Bawley Point - WWOOF Job Australia

We couldn't have hoped for a better WWOOFing experience than we got in the small town of Bawley Point, NSW. It was a genuine exchange where we worked 4 hours a day and received a wonderful place to live and we were welcomed in as family members with some really wonderful
people...

Our Host Family

Zora and Scott are a married couple and they have an adorable 5 year old daughter, Bella, a little dog Dingo, a horse Pebbles, and two pet mice Rosie and Susie. From the minute we arrived we knew we were lucky, Zora picked us up from the bus stop and she and Scott welcomed us into their home and we got to know each other over tea. They have travelled the world and shared many incredible experiences and photos with us (including living on a deserted island in Indonesia and trekking in Nepal). Scott is a doctor and he and Zora (who is also a Naturopath and Yoga Instructor) opened up the town's family practice at the front of their property. They were incredibly accommodating and we really enjoyed joining them every night for delicious family dinners including BBQ Lamb, Indian Chicken, Prawn Stir fry, Salmon, and Bacon and Mushroom Risotto.

The Property

The family lives in an amazing furnished yurt at the top of a hill overlooking a peninsula. From the living room, you can see several surf beaches which suited Scott well (he considers himself a surfer first and doctor second). They have perfected living simply and living well at the same time, and we learned a lot about what we want in our future home. Their lot is 100 acres of native bush, full of wildlife. The terrain varies from rocky ridges to lush rainforest. One of Scott's surfer buddies, Vince, also lives on the property and takes care of the vegetable and fruit gardens (while he is not teaching Special Ed). Our cottage which
we called our Treehouse, is the most creative guest house I've ever seen. It started out as a shipping container, and was a converted into a beautiful cottage with windows on all sides surrounded by gum trees. Several mornings we woke up to wallabies hopping around nearby. How cool is that!?

Our Jobs

Often when they were not working, Scott, Zora and Bella joined us for our jobs and our encouraged tea breaks. The jobs included: clearing some brush with a nice view for a picnic area and fire pit, transplanting strawberry plants with Vince, removing bush-fire hazardous understory near the house, chopping firewood, maintaining the herb garden, and some weeding of tick-bushes and "farmer's friends."  

When We Weren't Working

One of the best parts of this experience was how much we were able to really experience the beautiful surroundings, and feel like we got to live their day-to-day Australian life. On the first day, we went for a swim with the whole family and built sand turtles with Bella, then came home and had a congo drum concert in the living room. The second day, Scott offered to take Mike and I out for a surf lesson, which of course we accepted. It was REALLY fun, he let us borrow two surf boards and wetsuits and drove around to a couple beaches to find the perfect waves. He gave us a lesson on the sand, then came out with us and helped push us off into the good waves. Mike stood up on the board for a second, and I got to my knees before having a couple wipeouts. While we were out in the waves, we saw something big moving, and Scott said, "It's a stingray! Want to surf over it?" I was nervous because it was about 4 feet across and had a really long stinger (made the ones we saw in NZ look like babies). But, we trusted Scott and paddled right on top of it from the safety of our boards, it was really amazing. Our second surf trip ended quickly when Mike took a big spill and came up with a broken board, oops (luckily, Scott was understanding).

Zora and Bella took us for a guided tour through the property, and we learned all about the native plants (some of which were so old they were dinosaur snacks, and a massive 400 year old spotted gum tree). We also grabbed a net and participated in several Bug Safaris, Bella's favorite activity. We caught several baby dragon lizards, skinks, grasshoppers, stickbugs, and praying mantis. Bella built lovely habitats for them, and always released them back to there home within 24 hours. She was a great guide, and made sure we didn't catch any of the poisonous snakes, spiders, or ants. However, we did manage to get the true Australian experience when Mike got a tick bite, I got a leech bite, and Mike squashed a venomous white tip spider in our cottage.

They even provided two bicycles and Zora gave us a map of the best places to go. We took a couple rides to local Shell Beach and Pretty Beach. Pretty Beach was my favorite, because it was full of wild kangaroos and wallabies with lots of babies. They weren't afraid of us, so we were able to bike along the forest trails and watch them hop along and watch us from only a couple feet away.

