo!

Exciting development! Ian and I bought our car/camper. He's a '95 Mitsubishi Chariot, maroon and very pretty. We've named him Milo. The two back rows of seats were taken out and it was converted into a campervan by the people who owned it before us, so it has a great bed. We've slept in it a few times and it's already saving us money on accomodation, for sure. He gets about 30 to 35 miles to the gallon (on windy NZ roads, too!) and only cost $2000 us. He's all-around fantastic, basically.

I feel like a lot has happened since I last posted. Last Friday, Ian and I booked it out of Auckland and traveled a few hours up north to the Bay of Islands. As you can imagine, this was a bay...with a lot of islands in it. Over 100, I do believe. We spent a lovely 4 or 5 days there, camping out on the waterfront. We spent a couple days lounging around around the beaches, flying our kite, hula-hooping in the surf, going for swims, etc. We also went on an amazing day trip on a sail boat and went dolphin-watching, which was incredible. There are tons of dolphins in the bay and they come RIGHT up to the boat--I could have almost touched them. We were supposed to swim with them but the conditions weren't right, but oh well. We also did a bit of (COLD) snorkeling, which was a bit boring since there wasn't much to see, but I still enjoyed it. We went on our first New Zealand hike (or tramps, as they're called here) to a waterfall, which was nice. Only about 3 hours or so round-trip, but it still kicked my ass. On our last day in Paihia, we went for a bit of kayak around the bay, which ended up being a poor idea. The weather wasn't looking too good but we figured we would be fine for an hour. Nope! As soon as we got out there it started to rain. Plus, we had managed to fall in right in the very beginning as we were trying to get into the boat, so we were already soaking wet. It was a somewhat miserable hour, but I actually kind of liked it. I haven't done much open-sea kayaking before, and it always feels like an adventure to me.

After our stay in the Bay of Islands, we needed to return to Auckland so that Ian could do something with his phone. We spent a night there and then headed up to our first WWOOFing house! It's about 45 minutes or so north of Auckland, outside the town of Warkworth. The house and the view are absolutely phenomenal--I couldn't ask for anything better. Our room looks out into rolling green hills, lakes, and a distant mountain with a sunrise view. The couple is turning the house into a B&B and there's lots of work to be done all over the property. They also have 20 cows, 2 goats (Basil and Rosemary), and 2 pigs (Lucy and Penny). My absolute favorite part of the day so far has been feeding the goats and pigs. I think I'm in love with them. We've definitely been put to work--4 hours a day doesn't sound like much, but 4 hours of weeding starts to drag on! The weather has been hot, which is both good and bad--we've got nice farmer's tans going, but also some sunburns. And farmwork in the sun is especially exhausting for me, I'm not made for that shit. I've been sore all week but I'm slowly sucking it up and getting better.

Okay! That's it for now. I know I keep saying I'll post pictures and I haven't yet, but we don't have Internet often and when we do it's really slow, so I haven't gotten around to it. I swear I will one of these days!

Love you all--xoxoxooxoxxo

Amy

Boring update

Sorry this hasn't been exciting so far. Ian and I are still in Auckland, still taking care of business, spending an inordinate amount of time using the Internet at the library and calling and texting people about vehicles. We are couch surfing with a great host at the moment right in Central Auckland, which is convenient since we've really simply been wandering up and down the same streets every day. It's been really boring, actually. Auckland is nice, but it's just like any other big city basically. We're excited to buy a van, set it up, and get out of here. We have two people set up to WWOOF with for the first part of April, and it will be nice to start getting our hands dirty and getting to work.

Anyway, I promise that I will have some more exciting updates (hopefully with pictures!) before too long. Love!

I've realized that I hate the title of this blog. "An Alaskan girl in New Zealand" sounds super lame. I need a new one! Suggestions, please??

We're finally in NZ!

After what feels like a very long journey, we finally arrived in Auckland this afternoon. Our road trip from Seattle to Tucson was amazing, thanks to some very kind hosts and hostesses, and the week in Tucson with Ian's family was also fantastic. We left Tucson a few days ago and flew to Fiji for two days, which was pretty nice--very hot and humid, but incredibly nice people and very lush green scenery like I'd never really seen before.

We got on a plane early this morning, had a 4 hour flight, and finally arrived at our hostel at around 3 pm. So far we've done a bit of exploring around the city, which has been great. It's a lot more diverse and metropolitan than I imagined it would be--my image of New Zealand was one of a fairly isolated, more rural country, and Auckland definitely contradicts that! This weekend we'll focus on getting all of the details figured out--opening a bank account, getting a phone set up, and buying a car. We're at our hostel for 4 days and then we'll be couch-surfing for a week or two further, and should probably be ready to leave the city by then. We found a really great couch-surf at a treehouse living with anarchist activists which is a bit outside of Auckland, and hope to stay there for a while. We'll then probably do some WWOOFing either North or South of Auckland and go from there. We decided to buy a campervan so that we can basically live out of it, and I'm looking forward to that!

Alright, we're off to listen to some free music in the park across the street, so that's it for now! I really do hope to have pictures up sometime soon, although so far it's been hard since Internet is sorta spendy.

Thanks for reading! Hope everyone is doing well. Xoxoxoxoxo.

First post!

Hey everyone,

Thanks for comin to check out my travel blog about New Zealand. I haven't posted anything yet, since I'm still in the US, but I'll be in NZ March 20th and I'll start posting once I'm there. In the meantime, feel free to meander over to my other blog, which is called you deserve this. Fun stuff will be coming soon!

xoxo
Amy