Adventures by Bexie

I love the kitchen!

2010-09-02T02:29:00.001-07:00

While we wait for the winter weather to let up a bit, as the fruit trees and strawberries grow, perhaps you would like an evening tour of my kitchen?

check out my shared blog Guerilla Pickles... (with Jake, the alphabetic pickler)

Winter in Tuateawa

2010-07-22T18:23:00.000-07:00

This winter has been a mix of wind and rain, lovely sunny days and cold, clear nights. While we tuck in early to warm up by the fireplace (it's dark by 6pm), we still have accomplished quite a bit with the help of some awesome volunteers: Cat, Mel, Dave, Nico and Jenn... Right now, as the rain pours down outside, I'd love to recap just some of the activities that have been keeping us busy...

CABINS!
You see the "s" there? We've got cabins. Not one, but three! There's a cabin for everyone: moms, nieces, friends.. Cabin 1 is jokingly called "Ninya's cabin" because it's near to the dog run, and I think Ninya might have the idea that it's for her... Cabin 2 will probably be called the Pohutakawa cabin, as it's under a Pohutakawa tree. And Cabin 3 is called the bathhouse cabin, because it was designed to be a bathhouse, but reworked to be a cabin..

Cabin 1: "Ninya's cabin" Dave and Nico working on the frame. Don't worry, Dave's a rock-climber..

Cabin two with a view

Hammer time!

Cabin 3: Currently known as the Bathhouse cabin

Cabin 2 again.. getting to the final touches

I'll post some more photos of the finished cabins soon...

TREES!
We've planted over 1,000 trees during the months of May, June and July. There are all kinds: acacias, eucalyptus, fruit trees including 100 feijoas and a few apples, passionfruit, etc...and NZ natives such as tarata (lemonwood), kauri, and more... The acacias are planted to improve conditions for future trees. They're hardy trees that will provide shelter and soil nutrition so that we can plant more natives and fruit trees between them in the future.

Acacia Pravisima

Feijoa

OTHER PROJECTS!
We've worked on a lot of little projects during the winter too. We're planting at least one new type of fruit or vege a week. This week Jon planted passionfruit, and we all worked on a strawberry planter, which we call the Strawberry Condo, made of a mussel buoy that washed ashore..

Baby strawberries from the Waihi weekend market

Jon made a base out of wood scraps leftover from the cabins. Then he cut windows with his chainsaw. There are 22 residents in the strawberry condo.. Jenn and I put in a french drain down the middle, which is a plastic tube with slots in it to improve drainage (kind of like an elevator for water to go down!). Then we filled it with mulch, soil and pine needles, planting in the baby strawberries level by level as we filled. There's even a penthouse for the Hiltons.

We've also made improvements to our worm bath (pics to come up soon).. It now is rat-proof, rain-proof, raised to waist level and easy to use. Everybody and everything is living in style in Tuateawa this winter!

And as I mentioned, at night we have fire and dogs to keep us warm until a new work day begins..

Seaweed!

2010-05-18T01:45:00.001-07:00

We're harvesting weed up here in the Coromandel. Seaweed, that is.. The oncoming winter weather has brought us storms.. specifically, Easterlies, which are delivering all kinds of nutritious seaweed to our beach. Trailer loads, in fact. We've spent many hours collecting the stuff in various conditions. Some mornings we drive to a nearby sandy beach, and then we cruise down the beach, throwing individual stalks into the trailer as we trot along. Other times, we go to our nearby rocky cove where there are hundreds of armfuls of it. Sometimes, we're a little late and the sea is starting to take it away again, so we have to grab it back from the receding waves. In any case, it's good stuff. And the dogs love it..

After our fruitful harvest, we have to dry the seaweed so it can be milled and made into seaweed tea fertilizer. So now our chicken run is often bedecked in weed. When it's wet, it shines a pretty green-gold in the morning dew.. after a day or a few, it turns into little black shrively things and that's when it's time to pack it up for milling. Unfortunately, the winter weather that I mentioned before is fickle as a pickle, and a hot sunny afternoon can turn into a downpour in moments, so sometimes we have to be patient with the skies and hope that our seaweed will eventually dry!

The seaweed tea takes months to ferment into fertilizing yumminess, but we are using the bits that we can't hang to dry right away. We have started two new worm farms with it (worms... I gotta tell you all about them someday. They're good guys, those worms!), we've made piles that will become homes for pumpkins and squash. We've spread it around our garden. We've mulched trees. We dug big pits and filled them with weed and grass and branches to slowly compost and one day feed avocado trees. We even nibble on it ourselves sometimes.

So that's seaweed. Stay tuned for upcoming blogs about worms! and feijoas!

Earthwise Valley -- Earth Oven

2010-04-11T16:53:00.001-07:00

I'm comfortable tackling a new project in the kitchen, or throwing chemicals at some paper in the darkroom, or deciphering a new knitting pattern.. but building is not my strong suit, if only for lack of experience. Building with anything... wood, bricks, metal.. I haven't been there and don't often go there. Nonetheless, I'm living in the valley now, in a country of DIYers, and it's time to learn to build!

As I'm most comfortable in the kitchen, I was put in charge of building our earth oven. An earth oven is made from mud, sand, mulch, and bricks. All the materials were found for free on the land. To prepare for our earth oven, Dave and the volunteers had to put together a stone plinth. It was also made with free materials. Yea!

Next step was making the bottom of our oven. We put a wooden pallet on our plinth for an even surface, and spread a thin layer of clay over the plinth to protect the wood from heat. This is not how i would recommend making an oven. I think next time we'll focus on the base as insulation. We used firebricks to make our hearth floor on top of the clay. Then we marked a circle for the oven and used a stick to measure the height and made a dome form out of sand.

We started the oven itself by making the sand dome which would become the oven interior when we'd dig it out later. It's a 70cm diameter and 40cm height. This will be big enough for a couple loaves of bread or one pizza tray.

Once our form was complete, we covered it with wet newspaper and had lunch. beware, the newspaper dries fast in the sun and blows away in the wind! Next time lunch will have to wait.

After lunch, we got our hands (and feet) dirty making the mix for the oven form. It was part clay, part sand. We mixed it on a tarp, using our feet mostly. I read that the recommended way of mixing was to do the twist, so we put on some appropriate music and did just that!

When we'd have a good mix, something that would stick together well, we made "muffins" (little round clay bricks) and began stacking them up around our sand form, kinda like building an igloo.

The first layer was about 7-10 cm thick. The second layer is for insulation and went on right after. It's the same thickness as the first layer, but made of clay slip (basically mud and water) and fiber (we used dried sticks and grasses). Our first bucket of clay was all gone, so we had to collect some from another location. It was a pretty pink hue!

The final layer is a thin layer of plaster. We used clay slip, sand and manure. There are rather troublesome cows that often invade the valley. Well, at least their shit isn't worthless! When the whole thing was finished, Jon ran down the road with a chainsaw to get us a door. It's made from a rata stump, which is a hardwood that should be able to handle the heat. Jon did a good job matching my requested door height, which is 25cm exactly and just wide enough for our pizza trays (36cm). Little John cut the door opening to match our door, and smoothed out the edges.

After it was finished, we let it wait about a week. The disadvantage of putting all three layer on at once is that it takes longer to dry out. Next time, I'd like to try putting the insulation and plaster on after the first layer has dried. After a week, we dug out the sand (actually, Dave dug out the sand) and started a fire in the oven to dry out the inside.

Our first fire didn't dry out the back of the oven, so we weren't able to bake in it. However, the second fire dried it all out and brought our oven to baking temperatures. The first products of the oven were two fine loaves of wholemeal bread, a couple kumara and an ear of corn. It lost heat fast though.

The third firing produced six pizzas (which were quickly devoured by eight hungry volunteers!) The oven seemed to hold its heat longer, though this time we left eh embers in it, pushed to the sides.

Check out Earthwise Valley's website

Earthwise Valley -- The volunteer house

2010-04-11T15:51:00.000-07:00

Summer is over! Instead of grieving over the dropping temperatures and lost hours of sunlight, I'm content to finally take a breath! I've been living for the last few months in Tuateawa at Earthwise Valley. I mentioned the valley and house in my Christmas blog post. Back then, Jon, Robin, Aron and I were setting the house up for the incoming volunteers. Well, now the volunteers have all left, after a 13 week program that was jam-packed with adventures and endeavors that I must now do my best to summarize.. I'll begin with the house.

Let's go back to January 15th. The beds are made and the bread is cooling on the counter top. The house is quiet. And then the van pulls up, Jon and Dave are back from Coromandel after picking up the volunteers and everything begins. From that point on, there are never less than 15 pairs of shoes by the door and the laundry line is always occupied. Welcome to group living!

Oh, but what a sweet group of folks made up the summer program! We had a few Americans, some English folk and a girl from Mexico. Every week a package would arrive with some sort of treat unavailable in New Zealand: s'mores ingredients from the States (graham crackers and marshmallows.. oh yes, they have "marshmallows" here, but they are nothing like the "real" thing), Valentina hot sauce and pulparindo candies from Mexico, matzohs at Passover, and everyone was happy to share!

For the first few days, I did the cooking with some help. Once the volunteers had gotten to know our kitchen, they were assigned to food teams. There were a lot of times when I wasn't around for a couple weeks, and I'd come back to stories of stumpy bread loaves as well as newly discovered kitchen talents. By the end of the three months, I believe that everyone could turn out a decent 1kg bread loaf, make a crumble with apples or blackberries or whatever fruit we could gather, and everyone had learned to love a kitchen full of basic ingredients like dried beans and grains. We ate our meals on the deck. Ah, the deck. It is my favorite feature of the house, with its view of bush and sea. There are pictures in my Christmas post, so have a look back at that to see the backdrop for our meals.

There were a lot of projects around the house during these months: composting toilets, building a spa bath, working on a greywater system, etc... I spent a lot of the time in the kitchen: making jams and jellies, pestos and sauces, breads (of course), vege burgers for the freezer, and pizzas in the earth oven (which deserves a blog post of its own!)

In the mornings or afternoons, I would try to get in some yoga time. I've had a lot of 7:30am sessions either alone or with a few others, and I've led longer sessions with the whole group. It was really great for me, as I love yoga and have spent so much time in classes with inspiring and life-changing teachers (namely Darcy Lyon and Stacey Rosenberg in San Francisco, but also including many others all around the world). Now, I am grateful to pass it on.

In the evenings, the group would often play a game, bake brownies and eat crumble, or watch a movie. We also had some bonfires, though most of the bonfires occurred during our camping trips. Sometimes I would retire to my bed or even go down to a tent in the valley to read and catch up on sleep.

Here's a link to the website for Earthwise Valley and some of the other volunteers' blogs. They were much better about posting than me =)

Earthwise Valley's website

Dave's blog

Laura's blog

Laura's Youtube videos

Update...

2010-04-11T15:37:00.000-07:00

Hello friends,

This blog-o is long due for an update! The lack of posting has definitely not been due to a lack of activity! In fact, it's been the exact opposite. Nonetheless, I will try to summarize the last few months in the upcoming week. Enjoy!

ROAD TRIP! part two

2010-02-03T12:41:00.001-08:00

Days 3 - 6

We spent every night in a different place: Te Anau to Queenstown to Fox Glacier to Hokitika..

My favorite camp ground was near Fox Glacier. We were on a driftwood covered beach, and looking back could see Mount Tasman and Mount Cook, the highest point in Australasia,.

In the early morning, we visited the glacier. And the the moment that we walked up, a river that flows under the glacier broke through the ice and we watched as a river appeared and giant chunks of ice came rushing down.

Afterward, we had breakfast and lattes while gazing at Mount Cook at the Lake Matheson cafe, which was posh but a welcome comfort after days of trail mix and camping.

When we walked around Lake Matheson later, Robin went to dip her feet into the lake, but just as her toes grazed the water, I spotted this hungry guy, waiting for a nibble. He was a big one, probably about 30-50 years old! Eels live to be 70 years old.

Another highlight of the trip was Hokitika, where there was a driftwood art competition on the beach. We got to see some of the artists at work. There was a side contest for the kids of building penguin houses.

We also did the first part of the Kepler track, one of New Zealand's great walks. It was a long day of hiking. First, uphill uphill uphill to this point..

Then down, down, down to the lakeside forest which was full of interesting mushrooms.

Driving around New Zealand is quite a treat. We saw so many things, and had so many memorable stops along the way. I'm really lucky to have taken this road trip with the Standleys!

