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.

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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. :)