Bella and I played school and pirate legos and made some books. Mike learned how to play backgammon and even beat Scott on our last evening. Zora gave us some bird feed one night to hand feed the birds from the yurt. It was such a blast to feed the bright lorikeets and king parrot. Our last evening, Scott dropped us off at our bus-stop and we took an overnight 12 hour bus ride to Melbourne (not something I hope to do again, but a worthy backpacker experience). We were sad to leave our cottage and new friends, but excited for the next part of our trip. We feel incredibly blessed to have had this experience, and hope that we'll get to see them again someday!

Hunter Valley Vineyards

Mike and I have never been and never plan to become wine connoisseurs, but we had heard so many great things about Australia's Hunter Valley vineyards that we decided to give it a go. We took a loop from Sydney to the Blue Mountains, to Hunter Valley, and stopped at the
Australian Reptile park on the way...

Australian Reptile Park

A little misleading name for a park that has more mammals than reptiles, but I'm not complaining. We spent the majority of our time here in the central park area, where kangaroos, wallabies and emus roam freely. We also managed to catch a reptile show featuring giant snakes and crocodiles. After the show, we volunteered to hold a massive python and got a photo taken with it. The wildlife expert told us to "just relax" as he wrapped the 15 foot snake around our shoulders. I got to hold it's head and Mike held most of the body. He was really heavy and the skin was cold to the touch, but we were strangely comfortable and smiled for our picture just fine. Afterwards, we took a stroll through the park and got to meet and pet Wonder the wombat and pet lots of marsupials.

Hunter Valley YHA

We decided to stay at the YHA Hostel in the Hunter Valley, which had it's own little vineyard, pool, and woodfire pizza oven. It was a small hostel, and the majority of the residents were grape-pickers who had to get up around 4 am to start working in the vineyards. Our room was cozy and the man at the front desk was very helpful and arranged a tour company to pick
us up at 9 am the following morning.

Our Tour

I was actually really nervous sitting on the bus on the way to the first winery, but quickly realized we were in good company after meeting our bus driver and fellow wine tasters. No one in the group knew much about wine, it was a young couple from Sydney, and a group of 5 fun loving Canadians, and a mother and daughter from China who actually didn't drink wine
and spent the majority of the day touring the botanic gardens. Our jolly tour guide, Brian was incredible passionate about getting us a full experience of everything the valley had to offer - and explained over the intercom what the day would entail, to our surprise, we were in for full day adventure full of tasting a lot more than wine. We got to sample everything the Hunter Valley had to offer: wine, beer, cheese, olives, olive oils, spreads, gelato, fudge, lollies (candy), and as if that weren't enough, we would end the day sampling some fun "party liquors." We also got to see a lot more then vineyards, Brian took us to a field of wild kangaroos, a botanical garden, a village of shops, and also the set of "A Farmer Wants a Wife," an Australian version of The Bachelor.

Wine Tasting

The first stop on the tour was Kevin Sobels' Wines and we couldn't have asked for a better Wine 101 teacher, Mandy, who had a lovely assistant Alfie (a big slobbery St Bernard). She gave us a list of 15 wines we would be tasting (at 9:30 AM), and a pencil and paper to take notes. I used a check-plus/check-minus system to rate the different kinds, while Mike
resorted to a smiley face/frowny face system (there were also several "neutral" faces, and his favorite selection had a smiley face and curly hair). It was really fun and she taught us all about why people swirl the wine and how to properly train your palate and experience
the different aromas haha. After this, we toured 2 more wineries (Aubrey Wilkinson and Ivan Hoe Vineyards) and tasted about 40 different wines.

Everything Tasting

The Hunter Valley also grows lots of olives, and we got to try garlic ones, kalamata herbed ones, and spicy ones. There were bags of bread for sale for 50 cents, which you could use to sample aisles of different olive oils, pestos, and chili sauces. Later, we got to try lollies in a British Lollie shop, and homemade fudge, gelato, and several kinds of cheese.
Mike had the beer sampler at the Blue Tongue brewery, 8 beers, but I guess we are beer snobs because to us they all tasted like Bud Light (we miss you Boundary Bay!). After all of this we were really full and tuckered out, but we did have just enough energy for the last stop of the day, The Golden Grape. Where we tried some really creative drinks: Golden Tango Cream ("love in a bottle"), Coffee and Butterscotch Liqueur, and Coolaya (strawberry sparkling "breakfast wine"). Before we all passed out, our group all took a "team-building shot" of the grand finale drink, Dragons Breath (Butterscotch Liqueur with Chili and Rosemary), whew! Luckily, Brian dropped everyone off at there doorstop and we fell asleep after a great day of touring the Hunter Valley! We're still not planning to become wine snobs, but it was fun to try it for a day :)

Blue Mountain Bushwalk

Having spent a wonderful week exploring Sydney we made our way back to the wilderness. Shortly after watching the Packers win on superbowl "Monday" (somehow that felt stranger than celebrating Christmas a day early) we took a bus into town, rented a car, and headed east for the Blue Mountains.

