Taupo Rendezvous

I figure everyone should have the experience of not being able to fit new socks into their budget right?
Poor, poor, smartwools.

After almost two weeks working at Monovale Organic Blueberry Farms and earning some money, it's time to hit the road in the morning for a minimum of two weeks of adventure. First stop: Tongariro National Park. Sign to Taupo made, beard trimmed, and socks patched, it's time to hit the road and leave the Gorilla Hut behind bright and early in the morning. I have a rendezvous with a fiddle toting girl from Montana and together we're going to finish off the North Island and take the ferry to the South. Wish me luck, things are about to get interesting.

Oh and I don't know how many lengthy posts will come in the next few weeks. I wouldn't count on many.

Go Bulls

The Fruitvans House

Disclaimer: this post is really really long! Sorry, but there was a lot to write about.

It wasn’t the easiest thing in the world to leave the comfort of Soggy Bottom for something that in all likelihood would probably turn out to be less rewarding. Everyone told me that all the wwoofing hosts usually didn’t have any vacancies for wwoofers around the holidays either because all the wwoofers made sure to get a spot early to have a comfortable holiday, or hosts weren’t taking wwoofers so they can have a relaxed holiday without any outsiders living with them. So a few weeks ahead of time I told the folks at Fruitvans that I’d like to come and spend the holidays with them and they said that would be great. If you read the post on what wwoofing is then you know that even though wwoofing was organized to give volunteers the opportunity to work on organic farms and learn about the natural world through acriculture, horticulture, viticulture, etc, many wwoof hosts are more unconventional.

The place I was going to wwoof at is called Fruitvans. Essentially it’s a business that buys fruit In bulk from farms mostly in the Hawkes by region and sells them at roadside stands out of the back of vans all over the region. I was a little weary of going to a place that runs such a big operation, feeling that as a wwoofer, I would essentially just be there to do free work for a 3 meals a day and a bed to sleep in. After reading a lot of what other people had written about staying there and talking to Taryn, one of the owners, on the phone, I thought it sounded like a fun place to spend Christmas and New Years.

After getting to Waihi, I waited around for a few hours until one of the fruitvans came by to give me a ride to the house after they had finished selling for the day. We drove out of town and down into the Karangahake Gorge where the fruitvans house is. on the way, we drove down winding roads following a river fit for the Rocky Mountains on one side and sheer cliffs on our other. We took a turn and crossed a bridge, drove up a small valley leaving the gorge and then turned into a long narrow driveway to the house. During the drive I had found out that there was about 27 other people living here and I was wondering to myself if I knew what I was getting into. The rest of the night was a whirlwind of shaking hands and meeting countless people, trying to remember all the exotic foreign names.

My time spent at fruitvans would eventually prove to be far more interesting and unique than I could have predicted. Living at the fruitvans house means living in an eco-minded community made up of dozens of people from all over the world coming together to work, eat, and live together. The whole thing  was started by Taryn and Marcelo, an Austrailian/Brazilian couple in their low 30’s who live in New Zealand during the summer operating the fruitvans   business. As Taryn explained to me, the two had done a lot of travelling in South America and it is their dream one day to open an eco-hostel in Patagonia to cater to travellers with an ecological theme. Besides the two of them, there is a full time Brazilian mechanic to service the two decade old fleet of vans and another Brazilian friend there for the summer. The entire rest of the staff are made up of travellers, some staying for months, some for weeks. 

28 people digging into the dinner that I cooked. 

 With two small houses and a newly built shed that comfortably sleeps about 20 people on bunk beds with sheets and carpets partitioning off bedrooms, the house can easily accomadate about 30 people at a time. What struck me as impressive during the first 24 hours of being there is just how differently a house has to operate when it has 30+ people living in it. Impressive because with that many people you might think it would feel more like a hotel with people always coming and going not having the same feeling of ownership and respect that comes with a traditional household. It was just the opposite though. In order for such a home to work, there needs to be a lot of organization when it comes to chores like cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping, and gardening in addition to work that goes towards the business. Yes, it took a while to get comfortable with all the systems the house used, like religiously sorting out trash and recycling into 5 distinct categories, or figuring out what needs to be done in the kitchen, which was a lot. At any given point during the day there were always 2 or 3 girls in the kitchen constantly baking bread or turning unsold fruit into more pies and deserts than anybody could eat.

