Christmas in Kiwiland

12/25/13

            It’s Christmas here in Kiwiland.  Last night, Michelle, Kellogg, and I attended the Christmas Eve service at the local church.  It was probably the simplest church I’ve ever been in, but it was perfect in its simplicity.  One small room comprised the entire church.  The walls of the room were white, and it was lined with basic wooden pews and vases full of flowers all along each side under the windows.  Much like the church, the service itself was very straightforward.  There were only about twenty people in attendance, and a lone minister presided over the entire liturgy.  There was no program outlining the schedule of the service, and the minister led us in what usually appeared to be impromptu prayer, and, of course, Christmas hymns.  She spoke often of how we all live in a messy yet concurrently perfect world, how God never seems to run out of surprises for us, and how fortunate we are that the horrors of other places never make an appearance here in New Zealand.  She also asked one member of each family present to come up and light a Christmas candle in homage to the lord Jesus, and at the end of the service different family members were invited to the front of the church to extinguish the candle.  It was really cool to see the reverend getting members of the congregation involved in the ceremony, even with such a small audience.  The service only lasted about fifty minutes, and at its conclusion the minister made time to chat with each family on their way out and wish us all a merry Christmas, exemplifying the very friendly Kiwi nature.  When we returned home, I silently thanked God for my good fortune in having the opportunity to spend a year in this wonderful place, settled in to bed to start a new book, and was quickly asleep.

            I woke up on Christmas day at exactly six o’clock a.m.  I was the first one awake, so I sat down to read quietly as I waited for everyone else to wake up.  We had a breakfast of toast, scrambled eggs, bacon, potatoes, and New Zealand style beans, and we all exchanged Merry Christmases as we settled around the table.  After breakfast, the Christmas routine followed much the same as that in America, all of us sitting around the tree exchanging gifts and then turning on the traditional assortment of classic Christmas movies immediately thereafter.  Michelle’s father and two brothers arrived as we were lounging about, and lunch was shortly on the table.  The Christmas lunch we had here was almost exactly like an American Thanksgiving, featuring turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, gravy, a carved up ham, and an assortment of vegetables.  The only big difference was kumara—which is probably most similar to a sweet potato.  Everyone was stuffed after lunch, but Michelle wasn’t done yet; she had prepared a pavlova on Christmas Eve, and she served it up with custard and home-whipped cream for dessert.

            After lunch, I went out back to toss the lacrosse ball around with the Czech girl Alena.  I was shocked to learn that they had even heard of lacrosse in the Czech Republic, let alone played it, and it was really fun to shake the rust off and play catch again.  When we were done, Lizzie (Graham and Michelle’s daughter) and her fiancé invited me back to their place to hang out and have a drink or two.  They also have near unlimited internet, and I was really psyched for the chance to get these seven pages of blog posts out of this word document I’ve been writing them in and onto the internet.  As I sit here writing this, though, the internet is totally down and I keep checking it anxiously to get connected as soon as possible.  I did upload my recent pictures onto my hard drive, so I’ll be sure to share some of those when I’m finally able to post (check the entry about wine country and Lake Taupo). 

            It’s been great having a Kiwi Christmas all the way over here on the other side of the world, but I did also really miss all the people I usually get to spend time with over the Holidays.  Life over here is definitely not the same without you Richardsons and the Halsey Moore clan that I love so much, and I was doubly bummed to hear that I also missed out this year on the company of the Careys, the Harrises, and the Reynolds family (there’s a shout-out for all you mates!)  One good piece of news I have for all of you back in the States…the sun is surely going to rise on this Christmas Day, I’ve seen it happen myself.  I miss you all, but am so glad you’re reading!

Wishing you all another Merry Christmas from Kiwiland on the other side of the world,

Jack

New Zealand Wine Country & Lake Taupo (With Pictures!)

12/24/13

            We left the farm in Gisborne five days ago, bound for the city of Napier.  It was sad to be leaving the thirteen new German (and one French) friends that we had just made, but we were at the same time excited to be heading for New Zealand’s most renowned wine country, followed shortly thereafter by Taupo and the magnificent lake there, overlooked by Mt. Doom.

            On our way out of town, we decided to stop and pay a visit to Cape Kidnapper’s…an acclaimed Rélais & Chateaux luxury resort and golf course.  I had hoped for a chance to play some golf there, but that turned out to cost a staggering $500 per round, so we settled for simple sightseeing and photo snapping.  It was an easy settlement to make; the place was gorgeous, surrounded by beautiful wooded hills and overlooking the bright blue ocean.