The Blue Mountains get their name due to a haze that often surrounds them giving them a "blue" appearance. They only rise to about 3500 feet (slightly higher than the summit of Snoqualmie Pass) and are more reminiscent of canyons and rock formations than what we consider as mountains back home. However this doesn't mean they aren't worthy of exploration.

We stayed in a nice little town called Katoomba. The hostel we stayed at was one of the nicest so far and within walking distance to the trailhead. 

After a quick breakfast Tuesday morning we packed a lunch and hit the trail. We decided on a four hour loop hike that would take us along the edge of cliffs, down a 900 step stairway, around the Three Sisters (a series of three rock spires), past Katoomba Falls, and over to a tourist attraction called Scenic World. 

We started off walking along the cliffs edge and made our way to Echo Point lookout which featured our first view of the Three Sisters, the iconic rock formation of the Blue Mountains. Echo Point is also a main tour bus stop and sure enough was quite crowded. We lost the crowd pretty fast when we descended the Giant Stairway, 900 steep steps down from the lookout to the valley floor. From here we hiked through brush and trees toward Katoomba Falls. With less people and more trees we managed to spot a kookaburra, cockatoo, blue tongue lizard, and a bird unknown to us that looked like an all black peacock. We had lunch at the falls and then made our way to Scenic World.

We didn't exactly know what to expect from Scenic World and were surprised by a half hour boardwalk through the rain forest featuring relics from the coal mining era of the region. Luckily, Scenic World operates both a cable car and railway to trolley their visitors back and forth. For a small fee we were able to take the world's steepest railway (52 degrees!) up out of the brush and walk back to our hostel. Pretty darn good day.

Sydney

We've arrived in Sydney, Australia! For the first week of our OZ trip, we were incredibly lucky and got to stay at our friends Jessica and Chris's apartment in Bondi Beach. We were welcomed with a nice sign on the window, Tim Tams cookies, and a 6 pack of Aussie beers. They cooked up some delicious spicy chicken burgers our first night. We were able to see quite a bit of the city, and had a great first week...

Bondi Beach: Probably one of the most famous beaches in the world, and it's not hard to see why. Its got gorgeous sand, water, surfers, lifeguards, and hundreds of people laying out to get a tan. The apartment is literally across the street, so it was fun to head to the beach as well as people watch from the window. The lifeguards are also famous, and are featured often on the TV show Bondi Rescue. We saw the film crew and a rescue from the beach. The beach time was great, although it was 108 degrees so we spent more time in the water than on the sand. We also spent some time on a rooftop pool overlooking the bay, went to several Bondi shops, cafes, and bars, and a really good Tapas resteraunt called Mojos.

Bondi to Coogee Coastal Walk: Mike and I spent one day making the trek along the coast through several beachs, and went snorkeling at one too. There are so many beautiful cliffs, bays, clear water, and parks for miles.

Downtown Sydney: We explored Circular Quay, the famous spot that holds Sydney's Opera house, the bridge, and ferry terminal. We took a ferry ride and also walked to the opera house. Pretty cool to see in person! We also spent a night out on the town and got to see another old friend from WWU - Laura who also moved to OZ and her boyfriend Grant. Great to see some familiar faces and remember the fun times we all had in college. Mike and I spent a day exploring the botanic gardens, palace, and Hyde Park. It was also really neat to go see the Munich Re building, which is the parent company of Sterling where I worked in B-ham.

The Rocks Market by Moonlight: The Rocks is a district in Sydney that has a really nice night market on summer weekends. We spent an evening eating some really good food - for Ray and I: chicken kebabs and pork gyozas, and for Mike: a kangaroo sausage. Then, we went over to an outdoor stage and watched a great guitarist and live band called Tails in Space.