Oh what fun it is to ROAD TRIP! (PaRt One)

2010-02-01T13:38:00.000-08:00

Last week, Robin, Aron, her dad and I traversed the southern half of the South Island. It was the quintessential New Zealand camping road trip. We drove for a few amazing hours each day, jumping out of the car every fifteen minutes to take pictures and every hour or so to take a hike, see a waterfall or a glacier, or watch sea lions jump around on the beach...

Day 1... We started in Oamaru and headed down along the East coast. On our first day, we stopped at the beach several times, to collect shells, ride a see saw, play on giant round boulders (the Moeraki boulders which resembled bald giants buried up to their eye brows), and to poke at huge pieces of giant kelp.

We also spent a few hours in Dunedin, a college town, where we saw the art gallery and received Cadbury Crunchie bars for doing the "Art Hunt"!

We ended up at Kaka Point, at the beginning of the highway that stretches along the South Coast of NZ, the Southern Scenic Route in the Catlins. We camped at a holiday park. It had a kitchen and showers and everything, to ease us into camping after the few days at our comfy hostel in Oamaru. We did a little lawn bowling in the evening with the neighbor campers. A very cultured evening of camping. The Kaka Point Nuggets, the local lawn bowling team, all over the age of 70, were having a few after presumably a long day of lawn bowling, and were kind enough to let us use their balls and lawn... In the photo below are Robin and her dad, and Becky, the stuffed dog that came traveling with us (belongs to Robin's little cousin)

Day 2... We woke up at Kaka point and drove a little ways down to Nugget Point (now do you see the inspiration for the lawn bowling team name?) where we walked out to a lighthouse.

We were hoping to see sea lions, and we saw hundreds.. including a couple on the beach before we even got to the point.

There were also millions of sea birds, including Royal Spoonbills (can you see their spoony bills? they're really cool.)..

In this shot of Nugget Point, there are hundreds of sea birds and sea lions... It's kind of like a Magic Eye...

then we drove some more until we reached Lost Gypsy Gallery, a painted green bus that has made its last stop.

The owner, Blair Somerville, is a genius at handmade fun. The whole bus is filled with automatronic toys of recycled materials to make a homemade museum of fun and play. There's tons of handles to turn, switches to flip, and buttons to push with varying results: skeletons riding bicycles or snail shells gurgling water in bubbly symphonies.. turn on the sound for this video!

Blair hangs out in his workshop attached to the bus...

As we drove on, we stopped at waterfalls (and did yoga on the rocks by the falls)

and a petrified forest that was 180 million years old (we were more entranced with the kelp, which also took better pictures)

and ended up camping in a field in a small, no-name town (this time no bathrooms or kitchen...) Each moment was worth its own blog entry, but there are still many days to catch up on!

Cheese by the sea...

2010-01-22T13:30:00.000-08:00

Oamaru has been a great place to spend a few days. The backpackers we've stayed at, called Chillawhile, is the best I've ever been to. There's an art room full of paints and canvases that are free to use, a music room, and on our first night there was a potluck! Every dish was vegetarian, just by coincidence, which says something about the people that stay here. Robin and I made coconut lentils and banana curry. Everybody had to introduce their dish and strike a pose. It was the most fun I've had eating and preparing dinner at a backpackers.

Kelly (standing) and her daughter Saol (on the couch), are the owners of the backpackers, had hosted us as WWOOFers at her house about half an hour away, in a boring town called Timaru. It was great to get to her backpackers after spending three days in Timaru, where she taught us how to play the djembe African drums.

The town of Oamaru was full of old-fashioned charm, with a dutch bakery, a bookbinding shop (that accepted donations of single malt) quirky art galleries and a whisky T lounge...

The other fun thing we did in Oamaru was visit the cheese factory by the sea, where we spent about half an hour with our noses to the viewing window watching the cheese makers in their oompah-loompah-like factory (maybe had the impression of oommpah-loompahs because they were all wearing white clean suit, hats, goggles and white mudboots).. Pictures were not allowed there though!

Oamaru at night..

This is when the penguins come out.. As we never made it to the Penguin Entertainers Club, so I'm not sure exactly who, or what, graces the stage for Oamaru's nightlife.

I do know what graces the beaches. Penguins. Little Blue Penguins that come onto the beach at 9:30pm every night to waddle across the beach, and road, to their little houses, or to sleep under buildings. Their houses are little white boxes, all numbered and clustered into little (stinky) penguin neighborhoods. On our first night, we only saw one penguin.. On our second night, we saw several.

First, they were just a cluster of black spots on the water, approaching quite fast, we knew it couldn't be seaweed. Then we saw about 8 of them appear on the beach and waddle as fast as they could to their neighborhood, where they preened and stretched until dark. I do have a suspicion that some of them made it to the Penguin Entertainers Club, as I heard the sounds of guitars and drums warming up right after the first group came in...

On our drive home, we saw more penguins! Why do penguins cross the road? To hide under houses and sleep.

Chicks and rays!

2010-01-17T20:26:00.000-08:00

After Christmas and New Years, the house in Tuateawa turned on its hard hat to set up for volunteers. We set up beds, varnished floors, moved furniture, and put in a huge effort to make the place as cozy as possible for a large group. I filled the freezer with pre-cooked foods: banana bread, plum sorbet, pizza dough, orange squash hummus, and countless loaves of wholegrain bread from the breadmaker. I filled jars with beans and spices, and labeled EVERYTHING from cupboards to rooms to toilets ("If it's yellow, leave it mellow. If it's brown, flush it down!" We are conservationists here!) Two of Jon's past volunteers, Sadie from Wisconsin and Dave from New York, came to help and the four of us shared long days and good dinners. I put in extra hours to make sure there was always good food on the table to get us through.

Amongst the work, we managed to make it out to sea a few times. We went for a full moon paddle on New Years (waiting for pictures from Sadie's camera), following the moon trail out to sea and drinking hot chai out of a thermos. We went snorkeling a couple of times.. Watching out for sting rays! Jon says it's a rush to swim over one.. I agree that it would be a "rush," but I don't think it's quite the kind of "rush" that I'm ready for... Can you find the sting ray in the picture here? (taken from an island that we climbed up during a kayaking lunch break)

On my last day, before heading South to catch up with Robin and her dad and brother for a camping trip, Jon and I went paddling out to an island off the shore where we climbed up to see gannet nests. We spent about an hour just hanging out with the birds and their babies, watching them fly and swoop in right by our heads. They all ignored us, kind of reminded me of the blue-footed boobies in Ecuador. When we paddled back to shore, there were hundreds of petrels (seabirds) flying towards shore all around us. They were all going the same direction and flying right along the water. It was like being in the middle of petrel rush hour. There are no photos, nor words to aptly describe the experience. All I can say is that I'm lucky to be here. As for the gannets, there are TONS of photos. Some of the best are below...

After kayaking we threw our gear in the car, and I hopped on the ferry to Auckland. From sea to shore to sea, without time to even grab a snack. On the ferry, I ate leftover curry while watching the sunset and slept, waking up just in time to see the city lights. I spent a few hours in Auckland, arriving at the hostel late (11pm) and leaving early (4am) to take a plane to Christchurch where I met Robin. We then took a bus to Timaru, where we are wwoofing for a few days, and meeting her dad in Oamaru, known for its penguins. Can't wait to get camping, as I'm tired out from work and would love to spend my days hiking and reading and knitting again!

Now Playing.. A Tuateawa Christmas!

2009-12-30T01:38:00.000-08:00

This is the native Christmas tree, the pohutakawa, that blooms in red around Christmas time every year. Pohuktakawas bring a little Christmas color to an otherwise not-so-Christmasy environment.. Robin and I arrived in Coromandel in mid-December, right in time to see the trees while on long drives along the coast between the towns of Thames, Coromandel and Tuateawa... All of these towns are situated on the Coromandel Peninsula. Thames is the "service" town, located at the base of the peninsula on the West Coast. Coromandel town is an hour North from Thames, also on the West coast. To get to Tuateawa, we then cross over the mountain ridge to the East coast and drive through a small, sleepy town called Kennedy Bay. Neither Tuateawa nor Kennedy Bay have any shops, just homes and a few cows, at least one pig, a goat (that seems to get around as the lawn mower in Kennedy Bay) and dogs.. Why would one go to Tuateawa? Why, for the sea, the forest and the mountains. Our host, Jon, has a new house in Tuateawa, and it is officially my home in NZ. Robin and I came to the house with Jon on the first day he bought it. We've spent the last two weeks sorting out the house, cooking elaborate meals and baking at least twice a day.. In between kitchen duties, we've also transplanted banana trees, made Christmas decorations, painted, knitted, kayaked, and had many beach runs. Bur first... Christmas!

Snowflake-making brought a good Christmasy feel to the house, as Christmas comes in the middle of summer here, and besides Jon we were two Alaskans and a Minnesotan. However, it got to be a competitive sport in the house, as Jon turned out to be a natural..

We decorated our Christmas tree with popcorn strands (made while watching Star Wars and eating brownies) and bones (for Jon's dogs). Our tree was a local, slaughtered pine. Pines are an invasive species, so they're often chopped down by conservationists..

Our tree is in the background here. This is Christmas morning, post-fishmas breakfast (explained below)... Robin is taking down my stocking with care (a hat from Ecuador, my socks weren't big enough!). It was full of Cadbury chocolates and a knitting pattern for socks! Jon is already digging into his stocking, which is a big, woolly sock. He's got big feet.

This is the apron that my sister, niece and nephew made for me! It matches the Pohutakawa trees! It arrived at the perfect time, as I'm spending hours of every day in the kitchen. I wore it almost the entire day on Christmas, while playing charades (the hardest one that I succeeded in acting out was "Stratford-Upon-Avon".. I used lots of "sounds like"s... We were using an outdated British pictionary game for cards)..

I also wore it later that night while playing Settlers of Catan. We play lots of games here at the house, and Christmas was no exception!

And these are the socks that Robin knitted for me! Stripes! Between the socks and the apron, I am definitely the best-dressed house elf in Tuateawa! I'm also wearing my Christmas crown that I got in my cracker, which we filled with more Cadbury chocolates and pohutakawa flowers!

This is Robin and her brother, Aron, who joined us from the states at on the day we moved from tents to the house. Here you see our second round of hats and the headbands that I knitted for Robin and Aron.

Oh right, I forgot the BEST part (sarcasm is hard to convey in type). Jon renamed Christmas as Fishmas! It all started a few days prior, when he asked Robin and I "Do you guys eat fish?" Our answer was yes, but we had no idea that meant that Christmas would turn into Fishmas. Early on Christmas morning, he dragged Robin out to retrieve the net at sea, then spent hours cleaning and filleting the fish. I helped out by taking pictures, attempting to untangle the net and running the fillets up to the freezer. Then we had fish for Christmas breakfast, which Jon thought was great, though most of us just had fruit.
Here's Robin filleting...

And the Big Eye that was just too cute...

Even when it's not Christmas, we are oh so busy here in Tuateawa. Jon is like a New Zealand guidebook, and our walks and adventures always turn up something new like these cat-eye snails..

We've been sooo happy to have a kitchen and have made all kinds of yummy stuff. Digging through Jon's storage containers, we stocked the kitchen with all the necessary stuff.. After a few days, we had a(nother) party for Robin's birthday, one week later, as we were finally able to bake a cake!

It was good to have Aron here for Robin's re-celebrated birthday. We were also glad to have another stomach to feed!

This is Jon and I. Have I even explained what this house is for and who Jon is? Too much Christmas cheer...

so.. Jon runs a program called Earthwise valley. The "valley" is a piece of land that Jon owns near Tuateawa. It's situated on land that was used for Kaori logging (booo!) and, more recently, cattle farming (booooooo!). Jon is beginning this project after after running a different volunteer project, which he did for about ten years. His goal is to plant lots of native trees for birds and bugs, as well as establishing a fruit orchard, vege gardens, and ultimately building big volunteer center.. Last year, they built a pond for ducks (including the endangered Brown Teal) and a composting toilet. This is the second season of volunteers in the valley. The first year, they all lived in tents, and it was tough. Thus, the house is a necessity.. Jon also takes the volunteers on lots of fun trips: kayaking, rock-climbing, etc... The volunteers will be arriving in January, and thus the house is needs to be fitted for its new purpose.. We're bringing in beds and stocking the kitchen for big meals.. In the meantime, we were lucky to have the house for just the four of us over the holidays, and we quickly felt like a family! I'll be here for the first week of the program to ease the volunteers in (and make sure they know to respect the kitchen that I've worked so hard to set-up!)

Golden kiwifruits that we got on a shopping day in Thames.. Oh what joy are fruits and veges when you live almost two hours from the shops!