            We arrived midday in Napier and checked in to the Stables Lodge Backpackers hostel, which was literally an old horse stable converted into surprisingly comfortable boarding accommodations.  We quickly befriended a large group of Swedish girls, all of whom were blonde, and of course another horde of friendly Germans.  Our Swedish friend Simon was very happy for the chance to again speak in his native language, which had grown a bit rusty for him in the constant presence of us mono-linguistic Americans.

            We went out to a specialty wine shop that night to find ourselves some promising looking bottles of local wine.  Kellogg selected a bottle of white that was called Middle Earth wine, and I chose a blended red from the vineyard Alpha Domus.  It proved to be a great choice; upon the first sip, I thought the Alpha Domus may very well have been the most balanced tasting wine I’d ever had.  Kellogg really liked his wine as well, and we drank both bottles that night while hanging out with our newest German and Swedish friends.

            The next day we spent walking around the city of Napier, exploring.  The place proved to be much more than we had expected; it was fairly big, very clean, and had lovely parks and boulevards scattered throughout town.  After we had strolled through what we figured to be the majority of Napier’s city center, we decided it would be a good night to see the second Anchorman movie, which had debuted only a day before.  After expecting the film to be a serious letdown in comparison to its predecessor, I was pleasantly surprised to find that, in my opinion, it actually stood up to the Anchorman name…but this is not a blog for reviewing American movies.

            The next morning we were on the road again, bound for the mini-adventureland of Lake Taupo.  We arrived there at about three o’clock in the afternoon, stopping along the way as we usually do for some photos of waterfalls and scenic lookouts.  

We checked in to the Rainbow lodge, where we asked the innkeeper for some recommendations as to how we might best spend our afternoon.  He suggested a venue of hot pools, admission to which happened to be free on that particular day, and we set out on foot for the place at once.  The pools were surprisingly nice and very warm, though we were eventually driven off by a ridiculous amount of little kids that had practically overrun the place.  After we’d gotten back to the hostel and changed, we decided to try out Burger Fuel for dinner, which is New Zealand’s counterpart to Five Guys or In ‘N Out and had been highly recommended to us.  The burgers were all right, though no match for their American equivalents, and we were horrified to find that a meal there cost us 24 New Zealand dollars.  It was cool that they offered kumara fries (a kumara is a bit like a sweet potato), but those turned out to be about as disappointing as the prices.

            The next day, we opted to make the three hour hike out of town to the illustrious Huka falls, which moves so much water that it pumps out 220,000 liters every second.  We had also happened to run into our buddy Fabio and his girlfriend at the hostel, who we had met back in Auckland, and he elected to tag along with us for the adventure.  The walk was beautiful, the trail hugging tight to the river the whole way, and we were awestruck by how crystal clear the water was.  We were also delighted to find a small waterfall of steaming hot water along the way, pouring out into the river and providing a natural little hot tub that was perfect for taking a dip in.  We even happened to see a guy wearing a cowboy hat floating down the river in a tube.  That quite possibly made my day.

When we finally arrived at the waterfall, we were astonished at its size and power.  I had thought the 220,000 liters per second figure really hard to believe, but upon seeing the waterfall for myself, I was surprised that number wasn’t higher.  The thing fills an Olympic sized swimming pool every fifteen seconds.

            On our way back into town from the falls, we happened by a really cool hole-in-one golf challenge in Taupo where you could win $10,000 for hitting an ace on a small green that floated about 110 yards out into the lake.  I gave it a shot, but it unfortunately wasn’t my day that day.  I did, though, hit the green a bunch of times, which always got you another shot for free.  I was pretty happy just for being able to continue smacking balls out into the water.

            We spent that night back at the hostel playing a card game with our friends that deserves mention, called We Didn’t Playtest This At All.  It’s an absolutely ridiculous game that requires a special deck of cards, and I’m not sure if you can find them anywhere besides the internet (it was introduced to us by a Swedish girl, who had received the deck as a gift), but it’s as easy to learn as it is fun and I think most anyone would enjoy it as much as we did.

            We checked out of the hostel the next morning, getting back on the road to head up north to our old WWOOFing farm where we are spending Christmas with Graham and Michelle.  We stopped on the way in the big city of Hamilton to find Christmas presents for our beloved hosts and their son James, and we arrived here on the farm yesterday at two in the afternoon.  We’ve passed the time lazily since we got back, me finishing my book, Kellogg watching Top Gear, and Simon taking some lessons in Czech from the two other WWOOFers who are here and hail from the Czech Republic.  Tomorrow we’ll be having a Kiwi kind of Christmas, and I’ll of course dedicate another post to that experience after we’ve had it.  Finding myself on the fourth page of this entry, though, I feel quite sure you’ve heard enough of my babbling for the time being.

