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!