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.
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Thursday, May 14, 2009
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. :)
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. :)
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
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
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
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