Merry Christmas to readers everywhere, your verbose friend,

Jack

20 Things I Miss About the U.S.

Disclaimer...this entry is not at all to say that I'm not absolutely loving every day I spend here in New Zealand.  Believe me, I am.  However, since I'm still working on the farm in Gisborne, and there's little about that experience that hasn't already been said elsewhere in this blog, I thought it would be cool to comprise a list of American things that New Zealand would do well to have more of.  Or, as I call them, 20 things that I really miss from the great US of A:

1.  My family, my friends, and my dog
        It goes without saying that these stand at the top of any world traveller's list of things they miss from home, and they require no explanation.

2.  Texas girls
        This, also, requires no explanation

3.  American football
        You always have to watch games (if you can watch them at all) at really obscure times and on the day following that on which they are normally played back in the States, since New Zealand is 18 hours ahead (e.g. Monday night football is always on Tuesday here).  I also grow tired of bar tenders looking at me like I'm totally out of my mind when I ask if they could please put on the AMERICAN football game.  Yes, emphasis on American, if you're anywhere besides in the States.

4.  College
        Absolutely, hands down, the greatest four years of your life.

5.  My fraternity brothers
        Virtue, diligence, and brotherly love.  Damn proud

6.  The American accent
        This is something I definitely didn't expect to miss, but Kiwis slur their words together like crazy and the way they pronounce some words is absolutely ridiculous.  Similarly, the vocabulary they use is sometimes complete nonsense.  As a result of all this, you very frequently have to ask locals to repeat themselves two or three times, and every foreigner I've met here has told me that I'm far easier to understand when I speak than the Kiwis are.

7.  Internet that isn't dial-up
        It's a very rare thing to be able to get internet at all here in New Zealand, and when you do, it's always dial-up.  I would say that the internet is easily the worst part about New Zealand...but when internet speed is the biggest problem a country has, I would also say they're doing pretty well (not looking at you, American federal deficit).

8.  Cowboy culture & southern hospitality
        People helping people, and everything you eat being fried and covered in country gravy.  Priceless.


9.  Closing times past 8 o'clock
        That's only if you're in the few (relatively) big cities here...everywhere else, all the stores close at 4 or 5.  It's a funny thing, getting used to buying your beer in the morning.

10.  Target, Wal-Mart, and Costco
        I know they're evil commercial giants that every day threaten to bury local small businesses, but every price tag I look at in this country brings me to the verge of tears.  NOTHING is cheap here.  And, in that same vein....

11.  Being able to buy a bottle of Jack Daniels for under $100
        This is not sarcasm.  A handle of JD will run you between 120 and 140 bucks here.  And no, that's not the exchange rate...that's blasphemous swindling of innocent people's funds and absolute public indecency.  No kind of alcohol fares much better than Jack does, either...there are liquor stores on every corner, and they've all got their hands at the very bottoms of your pockets.

12.  Having cell phone reception
        Similar to the story with internet, this is a very rare thing here in New Zealand outside of the few bigger cities.  Where I am now, there's no cell reception at all, causing all your messages to build up and come flowing in at an alarming rate when you pass by some lucky spot that happens to be close enough to civilization to get reception for a short moment.  Then, in an instant, that brief ray of light is gone, and you're left in the communicative darkness of not being able to answer a single one of the messages you've just received.  Better just to power the thing off...sometimes, ignorance really is bliss.

13.  My English classes and teachers
        I never thought I'd say this...but I really do miss school (already).  I was very fortunate in the teachers I had throughout my academic experience, and Shakespeare is still my boy.  I've been reading obsessively ever since I got here; I've got a whole bag full of books that I've read already (funny how that happens, just as soon as the burden of having to do it is lifted).

14.  ESPN
        You can find it in a very few places here in New Zealand, but it's a quest akin to that of bearing the ring of power across Middle Earth through all the forces of evil from the Shire to Mordor, and tossing it into the fiery depths therein.  Best to just read the articles or watch the play-by-play.  (D'oh!  There's no internet, either...)

15.  Roads being paved
        There are plenty of paved roads in New Zealand, but there are also more than plenty unpaved roads with lots of treacherous holes and divots in them.  One third of all public roads in New Zealand are unpaved, and those that are put a serious beating on your car (sorry, 20 year old Honda purple wagon named THOR).

16.  Chick Fil-A
        Despite their many religious quandaries and resulting millions of haters, I, personally, still love and miss them for their delicious chicken.