Darling Harbour: We met Jess and Chris after work for some beers one day at a nice pub on the water, and walked around the harbour. This is where there is Wildlife World, the Aquarium, and lots of shops and resteraunts. Had a nice chat with them and then returned to the apt for some spicy peri-peri chicken pizza, (delicious!) and watched Bondi Rescue.

Wildlife: There is wildlife all over Australia, and we've already seen quite a bit. In the park at night, we've seen lots of cute possums (not like the ones at home), and some mice and rats. We also saw hundreds of wild bats (they are called flying foxes here). Lots of fish swimming in the beachs, but no sharks or jellyfish thank goodness. We spent a day at the Wildlife World - and saw the biggest croc in the world, most dangerous spider in the world, and most venomous snake in the world. We got lucky and were picked to hand feed some bright birds. Saw lots of kangaroos and wallabies, And of course the highlight for me, The Koala Sanctuary! Here, we got to see an 8 month old baby koala, and the best part was getting to pet a darling little guy up in a eucalyptus tree - so cool!

Chinese New Year: Sydney's Chinatown hosts the biggest Chinese New Year celebration outside of Asia. We had a great time celebrating with a bright and festive parade full of dragons, floats for the year of the rabbit, fire dancers,  and musicians. They also handed out red rabbit masks and light up noise makers to the crowd. After the parade we had dinner in Chinatown (sweet chili shrimp and vegetable soup and flame grilled pork). Then, we made our way over to Darling Harbor to see an elaborate firework display.

Today we're watching the superbowl, which doesn't quite feel right since it is Monday, and they are showing standard Australian commercials instead of the superbowl ones. It's been a great first week, and we're looking forward to exploring outside of Sydney next week and then heading to our new WWOOF job after that. Hope all is well at home!

If you would like to see pictures from Sydney, go to:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2301508&id=25900500&l=6668d20cf4

Sweet As Bro (Quirks of the Kiwi)

As our great New Zealand journey comes to an end, we would like to take a moment to remember the Zorb, hokey pokey ice cream, and all the other little quirks that make the kiwi people unique.

"Sweet As" - a confirmation that one hears and agrees with their mate. Often followed by "bro." They love this phrase here so much that it is on t-shirts, postcards, and keychains. 
Example: "that river rafting trip was sweet as!"

Variations: Somewhere down the line people also took the idea and replaced "sweet" with alternative adjectives. For example, I heard a guy say to his friend, "man I accidentally ran into that girl. I didn't mean to, but I felt mean as!" And lady say to her daughter opening a kids meal, "oh I bet you are happy as!" At first this phrase drove me nuts with anticipation ("my inner dialogue was dying to know, "happy as a clam? Sweet as pie? Please finish your statement!") but I soon learned to embrace it which is a good thing, because it really is kiwi as. 

"Good On You:" well done, a pat on the back. Similar to the US phrase "good for you" but used a lot more frequently and more enthusiastically. We heard it pretty often after telling people about our itinerary. "oh! That is the best thing you could do with your life right now! Good on you mates!"

Jandle: flip flop

Choice: the best. "Oh man, the burgers at Fergburger are choice!"

Bogens: punk teenage boys with neon shirts and terrible mullets. The more extreme the mullet/rat tail/scraggly braid, the more extreme the attitude. We made the mistake of staying at a campground full of them and didn't sleep due to the all night screaming, drinking, and smoking. We even witnessed a group of bogens get escorted out by police, and they were punks the whole time chanting, "oh I am so tough because I am a cop with a badge and I get paid to ruin teenagers night..." 

"Aw Yeah:" an exclamation used by bogens, usually yelled across large distances. I think It's sort of like a platonic mating call to see if others of their kind are near by. At the campground you could hear it yelled back and forth from every direction at all hours. 

Brekkie: breakfast. Actually, it's pretty common here to abbreviate words and add an "ie." See if you can figure these out:
 "ouch! Time to get out the mozzie spray." 
"it gets pretty bright in the mandarin orchard, so don't forget your sunnies!"

Hokey Pokey: NZ's national ice cream flavor. It is vanilla with little toffee pieces and caramel swirl.

Lamb: you probably know they eat a lot of lamb, but did you know that it is used in a variety of other foods as well? We tried lamb burger, minted lamb potato chips, lamb and cheese pie, and canned lamb stew. I was reading a trashy celebrity gossip magazine, and they had an article about how Prince William and Kate should serve lamb at their wedding.