I wouldn’t be surprised if I never lived somewhere with so much international culture all mixed together for the rest of my life. When I arrived, there were 2 other native English speakers, Taryn and a Canadian girl. The rest were made up of Dutch, French, German, Mexican, Argentinean, Brazilian, Patagonian, Spanish, Belgian, Japanese, and probably a few others. All this was pretty intimidating at first, being the only American and only person who wasn’t bilingual wasn’t always easy. Group conversations were always in English of various levels but it could be a lonely feeling when everyone around you is speaking a different language with eachother.

Although vegetarian, meals at the house were a pretty big deal for everyone there. Every night, two people were assigned to cook dinner. Everyone would crowd into the eating room with a large table made from old fruit crates painted and decorated and most people would grab a cushion and sit on the floor. Whoever cooked dinner would start making plates for everyone and at some point one person would start clapping and then the whole room would burst into applause and cheers. The first time it happened to me, we were all sitting around the table and I was wondering where the food was. Through the door walked a girl with a tray of vegie pizza and everybody went wild with applause.  Though it was almost always some variation of stir fried vegetables, pasta, rice, with plenty of soy sauce or hot sauce, it was always delicious. The best part was that because we bought avocados in bulk, it was someone’s job every day to sort the ones that were close to going bad and make two enormous bowls of guacamole for dinner. I put Avo on everything I could. After everyone finished eating, a bag was passed around that contained a piece of paper for every person in the room. When it got passed to you, you drew a paper that might read: ‘do the dishes’, ‘clear the table’, ‘kick everyone out at 11:00 and hit the lights’, or ‘go to bed, you look tired’,’turn to the person to your right and give them a 5 five minute massage’ and in this way, a meal for 30 people was easily made, eaten, and cleaned up after. Everyone loved the tradition of it all. At the house were two Tengo instructors from Argentina and every other night, about 15 of us would get a tengo lesson and cut loose after a long day. Since being in New Zealand I’ve experienced a lot of new things but never thought I’d be so into getting tango lessons, it’s just not something I would normally do. Surprisingly, the guys seemed more interested than some of the girls, who wouldn’t stop laughing when they made a mistake while the guys worked to get it perfect. Just another thing I’ll take away from living in such an outgoing house.  

Playing frisbee at Waihi Beach afte work. 

 The first week wore on and I mostly did odd jobs around the house. I mentioned that I had done some building at Soggy Bottom and this pretty much just gave me authority to spend a few days making and fixing things. I was shown a small pile of scrap wood to use and the shed that housed a bucket of used bent nails, a hammer, and a saw and was let loose. Over the first week I built an outdoor shower on the side of the house, a shelter for storage, a new set of clotheslines, a huge shoe rack (30 people + no shoes in the house), set up water drainages pipes under some big tents, two great benches for the eating room and fixed a broken Adirondack chair, a broken step, a bunk bed, and an awning. Sometimes it was hard not having any tools or materials to work with but I was told to just see what I could do and was happy when Taryn was practically ecstatic when I finished another small job. With so many people in the house with different skills, we all had our niches. Those who could cook and bake did that all day, those who could garden would manage the garden, chickens, and huge compost system, some ran the fruit selling business while others actually sold the fruit and those who couldn’t do any of that would clean or sort out rotten fruit from good fruit. Apparently my handiness came in good use again because I just became the handyman of the house and helped out here and there after I ran out of things to build/fix for the day.

As Christmas got closer the numbers in the house grew to about 35 people and was getting pretty crowded. This all worked out well for the house though because with the added business of the holidays, there was plenty of work to go around and I got to get out of the house and go help sell fruit. Most of the time this was boring but every day I got to get to know somebody new pretty well after selling fruit with them for 9 hours and getting out of the house and into town for the day was always nice, not to mention earning a little money. So things got pretty busy by the end my first week there. The fruitvans house is actually one of two houses that run the same business in different parts of the country. Because all the organizers are close friends, they decided to combine the houses and have a Christmas party at our house, bringing our number up to 60 on Christmas Eve with a huge party that night.

Most people agreed that Christmas felt pretty strange when it was a perfect 75 degrees and sunny outside every day with dark not coming until after 9:00. A few days before Christmas, we decorated a tree, set up a secret santa, everyone made Christmas posters in their native languages, and of course listened to Christmas music. It was about this time that the amount of wine and beer that was being consumed in the evening went way up, at least among the Europeans and myself.