17.  American music festivals
        The only places I've ever been where literally everyone is ecstatically happy.  While some may point the finger at MDMA, I blame it on the awesome live music.  There are some music festivals here in New Zealand, but usually most of the headlining names end up canceling, and you spend hundreds of dollars to watch local bands you could've seen for free at a bar or club.

18.  Video games
        They're a terrible, completely unproductive guilty pleasure, and the reasons why I came to New Zealand were in no small part to get away from things like video games for awhile.  Still, the fact remains that I miss them.

19.  My (American) car
        90 percent of all the cars here in New Zealand are ancient Japanese imports, and the importation duty you have to pay on any relatively new car from the states or elsewhere is a minimum of $40,000.  Also, HEMI engines basically don't exist here.  Oh, to go fast again....

20.  The amazing state of Colorado
        It's as beautiful as New Zealand, and you still get to drive on the right side of the road (yay normality!  It's not called the RIGHT side of the road for nothing).

    So there you have it, everyone who's been reading this blog and desperately wishing they could be here seeing these beautiful sights of New Zealand for themselves...20 American things you have every cause to be thankful for.  While I still think everyone owes it to themselves to get out and see a place like this at least once in their lives, I also think there are those certain awesome things that lead you to call a place home.  I'm sure each of our lists would look different, but even still, when you go out into the world a-traveling and seeing grand new sights and meeting friendly new people, there are things that you'd miss and that would eventually draw you back home.  Oh, and one more thing I might add to my list that's just as meaningful as the rest...weighing in pounds, measuring in feet, and buying gas in gallons.  I know I'll sound terribly American when I say this, but why can't everyone else just think like us?  Confound that dastardly metric system...this is, after all, an entry about America!

Signing off from New Zealand, your homesick friend,
Jack

Full House on the Farm

12/9/13
    Work on the farm has been really crazy the past few days.  Two days ago, there were 16 WWOOFers on the farm; 12 of them from Germany.  If anything, it's made the work easier...with so many people, we are able to form massive chain gangs up and down the hillsides, so we can simply pass the brush and firewood along down the line rather than having to walk it down the hills ourselves and then back up again to fetch more.  We've been doing much the same work every day; collecting ridiculous amounts of firewood and dumping them into rickety old trailers, to be hauled back to the farm by the quad bikes.  One of them has no working brakes, so that's always fun to be riding on.  Earlier today, as it was going up a hill, the bike stalled out and could go no further because of the weight it bore, so it started rolling backwards and the driver was unable to stop it.  All of us who were on board started jumping off, if we weren't thrown off first, and the bike reared up onto its back wheels, threatening to tip all the way over onto the people who had been thrown.  It didn't, though, and after it had been relieved of the overburdening weight of all its riders, the bike was able to make it up the hill on its second try.  The quads certainly put as much work in every day as any one of us does; on our way back into the farm this afternoon, there were eleven of us riding on a single one-seater bike, with an overly full load of wood in tow besides.
    The hundreds of cows roaming around the farm provide an added complication in navigating the bikes over the uneven terrain to and from the farmhouse.  More often than not, the gigantic beasts wind up dashing straight in front of the bikes in their manic efforts to escape the rumbling things that must seem quite foreign to them.  The sheep are never such an obstacle; though there are thousands of them, they keep out of the way of the bikes much better than the seemingly less intelligent bovines.  Something also worth noting: there is a single black sheep on the entire farm, which I thought was pretty funny.  I took the liberty of naming him Chris Farley.
    The bonfires we burned upon the hillsides today were by far the biggest I've yet seen in New Zealand.  The piles of wood were absolutely massive before we set them alight; most consisted of multiple whole trees that looked to be hundreds of years old, as well as countless sticks and branches.  You could feel the overwhelming heat of each fire from over thirty feet away, so it was quite a chore to monitor them and keep them all burning properly.  Fortunately, though, we finished our work at 10 A.M. today, since we woke up to start at 5, and I'm now able to write this post without being shooed out the library door before finishing since we got into town much earlier than we did last time.  The only bad news is that this post features no pictures, since I haven't been taking my camera out with me to work.
    We have another ten days of work ahead of us on this farm in Gisborne.  Though it doesn't really make for the most exciting blog posts, I still feel compelled to keep the thing updated whenever I get the rare chance for some internet.  I don't know when it will be coming out back in the states, but the second installment of The Hobbit is debuting here in two days, so we are about to make our way down to the local movie theater and buy our midnight premiere tickets in advance.  It seems like missing such a thing while we're actually here in New Zealand would be pretty silly, so we want to be sure to have our tickets as soon as we can.  I think we plan on taking the following day off from work; waking up after two or three hours of sleep with a whole day's work ahead of us seems like a pretty poor idea.  Our host Angela says we are allowed a day off whenever we like, so long as we feed ourselves on that day.  Which definitely sounds a lot more feasible to me than hauling firewood all around the farm for hours after hardly any sleep at all.
    I'll close here for now, though I don't know when the next time I'll write will be.  The work on the farm is likely to remain much the same, so I might wait until we head back up north for Christmas with Graham and Michelle to post again.  I think we'll be stopping in to Lake Taupo on our way up, as well as Napier and Hawkes Bay, which make up the most prominent wine country here in New Zealand.  That should make for great photos, and hopefully some good stories as well.  You readers, of course, will be the first to have them.