We're establishing a garden at the house. We planted lettuces and broccoli in a bed that we filled with dirt harvested from the valley, seaweed from the beach and duck goo from the pond..

The view from our house!

Wow. Now that I've started writing this blog, I realize that I should've been writing one everyday! There's so much we've done.. But here's one last pop! kayaking...

And a little blue penguin who was out people-watching while we paddled by...

The little train in wonderland

2009-12-16T16:10:00.000-08:00

This blog is for Jake, my nephew, who has probably never read a blog before, but is a train fanatic. I have ridden trains in New Zealand, both large and small. Today, I'll tell you about this little train in wonderland, as I would call it. The Driving Creek Railway was built by potter Barry Brickell who wanted to collect clay from high up in the mountains. He realized that he could fund his project by bringing tourists up on the train, and Driving Creek was born. It's a great combination of art, train engineering and conservation. I have ridden this train twice now, the last time for Robin's birthday in Coromandel. It winds up the mountain through native trees and random sculptures and passes thousands of wine bottles, which are used to make attractive retaining walls.

The train ride zigs and zags up the mountain, using lots of switchbacks, which I imagine they use this doohickey for.

The final destination is the Eyefull Tower, with a view of the Coromandel.

Wonderful, windy Welly

2009-12-12T18:02:00.000-08:00

Wellington is wonderful. I'm staying at a house that is on the top of the hill, looking down over the city and bay. The wind sings all day and night sometimes, which makes hanging out in the house feel extra-cozy. I've been knitting and baking. But there is a whole city to explore. And a wonderful one!

I spent most of my week enjoying free city activities such as the library and various used book stores. I read the entire Harry Potter #6 book without purchasing it or getting a library card. This is definitely backpacker behavior! I also hung out at Te Papa, a superb (and free) museum. I spent several hours there throughout the week and would gladly spend more. There's four floors with all types of exhibits from art to science, including a colossal squid. The squid is the only one in the world on display. They also had a video that showed how the caught the dying squid and froze it. Then puzzled over how to unfreeze it...

The blue whale skeleton along the ceiling on the right was impressive..

As was the giant macabre aquarium (see the cute dolphin!)

I got to see many of the birds of New Zealand, at least those that aren't extinct. (there are at least 91 extinct NZ species)

I also went to a knitting group at a local bar. Lovely!

After about half an hour with my head in my scarf, I looked up and realized how funny it was to be in the middle of a bar with a bunch of knitters. We were getting some looks. The table next to use was a couple sipping wine, and next to them were some college boys drinking pitchers of beer and playing a giant game of Jenga.

Ginger Dreams... (baking in Wellington)

2009-12-12T17:36:00.000-08:00

I have been listening to Minneapolis radio station (yes, The Current) online and have been enjoying the reports of blizzards and negative temperatures from afar. Cold is so romantic when you're far from it! Now I hear that even SF'ers are able to see their breath indoors. My advice, a healthy dose of ginger. It just so happens that I found a "ginger beer fruit cake" recipe and took a picture of it for a certain ginger beer-brewing friend to try out this Christmas, but I will have to include some of the numerous other ginger recipes in the book cuz I just got too excited. The cookbook is the quintessential New Zealand cookbook, by the major baking company Edmonds. It's in every household (the cookbook), as are old tins of Edmonds 'Sure-to-rise" baking powder and mixes. I think that it's just trendy to use the old tins and refill them from Bin Inn but maybe they just like to think about baking and never get around to it and the tins really are filled with the original baking powder..

As I happily reminisce about the crunch of snow and the smell of pine trees, ginger dreams...

The lady who I'm housesitting for is somehow related to Mr. Edmonds himself...

Fruit cake is actually quite popular here, as are many variations on it that come our at Christmas.

Bavarian creams and puddings are under "cold desserts" while sponge cake, (known simply as sponge) is under "puddings." I attempted a sponge today (sooooooo not vegan) and failed so I won't put the picture up. As a 8-year vegan (now dabbling in a no-rules diet), I find it hard to get eggs to perform for me.

Bin Inn, a baker's paradise with every imaginable kind of flour, dried fruit, nut, cake mix, and candy tidbits..

Also has brewing kits..

Edmonds tins

Want a bite? My sponge cake didn't turn out, but my brownies were pretty good. I should know, I ate most of them. I also brought some to the neighbors. Today, the other neighbors showed up with fudge (it's a Kiwi thing) shortly after I had eaten the last brownie. I was sad that I had nothing to give back!

An old farmhouse and Saturday market in Nelson

2009-12-10T11:52:00.000-08:00

Robin and I WWOOFed for a few days outside Nelson in an old farmhouse filled with old stuff. The kitchen was kind of like an antique store. Our host had lived there for 40 years, since her parents had moved to Nelson as artists (potters). Most of the stuff in the house was still from the 60's. such as old biscuit tins that they used for food storage (I assume that they had refilled them at some point..). Our hosts had a passion for tango and salsa (though you wouldn't guess it!). Our first night we went to a rueda class, which is like salsa meets square dancing. Everyone dances in pairs in a circle and switches partners. It was fun, and totally unexpected! That's whats so much fun about meeting a new host. Wondering what their house is like, what they eat, what they do and will do with us... We feel a bit like the kids in a Series of Unfortunate Events, but its more like a Series of Fortunate Events..

For work, We trekked around eradicating weeds, including periwinkle. I never thought that the beautiful Crayola color from my youth was named after such a pernicious weed! We also washed the deck and stacked firewood.

And we built these little nests around the fruit trees. The trees weren't producing too much edible fruit yet. As WWOOFers, we rarely see the (literal) fruits of our labor. There were some sour grapefruit that we tried baking with honey and cinnamon to make palatable. Result was edible but nothing to write home about.. (Of course, blogs are a different story..)

We had a lot of fun in the town of Nelson. It's definitely a great New Zealand town, not too big nor too small. There's a little of everything. But on Saturday... oh the Saturday market! I've been to markets of all types. Farmers markets, art fairs, craft markets in San Francisco, Minnesota, Ecuador, Spain, Mexico... But this market wins! The sun came out, the town buzzed! There was fruits and veges, homemade jams, honey and fudge, and all manner of breads, cookies, gluten-free pastries, vegan marshmallow bars.. There was local artists selling homemade clothes, pottery, soaps, and even origami. The origami man was great. He made little mobiles and told me that he can make over 100 animals. The best by far was the kiwi! I have since tried to figure out how to make a kiwi from online instructions and youtube videos and only made paper messes! Here he is with his Kiwi..

The kiwi mobile..

and other mobiles..

Other wares at the market include handmade underwear..

Savoury pies, which come in all kinds of flavors as you see here.. Lamb and minted pea, Thai satay vege, venison and red wine, and "brunch"..

Recycled can sculptures..

Reusable shopping bags with cute NZ screenprints (I like the wood pigeon. It's a huge, fat pigeon that is endemic to New Zealand. It eats the large berries that none of the other birds can eat, and is crucial to the survival of many of the native trees since it is the sole bird that eats and spreads their seeds. The Maori like to eat wood pigeon, especially after its stuffed itself with berries, but its a protected species.)

After spending the whole morning at the market, we boarded the bus back to Picton, the ferry back to Wellington, and retraced our steps moving backwards but forward to new experiences.. housesitting in Wellington, Christmas in Coromandel.. A series of fortunate events, I hope!

No hard work in Double Cove!

2009-11-29T12:41:00.000-08:00

Hello hello. Well, we just spent three idyllic days at Double Cove in the Marlborough Queen Charlotte sounds.. (mainland Marlborough is where all the great NZ Sauvignon Blanc comes from) Robin and I have had nothing but good luck in New Zealand. Everything turns out right for us. After our day off in Picton, we headed off to work with some WWOOF hosts, Trevor and Lyn, in Double Cove. The weather was a bit scungy, but lightened up for our boat trip. Trevor picked us up in his orange boat. Earlier in the day, I had talked to my family on Skype, and they asked, "How big is the boat you're getting picked up in?" I answered, "orange," which I knew wasn't a size, but was all I knew about the boat. Well, hindsight is 20/20. Now that I know the size of the boat, I wonder why I didn't realize that large, or even medium, boats are rarely orange.

A map to illustrate our route from Picton to Double Cove.

Trevor driving his little orange boat

Robin and I squeezed into the back with our packs

The little orange boat is called a Naiad, and is made in Picton. They use it as their main form of transportation. The white boat is an old, wooden boat named Rebecca.

Our first night, we were shown around our bach (beach house). We had our own house! We had dinner with our hosts in their home, and then knitted and read in our bach while the rain fell. We were told that penguins, yes penguins, live under the shed next to the house. So I got up to look out the window every five minutes, waiting for the penguins to march up the hill and go to bed. We never saw the penguins... We're starting to think that they're like little elves, living under the house, heard but not seen...

We did see the Weka, and fed it crackers! Wekas look like a cross between a duck and a chicken with intimidating legs and claws. They came down to our door in the morning for breakfast.

On our second day, we were meant to be painting the exterior of the bach to earn our keep. But it rained! And as soon as the weather cleared up, Trevor took us out on the Naiad to feed the blue cod, collect mussels and peer down at sting rays in the crystal blue waters..

Cod like white bread

We did a bit of work, dusting around the bach, but we had so many breaks for morning tea and lunch and such, that it really didn't amount to much. Oh well, our hosts were just happy to have us there. It was kinda like a trip to grandma and grandpa's! It was fun poking around the bach, oh so 70's in it's decor. We made an origami mobile (fish!) for the bathroom.

Our third day was beautiful! There was a rugby game on in the morning, so we didn't get around to painting. We went over to the neighbor's house and swept. Then Trevor showed us the jellyfish, and after lunch we went for a swim and laid out in the sun. Swimming with jellyfish was like swimming in a sea of bouncy balls. They were Common Jellyfish, so they didn't sting us. Just bounced off our arms and legs as we swam.

We went for a walk after our swim, and listened to the enchanting Tui birds. At dinner we watched the horse races with our hosts. Their son-in-law's horse won! Then we went back to our bach and played a board game, the New Zealand Four Square Checkout Game where the board is a Four Square shop, and we had to pick up all the items on our list: Marmite, Edmond's custard powder, sponge pudding mix, and other Kiwi favorites.

It was sad to say goodbye to our bach and all our friends: the blue cod, the Weka, swimming jellyfish, and singing Tui birds...) but today we are off to a new host in Nelson, 2 hours away. On our boat journey back to Picton, we saw dolphins jumping in the bay.

Tui

Thanksgiving in Picton

2009-11-26T13:34:00.000-08:00

Robin and I "celebrated" Thanksgiving with a day off in Picton. Picton is on the South island. It's considered the portal to the South Island, because of the ferry between Picton and Wellington (on the North island). I met Robin here to go WWOOFing, but our hosts delayed by a day so we got to chill in town. This was not a problem. The hostel we stayed at is laid-back, with lots of couches and sunny nooks. The weather is beautiful. And hey, it really was a holiday.. kinda. Since they don't celebrate Thanksgiving here, and we're one day ahead, it was hard to decide which day was "thanksgiving." Started our day with a free breakfast at the hostel, which we were very thankful for.

Then we wandered into town, checked out the post office (where I picked up a postcard sent to me from friends!) and wandered into the shops. At the secondhand store, I bought myself a tea spoon and Robin got a shell. Having not "shopped" for a loooong time, it definitely felt like Christmas! X-mas music played in the shops. As the decorations go up, the sun shines warmly, and next to the Santas, the shops display their summer wares: jandals (flip flops) and togs (swimsuits)..'

We had a picnic on the marina and laid out in the sun. Hummus, crackers, and yummy treats from the bakery including a ginger crunch slice, my new favorite Kiwi treat!

Later we went on a long hike to get a view of the harbor and the islands. Today, we are heading off to somewhere out there (in the Marlborough sounds). We're getting picked up by boat, and have no idea where in the sounds we'll be. So it was fun to gaze out into our unknown future home away from home. The water is aqua blue and the islands are green. For variety (so as not to over-do the landscape photos), here's a drawing that Robin did.

One of the shops in town had a little gallery. I love the traditional Maori portraits. Old men and women with tattooed faces and pipes in their mouths.

After our hike, we had a backpackers "thanksgiving" dinner. It wasn't really Thanksgivingy. We're saving ourselves for Christmas. It was backpackers budget and energy. It's hard to cook anything too elaborate in a hostel kitchen with ten other people around and never enough counter or stove space, so we had a nice bean and rice salad.