One table of about 6 packed with foood.

 On Christmas Eve, with the promise of making a good buck,  I got up at 4:00 AM to help load the vans and make bags of cherries for them to sell. Sitting on a fruit crate counting out 18 cherries to put in a mesh bag and watching the sunrise and drinking coffee with a bunch of friendly Brazilians and Argentineans was actually one of the nicest mornings of the whole trip and made me want to see more sun rises before I go home. later I would drive one of the rickety trucks through the countryside to deliver more fruit to the sellers. Driving in New Zealand is always interesting for me. Driving on the left side of the road wasn’t so bad the first time and I learned to appreciate all the turnabouts pretty quickly. The first time I drove for fruitvans, they asked me to go to the recycling center and the grocery store in town. No problem I thought to myself, I had already gotten kind of used to driving on the other side of the road. Now I had to drive a huge 20 year old manual transmission truck out of a mountain range and all over town. That was an interesting learning experience but I did well.

Anyway, the women spent the afternoon decorating the shed that we slept in, turning it into a something fit for a Christmas party. Presents were stuffed under the tree and tables and tables of food were set up. Cakes, cookies, pizzas, sushi, things from around the world that I don’t have any name for, there was just so much food and it was all delicious. That night things got kicked off with a short speech and a performance of some sort by each house. The visiting house had a girl playing a beautiful song on violin but our house was way more fun as a dozen of us, including myself did a short tengo for everyone. After all that properness and organization, we just ate until we couldn’t eat any more. We then opened our presents, turned up the music and 60 people partied late into the night. Of course the party was great. Face painting, all sorts of games from around the world, dancing, anything was fair game. I finally went to the other side of the sheet that separated my bedroom from the party room and went to bed around 4:00, very happy that I had survived my first Christmas away from home and it was one that I’ll never forget. Many people stayed up to watch the sun rise and then headed off the bed early on Christmas morning. The previous nights dinner turned into breakfast and lunch because there was so much left over. After everyone got a few hours of sleep and had lunch, dozens of us migrated to the waterfall down the road for a Christmas day swim and then in the afternoon we all went to the beach to beat our hangovers.

The tree was packed 

Christmas morning

100 year old train tunnel. Probably the most unique part of any daily run that I'll ever have. took 5 minutes to run through and headlamp was a necessity. 

The waterfall a few minutes walk down the road

Things returned to normal pretty quickly and lots of people left over the next few days bringing our number back down to about 20. This felt small but it was great having the extra space and everyone there had been around for a while so we were all very comfortable with each other. The business stayed busy as the holidays weren’t over yet and we went back to work, contemplating New Years resolutions out loud and looking forward to another party. Without most people having New Years day off work, the NYE party was looking much smaller than the Christmas party but I was looking forward to it just as much as I had come to really get to know and like everyone at the house by now.

The plan for NYE was much less intricate than Christmas but probably more up my alley. A man named Mauro from a village at the base of Mt Fitz Roy in Patagonia wanted to make us a traditional Patagonian dinner for our party and we let him. After making sure everyone was okay with eating meat (and we were definitely more than okay with eating meat) he went out and bought a whole lamb to slow cook over an open fire. I was blown away when I heard his plans. First of all, Mt. Fitz Roy is among the worlds most famous mountains deep in the heart of one of the worlds last wild places. People, and especially climbers, talk about Patagonia and Mt. Fitz Roy with so much reverence, it seemed crazy to me that this man was born and raised at the base of it and now he was here cooking dinner for us in his custom. 

He started by building a fire and staking the lamb over it in the early evening. By the time enough embers had built up in the fire, he moved them over to a makeshift grill made of a grate propped up on bricks. Here he grilled potatoes, onions, mushrooms, vegetables, pizzas, and chicken. The look on his face was sheer joy all night as he ran around shoveling hot embers around and cooking  dinner for everyone. It was a chilly night (maybe 60 degrees) and we all gathered around the huge fire listening to music, munching on delicious meat and pizza, and waiting around for midnight. The conversation among the young people that night was heavy on looking back at what we had learned during our travels and what we all wanted to do with our futures. Some people had already been in New Zealand for almost a year and looking to 2011 for what they would do when they went home and others were wondering where the next year would take them because some weren’t planning on going home for a long time to come.  It turned out to be a great night and one of those times when you can look around at your friends around you and think with surprise that you have only known these people for less than two weeks.