Possums: usually kiwis are very green and into saving the planet, but not when it comes to possums. The possums here are really cute and soft, but also overpopulated and taking over some areas. As a method of control, there are traps set all over the forests and beaches, and the government even began dropping the poisonous substance 1080 in the mountains. Most gift shops sell possum gloves and rugs.  Our Milford Sound bus driver made an announcement over the speaker encouraging everyone to try to run over possums while driving. 

Tim Tams: a delicious little cookie found in NZ and Australia. It's layers of fudge and chocolate biscuit covered in chocolate.

Spare Change: there is no such thing as  a penny or nickel. They round too the nearest .10. The bills begin at $5 ($1 and $2 are coins). Returning change took some getting used to while selling produce by the kg at the Wilderland shop. 

Extreme Adventures: I anticipated the bungee jumping and skydiving, but couldn't have dreamed of the schweeb or the zorb. There is a market for adventure activities and the kiwis capitalize on that with all sorts of creative ideas:
Zorb - the human hamster ball. A 10 foot tall inflatable ball that 1 or 2 people can sit inside and be rolled down a hill. Or if you feel extra extreme you can Zorb through water.
Freefall extreme -   Want look like you went skydiving without spending the money to actually jump out of a plane? You can pay to put on the suit and goggles and go into a "zero gravity" room where you air jets suspend you several feet in the air. 
Schweeb -  It's part bicycle, part rollercoaster, part subway. Peddle around on Human powered little capsules suspended on a rail way. Peddle as fast as you can and even race your friends.

 

Wilderland Farm

We have spent the last two weeks living at Wilderland Farm on the Coromandel Peninsula. It was a legitimate Wwoof (willing workers on organic farms) job, and it was eye-opening, exhausting, and incredibly rewarding. We were very out of our comfort zone and in the minority in many ways, which led to some learning experiences that otherwise wouldn't have been possible. We are thankful for the experience, and wouldn't change a thing. I couldn't possibly sum everything up in one blog, but here goes nothing....

The Property

Wilderland was created in 1964, and has transformed from a full on hippie commune to a charitable trust aimed at teaching organic farming and sustainable living to visitors and students. 

The property itself is over 150 acres of lush tropical forests, orchards, and gardens interspersed with very basic hand built houses, workshops, and a communal kitchen area. The entire place is self sufficient, the water comes from rain barrels and filtered river water, the toilets are compostable and there is just one shared shower that is heated by a small wood stove (that also serves as the oven and stove for cooking). 
The community building contains a big dining table, library full of books people have left, and a kitchen full of organic oats, rice, and grains. They even grind their own flour from wheat grown on the farm. The entire property overlooks  a large estuary and there are nice views of the town across the bay.

Also on the property, there are bee hives for making honey. The structures that people live in vary from large houses, tents, and old buses to a backpacker style dorm and a large teepee. Outside, there is a large woodshed and workshop, and a playground, rope swing, and trampoline.  Trails run all over and it is easy to explore and get lost. There are not any livestock, it is a completely vegetarian farm. There were two nice dogs, a family of chickens, and a wandering duck who is often being scolded for munching on crops in the salad garden. Since life is in the bush - there are also a few pests, Mosquitos, ants, sandfleas, and a family of rats. Other than the annoying bug bites you sort of forget they are there and they don't really interfere.

Our Jobs

One of the benefits of choosing such a large farm is that we got to participate in a wide variety of projects. Every morning (except Sundays) we all meet at 8:00 for a meeting to go over what tasks need to be done and you choose where you would like to work. All the workers set off for the jobs until the bells are rung around 1:30 (lunchtime). The work was challenging and strenuous at times, but always rewarding and interesting. 
The first day I harvested potatoes and onions in the garden, and built a compost pile using the weeds that were left. The hardest part was carrying the crates of potatoes up the hill to the house in the hot sun. Mike spent day 1 chopping a huge pile of firewood.

I really enjoyed putting on a picking bag (like a kangaroo pouch), and climbing up trees and ladders in the orchards to harvest plums, mandarins, tangelo, uglifruit, and avocado. We learned how to prune citrus trees. In the gardens, we built bamboo trellises for tomatoes and capsicum (peppers). We learned how to pick cabbage, silverbeet, sweet corn, and onions. Mike also tested his lumberjack skills and spent a day chopping down trees.
Some of the projects were maintenance  and construction related. We built a patio for one of the houses, a roundhouse structure, and a graywater system (a giant tub we filled with levels of rocks and a tubes and pipes for filtering system, we planted specific plant species to create a natural water filtration system for the sink where people wash their hands). Saturdays were maintenance days, I cleaned and organized the kids play area and the used clothing area (where people can take and leave used clothes). Mike mowed the lawn and did some weed whacking.