One among many working on this gigantic Gisborne farm,
Jack
   

Home on the 3,000 Acre Range

    Four days ago, Simon, Kellogg, Luise, Dardan and I arrived in the city of Gisborne, which is located on the southeast coast of the north island.  We checked into a hostel called the Flying Nun, which we thought to be no more than a catchy name, if not a bit silly, until we were informed by the innkeeper that the place was in fact an old nun convent that had been converted into a lodge to accommodate backpackers.  Given this information, we were a bit surprised that we hadn't deduced it for ourselves, as the resemblance of the old building to what one might imagine a nunnery to look like was quite striking.  The building looked well and truly ancient from the outside, featuring a mural of a spritely looking nun gazing down upon the main entrance of the building, as well as a holy cross at its apex.  Walking around inside, we quickly discovered that hardly anything at all had been done to the building during its so called "conversion."  The bathrooms only featured signs reading "ladies," as nunneries are of course rarely ever home to a guy, and there were hardly any modern appliances to speak of.  By no means did this surprise us, and we thought of posting up in such a place for a night as quite a new and enjoyable experience.
    We only stayed in the hostel for one night, though while we were there we met about a hundred travelers hailing from South America.  They were a loud and lively bunch, and at no point throughout the night did silence ever break the friendly conversation being made in Spanish echoing throughout the hallways.  We did our best to keep up with them, putting to use our very limited Spanish ability, but we did little else that day other than repeatedly try to get in touch with our new WWOOFing host and make arrangements for where and when we might meet her.  We succeeded on about the fifth or sixth call, and she told us she'd meet up with us the next afternoon after she was finished with her violin lesson.
    We met her the next day at a designated spot on the main road that we all knew well enough, and we were a bit surprised at what we saw.  Her name is Angela, and she is seventy years old...which might not sound all that unusual until you consider the fact that she manages a 3,000 acre farm all by herself.  That proved to be nothing, though, next to her ability with a chainsaw that we would witness the next day.  But I get ahead of myself.  Angela very graciously lead us up the gravel road to her farm, our grossly overloaded Honda wagon limping along behind.  We found the farmhouse to be a very, very old one, but that just made it feel all the more warm and cozy (especially at the wonderful price of zero dollars a day, assuming you can keep up with your work).  Like the hostel before, the farmhouse featured very little recent work that had been done to it, and even less evidence of modern technology.  In fact, I think I would feel comfortable in saying there is no technology at the farmhouse...and when I say no technology, I mean it.  In the mornings before you shower, for example, you have to stoke a fire to heat the water if you want your shower to be warm, for there is no self-sufficient heating system within the house's plumbing.  All of the furniture within the farmhouse is broken and caving in on itself, and my bed is no more than a simple pallet on the floor in the corner of a room that I share with Kellogg and Simon.  Few of the rooms have light or electricity, and our own room features only a lonely lamp hanging from a cord in the center of the ceiling, with no power outlets to speak of anywhere.  But, surprise surprise, the house affords marvelous views of the beautiful New Zealand landscape on all sides, and, like everywhere else we've been to so far, the bird denizens of the forest can be heard singing their sweet songs at all hours of the day and night.  Here are a few pictures that were all taken from the front yard of the house:

And here is a picture of the farmhouse itself:

    The work we have been doing since we arrived has been incredibly fatiguing; mostly, we've been walking up and down ridiculously steep hills to collect dead and dying brush, pile it up in massive stacks, and set them alight.  We've also been collecting all the firewood we can, as wood is obviously at a premium in a house where you need it to keep your water and yourself warm.
    Unfortunately, the Gisborne library where I sit and write this is closing in a matter of minutes, so I will likewise have to close here for now and update the blog again when I next have the chance.  Needless to say, there is no internet or cell phone service to be had at the farm, so whenever I can get back into town I will write again.  Farewell for now, and thanks as always for reading!