This was followed by the hostel's special, Hot Chocolate Pudding and ice cream, which they serve every night (for free!) at 8pm. We followed our pudding with a soak in the hostel's spa. Did I mention that it's a really nice hostel? (Sequoia Lodge, if anyone's interested)

i

Homes away from home

2009-11-24T23:23:00.000-08:00

Here's some of the places I've been sleeping and frequenting over the past week. I'm really using my gear! Like for survival, or at least comfortable survival. By gear, I'm talking about all the stuff that I bought at REI while dreaming of adventure. I didn't really think that I would use this stuff to its full potential. Now, only a third into my trip, I've utilized every zipper and hood and waterproof feature, while silently thanking the geniuses (REI gods?) that designed this stuff!

Dad, thanks for the silk long underwear. And remember that green fleece that I bought right before I left, just because it was on sale at REI? The one that you tried to talk me out of cuz it's so bulky. Well, I've probably worn it EVERY day. It's also been my pillow on more nights than not over the past couple of weeks. It functions as a blanket at times, a cushion to sit on, and more.. Then there's my brown rain jacket. Six months ago I was at REI, trying on the "sky blue" and "eco-green" breathable rain jackets. Wondering if I really needed to spend so much on a rain jacket. The saleslady at REI convinced me that I should, and that if I really was going to be WWOOFing in New Zealand (She had actually heard of WWOOFing and been to New Zealand) that I should get the brown. Well, she was right. It's often covered in mud. And that brown rain jacket, that scrunches up to a tiny ball in my pack, has kept me safe from gusty rain while working, has kept me stylishly weather-proof in Wellington, and now has proven its might in snow. Thank you REI saleslady..

Enough talk about STUFF. You may be wondering, where have I BEEN and what have I been DOING? I'm not sure I can even remember! And it's late. And I'm over-tired... Today, I arrived by ferry to Picton on the South Island. I've crossed from top to bottom of the North Island twice in the last few weeks... And I plan to do it again in a couple weeks, after a quick jaunt in the North of the South Island (sorry, i know this is confusing without maps. I'll work on that another time)

So here's one story. Let's see, the last that I had a chunk of internet time to post a blog was in Wellington, correct? Wellington is at the bottom of the North Island. Well, after that, I went back about halfway up the North island to the National Park where I climbed a volcano and stayed in an alpine climbers hut.

The hut was amazing. But this photo does nothing to illustrate our initial approach. I have no photos of that day.. We carried up all our food and gear, scrambling over rocks in wet, cold clouds. Visibility was at a zero and our packs were covered in ice, frozen cloud vapor. It was a miserable climb, about one hour. But oh the hut, with its heaters that dried our clothes and packs, a hot water pot, and a toaster. It even welcomed me with a flower (ice, of course)...

The climb was worth it. Once in the hut, life was all tea and toast and lots of time to read while we waited for the storm to pass. There was no internet or phone service. Just cribbage, cooking and knitting. It was a lovely way to spend a few days...

We stayed in the hut for three nights, and climbed up to the summit when the weather cleared on the second day. The first thing I saw when the weather cleared, after being surrounded by nothing but solid, gray, was Mount Doom. It's actually called Ngauruhoe, but I know it as Mount Doom from Lord of the Rings.

We started our ascent, unsure of the outcome. Would the clouds close in again? Would we climb up for over two hours, only to find our view enveloped in the same solid gray that had been outside the hut windows for the whole day?

Well, we were rewarded. At the top, we found ourselves high above the clouds, high above the world, on the top of Ruapehu!

I collapsed and ate Lindt chili chocolate (chili=cayenne).. Never has chocolate tasted soooooo good. We peered at the crater, also covered in snow.

The next day, we said goodbye to our hut. The clouds were gone, so I actually got to see the terrain we were trekking through. We drove up North to Taupo, a touristy city, and had dinner at the Burgerfuel. The shock of being off the mountain was double, as not only were we back in civilization but we were no longer surrounded by snow and clouds... We ate by the lake, watching the sun set over our mountain (To the left of Mount Doom)

...and remembered the previous day's sunset...

Kiwi Frisco

2009-11-14T20:09:00.000-08:00

Wellington is the third city I've visited in New Zealand, having spent the vast majority of my time in small towns and in the bush. It's nothing like Auckland, and I'm interested to see some of the other cities now. The similarity between SF and Wellington is eerie.. It's surreal for me to walk around a city so like my adopted hometown..

I was given a bed and meals by Robin's boyfriend's family (she met her boyfriend in Alaska when he was an exchange student there..). This first photo is the view from their house.

I don't have any pictures of the house itself, or the inside, but it's basically like every home in San Francisco. Wood floors, long hallways, high ceilings, decorative moulding, etc... The architecture is the same Victorian style, so walking around the streets is like being in a parallel universe. See below.

There's also the same hills, and the wind blows over the bay in exactly the same way. If you click on this photo, you can clearly see the purple house on the right, which is painted like the nicer houses in SF.

Robin showed me her favorite spots in the city. We visited cafes like Fidels on Cuba Street (Cuba Street = Haight street, Valencia Street, and Divisadero all mushed together. Wellington is much smaller than SF afterall) where we had flat whites (one of New Zealand's finest inventions, an espresso drink that is halfway between a latte and a cappuccino) cakes and cookies, such as the vegan chocolate raspberry cupcake below. We avoided the savory baked goods that dominate the countertops, savory pies and muffins. no way!

We went to see a movie (Away We Go) at the little cinema house by her house where they served wine and lattes to enjoy during the film.

We went by a venue called the San Francisco Bath House to check out the gig calendar, but didn't go inside..

And we wandered around the city, hitting up used book shops and checking out all the street art. The style here is so Frisco! There's lots of cute monster themes in the art (there's a shop just like Kid Robot) and overpriced but cute used clothing stores.. Below are some photos of the street art, including my favorite discoveries, something I've read about on the internet (thanks to Gabriella) but never stumbled upon on the street, guerilla knitting!!

Holes dug, time sat, and the incredible SCENAR!

2009-11-12T00:00:00.000-08:00

Ah. The internet. I've been away for awhile, away from cities, internet, phones...And I find my patience for all things city, internet and phone is all but nonexistent. So pardon my lack of e-mails, blog updates, etc...

Now I am in a backpackers outside Wellington, which is the San Francisco of New Zealand. A city on the bay with hills and a cool breeze. Some of the houses copy the San Francisco style, but with more space between them. It's actually a sister city.

I spent the last week at Belmont Regional Park, outside of Wellington. I took the train down. It was 12 hours, but I enjoyed it so much that it only felt like a few hours. I kept a train journal, so I can look back and see how the hours passed by. It was meant to be a blog post, but again, I lack the patience to type it up.

When I arrived in Wellington, it was night and I transferred from the big train to the metro train without leaving the station, then was picked up by my new hosts and whisked off to their home in the park. So, I didn't even glimpse the city at my arrival.

My hosts, Ian and Alicia, live at and operate Belmont Park Retreat center, and were hosting a mediation retreat while I was there. I was the main cook for the retreat. As I arrived a few days earlier, I also got to do a lot of actual WWOOFing. Digging holes, planting trees, mulching, moving dirt, fetching buckets of water from the stream and digging more holes. Again, it was real WWOOFer work. On the first day, I worked 6 hours, which included an extra 2 to "pay" for my stay the night before. It was a windy and drizzly day. I dug holes until my arms were about to fall off and my back was tired but surprisingly not sore! My back had sorta gone out the week before, for absolutely no reason, and I was moving like an old lady for a whole day. But there I was a week later, and putting in a day of ax-swinging, shoveling and scrambling, yet my back felt fine...

Anyways, the end of my first day found me on a steep ridge, in winds so strong that my hat would be whipped off and I couldn't spin around fast enough to glimpse where it flew to.. The spot that I had to plant my last trees that day, mostly Eucalyptus, was in the middle of a patch of gorse, a spiny bush that stabs through most clothing and gloves. As I worked, I continually lost my footing on the two foot wide ridge, and often slipped into the hole I was working on. When I looked back, I realized that there was a drop-off of about 30 feet through gorse into a cold stream. Oh, and I forgot, I was digging through clay and stone-filled soil, hence the ax. Yes, a real WWOOFer job.

The retreat was a totally different experience. I was supposed to be taking part in as much of the meditation as I could, but I found it extremely difficult! Especially while being the cook, as I tended to think about everything I needed to do. We would sit for about 45-minutes for each meditation session. I did one session on Thursday, Friday and Sunday, and three sessions on Saturday. I did NOT succeed in quieting my mind during any of the sits, but I tried, sometimes. Meditation is about training the mind, and I am only a beginner, so I guess my struggle is to be expected. As a cook, I had free reign of the kitchen, and was allowed to skip most of the sits and also allowed to talk. The other retreatants were silent for the whole day on Saturday and most of Sunday. It was hard to know whether they were enjoying my meals! I also cooked special meals for Bhanti G, the Buddhist monk that was leading the meditations. His meals were served on fine dishes and trays. It wasn't too hard to cook for him, as he ate only curry, rice, porridge, yogurt and dhal. After noon, he only had chocolate and cheese cut into cubes with black tea and sugar.

I wasn't alone in the kitchen. I had someone to talk TO. Robin, my new WWOOFer friend, was my co-chef. She's 18, from Alaska, and is pretty much into all the same stuff I'm into. We spent our down time reading, knitting, hiking and finding ways to get our sugar fix! The kitchen was well-stocked with some of my favorite ingredients: tahini, honey, tempeh, nuts, pumpkin, and plenty of organic produce. But there was only Bhanti G's chocolate, offered to us occasionally, for our sweet cravings. So we would mix yogurt and raisins, tea with milk and honey, or whip up a dessert. It turned out that Ian had a secret sweet tooth, so we were able to pull off the desserts. The three of us were sugar co-conspirators! For my last day, Ian served Christmas mince pies with custard.

All in all, this was my best week WWOOFing so far. My hosts were kind, caring and patient. Also, it was my first time WWOOFing with someone else, and it really changed the experience. I am so happy that Robin was there, and we are probably going to WWOOF together again sometime soon!

I cut my finger pretty badly on a tin can on my second day as cook. Alicia, who practices natural medicine, sat down in the middle of the busy retreat and treated my finger with a handheld machine called a Scenar device, which gives out electric pulses. The result, my finger healed so fast, I want a Scenar of my own. I looked it up on the internet today. Here is the description...

"Scenar - Space Age Medical Technology The S.C.E.N.A.R., Self-Controlled Energo Neuro Adaptive Regulation, was developed for the Russian space program to overcome the unique problems of space travel. SCENAR - The scenar uses biofeedback - by stimulating the nervous system, it is able to teach the body to heal itself. Tests conducted in Russia have shown the Scenar proves to be effective in 80% of cases treated."

I know it sounds like a bunch of witch doctor voodoo to some of you... But if only you saw my finger. When I cut it, it sliced deeply into my finger. The skin immediately turned gray. I thought that I'd be at the doctor getting stitches that afternoon. Within three days, I don't even need a band-aid. The cut is still there, but it is barely a bother anymore. I DO have pictures to prove it, but I'll spare you all the gore. Email me if you want to see..

So, a wonderful and healing WWOOFing week behind me, I packed up my bag to move on today. Ian and Alicia drove me to Wellington. Their daughter works as a cook in Parliament, and we visited her at work. We got the VIP backstage tour of the parliament "beehive," a beehive-shaped building with a Harry Potter-esque feel to it. The center is a round room of elevator doors. Remind you of anything? We toured the kitchens with our special badges with "E" for executive on them, all wearing hair nets. Then, we tried to jump on the public tour, but had security called on us because our badges did not have "T" for tour, and we were carrying cameras. I had been taking pictures in the private areas the whole time. On the public tour, we didn't get to see the center of the beehive, but we got a lot more information. At the end of the tour, we had E badges, T badges and hair nets to symbolize all the parts of parliament that we infiltrated..

Tonight I am staying in Plimmerton, a town just North of Wellington on the sea. I watched the sunset tonight, and then returned to my hostel with shoes full of sand and a pocket full of sea glass. Other than the sea, it's a boring suburb, but all the hostels in Wellington were booked for a big soccer match that is on Saturday. I'm going to stay with a family in Wellington for the weekend, where Robin is staying now. Then I'm heading North for a brief stomp around the Tongariro National Park. Then probably ferrying over to the South Island. Nothing is for sure, this road is ever-changing.

p.s. I'm in my dorm room, finishing off this post. It's 11pm and I haven't seen any of my dorm mates yet, so they must be out partying. The hostel is quiet except for the sound of the ocean waves, accompanied by loud snoring from the room next door. oh you backpackers!