The next day, those that had the day off sat around the gazebo in the yard and drank coffee for hours and hours all morning. At noon, most of the Europeans cheered Happy New Years because it was now the new year in their own countries. I realized that at 7:00 that night, I would have to do the same, though I would be the only person with that time slot. Many of us were getting ready to leave because the holidays were over and most of us had to move on so we enjoyed the time we had off to sit around with eachother before people started leaving. I would be leaving the next morning on January 2^nd so I was just enjoying my last day at the house.

Happy New Year Chicago

At some point, someone had the idea to go to go on a hike to a river where we could swim. By now I was shaking with too much caffine so a hike to a remote swimming spot sounded great to me. Seven of us piled into a car and headed deeper into the Coromandel Range for an unforgettable afternoon. We got to the parking lot of Dickie Flatts to find it pretty full and right away I was bummed about all the people. After 45 minutes of walking, the crowed had thinned out and the trail turned into a narrow tunnel about 200 meters long with water running at our feet in places. I was the only one who brought a headlamp so I walked in back and showed the way. It was here that I saw my first glow worms hanging from the ceiling. Not really a big deal but I was wondering when I would spot them. When we got to the other end of the tunnel, the trail opened up to a grassy area on the side of a river that ran down the canyon we now found ourselves in. At that spot the river took a bend and widened to make a swimming hole with little current but before and after moved swiftly with steep stone walls on either side.

I went to find a spot to change into my running shorts to swim in and came back to see everyone already in the water. The swimming hole that we found was walled in on both sides of the river and upstream were rapids and a small waterfall that looked dangerous to climb up to access what was upriver which is where we heard was good to explore and swim. The neat thing was that there was a hole in one of the vertical stone walls to the side of the waterfall that blocked our way that had about two feet of water pouring out of in and into the swimming hole. Four of us, one French guy and two German girls, swam across the pool to where the hole in the wall was and climbed into it. it was another old mining tunnel about 100 meters long that sloped upwards and rejoined the river above the rapids. Obviously the tunnel had been there to divert the river 100 years ago when there had been a hydro-plant at that spot or something. We laughed and scampered our way through the tunnel with water rushing past our legs and both hands gripping the walls to the side. When we got to the other side, we found ourselves in a narrow canyon with steep stone walls going right down into the slow moving river. We  jumped in and started swimming upstream. In a few places the gap between the walls would narrow and the current would be swifter , or we would have to maneuver up small waterfalls in our making it hard but fun to make our way up the river, further and further from the crowds. Finally after a while of this, we rounded a corner and the canyon opened up wider with a huge log spread across the water sticking out just enough to sit in the sun with our feet in the water. At times the swim had been dangerous and sketchy but we pulled and scraped our way to this beautiful spot and sat here looking down the deserted canyon, feeling miles away from anything. It brought me back to a hike I had taken with two close friends 8 months earlier in which we set out to climb a series of steep waterfalls in search of a mountain lion in southern Utah. That day had been filled with adventure, danger, laughter, even some minor hypothermia and thinking of this made me laugh, remembering how I have so many great memories from the last year of travel and adventure and can still find so much joy up to the present when I find myself in situations like this and was xcited for many more. 

Tunnel leading to the swimming hole

Laying in the sun with the waterfall climbing crew. 

Fruitvans Driveway

We swam and climbed back to the swimming hole to lie in the sun before heading home for dinner but I had been keeping a close eye on my watch. In the car on our way back, 7:00 rolled around and we all counted down to New Years in Chicago. It was a great end to the day and to my two weeks at the Fruitvans house. The next morning I got up early, ate a big breakfast and caught a ride with a seller into town with my pack. I had another host further up the Cormandel and grabbed a dozen Avocados from the back of the van for them and said goodbye.

Just lookin' for a friend on a stormy night

Soggy Bottom

On November 28^th, I packed up my stuff, said thanks and bye to Sven, Softy, and Speedy (the dogs), and took a bus to Nguarwahia in the afternoon to start wwoofing at Soggy Bottom Rare Breeds Pig farm. I didn’t know a lot about the place but it sounded a lot more like what I was looking for.  I knew they had two teenage boys, lived on 20 acres of hilly land, raised rare breed pigs, and operated a butchery on the farm.