Wilderland also has a roadside shop where they sell honey, produce, tea, candles, postcards, jams, chutney, and lotions (all made at the farm). We each worked a couple shifts there and enjoyed chatting with the locals and tourists who stopped by.
One day at the shop I got asked so many questions about the manuka honey, which is well known for having medicinal qualities. That night I got to thinking about how much tourists like to try new local products and understand each one. NZ has an entire industry based around sampling wine and cheese on tours. I wrote down an idea and proposed it the next morning at our meeting, it went over well and I got to create four hand painted honey signs for the shop. I researched the types sold, and made informative signs about the color, quality, origin, taste, and uses for each one. I had a great time scrounging for wood scraps, got some help with the power tools, and sanded them into nice signs that I painted designs on with my buddy Fanelie from France. 

For our last day, Mike and I went with   another resident, Josh, and spent the day working at Wilderland's booth at the local farmer's market in Whitianga. It was pretty neat to see the full circle - packaging and selling the fruit that we had been up in the trees collecting the day earlier. Mike and I think it would be pretty neat to have our own booth in a farmers market someday.

The Food

Each day after working in the morning, we all gathered around for a big vegetarian (usually vegan) feast. The entire place is vegetarian. We were allowed to eat unlimited fruit, vegetables, and grains from the farm. The kitchen was loaded with spices, supplies, and food. We cook at home all the time, but usually dinner is based around meat. We actually struggled to come up with something the first night, and stood around thinking about what we could do with a zucchini without being too obvious that we were clueless. A nice resident noticed we looked embarrassed and offered us a big leftover salad :) Eventually we figured out plenty of options and had a good laugh about how surprisingly delicious the meals were with some other carnivores.  The lunches were giant bowls of colorful salads, curries, soups, and usually a dessert made with plums or apples. Everyday it looked like a Thanksgiving family dinner. I didn't think it would be possible, but I did manage to get sick of eating fresh plums, mandarins, and avocados.

The People

Throughout our stay, we met about 50 people. Some people came to visit for a day, most for a week or two, and some feel so at home that they find an old bus or build a teepee and move in. Seriously. Every person was so fascinating. There were several families with kids and babies too. It's not every day you can share an "office" with such a diverse crowd. We worked, lived with, and ate daily with people from: France, Israel, Japan, Belgium, NZ, England, Germany, the Yukon Territory, Denver, Pennsylvania, Norway, Spain, and even a guy who lived three blocks from where Mike grew up in Seattle. The lives, backgrounds and occupations were equally as diverse. Some memorable ones included: teacher, farmer, economics student, military sergeant, community  planner, wedding officiant, medical student, Doctors without borders volunteer in Africa, aspiring filmmaker, chef, sculptor, gypsy, surfer, social worker, musician, artist, marine biologist, bar owner, and a circus clown with ten foot stilts. As you can imagine, we had some lively and intriguing conversations over lunch and games of cards.

Free Time

In the afternoons and on Sundays, we were free to do whatever we liked. Since the property was so big, we usually stayed there and walked to the estuary to swim, kayak, and even have a mud bath. We were usually pretty tired from working in the morning, so often we sat under an avocado tree and read. Some nights we hung out with co workers and played games, played music (one guy was very talented at playing his hand made didjerido), and heard some great stories from fascinating lives.

One Saturday, we decided to camp for a night in Hahei. We went with two friends we had met at Wilderland: Karmi and Fanelie. Karmi is a student in Ohio studying biology who is really into three towed slothes. Fanelie is from France, and came to NZ to learn English. She was a fast learner and we had a lot of fun joking around ( even though she claims that American English sounds like there is a potato in your mouth). The four of us took off in the afternoon, picked up some food for a BBQ, booked a campsite, and saw some amazing beaches:

Hot Water Beach - a beach known for the natural heating of lava rock below the surface, so at low tide hundreds of people bring shovels and build temporary natural hot tubs. We got the perfect night, low tide was at 10 pm, so around 9 we started digging. It took us about an hour to dig a tub big enough for four. Once we did, it was so relaxing to sit in the ocean at night looking at the moon and stars while our tub heated all of the new waves that snuck in.

