To The South Island!

Hey everybody! So the last time I left you we were about to start apple picking... Well, a lot has happened since then!

First a few pictures from Auckland I didn't get to post yet.

I gave Dar and haircut and a beardcut.

And we had an amazing adventure and epic hike with Amy on Rangitoto.

We were all a little tired out after the walk.

Anyway back to where I last left you. We were living with Chatwell, this crazy cockatoo.

Went to this really cool festival in Napier, the closest larger town to Hastings. In the 1920's they had this really bad earthquake, and since so much rebuilding was done after it, the town is famous for being full of art deco. So each year they have art deco weekend, where seriously like 80% of the people on the street are dressed up in 1920's clothes, people drive around in 20's era cars, and they have a big free concert with 20's music.

We found a duck car!

But this was my favorite one.

The NZ Army showed up. 

We picked apples for about 3 days, and at $35 per bin, if you pick pretty quickly you can make a fair amount of money....

But we weren't very fast. We averaged about $5 per hour (minimum wage is $13.50) so we quit after only 3 days!

After we left apple picking, we went back to the vineyard we worked on in Hastings, but he didn't have any work for us. So, we spent a few days playing around the area...

We went to go have lunch by the river one day and saw this thing floating down the river. It's a haka, a traditional Maori war boat.  And when we went to go look at it up close, they offered to take us out for a ride in it!

One day we found ourselves at this recycling event called 'Junk to Funk' which was held at the studio of an artist who makes recycled artwork. Basically everyone brought any crap they didn't want anymore, and people got creative and made stuff. Super Eugene. This was the 'funk' table of the things people had made from stuff on the 'junk' table.

There were some pretty weird ones too.

I made a hat.  There's also a picture somewhere on fb of me wearing it. It's made of a cookie tin lid, some old fabric, part of a wicker chair, fishing line, the plastic tubes used to make bottles, and some hair curlers.

And one afternoon, after a couple days pondering our next move, we read an ad online that there was vineyard work on the south island in Blenheim, an area we'd planned on going for before we ended up in Hastings. So at around 3 in the afternoon, we decided to just go. We got tickets on the 2am ferry, we filled a plastic bag with things for the op shop, threw the rest in our bags, and bee-lined it for Wellington. We slept some in the ferry terminal, tied adventure bike all up safe and sound at the bottom of the boat, curled up to a sci-fi movie at 3 am, and sailed on over the south!



Unfortunately, the guy I'd talked to on the phone who said there would be winery work if I called back, never answered the phone again, and we ended up sleeping on some gravel outside a hostel waiting for the managers to show up. But, by the afternoon we'd found a different hostel and more vineyard work. Horray!

We didn't end up staring work for the first few days, so we spent some time driving around checking out the place. 

Dar showed me how to break rocks since he is so well versed in it from growing up as a little boy.

There were some cool bugs too.

We started vineyard work again, but the memorable part was spending time with the friends we met. We were in the smallest town ever, and we were living super budget to try and save money, but we found this golf course that cost only $10 per person to golf. So one Sunday, we went golfing!

No one had any idea what they were doing. 

Seriously me having golfed a couple times as a kid was the most experienced golfer.

We quickly learned that there was a reason the golf course was so cheap... The whole place was COVERED in sand flies (gnats that bite) and a heard of sheep that lived on the course left many little presents on the greens.

One day Dar surprised me with a picnic lunch at a farm park close by!

The town at the bottom of the picture is Blenheim.

Our last job was on a vineyard. 

And there was this moment, working on the vineyard where Dar says to me:

 "Do you want to quit?" 

"Today?"

"Yeah, today."

"Ummm... Yes."

And when I took a moment to think about it, I'd been spending all day staring at the grape vines trying to make sure I found every last green one, and I looked up from my work, and saw this.

And I just went, Holy shit! What am I doing here doing this work? Why am I not enjoying this beautiful country and working doing a job I actually like in the US? This makes no sense!

So we quit that job too! And now we will just travel and not work again until we get back to the US.

Next we decided to head back up to Picton to go see the sounds at the top of the north island. It was way beautiful!

It was a bit of a rough ride on the motorbike....

We spent the night in a hostel in Picton where some really friendly Maori guys kept giving us beers, and Dar got a little braggy about how much alcohol he could drink. So they put him to a challenge.

We also met our 3rd friend named Lars, this one a crazy viking who makes motorbikes. He was a hoot!

We said bye to Picton the next morning, and headed for the Queen Charlotte Track and Nelson

We walked a bit on the track, and found some pretty stuff! Some people do 3 or 4 day hikes on this track, but we don't have any camping gear, so we did just a 3 or 4 hour short hike.

Found this cool flightless bird

And a blonde ducky!

No pictures from this part, but as we headed on over to Nelson I got off the bike at one point and realized I couldn't feel the upper half of one of my legs. I walked, jumped, and ran around for 30 minutes at this campground trying to get feeling back, but it wouldn't get better. It was really weird. And the next morning, when I still couldn't feel my leg, I decided I better go to the doctor and get it checked out. Turns out riding on the motorbike with all of our stuff for so long caused me to pinch a nerve, and it took almost a week for the feeling to come back! 

