Olives, Pirate Dinosaurs, and Kitties

Turns out olive harvesting is painful. At least, if you're the one up the tree it is. Maybe I should post pictures of my myriad scratches and scrapes. :)

However, we had a great week in the far North of NZ with Charlotte, Mark, and Joe! They're a charming family of mixed British and Kiwi descent who just moved onto this farm about a year ago. Mark is a general practitioner in the nearby town, Charlotte is a farmer-mom and baker extraordinaire, and Joe is an energetic, bright 4-year old. They had no previous experience with olive farming, sheep, veggie growing, or anything of the sort, but over the last year they've been learning as they go and fixing up this farm into a really great place. There are some 600 olive trees scattered all over the property, often in the most inaccessible spots. We didn't harvest all of them, as some were chock full of olives and others only had sparse smatterings. It took some ingenuity to figure out how to get at them. The method we mostly relied on was spreading large nets on the ground under several trees at a time, propping up the parts where the olives might roll down the hill and get lost in the pasture. Then we used hands and small rakes to strip olives from the twigs.


Of course, the best and blackest olives always seemed to be on the very top of the trees, which necessitated some serious monkey-climbing into the precarious upper-branches. None of these trees were really large, and in many of them the breeze coming in off the harbor would send branches (and the harvester perched among them) swaying to and fro. Mark compared it to "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon". I've always been an avid tree climber, and it was a lot of fun to squirm up through the branches and pull down handfuls of olives, with just my legs braced against anything steady. The only drawback was the abundance of tiny twigs smacking you in the face, scratching at arms and legs, and snagging clothing. But still fun.

This summer there's been a pretty terrible drought up in that region, with absolutely no rainfall for about 4 1/2 months straight. After last year's bumper crop, the trees this year could hardly compete. However, by the end of our 3 straight days of picking we had filled up every available container, from olive baskets to Joe's toy containers, to shopping bags and coolers. Charlotte and Mark told us they expect the olives to yield a great amount of oil for their weight, as they're not filled up with any excess water. It should be particularly good oil as well. Mark drove our load to the nearest olive press on Sunday night, so hopefully in the next couple of days well know the final weight of our harvest, and what kind of rating their oil receives.

When we weren't harvesting we helped Charlotte mulch her veggie garden, harvest apples from their couple of trees, feed the sheep, read to and entertain Joe, etc. He's a really funny kid, always eager to be in the thick of the action. He would don his Batman and Spiderman costumes and bring us cold beers or lunches while we were harvesting. And do break dancing and The Robot performances for us. They had an amazing cat named Lola, who followed us as we went around the property, pounced and jumped after the rugby ball when we played with Joe, and alternately attacked us and snuggled with us. I think Kelly fell in love with her.

We spent one morning wandering the beach where their property meets the Hokianga Harbor. There are great big boulders scattered around the shore, with oysters crusted all over them and little black crabs with blue claws scuttling away into the crevices when we approached. On Monday Charlotte lent us her car so we could take a drive to scenic Waimamaku Beach and the South Head at the entrance to the Harbor.


Overall a fun, busy, exhausting week up North. This kind of personal experience has really been more meaningful to us than a lot of the sights we've seen around the country. Now we're back in Auckland figuring out our next move. I think we'll be heading back to the States sometime soon.

Aaaaand We're Back!

Sorry for the lapse in updates! We've been doing some figuring. The conclusion we've come to is that New Zealand is an awesome place to visit, but may not have much to offer in the long-term.

:\

I know, kind of a let-down.
In coming out here I think one of our real concerns was falling in love with the country and never wanting to leave. But while we've seen and done some really wonderful things, there doesn't seem to be much going on outside of tourist-type activities. The country is kind of lacking in any unique culture or character. I guess there's the Maori heritage, which is quite fascinating, but it seems to be pretty much confined to museums. Otherwise it's just like a watered down version of the UK; it's got the scenery but it's missing the charm and the quirkiness.