Hot pools, cool whales and mammal haters

2009-11-03T20:29:00.000-08:00

Saturday: Left the comforts and extreme cleanliness of Jacaranda Lodge for a tent and gas stove in Jon’s back-to-the-earth valley. The valley is a piece of land that is to be replanted with native trees and built up to house volunteers. So far, there is only an outdoor kitchen, as there is a lot of bureaucratics that are still being sorted. Though the valley is on hold, Jon also coordinates volunteers and interns for other conservation projects. We cooked up a pot of carrots, kumara, onions, quinoa and a curry packet by torchlight and ate by the fire. Finished the meal and evening off with Gingernuts dipped in a lovely lavender and chamomile tea. It was an unforgettable Gingernut experience, I had never had them dipped! We got all giggly and forgot that we were freezing for awhile, standing outside the tents watching the shooting stars and satellites. Finally, I bundled up in my tent with as many clothes as I could fit on inside my sleeping bag.

Sunday: In the morning, had muesli and tea. Then, while Jon went to a meeting, so we had a morning off to read and lay down in the sun. When he returned, we packed some sandwiches and went on a hike that was supposed to be a couple hours but lasted the rest of the day. We hiked through old DOC trails, following little plastic triangle markers with codenames like “BL, BL EXT, SU, SUX, DOG, TV, W, Hope…” BL EXT was the worst. Jon is sure that it was made by someone sitting in an office looking at a GPS. Instead of going along a ridge, it scrambles for over an hour across the steep hillside. I fell and banged my shins on a tree trunk. Thus, BL now stands for “Bexie Lying (down).” Jon’s dogs teased me, running ahead and then dropping behind and then running past again. We hiked up to a lone Kauri tree that we can see from the valley. Why it was left when all the rest of the ancient trees were felled, nobody knows. When we got back from the hike, having found the stream that Jon hopes to run a water pipe too, we quickly loaded the rowboat on the truck to put a fishing net out. By the time we got back, it was dark. We had more of the same for dinner. The night was cold again, but I was happy to know that my sleeping bag would be sufficient, and I fell asleep instantly.

Monday: Jon brought the net back in early in the morning while everyone else slept. He caught one big fish, which was perfect as he put the net out intending to catch fish to give to the local Iwi, a Maori elder that had to approve Jon's plans for the valley before council would approve them. The rest of the fish were for our lunch. We hoped to stay another night in the valley, but rain came and we vacated quickly, retreating to Thames where Jon has his office. We stopped along the way to pick up Jon’s other car, and I got to drive it down the winding roads. Jon dropped us off at the backpackers, where we cooked up another curry packet and fish.

Tuesday: Explored Thames, which is merely a “service town,” but still offers a nice Coromandel peninsula flavor. There are lots of second-hand shops, book stores, and nice cafes in the few blocks that make-up town. I went to the local pub to use internet, and had a carrot cake for lunch. Carrot cake is lovely in New Zealand, with lots of pumpkin seeds, dried apricots and pineapple, and cream cheese frosting. I reckon it’s a full meal. I wandered over to the railway station, which was a narrow track railway, and the mangrove bird hide where I saw a spoonbill and various other shorebirds. In the afternoon, I helped Jon by driving his car to Cambridge, where I left it for his incoming volunteer who will be based there. We went to a Thai restaurant and had a good night’s sleep in a real motel. There are no hostels in Cambridge. It’s not even in my guidebook.

Wednesday: After Jon met with the foundation where an incoming volunteer will be interning, we went to visit the foundation’s project , the Maungatautari Ecological Island Trust. See, it’s not really an island. It’s a mountain that’s been surrounded by a 30-mile pest proof fence. What is a pest in New Zealand? Well, any mammal is. See, there were no land-based mammals in New Zealand before settlers came from Europe. This is why such strange, exotic and defenseless birds evolved. New Zealand has the world’s heaviest insect, the Weta, and parrot, the Kakapo. When Polynesians, and later Europeans, arrived on the islands, they brought their pets, as well as their pests. Indigenous flora and fauna suffered greatly. Almost half of the birds and frogs are now extinct, and there are more than 600 endangered species. Apparently the native trees were quite tasty, because many of the introduced animals (especially opussum, weasel, rabbit and stoat) fed on them happily, while introduced flora outcompeted them for sun and soil. Jon, who runs a project to replant native trees and bring volunteers from overseas, says it’s hard to explain to visitors that mammals are the problem. “Why do you hate animals, Jon?” he is often asked. So, he has been interested in Maungatautari, because it helps to illustrate the pest problem. We didn’t see the Takahe, a bird once thought to be extinct that is now being reintroduced in various conservation projects, but we did see many other birds and trees. After the project, we drove to Rotorua where we checked into a backpackers (aka hostel), and headed to the hot pools to wind down. Actually, we went to a hot river, called Kerosene Creek. And here, I met a girl from Minnesota whose strong accent was not muffled by the sounds of the hot waterfall!

Thursday: Rotorua is also called Roto-Vegas. It’s the main touristy town of the North Island, with a strip of hotels running through it. The reason for its popularity, geothermal activity which equals hot pools. There is a private hot pool in each room of every hotel in Rotorua. The natural thermal water is piped in. The whole town smells like sulfur (eggs!). The backpackers generally have a shared pool, as ours did. It was nice for a dip first thing in the morning when I had it all to myself. Afterward, we drove to Tauranga, where Jon visited his mom. We took the dogs for a walk and went to ANOTHER hot pool, this one a large facility with dressing rooms and showers. Tauranga is a fast-growing city in New Zealand, and I was surprised at how being in a city felt after being in small towns for so long. The best part was lunch. We went to Burgerfuel, a burger chain with tons of options including three vege burgers. I had the pumpkin, cashew, ginger burger with nut pate on a rice-flour bun and a honey ginger soda. After Tauranga we headed up the coast, stopping at dinnertime to grab sandwiches that we ate on the beach. At night, we arrived in Whitianga, back in the Coromandel peninsula. Thus, we had done a big loop. Here, we had a rented house where we stayed for three days while doing a Whale Medic course with Project Jonah. Read on…

Friday: The Whale Medic course, which Jon was helping run, was held for the high schoolers in Whitianga, so I had a day to myself to wander around town, pick up groceries, and check out the beach. I collected all these shells, which Jon later identified. They are (from Left to Right) as follows… (PHOTO COMING)

1. mud or clay stone
2. Jasper (stone)
3. Limpets
4. Slippers
5. Scallops and fan scallops (which can be either left or right-handed, but usually left)
6. Crab shell
7. Trumpets
8. Rainbow
9. ?
10. Leopard (snail)
11. Toaharoa
12. Box cockle and other cockles
13. Green-lipped mussel and other mussels

I made dinner for everyone at the house that night, yellow curry fried rice.
Saturday (Halloween!): We all did the Whale Medic course to become official Project Jonah Whale Medics. Most of the people at the training were New Zealand natives. Project Jonah trains them, and then adds them to their database to be contacted for help at whale strandings, which are common in New Zealand. Officially, the Department of Conservation is in charge at the strandings, but Project Jonah is second-in-command and provides necessary support. There are a lot of things that you can do wrong at a stranding, and sometimes pods of over 100 whales all strand at once. Since not enough people were signed up for the course, and since Jon was helping to run it (by holding the giant, heavy plastic whale in cold water for hours at a time), we got to attend for free. Unfortunately, I don’t have a cell phone, so I wouldn’t be able to be on-call while I’m in New Zealand, but they were happy to have me anyways. We spent a few hours at the high school learning the theory, and then spent the afternoon in the water with the plastic whales, filled with water so that they were actual weight and size of Pilot and Orca whales. (PHOTO COMING) It was cold. I was able to borrow a wet suit, but I was still freezing. Oh yeah, that’s another thing, without a wet suit I wouldn’t be allowed to help save whales in the water at an actual stranding. But well, it was an interesting Halloween activity! After, we had a nice dinner with lots of pumpkin (I think I eat pumpkin everyday here! Yea! It’s in everything: quiche, soup, pumpkin hummus, etc…)

Sunday: We wound back up the coast to Jon’s valley. Spent a night in the tents and went for a morning paddle. The weather looked awfully scungy (my newest and most-used Kiwiism), but once we were out paddling it was great! I really enjoy sea kayaking. We went out to a small island that was shaped like a shark fin, (PHOTO COMING) and then paddled back in hard against the wind. We also paddled past a waterfall. When we reached it, the sun peeked through the clouds for a quick moment. I saw more penguins swimming around us, lots of fish darting through seaweed, and a Gannet seabird dove into the water right next to me, then came up and floated alongside me for a bit. After kayaking, I had to pack up quick to make it to Auckland for my train ride the next morning. Conveniently, Jon had to pick up a volunteer in Auckland so he gave me a ride, and I’m being picked up in Wellington by my next host. Nice, huh?

If you don't know where to find me. well....

2009-10-29T18:56:00.000-07:00

well, this one is a fly-by post as i am using a pay-per-minute computer to buy a train ticket, and decided to give a quick update before i run out. lately, i've been living between a tent, a truck, two dogs, and a group of conservationists. We've been to Tuateawa, Thames, Cambridge, Mount Mangatuatari, Rotorua, Tauraunga, and Whitianga where I will be training to become a whale medic for Halloween. I mean, on Halloween day, I will be literally be in training to save stranded whales, not dressing up as a whale medic though it would make a fun costume! I also have bathed in hot pools and rivers (Kerosene Creek), seen the world's largest pest-proof fence, and gone on a half-day serious bushwalk. Now you all must wait to hear details of these adventures, as I am onto the next. Will hopefully have internet on my 12-hour train ride to Wellington this Wednesday so I can do it all justice.

You do not have to know where you are going to be headed in the right direction! (From a fortune cookie)

Caminante, no hay camino. se hace el camino caminando...

xo bexie

Otra vez, una caravanista!

2009-10-22T00:26:00.000-07:00

On the food poisoning, it may be a virus. cuz it won't go away! i'm out of bed now, working and moving. but still getting dizzy and needing to lie down, and still on a diet of very simple foods. so... it's more than mildly annoying..

On my first day out of bed, I moved to the caravan. yea! once again this year, a caravanista (for those that need explanation, I participated in the 20th Friendshipment Caravan to Cuba in July of this year http://picasaweb.google.com/Rebecca.Towle/CubaCaravan?feat=directlink)

I love the caravan, and despite the hassle, I love to occupy new spaces and small spaces. When I was a little girl, I loved hotel rooms. I'd look in all the dresser drawers and be delighted to discover all the things that were always in hotel drawers: bibles, menus, sometimes a free plastic bag for laundry!

Now, as a traveler, I take pleasure in personalizing each and every space I pass through. Out of my pack, I pull my books and stack them on the bedside table. I put my teddy bear, Tigo, on the bed. I set up my old travel alarm clock that I've permanently borrowed from my dad. I set up any decorative and sentimental touches that I have accumulated. On this trip: a kauri wood egg, a postcard from friends in 'Sota, a little monkey toy from my sister and niece, my capybara keychain from Auckland and for my "kitchen table," I currently have orchards from the Coromandel Music Society that were a thank you for running the data presentation at the Ukemania and Golden Girls concert.

The caravan is great because I even have my own little kitchen. Wow, a kitchen all to myself! I've stocked it with tea, coffee, rice milk, rice krispies (called rice bubbles here), muesli (for when my stomach gets better) and every night I bring over drinking water for the hot water pot and a piece of fruit for the morning. It's like easy camping, living in the caravan. I have my bathroom and most of my meals in the house. (I haven't attempted using the caravan's stove, oven or even microwave). Early in the morning, the birds start to sing, and these birds do rival the famous "dawn chorus" that I've heard (recorded) from the bird sanctuary of Tiritiri Matangi near Auckland (Where I will be volunteering next year)

Robin and I made orange curd with her Seville oranges today. Then I juiced a bunch of grapefruit. It was fun to work with the citrus fruits, as I spent a couple days doctoring the trees, and feel friendly with them now. =)

Ukemania sing-a-long

2009-10-18T23:56:00.000-07:00

Kayaking in rocky road volcanic crater

2009-10-18T15:39:00.000-07:00

The weather was fine on Friday, and I was lucky enough to have a kayaking connection in my reserves just for a fine-weather day as such. I put in my work hours for the day, and was picked up in the afternoon to drive over the hills (I'd call them mountains, but they're hills here) to the other side of the peninsula. The view from the top as we crossed over the mountain pass was amazing. Water on both sides, Coromandel behind us and Kennedy Bay ahead. On the drive home at night, we saw even saw the lights of Auckland. Kennedy Bay is a "locality" according to Wikipedia. It looks like a few houses on the outskirts of a town, but the nearest town or shop is over the mountain/hill in Coromandel. From Kennedy Bay, we drove North to the edge of Tuateawa. I don't even know what to call Tuateawa, since the only Wikipedia entry is in Maori. "o Tuateawa he nohanga o te rohe whenua o Waikato," for those of you that speak Maori.. I guess it's a locality too. I can't find any population estimates for either. A visible sprinkling of houses, and probably many more in the bush.

