Day 4 on the farm

Today we weeded the corn patch and planted a second crop of corn. We paddled around the swimming pond and fished scummy plants out with a net! It’s a good activity in the heat. It’s really hot here, but the breeze keeps it tolerable. On our morning walk I climbed a tree with Alec. He always points out the good climbing trees on the property, so I decided to give this one a try.

Oldest bridge in NZ. 

Weaving flax. 

An old cream shack. 

The art gallery building. 

Then Laura and I walked to Kohukohu, the nearest village, which is about a half hour walk away. It has a handful of cute little shops and cafes. We went back to the art gallery and I bought a really awesome art piece that I have to send home in the mail. It’s stitched muka (flax fibre), plain and dyed with a local tree bark, on a blank canvas. It’s my first piece of art ever bought in a gallery! I can’t wait to hang it when I get home. Everyone in the art gallery is so lovely! There is a little artist collective that we made friends with, and I got to meet an talk to the artist that made the piece I bought!

We also went to an adorable café and had coffee and carrot cake. Everything is on island time here… so you can’t be in a rush!

We walked along the main drag and stood on New Zealand’s oldest bridge. It was a lovely day. The walk back was fun, we met a local who walked with us for a ways and told us about some Maori culture. We came home and made some soup for dinner with a lot of garden veggies (veges as they call them in Kiwiland). 

We went up to the highest point on the property and looked at the stars with giant binoculars and a tripod. We saw Jupiter's moons!!!! It was soooooooo amazing. I nearly had a panic attack when I saw them. And we looked at Sirius and the Seven Sisters and galaxies and nebulaas and dust clouds. And we saw the Southern Cross, which is a new constellation for us. 

Day 3 on the farm

Jan 4 Blog version

Alec makes a lovely muesli mix that we have for breakfast. It’s what gets me out of bed in the morning. Although the blue skies and birds singing helps too (sorry Canadians). On our morning walk with Dog we went up to Wally’s house. Alec sold some property to Wally a few years ago, and Wally has built a house completely off the grid with 2 solar panels and a wind turbine. Wally makes model airplanes, and has some art in the local gallery too. We found some jasmine flowers on the walk and put them in our caravan. They made the place smell really good and flowery.

We weeded the strawberry patch, and were allowed to eat all the strawberries we found! They were delicious. And the highlight of my day was….. I FOUND A PRAYING MANTIS!!! Best day ever! It was a little green one. I want to keep it as a pet in our caravan but Laura won’t let me. We ate some grapefruits (New Zealand gold and Wheeney varieties that are so sweet! The Wheeney tastes like lemonade!) , and a fruit salad fruit (which is the fruit from a house plant we have in Canada). The fruit salad fruit’s Latin name translates to  delicious monster or something like that. Turns out the fruit is really delicious, but it contains oxalic acid that feels like slivers in your mouth when you eat them (surprise!). Alec didn’t tell us until after we ate them…. (We ate more anyway, even though we were terrified of it. It was such a rush.)

Then we too the ferry to Rawene (a 10 min drive plus a 10 min ferry ride) to get a car part fixed. There were rogue chickens on the loose at the ferry terminal! They were beautiful. We got some groceries and picked some prickly pairs to eat from the parking lot, but we ended up with little slivers all over our hands (we are so smart). We stopped in the Kohukohu village on the way back and went to a little op-shop (thrift store) in a tiny little box building that I looooove. We went to two art galleries: one had both traditional and contemporary Maori art. The owner’s sister worked down the road and was doing a flax fibre workshop, so of course we went to see her and had an impromptu flax workshop! Everyone was ridiculously nice and friendly. Laura was really good at separating the fibres from the long leaves. We used the sharp edge of a big mussel shell to scrape off the green and waxy part of the leaf. The white fibre can then be twisted to make twine.

2 types of grapefruit and fruit salad fruit for a snack

Picking graprefruit

Wally's garden. Banana trees in the background, nasturtiums in the foreground, which are basically invasive here. They're everywhere! 

My new best friend. 

Chickens at the ferry terminal. They actually crossed the road at one point. 

Prickly pears in Rawene. 

Giant fiddlehead. 

Going on a walk with Dog. 

Black tree fern. HUGE! 

The view from the top of the property. 

Stick bug. 

Dog being majestic. 