A few hours later, Sara Walker picked me up and we drove through the hilly countryside to the family’s house. I was happy to be going somewhere where I would be a little busier, and get to live with an actual family for a while. Not just that but another wwoofer, Pheobe, had gotten there the same day. I was excited to meet someone doing the same thing I was. 

One day Phoebe and I sliced and packaged bacon in the morning and then made gallons of lard from the left over fat by melting it in the oven. One of many things I never imagined i would learn how to do. 

The next two and a half weeks were everything that I had wanted to get out of wwoofing and more. Pheobe and I usually met up at the breakfast table before setting off on a big atv dune buggy thing to drive around a whole network of narrow dirt roads through the hilly maze of soggy bottom to feed all 3 dozen or so pigs.  After an hour or so of that, we either helped Jono in the butchery making and packaging bacon, burgers, and sausages. Lots and lots of sausages. When I wasn’t busy doing that, most of the time I spent on one building project or another, something I really loved doing at Soggy Bottom. It didn’t take long to convince Jono that I could use the woodshop and do a reasonably good job on whatever needed to be built on the farm. First he had me finish paneling and putting battons on two walls of a shed that had taken 18 months to complete. Once I put the gutters on, it was pretty much complete and it felt great to actually have skills that are useful on a farm. Raising animals, gardening, all that stuff is pretty new to me and during the first week Pheobe definitely outshined me when it came to knowledge of the natural world. But carpentry, that’s something I could teach her about and we had a good time hammering some nails all day.

After finishing the shed, Jono let me get to work on the family tree house. Deep in the woods tucked in the back of soggy bottom, there is a tree house suspended between 4 trees. It was a personal project of the families but as they were so busy and the two boys were still too young, they trusted me to wire the walls for electrical, put the insulation in and finish the walls with paneling. By the time I left soggy bottom, the place looked great and I was proud to have worked on it.

Letting an over-confident 12 year old drive me around some pretty crazy dirt roads in what could be the shire in an atv. 

In the evenings, when the sun started to get lower and it cooled off a bit, we drove up to one of the highest spots at soggy bottom where the garden was at the top of a hill. I got to learn a little bit about gardening and it felt good to get our hands in the dirt, even after a long day. New Zealand is just a beautiful place and when the sun starts to sink in the sky, the light changes in drastic ways that you don’t get in the U.S. I don’t know if it’s because we’re so far south but the air is just different here. There is always a couple of hours at the end of the day when everything starts to glow and there’s always a sunset behind some distant mountain range wherever you are.

One of the unique things about New Zealand is it’s do-it-yourself attitude you see everywhere. Maybe it’s just the circles that I have been running in, but the people I meet always seem to have so many skills and plenty of confidence in themselves to tackle big projects. The walkers moved to New Zealand from England 7 years ago with the goal of starting a pig farm and butchery. They didn’t have much money and didn’t even have a home to live in.  With 20 acres newly added to their name, they spent the first few weeks in New Zealand converting an old sheep shearing shed into something livable until they could get a proper house built. Maybe it looked desperate and pathetic at the time but I don’t know if I’ve ever lived in a more comfortable home. From the outside, it truly looks like a big shed, with corrugated steal walls and a sliding barn door for an entrance. On the inside, the walls, floor, and ceiling are roughly finished and the huge area was divided into a few bedrooms with the main living area kept open and spacious. With high ceilings, comfy sofas, and big wood slab tables, the house is primitive but felt luxurious. I’ve never met anyone before who could move into a sheep shed and turn it into something this beautiful. Who in America would even try? Every day at Soggy Bottom, I felt lucky to be a part of something that felt so unique and memorable. 

Waikato is a region dominated by dairy farming. This is the view from Soggy Bottoms driveway, just in the foothills of the Hakarimata  Scenic Reserve looking into the plains. Remind you of the party tree? This spot is also only about 15 miles from where the shire was filmed. 

Sometimes after dinner, we would grab a beer and drive up the highest hill on the farm to watch the sunset. Pheobe and Mallory. 