The friend of Robin's that was taking me kayaking is named Jon, and he too is establishing himself in the bush. He has a piece of land and is awaiting council's approval so he can build a home, plant trees, etc... This seems to be how many Kiwis live. They buy some land and live in a tent while they build a small cabin. Then, they live in the cabin while they build a home. Then, they get WWOOFers who live in the cabin and help them to live off the land. Lisa, Greg's WWOOFer, was living in his cabin. It was pretty nice, as he had made it for his own home many years ago. Everyone has a WWOOFer here, and some are still living in tents alongside them. Jon takes WWOOFers, and they all live in tents. But right now he's living in the "big city," Thames (population 6,700), to get all his paperwork in line. Thames is the seat of the Thames-Coromandel District Council.

So, onto kayaking. We readied the boats and packed them up. This all took quite a long time. "It takes just as long to pack for an hour trip as it does for a multi-day trip," said Jon. You have to bring all the safety equipment, emergency water and food, etc... He entertained me with stories of his own close encounters to underline that point, including one time when he had to spend the whole night on a small, rocky island because it was too dark for a rescue though the coast guard knew he was there. He said it was more embarrassing than scary. As it was getting late, I was getting scared. But we set off, and Jon seems to have learned his lesson. As soon as we pushed off into the sea, a little blue penguin swam by! When we got out into the water, we looked back at the bay we had left behind and saw it's giant semi-circle shape. It was actually the remaining half of a volcano. We paddled along the shore and back. We were out for about two hours, paddling along the black rock cliffs, past caves and tunnels. Gannets, big black and white birds, were fishing around us. They soared high above us, peering down at us, and then suddenly would spin into a nose dive. "Gannets can dive from a height of 30 m, achieving speeds of 100 km/h as they strike the water, enabling them to catch fish much deeper than most airborne birds." (wikipedia) There were big boulders stuck in the cliff walls, and Jon explained that volcanic rock is soft like marshmallow, and these bigger rocks sink into them and get stuck like chocolate chips. So the cliffs were really just like rocky road ice cream.

We pulled in and packed up as the sun was getting low. Jon supplied a packet of Ginger Nuts for a snack. Has anyone ever had these? They are like ginger snaps, just as hard but a bit thicker. I guess they would be good for dipping in hot chocolate or something. We drove back to Coro through the winding roads at night, got that glimpse of Auckland, and when I made it back home I was too tired for dinner. But I am way too busy to go right to bed. I had to make a power point presentation for the Ukemania concert the next day. The ukelele group, Ukemania, was having a sing-a-long, and I was in charge of putting the lyrics on the screen. We borrowed a projector and screen from the Coromandel Independent Living Trust, and only I knew how to work it. I also made muffins for the bake sale. I will post photos of the concert soon...

After our successful paddling trip, we may go out again next week to explore seabird island. It all depends on my busy schedule! And, sadly, I've been laid up with food poisoning. Hence, catching up on all the blogs. It's incredibly frustrating to be in bed when it's such a nice day out and there's so much to do. Worse, I'm missing a day of work which means that I'll have to make it up somehow. Argh!

Horse-capades

2009-10-16T21:31:00.000-07:00

On my day off, Robin had organized a whole big day and sleepover for me with another WWOOFer. We laughed, because it was a lot like when we were kids and our parents would bring us over to a friends' house for dinner and say "They have kids too. You two can PLAY!" But we did have a lot of fun, so I was grateful for the motherly treatment. However, the day didn't go as planned. Many of you may remember the plan. Horseback riding in the morning. Well, it started out well. I was picked up bright and early by the school teacher from Colville, and he drove me up the peninsula through winding roads and past bays and islands. It was great, because Peter, the teacher, is also a tour guide and didn't stop talking about Maori and hippie commune history in the places we drove through.

We arrived at Peter's school, a two-room schoolhouse with 30 children. I hung out in the teachers lounge for a bit to read the paper, have a coffee and wait for the morning to proceed. I didn't want to show up at my friend's house before they all woke up. Then, I caught a ride from the school back into town with the school bus driver. He knew the person that started WWOOF in the 70's in Britain, and had moved to Coromandel after meeting a WWOOFer there. The walk from town to Greg's woodworker shop was about 45 minutes, and I wrote a little folk song about WWOOFing as I walked accompanied by a chorus of cow moooooooooos.

The morning horseback ride had been canceled and moved to the afternoon. I found out when I arrived at the cabin where Greg's WWOOFer, Lisa, stays. But it was fine with me, because i got to hang out and do NOTHING all morning long. It was divine! I read, and had tea, and stared out the window while Lisa and Greg were working up in the woodshop. When they finished, we all had lunch and while we were eating the horse place called again. This time to tell us that there was no guide to take us out. She was in Coromandel getting her hair done. But I had just come all the way from Coromandel (or Coro, as the locals call it), and would we like to go on the ride without guides? Well, we didn't lie about our experience. I figure I ride a few times a year, and Lisa had ridden a few times in her life. But they seemed confident that we could go for it, typical laid back Kiwis, so we gave it an honest effort. First, the lady who put us on the horses gave us no instruction. Second, my horse was named Farty! And no, Farty didn't want to go for a ride that day. Neither did Lisa's horse. We spent half an hour trying to make the damn things move. The lady who was helping us would drag us over the bridge, and then the horses would jump back into the river and gallop us home. I asked for some tips, as she kept yelling at me to have two hands on the reins which meant the horses were ridden in a different style than I was used to. And her tip was only "growl at them." After our unsuccessful attempts at growling, I was laughing at my own growl, we were allowed to give up. Instead of a horseback ride, we went on a walk through the cattle paddock where a giant bull steeled us with his stare (Um, do you think he's going to charge Lisa? I asked. I kept my head down and didn't make eye contact, as I would if there were a shady character across the street in the city), and we admitted that we knew our place here on the farm.

Tree doctors

2009-10-13T00:59:00.001-07:00

So busy here in Coromandel. I had no idea that life could be so full! It's exhausting and inspiring..

On Monday we played tree doctors. The citrus trees have borers (nasty little pests that bore holes through the whole tree). Neither Robin nor I really knew what we were doing, but we spent some time online and dug some thigns out of the shed and had a go at it. It was an all organic approach, with neem tree oil, copper and acrylic paint, paraffin and other home remedies. We had to completely chop up one tree, as it is almost dead anyways. We doctored another tree, cutting off branches and finding borer tunnels. Then eye droppering paraffin down them, clogging them up with blue tak (like that yellow putty stuff we use to hang posters with), and painting the cut with a mix of acrylic and copper. Then I bandaged the really damaged areas with rags soaked in neem tree oil, covered it with food wrap and taped it up. The patients need to wear these bandages for three weeks, which means I'll take them off right before I leave. And hopefully I'll be back in Coromandel next year to see how my trees are doing!

Tuesday was MahJong day with the old ladies from town. Jocelyn, the whitebaiter, plays mahjong on tuesdays and bridge on Sundays. I mentioned that I've always wanted to learn MahJong, so she brought me along. It's a great game and now MahJong set is on my mason jar list. It's kind of like Gin or Gin Rummy but with much more complicated sets, traditions and rules like building the tiles in a wall, to represent the great wall and keep bad spirits out. There are so many different combinations to win with that each played must have their own book of sets and each has its own name like "Seven sisters," "Chop Suey," "Wiggly Dragon," "Big Robert" etc... I love the sound of the tiles clacking together when they're being shuffled. It's called twittering. Due to the age of my company (75 and up), I didn't make any references to Twitter.

Tomorrow is my day off, and Robin has arranged for me to go horseback riding in Colville (30 minutes up the peninsula) with another WWOOFer. The Colville school teacher lives next door, so he is picking me up on his way to school at 7:15. I'm to be dropped off at Greg the woodworker's. Then I'll meet Lisa, and we'll ride at their neighbor's place. We'll get a ride back to Coromandel with the school teacher or hitchhike (which is common here. There's two of us and it'll be daytime so don't worry mom). Then it's quiz night at the pub!

Some pictures of the B&B and the backyard it at sunset.

"All whitebaiters are liars, except for you and me" or "The day the pub burned down"

2009-10-10T03:10:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been a lively and lovely week in Coromandel, and I think I could be happy staying here forever.. Most of the people living here have come from somewhere else, and many of them came here first as WWOOFers (doing what I'm doing. By the way, I found out that even though I'm using Help Exchange instead of WWOOF (Willing Workers on Organic Farms), I still am called a WWOOFer). It's a small town, but there is a lot of activity if you know where to find it, and Robin has kept our calender jam packed with housework, gardening and diversions round town.

Of course, the first thing is always work. I am here to learn and work, though adventure is a part of it all. I've been learning the ropes here at the B&B. Robin taught me all about cleaning the rooms and bathrooms, making the beds etc.. She noticed right away that I'm not "domesticated." I tried to learn, but after two days, I found that it was totally exhausting and tedious work for me. So now I am doing the downstairs stuff in the mornings: cleaning the kitchens, vacuuming the lounge, making muesli and bread, gathering firewood, sometimes ironing and helping hang the laundry outside.. Much more suitable work, as it doesn't exhaust me and I enjoy it alright. We also get to do fun things like crack macadamia nuts, make pickles and marmalades, juice fruits, and work in the orchard and garden, of course.

One day, we zoomed off to go whitebaiting after the guests had breakfast Whitebait is a delicacy in all the cafes and restaurants here. It's actually baby fish. The fish come down the rivers to the sea to lay their eggs, and the whitebaiters catch the newly hatched babies as they start their journey back up the rivers at high tide. Whitebaiting is a bit of a fixation here, as its very expensive in restaurants and shops. Robin, my host, is a new whitebaiter, and I was lucky to be invited along. The season just began, and she is learning from Jocelyn, a 77-year old who has been whitebaiting for 50 years. Whitebaiters are very secretive about their spots, Jocelyn just inherited a new spot along the river after the death of a friend. I guess I was allowed to witness her new spot because I'm not from around here and maybe couldn't find it again if I tried. Robin told me that we weren't allowed to tell anyone where we were or what we caught. "All whitebaiters are liars, except for you and me," is the common saying among whitebaiters. So I'll tell you what I can. We all stood on the side of the river, and Jocelyn had put a piece of white plastic in the river so we could see the baby fish when they swam by. Then we'd all be very still, and she tried to swoop them up with a net. After the whole morning, she had caught about two handfuls.

On Wednesdays, its pub quiz in town. Last week was New Zealand themed, and I was only able to help out with a few questions. After the quiz, Robin volunteered us to write the questions for the next quiz, so between all our other activities we've been working on that. So far our categories are "Death by misadventure" and "Incredible edibles." As an antidote to the last quiz, our questions are international themed. We need four more categories. Suggestions are welcome. I changed the settings on my blog so it'll be easier to leave comments. Thanks for those that have commented. I replied in further comments so check back to the posts you commented on.

On Thursday, we covered the strawberries in the garden, worked on lime pickles, did the inn work, and then made curry and dal, followed by chocolate beet cake and watched TV. I hadn't watched much TV in NZ, but Robin is a fanatic about Outrageous Fortune, a Kiwi series that is supposed to be remade in the US. It is good to sit on a couch and relax, especially with chocolate beet cake. I love the cake so much, I told Robin that I'd leave when it was gone. And she said that she's keep making it as long as I'm here. yea!

On Friday, we went to into town in the morning and visited yoga, the artists co-op and the farmers market. Yoga is at the local church, and I was a bit disconcerted when we pulled up and parked next to a small graveyard. First time I've done yoga next to a cemetery! In the afternoon, it was rainy and cold. I started the fire (all by myself!) and organized the kitchen, filling jars with various flours, nuts, grains, dried fruits, etc... Then I fed the calves. After they finish their bottles, they start sucking each others ears (see photo below) until the milk kicks in and they start running and playing. It's cute. They're two weeks old, and have to start eating grass soon...