We picked some sweet corn for dinner and cherimoyas from a tree. It’s my new favourite fruit! Its dark green on the outside, apple sized, but it’s squishier. Inside it has white flesh with giant apple-like seeds and tastes like bananas mixed with pear and vanilla pudding and mango and pineapple! Laura and I are addicted. Fortunately there are trillions around here! We eat them fiendishly at almost every meal. 

In the evening we went up to the top of the property with giant binoculars and a tripod. It was so beautiful! We saw 4 or 5 of Jupiter's moons!! I really freaked out when I saw them. We looked at different constellations and gas clouds and dust clouds. And we saw a few shooting stars! A great way to end the day. 

Our first wwoofing destination!

We made friends at the couchsurfing event at a bar that will show us around Auckland when we return.  We danced to bad music, which finally made us leave when a gangam style remix came on. 

We got up at 630 the next morning to catch our bus and woke up everyone in our dorm...  The bus took 4 hours to Paihia. We saw pink sheep at sheep world by the road... it was distasteful in my opinion... but I still really wanna visit on the way back! We stopped and ate sandwiches and kiwis in Paihia, and I bought an avocado at the farmers market and it was SO GOOD! We hitched out of Paihia and met a couple that offered us cookies. Then we hitched with 3 or 4 other people to get to Alec’s house near Kohukohu, which took another 4 hours. 

Alec has a big white dog named Dog. He looks like a polar bear. He didn't like us at first, but after some scritches and treats he likes us a lot. We went for a walk around the property and saw stick bugs on kanuka tea trees!!!! And the views are beautiful! There are many different types of fruit trees all over the property, grapefruit, lemons, oranges, olives, bananas, mangos, guavas, crazy fruit! Passion fruit…. We made dinner (stir fry) and then had coffee liqueur with ice cream for dessert! Alec is very generous with his time and knowledge. Our home is in a little camper outside with red sheepskin rugs and our own sink. It's lovely! 

My first two days in Auckland

My first moments in NZ started off perfect when Laura met me at the airport with chocolate. We took a bus to the city centre, while I exclaimed about fern trees and cool plants all the way. We walked to our hostel, which backed onto a beautiful park! It was lush and green and had big trees and a mini zip line! (We think it’s intended for grown ups anyway…)

            After we saw the park, we walked along some residential streets and found some hibiscus blossoms along the street. We picked a few for tea. Then we came across a GIANT rosemary bush outside someone’s house. So of course we picked a few sprigs. And then they also had some GIANT fennel plants, so we picked some of that too, which we made into fennel, potato, and rosemary fritters for dinner. We had them with sheep yogurt and lemon. We also found some lavender plants so we picked some flowers and made hibiscus and lavender iced tea with honey and lemon when we got home. There were extensive bins of free food at the hostel too, so we had an awesome (and really cheap/kind of stolen) meal. Someone had also left some Australian rose in the fridge so we had that to top off our freegan food.

            We also saw some GIANT aloe very bushes, and some jade bushes. Everyone’s yards are just full of thriving jungle plants!

            The bad news: I have cankles. Literally. It concerns me. Laura says it’s from flying. It reminds me of when I sprained my ankle and it was really swollen. Luckily, they were temporarily cured by lying upside down on a hill, and then backwards on a plastic lounge chair. They came back later, but are mostly gone today. This trip will be known as “The Time Michi Suffered Cankles.” I’m a survivor through, I’ll get through it hopefully.

            Today Laura and I were going to get a ride with two girls from BC that I shared a room with last night. Turns out the ride didn’t work out (they weren’t going far enough North), so we walked around the city to find some internet and find another hostel. Our last one was really nice, but we wanted to try something knew. Everyone takes 2 days off after New Years eve here, so hardly anything’s open. We used some internet outside the library, where there were about 15 other people doing the same thing.

            We found another hostel close to the bus stop where we will catch the bus tomorrow to Paihea. We did a lot of walking today: we explored some lovely parks, went to an amazing Indian food restaurant that had a lunch special with a TON of food and naan.

            People are really friendly here. Lots of people stop to talk to us and ask us what we are up to. There are also a lot of other travelers with giant backpacks just like us.  Theres a giant slingshot ride by the skytower that people go on, and a bungee jump thing off the skytower itself.

Tonight we're going to a bar to a couchsurfing event. A guy pulled over and told us about it when we were using the internet on a park bench. We looked up the event online and we get cheap drinks! The bar is near our hostel, too. 

            Tomorrow we’re getting up early to get the bus at 7:45, and we will get to Paihea at noon and start our first woofing experience! I can’t wait! Wish me luck on the cankles!