So, we're going to roll with the punches and get all we can out of this, but not make any long-term plans here. We're practicing resiliency. It's a hard outlook to maintain at all times, but it's either that or buy plane tickets home tomorrow and come back crying that it wasn't what we thought it would be.
Not only is that not really our style, but it wouldn't really be fair. We've had a great couple of months traveling down here. :)

We finished our circuit of the South Island with Kaikoura, on the east coast. There's some feature of the ocean floor right off the coast there that brings cold arctic waters rich with nutrients right up to the surface, creating a feeding frenzy for everything from krill and plankton on up to the sperm whales, orcas, blue whales, seals, dolphins, etc that feed on them. We were pretty psyched to go whale watching, but two days of consistent rain and high winds canceled all the trips. We'll have to get back there some day..

After that it was back across the Cook Strait to Wellington, and then on up north with only brief overnight stops in Napier and Mt. Manganui. We had to get up here by the 25th, because we made arrangements to work on a farm! Tomorrow we're heading to 4 Winds Olive Grove, which is owned by a young British couple. We'll stay with them for about a week, working on the harvest in exchange for room and board. Should be an interesting experience as neither of us really knows anything about growing or pressing olives. After that we'll either look into working for a bit on another farm (we're both interested in dairy farming and also beef/mutton farming) or we'll continue on our tour of the North Island.


Right now we're in Paihia, on the Bay of Islands. After the last couple of looong days on the bus we were looking forward to relaxing on a beautiful beach before getting into some hard work. This area is celebrated for it's coastline, and is a major holiday destination for Kiwis and tourists alike. Paihia itself is also a major center for scuba diving, as the many bays and islands offer beautiful and varied reefs. Unfortunately, shortly after we got down to the beach the clouds started rolling in. We walked around town for a bit, and then headed back to the hostel just in time for a serious downpour. This country gets a lot of rain.

After the dramatic and varied landscapes of the South Island, driving back through the North Island seems kind of tame. It's quite beautiful in a serene and pastoral kind of way, but can't really compete with, say, Fiordlands National Park. Or Lake Wanaka. Or the glaciers. Or a billion other things down south! Note to anyone about to undertake a similar tour of NZ: do the North Island first. Otherwise it'll just be anticlimactic.


Cross your fingers that olive harvesting is fun. Or at least not painful.

More Video

Becky early on in her advanced studies of the Kiwi accent. Auckland, January 2010.



My apologies for not being able to edit the video orientation!

Video!

We are now starting a new series in our blogging career. it's called videos. Bear with us as we figure out how to do this!
Our first test is from our water taxi ride along the coast of Abel Tasman National Park.

Van Take Two

So, about six weeks, two islands, and a little over 2200 miles later...we ran into our old van in Kaikoura.

Small, small, SMALL country.

Christchurch

We've landed in Christchurch!

Quick sequence of events:

Left Dunedin Monday morning, stopping at the Moeraki Boulders and some crazy blue glacial lakes on the way to Lake Tekapo. This is another glacial lake situated at the foot of the Southern Alps. Its' color is due to the finely ground mineral particles held in suspension in the water, reflecting back light. It's like neon aqua.

Spent two nights at Tekapo.
Went horseback riding around and over Mt. John.
Put our feet in the freezing cold lake water.
Looked at the stars from one of the highest visibility locations in the world (thanks to the thin atmosphere).

Drove to Christchurch Wednesday morning.
Began furiously applying to jobs and posting resumes to various websites, etc.


It's crunch time. Either we find jobs within the next week or two (either here in Christchurch or anywhere else in the country), or we blow the last bit of our savings on some amazing experience, and then purchase tickets back to the States.



Stay tuned to find out..

Revision

Ok, well Dunedin may not be Edinburgh, but it's cute in its own way. On Sunday we enjoyed the free Dunedin Art Gallery, which included a haunting photography exhibition which focused on scenes in America that most people never see or hear about. Tons of nuclear waste giving off strange blue light from where it's stored in water. Inbred white tigers. Playboy magazine printed in Braille. The Body Farm. A very creepy look into what goes on in the US of A. Makes our country look just a little bit..off... But Kelly and I enjoyed it nonetheless.

We tried to take a tour of the Cadbury factory, but it turns out they don't produce chocolates on the weekends so we wouldn't have been able to see the actual machinery and production process. We were pretty bummed about that, but bought a bunch of chocolate in the gift shop anyway.