On Friday night, we went to a folk concert at Robin's friends' house. It was a guy named Mike Harding, who had a night off his tour and decided to do a small show for a few friends. What a treat! We sat by the fire and he told us all the background to the songs. Kiwi folk music, love songs about gumboots and train stops, TV jingles for Crunchie bars... I probably missed over half of the jokes but enjoyed in nonetheless. For example, "The Day the Pub Burned Down" was about a local pub that caught on fire. When the firefighters came, they tried to put it out with beer. "Screw the pub. Save the beer!" said the locals. "The firefighters fought the fire, and we fought the firefighters!" It was the kind of music my brother would love.

Saturday, I rode my bike into town after work, and checked out the local cafe, Driving Creek Cafe. They also take WWOOFers, and I would love to work there. I stopped in the gold museum briefly. Coromandel is the first place that they discovered gold in NZ (As Uncle Charlie pointed out in his comment). There's people that are pushing to have the mining opened up again. At the same time, there's a group of people that have turned Coromandel into a "transition town," tryng to reduce its reliance on petroleum. I wonder how these people get along with each other. I will find out more, as the Transition Town people are all at market, where we hope to sell our lime pickles, and Driving Creek Cafe, where I hope to hang out more. While the main guy behind gold mining is a pub quiz junkie. So I hope to find out more over the next couple weeks.

We went to Greg's house for dinner last night. Greg is a friend of Robin's, a woodworker, living on a lifestyle block, who makes beautiful slab furniture. He has a WWOOFer from Chicago, another woodworker who sells beautiful jewelery on Etsy (misswoodright.etsy.com). It was a meal made entirely from him garden and lamb. There were a few lamb running around the house while we ate, so I'm sure they were free-range. When we finished dinner, Greg said, now I'm going to make a cake. I was a bit surprised, since it seemed a little late to start making a cake. However, Greg was making prison cake, which only takes half an hour cuz that's all the time you have to make cake in prison. It's also a chocolate cake, not as amazing as the beet cake but good. I'm eating cake everyday here!

Today is Sunday. It's been a relaxed day, though we did go into town to see the country music at the "bottom hub," the bar at the bottom of the hill. The bar at the top of the hill is called the "top pub." It was an open stage, but we didn't get up to sing anything. There was a Maori guy that sang (Maori is the indigenous people of NZ), and it was pretty good. The rest was all off-key American country songs like Boot-Scootin Boogie. Well, it was an experience...

I better get some rest now, and let you all get back to your lives! Sorry for the long blog, there's just so much going on! I'll load some pics of the b&b and town soon too.

Final notes on kerikeri. Hello Coromandel (with maps)

2009-10-06T01:48:00.000-07:00

Ooh. We crammed it allll in for my last days in kerikeri. On Saturday, Richard who rents a room at the house, brought me up to Ahipara, about two hours up North, to tag along on a quad tour that he was leading. I was really lucky have the opportunity to jump on the tour, which usually costs $150.

We rode down the beach, past the seaweed pickers village of informal houses and across sand dunes. I was also lucky to see some more of Northland, including the Mangamuka scenic pass which wound through pointy top mountains and misty fern-filled forests.

On Sunday, we went on a hike around some old Kauri trees. The whole North island used to be covered in ancient, tall Kauri trees. But the British, and later the Americans, Australians and the rest of the usual suspects, came in and cut them all down, as I was explaining in a previous post. Well, there are a few that remain.. They're massive size is mostly trunk..

We also went to the Kerikeri farmers market where I sampled macadamia nut butter, chutneys, kumara (sweet potato) chips, fudge, etc... On Sunday night, we had a big dinner and a full moon party bonfire for my last night. We had been planning it for days, but the whole day it rained and rained. I was sure it would be canceled, but Louisa continued with the plan. "We'll burn a hole in the clouds so the full moon can peek through" Some of the people I've met in Kerikeri came over. Louisa made blue cheese pizza and a chocolate roll with coffee cream. Right as we finished dinner, the clouds parted!

The guys built the biggest bonfire I've ever seen, which they said would be the smallest I ever see in New Zealand.

The kids roasted marshmallows. The puppy and cats and ducks all came. Louisa pulled out a box of fireworks and then worried the whole time about the kids hurting themselves with them. Some of us fell asleep in front of the fire, as we stayed out there past midnight.

On Monday I rode back into Auckland with one of Louisa's yoga students. I stayed in a giant hostel in the heart of the city, which I must say, I could happily never visit again though I probably will be passing through it many more times. Tuesday morning, I jumped on the ferry to Coromandel where I now reside at the Jacaranda Lodge with my host Robin. The first day here has been busy with settling in and all the visitors that have popped in and out. I spent a lot of the day in the kitchen, baking bread for the guests, making lime pickles for the market, and eating Robyn's chocolate beet cake. I also got to bike into town to pick up some milk, learned how to stock the firewood and start the fire, collected citrus fruits off the tree for juicing and met the baby calves who I will be feeding (with bottles!) on Friday. This is going to be a great place to stay and help!

I have put my photos from these last few days on picassa, so you can see them all instead of just the ones I upload here. It's always so hard to choose! There's more photos of the sand dunes, seaweed pickers village, bonfire, fireworks, farewell dinner, and ferry crossing. I even put captions on a bunch of them and there's space for comments so check it out! (There's also bird photos that need ID)
http://picasaweb.google.com/Rebecca.Towle/KerikeriAndAuckland?feat=directlink

And here are some maps of the North island that my dad found to show you all where Coromandel and Kerikeri are.

Winding down and up in kerikeri

2009-10-02T03:05:00.000-07:00

I'm squeezing it all in before i shift places on monday. Yesterday I learned how to ride the motorbike. The boys got new motorbikes as a surprise present from their dad. They were delivered while I was taking care of them, which wasn't really the best surprise for the babysitter. "They don't have any gas in them, right?" I asked the deliveryman. "Well, Of course they do!" And then he proceeded to show them how to use the gears and took off. Anyways, they are addicted to video games so motorbike fun wore off fast, and I got a chance to try em out. After a little bit, I was in third gear making figure eights around the chicken paddock. It was pretty cool, but scary. It's easy to panic, take your foot off the foot brake, and then pull your body back which revs the accelerator while trying to squeeze the hand brake. Really easy.. The guy that taught me how to ride them explained to me that exact sequence of events two or three times before i got on the bike. And it's the first thing I did. I got into gear and took off before I was ready, thinking "oh crap, it did it," and then panicked when I got to the fence. I laughed it off that time, cuz it was exactly what I was told not to do. Then there was another time.. Well, I won't go into details for mum's sake.. Let's just say that I didn't realize what I scare I got until I got off, and my knees were shaking.

After motorbikes, we went to the swimming hole to catch eels, since I had mentioned that I've never seen one in a river before. You see, the boy's uncle was staying with us, and he's an active, outdoorsy guy. Same one that decided I should learn to ride the motorbike. I mentioned the eel thing when we were talking about the baby ducks. There had been nine, and they are already down to six! Louisa says the hawks, cats, and eels get them. Next thing you know, we're out at the river with a line, a hook and a sausage. We caught about four eels, but who knows how many for sure since we threw three back. One was kept for dinner.. cooked over a fire. Cuz that's the only way uncle Grant cooks things I guess..

Grant's son (Angus or Bryce, I never got it straight) and the eel that was later dinner. As a former vegan and current freegan, I will spare you all the picture of the eel pinned to the tree with a knife thru it's head, though I wish it had been a video cuz the eel suddenly wriggled and i had to choke back a scream

the boys on their bikes (didn't get a picture of me on the bike, cuz obviously, how would i take a picture of myself on it)

a shot of the family (Louisa, Charlie Rose, Finn and Zena the puppy. all except Tiger, the 11-year old boy, who is way too cool for ice cream with the family) in Paihia, the neighboring touristy town on the sea about a half hour away. The puppy had never been to a town before. She had no idea so many people existed in this world, and it was still a tiny town.. Next stop, New York. Well, maybe not. maybe Auckland where she'd be a country mouse in the city. She's still deathly scared of cars, other dogs, and the ocean...

Here you go dad. There birds were not pets. I have been trying to get photos to send to dad for identification, but bird photography is not easy. For example, the photo below was supposed to be of this big white sea bird swooping down to catch fish. Instead, all I got was this rainbow.

And here's some birds on the rocks.. yup, bird photos are pretty boring when they're just little spots..

Tomorrow I go into kerikeri to use my coupon for a free breakfast buffet and then up North to maybe ride quads in the sand dunes!

Ginger beer, cheesemaking, and quality of life.

2009-09-29T12:58:00.000-07:00

Most of the culture here is based around homemade, homegrown goodness. I've gone through more bags of flour than you could guess! We made cheese the other day from yogurt, which I could've made from scratch had I been bold enough to milk the goat. Yogurt-makers are sold at every major grocery store! At every yoga class, one of the students brings Louisa a bottle of homemade chutney or jam. There's little organic vege gardens in every yard (vege is the kiwi spelling of veggie that I've happily adopted) that usually include many varieties of lettuce and greens, potatoes, garlic, a lemon tree, a banana tree, beans, pumpkin, and other favorites. We've been rolling in celery and broad beans this month. Last night we had to use up all the broccoli, so made a broccoli/blue cheese/kumara (sweet potato) soup. yum!
I've started a list of all the things I want to have when i finally "settle down." it starts with mason jars, which was put on the list over a year ago when i started it (at Krysia's lovely home in New Mexico), so i call it the mason jar list. I've added many, including 'creative mailbox' and 'hot water bottle' since I got to Kerikeri. basically, it's a little piece of each home i pass through that I hope to have in my own one day.

Here's some more photos from the days in the kitchen. As well as some photos from my walks down the road... The end of the road, bamboo groves and one of many creative mailboxes.

Hey, how come nobody writes comments anymore. Are you out there?

To the left!

2009-09-28T14:53:00.001-07:00

quotidian adventure. going to drop the kids off at a party and rent a movie. but also the first time driving in new zealand.. Finn sat in the passenger seat and reminded me to drive on the left.

First get the music on. Then figure out which one is the gas pedal. it's the same, but it's still confusing cuz everything else is reversed (gear shift, window wipers, etc...) Then get the kids in the car and off we go!! It wasn't AS strange as I thought it would be. The streets are so quiet, there's plenty of time to think about each turn and roundabout.

Passing time, "kerikeri life," discoveries of zen...

2009-09-22T21:31:00.001-07:00

There is a photo competition at the local photo shop. They told me that I should enter. They said that they can't get the kinda camera I have here in kerikeri, so maybe that's why. Anyways, I wouldn't be around to collect the winnings (a poster canvas print, 100 free prints, etc...) but the categories are as follows: "springtime" (for spring is springing here as the leaves turn back in Minne), "party time" (for which I'd have to throw a party) and "life in kerikeri." So this is my life in kerikeri..

I found out that kids make good kitchen helpers when they're in the right mood (well, at least Charlie Rose does). She excels at stirring, kneading (but she doesn't like getting her hands messy so the dough has to be a dry one), and reading to me while I cook (from the book of nursery rhymes, or if I'm lucky, the story of Tiger the kitten) Here she is helping me with a sweet potato pie (or kumara pie, as sweet potatoes are called here), which she says is an adult dessert I made chocolate rice krispie treats for the kids. Which are called "rice bubbles"

I discovered the hand of buddha. Not while doing yoga, but while hanging out in the gardens. That's what this plant is called. I got excited cuz I thought it was like a squash and I could make one of my many many squash recipes. But instead, it's an inedible fruit kinda like a lemon. You can use the peel for zest, but would you really want to remove the hand of buddha from the garden just for some zest? Though I haven't had time to weed the gardens at the yoga center yet, I went up there while walking the puppy (and kitten) to pick some more cherimoya fruit. The fruit are high up in the tree so either me or Charlie Rose has to climb up and get them. Or we try to beat them down with a stick. Cherimoya hunting is my kind of hunting! Like easter egg hunts.

Watering the vetiver grass every sunny day. This would be the first in a series of photos of gardening in my tee-shirt from Gary Guthrie's farm (the carrot king of Iowa) where my organic farming adventures began! Credit goes to Richard for the photo and the sky for the sunny day! There's only been a few sunny days this week. Lots of time for baking!!

Tonight is taco night. I'm doing alright at this subsitute mom thing, but am greatly excited that real mom will be home soon (this weekend). also, kids don't always love my cooking, and I have a lot of leftovers unless its pizza or muffins. Today I made pizza muffins!

And, to bring the day full circle. This is the current status of kerikeri, 5:38pm Wednesday. view from the kitchen window.

Treasures old and new

2009-09-19T13:01:00.000-07:00

This weekend has been fun. Homecooked meals, a visit into town to check out the library and have a coffee (flat white, not my favorite but the only term i know. there's a fancy espresso machine at the house so I don't go untended for). Hanging out with the kids and puppy and kittens. The kittens amaze me. They follow us on walks with the puppy, maybe I've mentioned that?