Gemstone Bay - we rented snorkels and followed a "snorkel trail." Throughout the cove, they have floating signs informing you about the fish below. We swam from one sign to the next and saw quite a few fish and urchins. The following week, the front page of the local paper featured a picture of the same bay, where an unusual sighting had occurred: a 14 foot great white shark! Yikes, glad I didn't see that through that little mask...

Stingray Bay - in my opinion, the most beautiful beach in NZ so far. Bright white sand, clear teal water, and it was protected by large cliffs on both sides. And, the best part was that it lived up to it's name - we saw several black stingrays swimming! They are really beautiful to watch, they just glide along the bottom of the sand. 

Cathedral Cove - one of the icons of the north island, a 40 foot cave that opens up to gorgeous beaches on either side. It was really nice but also really crowded. We lounged around, jumped in the waves, and Mike swam out to a rock that people were jumping off of. The area was recently filmed as part of the set for the new Narnia movie. 

What's Next?

We are now back in Auckland, preparing for take-off to Australia! Thankfully, the flooding seems to have subsided both here and in Oz. Since we found wwoofing to be so rewarding, we decided to spend part of our time in Australia doing another job. I sent some emails and found a good match, we will be living with a lovely young family in a cottage on 100 acres of eucalyptus, kangaroos, and wallabies. We are also looking forward to having fun with some familiar friends, exploring Sydney, and maybe getting a chance to see the Great Barrier Reef! We will write again soon.
 Love, Megan and Mike

The Spectacular South Island of New Zealand

Happy 2011! It's been an eventful one for us so far as we continued our drive around the South Island, and now we are working our way back North to start our next Wwoofing job. NZ's south island is full of natural beauty, long windy roads, and clear blue lakes and rivers. We managed to visit the following:
Arrowtown - A small town know for it's gold. It's a cute little town with an old western feel. We went for a riverside walk, watched kids panning for gold, and were amazed by the glittering river and rocks that were all over the place.

Queenstown - We decided to spend New Year's Eve in Queenstown, "The Adventure Capital of the World." It was one of our favorite citys so far, a hopping city and boardwalk on a clear lake surrounded by mountains. It had the scenery and atmosphere of Whistler, with a little bit of Vegas mixed in (just replace casinos with skydiving and bungy jumping). We had hoped to either skydive or bungy jump, but were put off by the extremely high prices. We decided that since we have both of these activities close to home, we could stand to wait until we have a steady income again and postpone them. Instead, we signed up for something we couldn't do at home, the Shotover River jet-boat ride. Jet-Boats are all over NZ, but this one looked like the most exciting. You sit in a boat with about 10 people, buckled in and holding on tight as you zip up and down a river at 50 mph. The boats are incredible, they can do 360 spins and cruise in 8 cm of water, all while going up a river darting through steep canyons. Incredible experience, we're glad it's the one we chose.
For New Years Eve, we decided to hit the world famous burger joint - Fergburger. We enjoyed giant loaded burgers and fries, definately worth the long line that wrapped around the building. After dinner, we made our way down to the nights events. The city of Queenstown puts on a pretty elaborate New Years festival that included two live bands (Sequin Girls and a rock cover band), a big stage with a dj and dance party, and a nice firework display on the lake. On New Years day we explored the town on foot, checking out the lawn bowling course, rose garden, and frisbee golf course. We have been keeping in touch with a nice couple we met in Fiji, Rob and Mel from England, and were able to meet up with them at Monty's pub for Nachos and drinks. It was so nice to see some familiar faces, and compare stories and adventures from our travels. We hope to meet up with them again soon.

Milford Sound - Milford is one of the top activities for NZ tourists, with its glacier valleys, dark blue waters, and dramatic peaks. It's full of dolphins, seals, and penguins, and also know for giant waterfalls. We chose to take a bus to the sound, because it's a five hour trip on pretty treachorous roads. This turned out to be a great idea, because our guide was wonderful and gave us so much information and stopped at many photo-spots that we would have missed. Unfortunatly, it was raining so we couldn't get any of the classic Milford reflection photos, but we did have a great time on the scenic cruise. The boats take you right under the waterfalls, it was thrilling to stand so close to such a magnificant force. We also saw a seal family laying out on some rocks, and took a trip to the underwater observatory.