We got really good news the other day. Dar got accepted into the Physics masters program at UO! So we had a celebratory lunch at a yummy Indian restaurant (This is also right after I found out there wasn't something majorly wrong with my leg!)

Some celebratory cappuccinos

And Dar took a celebratory ride on the boogie train!

The next day we headed up on the motorbike from Nelson to Motueka, where we hung out at a beach, 

We found some really amazing tide pools with starfish, blennys, snails, and hermits. Salt water nerd out time!

The next day we headed up to Abel Tasman, the national park near Motueka. It was an incredibly beautiful place.

And after 3 months of beautiful sunny days, the day we decide to go see Abel Tasman, they had the first rain. 

We saw some really cute seals though!

And this is called split apple rock.

There is a huge swing bridge in the middle of the park that we walked across.

And after Abel Tasman, as we planned to head onto the long and now quite rainy stretches of the South Island, it came time to say goodbye to adventure bike. So we gave her a good bath...

And yesterday, I took her for a last ride, and gave her a big hug goodbye so we could continue on adventuring.

Now we are hitchikers! 

We'll spend the next 3 weeks exploring the south island, then making our way back to Auckland, where we catch a flight to Gold Coast on April 11th! Our itinerary looks like this:

Thursday April 11 - Auckland -> Gold Coast

Friday April 19 - Gold Coast -> Phuket

Thursday May 2 - Bangkok ->Tokyo

Friday May 10 - Tokyo ->Seoul

Monday May 20 - Seoul ->Shanghai

Tuesday May 21-  Shanghai -> Honolulu

Saturday May 25 - Honolulu -> Eugene

Really excited to see my friend Takako in Japan! Also a friend I met here in NZ will be in Tokyo at the same time! We've set up a bit of couch surfing in Australia and Thailand, so there should be a ton of adventure there too!

So we've spent a night in Hanmer Springs, a night in Chirstchurch, and now we're headed wherever our thumbs take us! We're shipping our computers away today, so this will probably be the last post with lots of pictures, but probably some phone pictures will still come up once in awhile :)

Bonus points for whoever can tell me what this car has done to make these tracks.

And bonus picture for today: A little ghetto NZ. Poor shopping cart didn't deserve it's untimely end.

More Adventure!

Been adventuring too much and haven't even had time to make an update!

First here is a blog post my friend Lisa did about a road trip to Coromandel we did a few months ago. I wrote a bit about it here, but her's is worth reading too!

http://lisafindley.wordpress.com/2013/02/19/take-the-wrong-turn-for-the-right-weekend-in-the-coromandel/

Almost a month ago now Greenpeace's boat the Rainbow Warrior came to Auckland harbour and we went on a tour of it. 

One of the things they were really big on during the presentation was anti-nuclear power. NZ is a completely nuclear-free country. They've banned it everywhere, not even US boats which are nuclear powered are allowed to enter the waters here. And when you talk to Kiwis about it, it seems to be a major part of their national pride. It really confused me though, after seeing so many coal power plants on the train trip, why they choose to have no nuclear power, when what they use instead is in my opinion WAY worse for the environment. The Greenpeace presentation seemed to focus on the fact that they are kind of waiting for a better alternative, and some Kiwis I talked to later said NZ is such a small economy (land size and population really similar to Oregon - imagine Oregon as it's own country!) that it wouldn't make sense to have a nuclear plant anyway. There isn't enough power use to pay back the cost of building one in any reasonable time. And it's also politics like anywhere else, there are tons of people with jobs in coal, cutting it out would make any politician pretty un-popular. 

If you read my last post you probably saw our eviction notice for our roommate Amy. Having her move out was pretty sad, but before she left we dyed her hair pink and orange, then of course I couldn't help myself and I had to put some orange in my hair too - Oops! She also made us a pair of friendship headbands! Now she is off to the Bay of Islands working for accomidation and free diving at a dive shop there, and rumor has it she's off to work for free surfing soon too :D

We also dyed Dar's beard pink. Double oops!

About a week before we left Auckland, we got really tired of being poor, and said 'Screw it! We're going on a weekend trip!' So we used basically the last of our money and took a weekend trip up to Bay of Islands, about 2 hours north of Auckland. We got a night on a boat/hostel that sailed around the Bay.

While we waited for our boat I hung out at a boat gas station.

We went snorkeling! The first time I got to really use my Chirstmas present from Dar :D Gotta see all the fishies! I even saw a Goby! 

Dar didn't last long in the cold water snorkeling.... 

We also got to go sea kayaking! 

I don't have any pictures, but in the ocean around the area we were in, there is this crazy bacteria in the water that glows when you agitate it, really cool to see in the water at night.

We climbed to the top of a big hill on an island as the last stop on our trip. Beautiful views!