My first night at Soggy Bottom, Finn, the 15 year old asked if I want to go out and help him hunt possums. Not wanting to turn anybody down my first night there, I found myself carrying a .22 rifle and stumbling through thick jungle-like forest after a terrifying atv ride on dirt roads in the dark. In New Zealand, there are a lot of non-native animals that are considered pests because they really hurt the plant and bird population by eating everything they see. One thing that a 15 year old can do to help the health of his families land was to go out a few times a week after the sun sets and kill a few possums. He told me how this genuinely makes him feel good to be able to help the environment and how lucky he was to be growing up in a position to see how his and his families actions directly impact the land and the environment. Coming from a kid, this was pretty heavy stuff.

The two and a half weeks spent on this farm flew by in the end. The work was hard  but rewarding, the bookshelves were filled with non-fiction gems  (I must have read 4 books while there), and the fridge was filled with almost entirely food that had been traded for at various farmers markets for a packet of sausage or two by Jono. After work I would take a run up to the Hakarimata Scenic Reserve and use whatever energy I had left running up and down steep logging roads and sometimes all the way up to a cell phone tower at the very top.  

After running in the mountains, feeling invigorated. 

This calf was rejected by its herd and left to die in the mud over the winter. Jono saved it and now it spends its days wandering around the farm looking sad, but cheers up a little if you pet him. 

 Some wwoof hosts appreciate your help during the time you work but really prefer to leave you up to your own the rest of the time. The walkers couldn’t have been more inviting during the off hours. They took Phoebe and I to friends houses to swim, barbecues they were invited to, and even a trip to the cinema to see the new Harry Potter movie.

By the time after two and a half weeks there I knew it was time to move on. Though they would have been a great family to spend Christmas and New Years with, I had visions of heading to the Corromandel Peninsula to find someplace with more young travellers who were also spending the holidays away from home. After getting a lift to Hamilton by Torben, a german wwoofer who had just arrived, I jumped on a bus to the small town of Waihi.  

Inside the treehouse 

The tree house tucked away in the woods. great place to have a bonfire. 

Used to be a sheep-shearing shed. Now it's a spacious home. 

Front door of the house. 

Wwoof What?

So I should probably explain exactly what wwoofing is and why I’m doing it. Wwoof stands for Willing Workers On Organic Farms or World Wide Organization Of Organic Farms depending on the country where the organization is hosted. New Zealand is the former. Basically, an agreement is made between a wwoofer (me) and the host. The wwoofer works on the hosts organic farm for an agreed upon amount of time each day (usually about 4 hours a day) in return for food and accommodation. In this way, the wwoofer lives, works, and eats with the host and their family for an agreed upon amount of time from a few days to  a few months. The organization is very self-governed and every wwoofing situation is different. All a wwoofer has to do is look at the booklet or search online in the wwoof database through the thousands of wwoof hosts in New Zealand. When they find one that sounds interesting, the host is contacted and if everything sounds good, the wwoofer goes to live with the host. It’s a great way to not just travel through a land but to live there and experience the culture firsthand by working with individuals and families and learning about the organic and sustainable living practices they tend to have. In case you’re picturing the sprawling monocultures that cover the American Midwest, wwoofing farms come in all shapes and types, from regular homes in cities where someone just wants help developing a garden, to orchards, animal and plant sanctuaries, eco-villages, animal farms, and even businesses like cafes and bed and breakfests if they meet the criteria and give the wwoofer a chance to learn about nature. My basic plan for New Zealand is to wwoof my way right across it, tramping (backpacking) and exploring in between.

When I graduated school in May 2010, I knew I wanted to do a lot of travelling over the next year but had a very vague idea of where to actually go. Some trips were in the works, a bike ride to Atlanta, backpacking Utah, climbing in Montana and Washington, and a cross country bike ride to the Pacific ocean, but once winter set in I didn't know what to do. 

During the first few weeks of summer, my bud Dan Thurnhoffer and I drove out west for a few weeks of hiking and exploring, picking up a German exchange student, Nora, along the way that we had met on New Year’s Eve months before. At some point, we were driving across the gorgeous desert getting to know each other and discussing our futures. It didn’t take long for Nora to suggest New Zealand when I wondered out loud about what to do during my first winter out of school. She had travelled there a few years ago and described it like a backpacker’s paradise. Just a little later after finding out a little more about me, wwoofing came up. I mentioned that I was interested in learning about how people can live sustainably and responsibly on the earth. Some kind of a farmstay seemed like a cool idea and she suggested wwoofing. I had never heard of the organization but it sounded exactly like what I wanted. It didn’t hurt that wwoofing and New Zealand go hand in hand. The country’s economy is dominated by agriculture and horticulture with thousands of farms registered as wwoof hosts. Add to that the fact that the country is about the size of Colorado with a smaller population, transportation is relatively easy, and the place is georgous and I was dead set on New Zealand.  Just a few weeks after finishing school, I felt like I might know what I wanted to do with the next year of my life.  5 months and many adventures  later, I find myself crossing the equator cheating my way to a whole other summer to travel and explore. For the way things worked out, I feel very fortunate.