Here are some treasures I've accumulated in my time here.

New (young, fleeting): The first is a cherimoya, an elusive fruit-of-the-gods from Ecuador. I searched long and hard for these in Minnesota where they had briefly showed up at the Cub Foods. I had noticed in the Sunday paper ads and got one to take to work (Azia) where the entire kitchen staff was Ecuadorian. The fruit went so fast and they were so happy that I went back to the 24-hour Cub at 2am after work to get more. And they were gone! Poof! This heart-shaped one was growing on a tree on the driveway. I wouldn't have even noticed them, and nobody living here even knew they were there. The subsitute yoga teacher pointed them out. Those are also some chicken eggs that I got this morning. We found a nest of duck eggs in the pond yesterday too. Maybe I'll get to see babies?! How long do baby ducks take?

Old (ancient, everlasting): Richard gave me one of these wooden eggs after I was admiring them in his workshop. They're incredibly light and smooth, so I was captivated. Little did I know, they are made of the Kauri tree. The Kauri tree used to cover New Zealand, but when Europeans came they exported it all because it's such strong, light and beautiful lumber. Richard says most of it went to California, especially San Francisco to rebuild after the earthquake. They grow tall. All the branches at the top weigh hundreds of tons and yet they keep pushing up in short growth spurts that cause the rippled look in the wood. These eggs are made from 45,000 year old Kauri tree that was dug up out of the swamps!! There are some sap balls, called kauri gum, from the same old trees too. They had a big rush in the late 19th century to dig it all up to send back to England for use as a fire-starter.

Rainbow Falls and Fairy Pools and beach.. Northland, NZ

2009-09-18T02:16:00.000-07:00

I don't really love nature pics, but I take them anyways. I took the puppy, Zena, on a looooong hike to the Fairy Pools and Rainbow Falls. It was an attempt to tire her out and calm her down a bit.. It didn't work!

this tree is called peroora (that's not really how it's spelled. i sounded it out. it's a tongue twister)

This is honeydew from the same peroora tree. it's made by a honeydew insect and then the birds drink it.. i tasted it. it tasted like water, but my palate is perhaps not as refined as the NZ birds..

Tramping in the bush

Not sure why it's called Rainbow Falls and the Fairy pools, but why not?

After Rainbow falls, thought we'd give the puppy a real holiday and head to the beach. Are you tired yet Zena?

Puppies never tire of adventure! But waves are scary!

Some boys walked by with a basket full of sea urchins, their hands bloody from the effort. They cracked one open for me to try. fresh uni! ah, all the weird non-vegan things i've tried in the name of adventure.

this is not really how you eat it... there's some squishy yellow stuff on the inside amongst all the squishy black and pink and red stuff. that's what you scoop out and eat straight. it's slightly sweet and gooey. at Tsunami we served "spoonfuls of happiness" with urchin, quail egg, flying fish roe and sake in a shotglass, so i was familiar with uni but never had eaten it..

One more idyllic beach pic...

...and one more peacock butt. he was after the chickens again when we got home. i got a slightly better picture this time, but he always puts his tail down when i get too close.

kerikeri! (which means dig dig) getting to work!

2009-09-16T13:55:00.000-07:00

Kerikeri! It isn’t raining so much anymore and when the sun shines this place is like paradise! The plants are all tropical, ferns and palm trees and bamboo. Every type of fruit and vege grows here! Golden kiwis are amazing! They have tamarillos which are like tomate de arból (Tree tomato) in Ecuador and kumara which is a purple sweet potato like the camotes I loved so much in Ecuador too. Check out this fruit bowl. The bananas are the only non-local item, and they taste it too.. The first bananas I've met that I don't like. The tomatoes and oranges we picked up from various neighbors and the kiwis come from another local stand. the tamarillos are on top.

I’m staying at a house that is a yoga center, organic garden and family home while the owner, Louisa, is away for a yoga teacher training with Iyengar’s daughter. Louisa has spent the last few days instructing me on everything from the kitchen to the gardens. After unloading it all, she left! I am in charge of everything with the help of her boarder, Richard. There is TONS to do, but I figure I’ll do what I can. As long as I keep the kids and pets alive, it’s alright, right?

Mostly I’ve been cooking stuff from scratch. Indian Pizza (check out the before/after pic) with whole-wheat pizza dough, spinach from the garden, feijoa chutney from the neighbors (not sure what feijoa is but we have various jars of homemade feijoa chutney in the pantry)... It took a long time and I used every dish in the house, but they all enjoyed it and even the kids ate some though I had made them a cheese pizza too. They want me to make pizza every night. I tried making sweet potato black bean burgers for the kids but they didn’t particularily like em. Then I mashed em up for tacos but again, no dice. They did eat my orange carrot bread, however. And muffins are popular around here. Not for breakfast, but for tea. There’s morning tea (which I pack in their lunches to eat at school) and afternoon tea when they get home. They’re kinda like hobbits. Good, simple food. Lots of it. Homemade jams and jellies and baking. And they go barefoot a lot. Actually, I let Finn, the middle child, go to school without shoes today. He convinced me that it’s ok, and I guess my perception of them being so much like hobbits allowed him to convince me.

the kids keep asking for pudding. i guess it's the general word for dessert but it also is about all they like for dessert. i asked them, "so pudding just means dessert?" and they said "yeah" so i asked, "like cookies and cakes?" and they said, "No, like dessert!" And i asked them to explain why cookies and cakes weren't dessert and they said that cookies and cakes are for afternoon tea, but custards, mousses, ice cream and puddings are desserts.

so now i make cookies and muffins every afternoon and have fun playing around with baking when I'm not tending to the yoga gardens, picking oranges from the orchard, or watering the vetiver grass, which is the one cash crop here. They sell it to be used in gardens as erosion control and use the clippings as mulch. I guess it's supposed to be amazing stuff.

So, I'm off to walk the 6 month old puppy. In the afternoons, I walk her with the little girl and we play explorers. The kittens usually follow us and climb trees. The photo is a picture of Charlie Rose, the little girl, playing in the backyard with her stuffed puppy. We go visit Richard's goat and the chickens (There is usually a peacock hanging around, strutting his stuff for the hens) and feed the ducks. All in all, lotsa fun! I'm probably 'exchanging' more than the required 6-8 hours of work for room and board, but I can't complain. Welcome to my adventure in domesticity and rural life!

ps. for the non-technically-inclined (Ahem, mom) you can click on the photos to make them larger!

p.s. peacock butt!

Auckland (correct pronunciation sounds like Oakland)

2009-09-12T13:37:00.000-07:00

I’m not going to miss Auckland too much, though it has been a nice starting point. I spent my days wandering around the city, which has grown on me little by little. The architecture is interesting, and I wish I had a better arch vocab so I could describe it. In lieu of description, I can put up some photos. To me, it feels very early 90’s.
As jet lag and exhaustion caught up to me on my first afternoon, I have spent the latter part of each day ‘tramping’ about the city, keeping my legs moving to keep my eyes open. The first day, I was revived at the waterfront, where I watched the cranes loading shipping containers and the little trucks that looked like grasshoppers on stilts. I think I looked a little silly with my face pressed up against the fence and my camera in hand… Hunger hit me early, as it has done every day since my arrival, at about 3 or 4pm. So it was that I discovered food alley. A food court of Asian restaurants: Malaysian, Thai, Vietnamese, Japanese, with its own bar, "Alley Cats," that looked like a slushie stand with colorful cocktails and a large beer selection. It was colorful, with flourescent lights, neon colors and a wll painted to look like we were outdoors. It reminded me of what I think it would be like to be in an Asian country. oooh I really want to travel in Asia since being here. My favorite part of Auckland is all the Asian restaurants, shops and presence. Well-divided into separate countries, unlike the U.S. where they tend to get all smooshed together. I hope to go to Food Alley a few more times when I'm passing through Auckland and sample all the cuisines. This time I had Japanese donburi, and a local NZ beer called Monteiths (The name of my evil second grade teacher that always made me stay in for recess and write sentences!)I was craving sake, but the only sake place I saw didn't keep the sakes in the fridge, but still charged high prices though the bottles wouldn't be worth it.

My second day commenced my shoe shopping tour of Auckland. Which really doesn’t sound that exciting, but anything can be the basis of an adventure. I got up at 7am and was already out by 8am. The shops didn’t open until 9am but I had to walk downtown and then I scoped out the scene before they opened. I traversed most of Auckland in my flip-flops and tried shoes on at most of Auckland shoe shops. I hate shoe shopping. Halfway through the day, I was tired, my feet and back ached and I had only bought one item, a small stuffed capybara keychain from the Japanese store. I stopped on K’road, which is a Bay Area-esque strip of thrift shops, Asian restaurants, coffee and teashops and nightclubs. It had started raining and I had to use the bathroom, so I ducked into a teashop that also was an art gallery, radio station and moko studio (traditional facial tattoos). They had a million kinds of tea, and I sat at the bar where I could see how each was brewed following unique guidelines and traditions. Tea is the second-most consumed beverage in the world, after water. The Irish are the heaviest tea drinkers, followed by Kuwaitis. New Zealanders come in about halfway on the list (of the book I was perusing about tea in the shop) and Americans are close to last. I made up for that by drinking many cups of tea there
while it continued to rain. When it finally cleared up, I continued on through the cemetery. The most beautiful cemetery, even beating the one I saw in Tulcan, Ecuador. The tombstones were all from the mid-1800’s. Then I headed back to the shoe stores in Newmarket, by way of the big park and duck pond in the center of the city, the last neighborhood on my list. I ended up with no shoes at the end of the day when the shops closed. Just my capybara keychain (which I left in the box for awhile, since the color was a surprise!) But I now know Auckland front and back. The next day, I got up early and went to buy the best pair of shoes I had found (at a high price. Tennis shoes here run $100-$200US!), which were at the very first store I had visited. I had breakfast out, a delicious muesli of sultanas, dates, coconut and oats with a fruit salad of kiwis, pineapples, and oranges. The buses went on strike, so I barely made it to my bus to Kerikeri. I had to run up the hill to my hostel after walking all the way to the shoe shops and the fake Apple (Mac) store where I had to buy an ipod charger to replace the one I left in the LAX airport. Then I was lucky, and the hostel owner drove me to the bus station. Now I’m in Kerikeri, five hours up from Auckland. It’s nice to be somewhere out of the city and out of the hostel scene. Hostels are always the same culture no matter what country you’re in. I’m staying with a kiwi family of three kids, their mother and Richard who lives here and helps with the kids. The mother will be going out of town in a week, so Richard and I will be in charge. More on Kerikeri soon, as I must take photos before I can add words.

"Is this your first coffee in New Zealand?"

2009-09-08T16:13:00.000-07:00

Is it that obvious I just arrived? Apparently, yes. I haven't spent too much time researching Kiwi slang. It's my first time traveling extensively in an english-speaking country, so I thought that the whole communication thing would be a breeze.
But my first exchange with a Kiwi had me at "Just a flat coffee?" "Um, yes? With milk, please." When the server brought my coffee to the table, he explained that they do not serve much filtered coffee here and that I should ask for an Americano from now on. I ended up with a cappuccino, which apparently is called "flat white." Oh well, it does the trick.

By the way, I'm here! Welcome to New Zealand! I'm getting right to my blog while I wait to check-in at my hostel. My plane arrived at 7:30AM this morning, Wednesday 09/09/09. We flew right past Tuesday, which apparently was the birthday of one of the flight attendants... Wow, what a flight! I could've spent a week on that plane! It was as big as a building, a flying castle. I was open-mouthed with awe, and the flight attendant decided to be extra kind to me. He whispered to me that the back row was open and that as soon as the seatbelt light turned off, I could move back there. He moved my bag back to hold the seat and put all the armrests up so I could lay down and sleep. I almost didn't want to sleep, there were so many movies and TV shows I wanted to watch on my personal TV screen. They served us a gourmet dinner with wine, gave us snack packs and toothbrushes and face masks and socks, and then I slept most of the flight until breakfast. I had two full meals between our midnight take-off and 7am arrival!

Auckland is just a big city. Not sure what there is to do.. But I'll be here for two days. Today, my goals are two. One, to find the post office and send a postcard to Brendan so I can find out how long it takes. Two, to buy a pair of shoes for working and walking. All I have is flip-flops and Japanese toe socks which keep my feet warm but will probably get dirty fast and may give these kiwis a bad image of American fashion.. Then again, I'm in travel-mode. Example: a fanny pack for a purse, I don't care so much about fashion.