Underwater Observatory - The observatory is a massive fiber glass cylinder that was built down into Milford Sound. There is a spiral stair case taking you to a viewing platform of the coral and sea life below. It was like scuba diving without actually getting in the water. One guy we met on our bus, Troy from Zimbabwe was very intent on seeing a shark. I was joking that we should move away from the big coral we were near because it didn't seem like a good shark hang-out. Just as I finished my sentence, Mike said, "There's one!" Sure enough, a shark darted right by the window. It wasn't a huge one, but still, pretty cool to see. On our bus ride back, our driver played some great theme songs (Titanic songs with commentary for our boat ride, TLC's Waterfalls while we drove by waterfalls...) For the last couple hours, he put on "The Bucket List" movie, we'd seen it before but it's a great flick that brought tears to my eyes and made us appreciate even more what we are doing.

Mt. Cook - After Milford Sound, we drove up another glacier valley to NZ's biggest mountain, Mt. Cook. We had planned for a long hike up the valley to see mountain, and were feeling really lucky because we had just missed a storm the day before. Soon we realized we weren't as lucky as we hoped, because the storm meant high rivers on the trail that were flooding over the pathway. We attempted to wade for a bit and scramble up nearby rocks, but got frustrated with the freezing glacier water and all of the sticker bushes, so we decided to head back and find a differant hike. We went to a drier area and hiked to Lake Tasman instead, which was so beautiful I'm glad we had the detour. Lake Tasman itself is very muddy, but it is at the base of a mountain, and in the summer, pieces of glacier break off and turn into bright blue floating ice-bergs. When we got to the summit, we were greeted by an evening sun, ice-berg filled lake, and a vibrant rainbow framing it all. It was the most breathtaking scene.

AJ Hacket Bungy Center - We visited the home of the world's first commercial bungy jump, and joined the viewing platform to watch people jump off of the bridge over a river. It is really fun to watch people ages 10-96 from all over the world take such a big risk and look so elated afterward. We watched a movie about the history of bungy, and found the story of AJ Hacket fascinating. He and a friend engineered their first bungy and tested it off buildings, planes, and even snuck onto the Eifel Tower. We got to hold the actual cord, which looks much different than I expected, not like the bungy cords you use to hold things down in the back of a truck at all, but more like hundreds of tiny rubber bands intertwined. A little like the inside of a golf ball. Like I mentioned, bungy jumping was not in the cards due to the cost, but we're hoping to plan a summer weekend to Whistler with friends and try it there... anyone interested? :)

Kaikoura - This was our last stop on the south island, it is one of the only places in the world you can watch for grey whales, orcas, sperm whales, and blue whales from the shore. It is also home to several fur seal colonys, one of which you can walk right next to them. It smelled terrible and a lot of people were getting much closer then we felt comfortable, but it was one of those "I can't believe we're doing this" moments. We also went for a hike along the Peninsula Track, which climbs over limestone cliffs overlooking the seal colonies, bird colonies, and whale watching boats below. It was one of my favorite trails in the world, even though we weren't lucky enough to see a whale. We did see hundreds of seals and birds of all kinds, including gulls, oyster catchers, albatross, and a seagull colony. I've never felt threatened by gulls before, but when the track went near a colony of hundreds of loud nesting seagulls we both felt nervous and walked a bit faster. Kaikoura means "Eat Crayfish," and they are known for having the best so we planned to have a beachside bbq until we saw that the cheapest one was $65, and most were higher. We opted for some much cheaper scallops and mussles, and decided crayfish is something we'll have to try another day. We also found out some very sad news while in Kaikoura - someone had visited one of the seal colonies and clubbed 24 seals including some newborn pups. I can't comprehend that, especially after watching the pups play in the water all day, and I hope that whoever is responsible is caught soon.

From Kaikoura, we took a VERY early morning ferry ride back to the North Island, where we are now making our way back towards Auckland. We'll be working on the farm until a couple days before we take-off for our next stop, Sydney, Australia! In other news, we're incredibly happy to say our good friends from Seattle, Brian and Martha have purchased plane tickets to come join us Thailand, AND my English Teaching placement has been officially confirmed in Thailand :) Best wishes and we will write again soon!