Sven the Emu Farmer

My first night in New Zealand, I slept like a rock for a solid 12 hours. When I got up, I paid the 4 dollars for the backpackers breakfast in the lounge, had my first encounter with wheat-bix (terrible wheat biscuits that make a kind of soupy porridge when liquid is added, terribly cheap. I thought it was actually cardboard when I had a taste before I found out you needed to add sugar) and sat down to plot my escape from Auckland. My first wwoof host was picking me up at 5:00 in front of the art museum so I had plenty of time to apply for a tax number in the Inland Revenue Department so I can get a job later. Most of the afternoon was spent at the park, lying in the grass.

Right on time, Sven picked me up and we finally headed out of the city and into the country, just 25 minutes and a world away. I had to admit, I was a little disorganized when I first got to New Zealand. I had contacted some wwoof hosts that sounded really interesting just outside the city but had a hard time finding an opening. I was under the impression it would be easier to find a host on shorter notice but at the time it was mid November and wwoofers were pouring into Auckland so a lot of hosts already had wwoofers. Going to Svens wasn’t my first choice but i figured I could take the first week there and get more organized to and find better things in the future.

From what I knew, he had about a dozen Emu, chickens, and a horse that needed to be looked after during the day while he worked as an engineer for Auckland working on their fresh water supply. Basically, I was there to feed the animals while he went to work. So as the days went on, things were pretty quiet. Filled with plenty of downtime, researching New Zealand on the internet, eating delicious food, and just hanging out with Sven after he got home from work filled my days.  A german of the highest caliper, Sven liked to eat delicious meats and drink good beer every night. With an endless supply of fresh eggs that I collected every morning, I made some pretty mean omlete’s and the coffee machine that grinds the beans and then pours you a fresh cup of coffee after you press a button made me feel thousands of times more comfortable than the travelling that I had been doing in the U.S.

my second day at Sven’s Emu Farm, Sven had the day off work so we took the dogs to the beach. After walking at least an hour down a deserted stretch of sand with the Tasman Sea to one side and beautiful stone cliffs with green and red bands of rock running across it, we didn’t see a single other person. Sven that was just the way it was in New Zealand. After being there a few days, this was the closest I had been to what I imagined the scenery to be and this was just an average beach. Spirits were very high.

An Emu. Smaller than an ostrich, Emus make you feel like your in the cretaceous period. And they're really hard to photograph up close.

As the week wore on though, I knew it was about time to move on. I spent most of my days alone, not really doing what I came to New Zealand to do. It was much easier this time. Folks at Soggy Bottom rare breeds pig farm said they’d be happy to have me. Not yet comfortable with hitchhiking, I got a bus ticket to Ngurawahia and got excited to get on the move again. 

Touching Down in Auckland

The flight to New Zealand was pretty uneventful. What I remember most was the apprehension of getting out of the city. From the crowded O’Hare airport to LAX and being stuffed in the airplane inbetween, I couldn’t wait to touchdown in Auckland, get my backpack from baggage and set off. When I got off the plane I started going through a mental checklist of tasks that had to be done. Go to baggage, go through customs, exchange my currency, and find the right bus into the city for starters. All this was pretty easy and before I knew it I was headed into downtown Auckland. The feeling of freedom after getting off the plane and leaving the airport was short lived though. Downtown Auckland is full of cheap backpackers (what they call hostels here) banks, post offices, and everything else I would need for my first few days in a new country so heading there seemed like the logical thing to do. Stepping off the bus just made me feel like I had traded one big city for another though. It was extremely crowded and cramped, with construction everywhere. I reminded myself that I would probably only be here one night and then I could get out into the country.