Your tired friend,
Jack

Petting Lions + Spring Break Kiwi Style

12/1/13

    We left Rotorua three days ago and set out for the town of Gisborne, where we have a WWOOFing job set up for Kellogg, Simon, Dardan, Luise, Felicitas and I.  Before we left, though, we stopped in to a nature park just outside of town called Paradise Valley, where we were able to see lots of really cool wildlife and even pet some lion cubs.  The park had a bunch of cool animals, including parrots, wallabies, ostriches, ducklings, alpacas, bunny rabbits, lots of fish, and, of course, lions.  The lion cubs were one of the softest things I've ever felt in my life.  The guy working at the park said they hadn't named the cubs yet, and he asked for our suggestions if we had any good ideas...to which I of course replied "name them Simba and Nala, duh!"  He rolled his eyes at that, and made it seem pretty clear that it wasn't the first time he had gotten this suggestion.  In an effort to compensate for my lack of imagination, I then suggested that he might name each of their lions after a member of the Lord of the Rings fellowship, and he took pretty well to that idea.  Maybe it was just the tourist marketability that such names would bring.

   

    After we left the nature park, we headed down south for the little town of Whakatane.  Upon arrival, however, we discovered that the few hostels that the place had to offer were all booked up, and so we continued on down the road until we reached the even smaller town of Opotiki, where a hostel called the Beach House was able to accommodate us.  Opotiki was insanely tiny; downtown Opotiki consisted of just one grocery store.  The hostel was amazing, though; it was located right on the beach, which was huge, isolated, and picture-perfect for a New Zealand postcard.  There was a long peninsula on each side, extending as far out into the ocean as the eye can see and each with tree-covered mountains jutting up out of the ground, which is a crazy thing to see right next to the ocean.  The waves at the beach were sizable as well, and I'm sure that if we'd had boards then we would have all spent the whole day we were there surfing up a storm.  Instead, we built a small hut on the beach using logs and branches that we found washed up on shore, and sat there on our little sand floor making conversation over cold Coronas and the sound of the waves breaking upon the shoreline.  As we sat enjoying one another's company, we realized that it was the last day of spring here in New Zealand, and also that we were in the perfect place to have a Kiwi sort of spring break.

    We met some very nice Austrian girls and a few German guys back at the Beach House, and after we cooked ourselves a dinner of steaks and pasta we chatted and played cards with them well into the night, not turning in until about three in the morning.  Still, we woke up early the next day so as to check out before ten, and we got back onto the road after filling up with petrol to make our way further down south for the village of Tokomaru Bay.  We arrived there today at about five o'clock and checked in to the hostel we're staying the night in, which is called Lost in Paradise.  This place truly is just that, lost in the heart of paradise...it's even smaller than Opotiki was, with only 500 people living here and one small store that closes at four o'clock.  Since we got into town at five, we went to the local pub for dinner and a few games of pool.  I ordered a rump steak with fries, which was quite good, even given New Zealand's lack of A.1 sauce (there are some things you just can't take out of an American.  Yea, it's that important).  We've just arrived back at the hostel, and we're all getting ready to turn in pretty early for bed, as it's Luise's birthday tomorrow and we want to be up in the morning to watch the sun rise over the bay and celebrate her 21st with her all day.  The day after tomorrow, we'll be headed out of town and finally arriving down in Gisborne, where we have our WWOOFing gig set up on a massive farm that we'll probably spend about three weeks on.  I'll update the blog when we get there, barring another dearth of internet access (which, let's face it, isn't all too unlikely in this low-tech country).  

Ready for the dawn of New Zealand's summer and glad the lions kept their paws to themselves,

Jack

Redwood Forest, Ziplining in Rotorua, and a Maori Feast for Thanksgiving (Pictures Included)

    11/28/13

    Two days ago we arrived in Rotorua, where we checked in to a hostel called Crash Palace.  We got off to an awesome start in Rotorua; as soon as we pulled up outside, our buddy Tilman who we met in Raglan came running out with a big smile on his face to say hi to us and fill us in on everything we needed to do while we were here.  What's more, as soon as we walked in, our good friend Max (who is the hobbit Pippin in our own little fellowship) was sitting on the couch in the lounge, and equally excited that we had just happened upon the same hostel he was staying in.  And even better yet, the room the desk had reserved for us was the very room Max was staying in; a four bed suite.  But I get a bit ahead of myself...on our way in to Rotorua, we stopped by an attraction that looked interesting to us, which was called a thermal walk.  It featured footpaths carved through New Zealand forest, winding around hot vents in the ground with huge amounts of steam rising up through the earth on all sides and bubbling mud pits dispersed throughout.  The whole place smelled like sulphur, but that was a minor price to pay.  Also, the venue that was offering the thermal walk featured lots of really cool animals, including some gorgeous peacocks.