That evening, we took a tour of the Otago Peninsula, known for its diverse and rare wildlife. We found a little ad posted on a bulletin board at our hostel offering drives around the Dunedin area by a university student. That's how we met Kahwooi. He's Malaysian but has been in the Dunedin area for over 7 years. He was kind of a funny, dorky guy. Liked to make corny jokes.

We set out at around 7 in the evening and drove the length of the peninsula with a couple of stops for photos. If anywhere near Dunedin resembles Scotland - it's the Otago Peninsula. Steep hills and valleys covered in green grass and dark patches of trees and shrubs. New Zealands' only castle, Larnach Castle, is right in the middle of it. We drove out along the northern coast til we came to the end, about 40km out. At the end there's the only mainland Royal Albatross breeding colony in the Southern Hemisphere. We got out and walked a footpath right to the edge of some great cliffs dropping off to the sea. There were lots of gulls around, and after a few moments of waiting we saw what looked like a pterodactyl flying among them. Seriously, this thing made the gulls look like robins! I think their wingspan is something like 3 meters, and they're so large that they can't really support themselves by flapping but instead depend on the breezes to give them lift. They were huge! Eventually we saw about three gliding around, but couldn't see around the rocks to where their chicks were.

As the sun went down and it began to grow dark we made our way down to a small sheltered beach where a number of other people were waiting. The tip of the peninsula is also home to the worlds smallest penguin, the Little Blue Penguin. They make their nests in tunnels in the hillsides, often displacing rabbits to do so. Every morning the adults swim out to sea in a large group called a raft and gorge all day on small fish, squid, plankton, etc. When night falls they come back to shore and fill up their chicks with their surplus of partially digested fish matter. Yum.

We were among a group of about 30 people waiting silently and watching the water to spot the raft coming into shore. A volunteer from the Department of Conservation used his dim red flashlight to show me a half-grown chick standing just a couple of feet away, peering into the darkness like the rest of us, looking for his parents! He was about 8 inches high, dark blue-black on his back and white on his chest. He was still kind of fuzzy looking, but otherwise could've been an adult. He didn't seem disturbed by our coming within about 10 feet of him. I stepped back and gave Kelly a turn to see, and then we heard whispers behind us and found that the adults had started coming up on shore.

They're funny little things, and didn't seem put off by the presence of so many people scattered around the small beach they were crossing to reach their nests. We could hear the chicks behind us calling to their parents with high-pitched cooings and trills. The DOC volunteers had directed us to stand spaced out so as not to block the penguins paths, and they came in ones and twos winding their ways between us. They stand at about a 45 degree angle to the ground, kind of swaying around a little as they decide which way to go, and take slow, awkward steps over the sand and rocks with their little wings held out for balance. Very deliberate in their movements.

This whole operation only took about 20 minutes. We were all suspended in silence as the penguins made their way up to their nests. Then everyone just kind of drifted off, back to cars left parked up the road.

So Dunedin isn't really so bad, after all. :)

Dunedin

We've reached Dunedin. Dunedin is Gaelic for "Edinburgh" and we kept hearing/reading that Dunedin was the southern Edinburgh. Becky and I both were excited to arrive in this town and were thinking of finding jobs to stay for a few months to soak up some fine Scottish influence.

EVERYONE LIES.

We are leaving tomorrow.


thats all i have to say.

Queenstown

I would just like to say that Milford Sound is amazing.
The drive to Milford Sound is also amazing.

Fiordlands National Park consists of 3 million acres of virgin rainforest. I can't even tell you how beautiful it is. Our bus driver blew me away with the natural history he was spouting off. E.g. the entire park was once covered by glaciers 1500m high, leaving only the the top thirds of the mountains exposed. The area is now covered by beech trees from the bottoms of the mountains up to about 1200m, where the yearly snows prevent seedlings from lasting through winter. They won't seed in the valleys either, which were scraped so flat and smooth by the glaciers that rainfall has nowhere to flow to, creating too boggy of a situation for the trees to grow. So we're driving down this perfectly flat prairie covered with gold grasses, and not a single tree, except the few shrubs which have sunken their roots into the boulders scattered here and there by the glaciers. At one point we saw a mountain which had crumbled down into the valley some thousands of years ago, and everywhere it left rocks there were trees standing up on top of them. But never on the floor of the valley. At times, when there has been a lot of rainfall and the trees become waterlogged and significantly heavier than usual, their root systems won't be able to support them by gripping into the bare rock any longer. When this happens it takes just one tree falling over to start a "tree avalanche", which will strip a large area of the mountainside bare down to the bedrock. It takes around 900 years for one of these scars to regenerate its forest covering, going through several stages of grasses, shrubs, and finally trees.