First I headed to a backpackers that I had seen online and got a room with them. When I finally got the elevator to work with the keycard that the clueless clerk gave me to move about the building, I found my room, half the size of a college dorm with two sets of bunk beds and girls clothes everywhere. Not exactly ideal but I headed out into the city get my chores down so I wouldn’t have to spend more than one night here. 

That afternoon I opened a bank account, got a debit card, called my first wwoofing host and agreed to meet him in the city after he got out of work the next day, and spent a lot of time walking around town and to the harbor. It was a pretty good, productive day all in all but one thing in peticular stands out. While walking down Queen Street downtown, I saw a familiar face duck into a small shop. I said to myself, “no way was that who I think it was”, but I had to have a close look. So of course I followed the guy. When I got to the doorway of the shop, he was walking out and I kind of stopped right in front of him prompting a surprised look on his face. And yes, it was him.

See, there’s this tv show on Animal planet called Whale Wars which follows an organization called Sea Shepherd. Every year, this organization sends out a few ships into the Southern ocean with the goal of stopping the Japanese whaling fleet from killing thousands of whales.  It can be kind of a corny show but intrigues me a lot because it follows dozens of individuals who give up huge amounts of time and energy to take a ship thousands of miles from anywhere to physically stop other very determined people who think what they are doing is not just okay, but an important part of their culture. Anyway, last season Pete Bethune joined Sea Shepherd and brought his super lightweight speedboat to help with their campaign. Pete Bethune set a world record years ago in that boat to bring attention to alternative fuel sources and now was using it for the conservation of marine wildlife. Just a few weeks into the summer, his ship was rammed by a Japanese harpoon vessel, split in two, and sunk. It was pretty dramatic  and a miracle that no one died. For the rest of the season, he plotted a way to get back at the Japanese. Weather it was a smart move on his part or not, Pete Bethune eventually drove a jet ski in the middle of the night to the harpoon vessel, boarded the moving ship in secret and revealed himself in the morning. He handed a bill to the captain and demanded to be paid and to answer for his warlike act against sea shepherd. I think the move was mostly done to  generate publicity. The Japanese didn’t take kindly to having their ship boarded, arrested Bethune and held him captive for months while taking him back to Japan where he was in jail with murderers and rapists for a few more months after that. So on one side of the argument, what Pete Bethune did by firstly getting his multi-million dollar ship involved in such a heated relationship between the Japanese and Sea Shepherd, getting his ship rammed and destroyed, and then illegally boarding their ship as some kind of revenge getting him hauled off the japan and imprisoned for the better part of a year was really stupid of him. In the end, his two year prison sentence in Japan was suspended and he was sent home. On the other hand, if you watch him in the show, you can see he an extremely passionate and determined person. Some people may think he’s an idiot but but all this was pretty inspiring to me so when I saw Pete Bethune walk into that shop I had to follow him and shake his hand. He was pretty surprised but very humble and was very happy when I told him how inspiring of a character he is. We chatted for a while and he seemed genuinely interested in my trip, though most kiwis are just that polite.  And then, because I had my cameral in my pocket, I shamelessly asked for a picture.  Only afterwards did I realize that what I should have asked for was to work with him on whatever big campaign he was working on now, but that would have been a stretch.  Still, I met this guy hours after arriving in New Zealand and while wandering aimlessly in its biggest city.  Maybe I missed my big chance.

So the first day in New Zealand drew to a memorable end. I was ready for a  long night of sleep and when I got to my room, the three girls I had to share it with didn’t look too happy to see me but I was exhausted. 

About 8 weeks overdue...

I know I told just about everyone I was going to start a blog to record what I was doing in New Zealand. It seemed a great way to let a large number of people know most of the details and actually make it easier to keep in touch with everyone at home. That was the plan. I started writing some entries right away but kept getting stopped when it came time to publish them. I didn’t like the first platform I tried, it just didn’t look good. The second platform wouldn’t upload photographs fast enough, something that I just couldn’t live with. Eventually, I pretty much just gave up and started writing in my journal whenever I felt the need to put some writing down.

My first Kiwi Beach. walked down it for 3 hours and didn't see anybody. Perfect.

So after 8 weeks of living in New Zealand, meeting a huge number of different people from around the world, hiking through the forested mountains of the Corromandel, and working many different jobs to earn my keep, I’ll try to do a better job writing about whats going on. I have good internet until the end of January and then I'm going off the grid for a while so I'll try to get some writing done by then.