    As soon as we got in to Rotorua, Max was determined to play the part of tour guide and he took us around on a really nice walk around a big lake with more steaming vents and through the town, where we stopped at an Irish pub for some shepherd's pies and pints, in the spirit of being Hobbits.  Oh, and another thing...I finally remembered to take some pictures of the hostel we're in now, so as to give you guys an idea of what those are like.  This isn't the coolest one we've stayed at, but I think it provides a pretty accurate representation for what a typical hostel is like.

There's also a nice lounge with leather sofas, a free pool table, and even a massage chair, but I just feel weird taking pictures of it because there's always people sitting in there, and our bedroom is fairly basic with a couple closets and four twin beds.  So, now that that's done, back to the daily activities we've been up to...this morning right after we woke up, we went for a hike through an awesome redwood forest with a really sweet Austrian girl we met the day before named Judith.  The redwoods were beautiful, and extraordinarily tall, with dense vegetation around them in spots and also some little ponds with the most crystal clear water I think I've ever seen.

After the redwood forest, Kellogg, Max and I went to do some ziplining through another New Zealand jungle, which was actually rated the number one attraction on all of the north island.  The ziplines were amazing; there weren't too many of them, but some were as long as 700 feet from end to end and we often found ourselves gliding over treetops that were about 60 feet below us.  Whenever that wasn't the case, we were zipping through the dense forest with trees on all sides, and I've never felt more like a monkey in my life.  On the last couple lines, we got to go upside down, which was a pretty awesome time, and Kellogg recorded some great GoPro videos that I'm sure you'll be able to find on facebook soon.
    Right after we got done ziplining, we had to rush back to the hostel to meet up with Dardan and Luise, who had just finished their first WWOOFing gig on a farm near Raglan, and we all shot over to the Tamaki Maori village just in time for an awesome Maori tribal ceremony and barbecue feast, which we found to be quite appropriate for a Thanksgiving in New Zealand (they even served a bunch of stuffing there, though they were oblivious to the fact that it was Thanksgiving for us).  I forgot to take my camera with me to the feast because it was charging (which I am very sorry about), but it truly was a remarkable experience, including an education on typical Maori tattooing, weaving, dancing, and military training practices, a tour through their whole village, as well as instruction on how to dance the famous Haka and an awe-inspiring Maori performance of all the above to show us just how far we had to go before we were as dextrous and nimble as the native people are themselves.  The feast was just as good as the cultural experience, offering all you can eat chicken, fish, beef, kumara, and potatoes, all cooked in the Maori fire pits, as well as a host of other things, like stuffing, cole slaw, potato salad, and local cakes, pies, and puddings served with cream and custard for dessert.  Though I'd be hard pressed to say we could dance or fight like Maoris after our limited instruction, we certainly ate like them tonight.
    We've got another full agenda planned out for tomorrow, starting out in the morning with zorbing (rolling down the New Zealand hillside in what essentially amounts to a giant hamster ball that you're strapped in to) and then going to pet some lion cubs after that, which really has nothing to do with New Zealand but is at the same time something that just sounds too good to pass up.  I mean, who among us hasn't always dreamed of spending an afternoon kickin' it old school with the likes of Simba and Nala?  After we're done with that, Simon, Kellogg, Dardan, Luise and I are all heading south to the Bay of Plenty, where we'll spend three or four days, on our way down further south to the town of Gisborne, where we have our next WWOOFing gig lined up.  The farm we're bound for sounds really awesome, with thousands of acres of land, seven or eight ATV's, and over twelve WWOOFers at any given time.  Once we're done there, we'll be headed back up north for a bit to Graham and Michelle's farm for Christmas, and then Coromandel where we'll stay with their son James and his fiancée Danica to celebrate New Years.  I'm sure I'll write again before that, though, probably more than once, and I'll try not to forget to take my camera to anything worth photographing.  Thanks again as always for reading, everybody, and I'll keep you all posted as our adventure progresses!