From Te Anau we drove for about an hour along the Eglinton Valley (identifiable as a glacial valley by its "U" shape and the angular boulders deposited by the ice) until we began to climb up into the mountains. The area gets incredible amounts of snowfall in the winter, and the steep-sided mountains, devoid of covering above the tree line, create a terrifically avalanche-prone situation. In the winter avalanches are triggered by explosives every two to three weeks (at pre-determined times when the road has been closed in preparation) so that the snow never builds up to dangerous instability. According to our driver, an avalanche can deposit up to 30m of snow on the road at one time. And these happen all winter long!! I can hardly imagine that much snow.

We stopped at one point to fill up our water bottles at a glacial stream. Recent rainfalls had created countless waterfalls tracing their ways down the bare rock, and made the rivers churning and swift. The water was incredibly clear and crisp. It's so strange to go against the basic safety rules which are drilled into you when you're a kid, such as "don't drink from streams or rivers!". This water was probably some of the purest on earth, without the aid of chemicals, distillation, filtration, or any of that junk. Just knowing I had it in my water bottle made me super happy. :)

Then we drove through a 1.2 km tunnel blasted through the solid granite of the mountains. It took 17 years to complete the tunnel, and despite its lack of reinforcements or ventilation systems it is the most secure tunnel in the world because of the strength of the rock. Our driver said that some years ago he was driving through the tunnel when a 6.something earthquake hit, and he knew nothing of it until they emerged from the other side!

After the tunnel we wound our way back down to sea level and soon came upon Milford Sound. Since it had been rainy the last couple of days we were treated to a billion waterfalls, mostly white threads spilling down the mountainside and often blowing away in the wind before reaching the sea. The mountains rose almost vertically out of the water, and the only way we could comprehend how huge they were was to see the tiny speck of another ship drifting by the base, or the white dot of a small plane taking someone on a scenic flight. Clouds were sitting on the tops of the mountains, and the sun was only able to break through here and there. I think the clouds and occasional rain made it even more beautiful.

We cruised down the sound all the way out to the Tasman, encountering some dolphins and fur seals along the way. On the way back our captain brought the nose of the ship right up near the base of a huge waterfall, so close that Kelly and I were both soaked by the freezing mists billowing all around us. We were afraid we'd drift forward just another couple of feet and the water would start pounding down on the deck, but luckily the captain was able to maneuver us quite deftly. I think that experience made Kelly's day.

It was a long day of driving to get to the Sound and then all the way back to Queenstown, but I would say it's probably the most amazing adventure we've had so far. We'll post some pictures in the next few days, though they really can't do justice to the beauty or scale of Milford.

Tonight is our last night in Queenstown, and tomorrow we'll head on to Dunedin. Later we're meeting up with a friend we've made, Hannah from Holland, for a burger from the legendary "Fergberger", and then possibly some ice cream. Queenstown is cute, but doesn't have enough going on to keep us here for long. In Dunedin we plan to star the job search in earnest, as it seems like a city we might both like a lot. Cross your fingers for good job opportunities.

On an unrelated topic, we did find some very tasty pies in Te Anau. Miles' Better Pies has shown us that SOMEONE in NZ has skill when it comes to cooking. Though I'm sure we could both still do better. :)

Southland

Location: Te Anau

Well we've finished with the west coast - for now at least. We spent a lazy couple of days in Greymouth and at Franz Josef Glacier, then headed inland to Lake Wanaka and its township.