Not sure why I'm grabbing Dar's tummy in this picture....

On the way back we opened up some of the weird starfish-related sea life we caught while snorkeling.

Here's me with a very friendly bird.

After we got back on shore after our boat trip we went up to a high point and looked out around the bay. 

Dar was overcome by the beauty.

And took this picture on the ride home, if you look really close you can see a little baby cow that's escaped from it's fenced area. I tried to go make friends but it was too scared.

On the way home we also stopped in a small town which is actually famous for their public toilets. The Hundertwasser Toilets. They were designed by a famous artist. Friedensreich Regentag Dunkelbunt Hundertwasser. What a name!

So that was our Bay of Islands trip, after that I worked my last few days at Buenos Aires, which was a bit sad, but I'll head back before we leave :) 

 I've been trying to remember to think less about what I'm leaving behind when I move away to something new and focus on the new adventure that lies before me. I finally had some friends when we left Auckland, and it was really sad to leave them behind after I'd spent so much time starting to create a friend base there. But now I think of all the amazing people I've met and experiences I've had here, and of course I'm so glad I didn't stay in Auckland! Same with all the friends and family I left in Eugene. 

One of the things I was really proud of when I left Auckland was finally getting decent at the espresso machine at work before I left. There was an espresso machine with a milk foamer in the neuroscience lab I worked in right before I left the states but I never figured out what to do with it even after having it explained to me. And then here, Kiwis are really obsessed with good espresso. Particularly the 'flat white' which is basically a cappuccino without the chocolate powder. Ever restaurant has an espresso machine. You couldn't really get away with having a restaurant that just had drip coffee I don't think. Even at Starbucks in the take away cups they do coffee art. And all the McDonalds have McCafe, which has full blown fancy Italian coffe machines in it. (My Italian friend Giulia sayas their cappuccinos are some of the better ones in NZ) So anyway learning how to use the espresso machine (particularly foaming milk properly) was a part of my job. And by the end I made coffees that looked like this! No art yet but I'll get there!

So we spent an arm and a leg shipping a big box back to the US (half of it stuff we shipped to ourselves here and barely used which was kind of a bummer but I think we learned a lot, and I'm happy to be living life as a backpacker again - it's a lot more fun! ) and we headed off down to Hastings/Napier where we heard there were apple picking jobs. It was me, Dar, 2 full backpacks, and a side bag all on our little 250cc adventure bike. We got about 15 kilometers down the motorway, and Dar pulled over because it was WAY too dangerous. So, we moved some stuff around, I found myself a cardboard sign, wrote "Hamilton or South" on it, stuck my thumb out and waited for a ride. I'd heard over and over from people that they'd had nothing but positive experiences hitchhiking, and now I"m one of them. I waited no more than 30 minutes, it took me 3 rides to get down to Hamilton from Auckland, and after spending the night there in a hostel with Dar, I waited only 20 minutes or so and my frist ride out of Hamilton was all the way to Hastings :D Really cool and interested people you meet hitchhiking. It's nice too here that it's perfectly legal too.

We spent way more time than we expected in Hastings looking for work, apple picking had been delayed quite a bit. So we went to the beach and had some fun here.

Then we got a call from the hostel owner one day (she helps people staying at t hostel find work)  And she had a job on a vineyard for us! We clipped up netting to keep birds out of the grapes. I don't think I have ever or will ever handle so many bread clips in the rest of my life as I did that week and a half!

 A really beautiful place to work!

Did I mention there is a huge hole in the ozone layer that moves over NZ sometimes? Its a serious problem here. NZ is the number one place for skin cancer, you can burn in seriously 5 minutes. It's crazy. I've gotten burned SO many times here. Even the bird nets for the grapes were specially made for the UV here.

We worked our awesome vineyard job for a week and a half, so we finally have a bit of money now! Woo hoo! We  even got to live in the guest house of the vineyard for awhile, which was really nice. I crashed the quad bike from the vineyard into a row at about 30mph, and am a bit bruised up, but all good, And Dar did his interview for the masters program on Friday so we are crossing our fingers on that one!

Today we moved into a new house, with the lady who owns it, her boyfriend and 10 year old son. There are chickens, a big fat cat, a dog, and a giant talking cockatoo of which videos will surely be posted. Tomorrow we start apple picking!

And today we didn't have work so we tried on some hats. And dar bought a rainbow luggage lock which he is wearing as a belt.

 

 

Bonus picture! The phone plugs here are super weird. They look exactly like the connectors for the Lab Pros for data collection we used in the Physics labs at UO

And now for a special edition of being close to Asia so there are tons of things with really funny English on them.

Make up your dreams! Intellectual Development! Superior materials. More new items available. To rank first among similar products.

USA Royal dollar playing cards.

NEW!

The fArm Exploiter!

With Authentic Working Functions!

Not sure what Sodor Fuel is...

This is the picture from a connect 4 box.

OWNING it is you Best Choice!!

This showed up on reddit a couple weeks ago.

Motor looks handsome.