Greymouth's a small, rather bleak ex-gold mining town. At one point I'm sure it was a bustling center of trade, but since there's not so much gold-mining going on these days it seems to have become a ghost town. However our hostel there, Noah's Ark, was really great and we hung out with several other travellers whose paths we've been crossing and re-crossing as we all meander southwards. The hostel go its name due to the fact that it once provided living quarters for the priests of the church next door, and when it remained untouched through several floods which severely damaged the city and destroyed the church in the early 1900s, they decided someone upstairs must've been keeping an eye on it. :)

We spent longer than anticipated in Franz Josef - 4 nights total - as I was coming down with a cold. We were able to offer a couple hours of work each day in exchange for our accommodations, so we figured we should take advantage of the free stay to rest up and avoid the ample rain in the area. The glacier actually comes down into an region of temperate rainforests, and they say it rains some 180 days out of the year. We didn't go hiking on the glacier, but we walked up the glacial valley to the terminal face and got a good look at the lower half. Hopefully some time over the next year we'll return to do a full-day guided hike, the only way to really get up on the ice and take a look at the cleanest parts and the ice caves, etc. Had a good time kayaking on Lake Mapourika. When we set out the conditions were mirror-like and since there was no wind we cut right across the water like a knife. It looks like hematite or mercury, all silver and black reflectivity.

Then we got to Wanaka. And we fell in love with Wanaka. It's a small town right on the edge of the third-largest lake in NZ, Lake Wanaka. The day we got there was hot and clear, and the water's amazingly blue. Not like Carribbean aqua, but like a blue M&M or something. Unbelieveably blue. The town is small and cute, not super touristy (a nice change), and filled with Kiwi vacationers. I think our bus driver said it was one of the top holiday destinations in the country. Understandable, with all the water sports, hikes, horse riding, vineyards, and ski mountains found in the immediate area. We only stayed two short nights, but have plans to return in the spring to find jobs for a couple of months. For now we'll continue our circuit, testing out new places and making mental notes of where it's worth returning to for more extended periods.

As soon as we crossed the Southern Alps on our trip from Franz Josef to Wanaka the scenery changed dramatically. The mountains around the glacier, the ones covered with temperate rainforests, receive almost all the moisture held in the winds that come in off the Tasman Sea, leaving nothing for the land East of the Alps. This makes for big, craggy, bare mountains, and scrubby, dry pasturelands. Except where irrigated the fields are mostly tan in color, and the only thing that seems to grow on the mountains are pine trees. Pair this with numerous bright-blue glacial lakes like Lake Wanaka, and you've got quite a view. It's really beautiful in a massive, raw kind of way.

Queenstown, the commercial and cultural center of this alpine lake district, is home to all extreme sports imaginable. Kiwis like dreaming up far-fetched and dangerous ways to entertain themselves. Hence the invention of Bungy Jumping in 1988 on a bridge shortly outside of Queenstown (at 43m high, it's now one of the smallest bungy jumps available. There's one in South Africa that's something like 500m high!). It's also supposed to be a great area to do a skydive, as the scenery can best be taken in when you've got a good vantage point. We only spent a night in Queenstown so far, but we found it to be a lot more charming than we had expected, given its extreme-sports-plus-partying-tourists reputation. We'll stop there again when we finish this leg of the journey.

So that brings us to Te Anau, our home for the moment. As we drove down from Queenstown the fields turned greener and the mountains more rounded and it really grew to resemble the UK. The older couple sitting in front of us on the bus were Irish, and they were telling the driver they felt right at home. Te Anau's a tiny town, with not much going on, but it's the gateway to Fjordland National Park. On Wednesday we'll be heading out to Milford Sound for a cruise. Cross your fingers it doesn't rain TOO much (some is acceptable, but I need to be able to use my camera without destroying it!). If we can figure a cheap way we'll also head to Doubtful Sound. I'd realllllly love to get there but it's much more inaccessible and much pricier. But supposed to be so so so beautiful!!! Then we'll return from this little tangent back to Queenstown, and onwards to the East Coast.

We're hoping to find work for a couple of months near Dunedin or Cristchurch, or somewhere in between. The land and the climate there is much gentler than the West Coast or Southland, which would save us from having to buy a whole wardrobe of outdoor gear just to keep warm and dry day to day. Though we have been discussing the merits of opening our own pie shop (savory AND sweet) and demolishing the competition. I don't know how a country full of intelligent, globally aware people can be contented with the baked good we've had the misfortune to encounter. Not a decent pastry in sight!