Praying I don't get mauled by a lion tomorrow,
Jack

Glowworms, Mordor, and Mt. Doom (With Pictures)

    11/27/13

    On our last day in Raglan, we decided to climb this big, awesome looking mountain that we could see from our hostel each day called the Sleeping Lady.  It was right across the water from us, and it looked like it was sure to be a really great hike.  Here's the view of it from our hostel porch:

We met up with our friends Dardan and Luise in the morning and together we all climbed up from the right side, starting near the famous Raglan surf beach.  As we worked our way up the narrow dirt trail, we quickly discovered that we were right, it was surely going to be a great hike.  Though it was quite steep, the lush forest we were making our way through and the breathtaking views from the top of the mountain were well worth breaking a sweat for.  Here you can see the path that we were climbing up on:

As we neared the top of the mountain, the trail got much steeper and more treacherous.  Eventually, we were met with vertical rock faces that we needed to climb up, with no more assistance than a few chains that were bolted into the side of the rock.  At this part of the climb, possibly because of all the shade provided by the trees that were surrounding us, all of the rocks we were climbing were totally covered with mud.  This made them very slippery, and we all lost our footing more than a few times.  It was all very well worth it, though, once we reached the top, and were met with this spectacular view of the rolling hills and Raglan below:

After our descent, we said goodbye to Dardan and Luise until we next would see them, and Simon, Kellogg and I piled into the car and headed for Waitomo, the home of the black water rafting caves that are famous for being full of glow worms.  On our way to the caves, we stopped in to this aviary called the Kiwi House, hoping to finally see some native Kiwi birds.  We did, and they were really funny things to see in the flesh; they're incredibly plump with ridiculously stubby wings and a long skinny beak, and they waddle around much like penguins, jabbing their beaks into the ground to look for food and pass the time.  We were also able to see a lot of other really special birds at the Kiwi House, like Kingfishers and vibrantly colored parakeets, as well as a Tuatara, which is the last surviving dinosaur that remains unevolved.  

    After our visit to the Kiwi House, we continued on into Waitomo, where we stopped to visit the black water rafting and glowworm caves.  The caves were pretty cool; their interiors were made up almost entirely of limestone, which was full of ancient fossils from when the ocean filled them, and there were glow worms around almost every turn.  They were really hard to get a good photo of, but here's the best one I could manage:

We weren't allowed to take pictures in the darkest parts of the caves where the glowworms were the most concentrated, so I apologize for that.

    We didn't spend the night in Waitomo, as it was an incredibly small town, but instead we headed for Turangi, which allows the best access to Mordor and Mt. Doom.  We also found a hostel that had really good reviews for just 18 dollars a night there, which we were really excited about.  It did turn out to be an amazing hostel, full, once again, of really friendly people and totally covered with really well done artistic renderings of pop-culture icons like the Lord of the Rings Fellowship, Gollum with his precious, Timon, Pumba, and Simba, and even the Simpsons.  From our hostel, Simon and I set out for the famous Turangi mountain crossing, which essentially goes right through Mordor and passes by Mt. Doom after about a seven kilometer walk.  Mordor looked almost exactly like it did in the films, with no trees, grass, or animals anywhere, and for the first time since we've been in New Zealand we couldn't hear the jubilant chirp chirping of a a single bird.  Mt. Doom was a truly intimidating sight; it was incredibly steep, with no hiking trails up it whatsoever, and the entire thing was covered in rocks, which we soon found were really sharp.  From the crossing path, Mt. Doom looks like this:

 The climb up the mountain was so steep that we literally had to crawl up on all fours the entire way, using both our hands and both our feet at all times so as to negotiate the rocky terrain without losing our balance or our footing and tumbling all the way back down the mountain, which would surely end in a split skull on a jagged rock and instant death, since there is nothing else to break your fall.  The rocks would also slide out from under your feet with every step, which made the progress up the mountain even slower as you would slide back down two or three inches for every five or six inches you stepped up.  This also caused frequent rockslides, and you had to be ever alert of climbers up ahead who were similarly always sending streams of rocks tumbling down the mountain towards you.  As we neared the top, we caught sight of numerous big patches of snow, despite the fact that it's the middle of summer here, right next to a steaming vent in the mountain where smoke is ever rising up from the molten lava below.  The snow made the climbing slippery, but it was only a short way from there until we reached the summit.  There, we were greeted with the most awe-inspiring view of New Zealand country that we have yet seen:

We had climbed so high that we were literally in the clouds.

    The descent back down Mt. Doom was really crazy; the only thing I can liken it to is skiing down rocks, with no skis.  We slid literally the entire way, and we each fell back on our butts at least 30 times as the rocks continued to slide out from under us, followed quickly by our legs.  Climbing Mt. Doom was certainly one of the toughest things I've ever done, and though I'm glad to have done it once, I definitely won't be doing it again.

    We've just left our hostel in Turangi this morning, and I'm sitting in the public library writing this post before we head out of town and make for Rotorua.  Rotorua is the Maori capital of New Zealand, and we're planning on partaking in a Maori feast there, as well as seeing some more glowworms, practicing the Haka, and maybe even visiting a big geyser that we've heard a lot about.  I'll of course update the blog with those experiences after we've had them, and I'll do my best to keep them all documented via photos as well.  Thanks a lot for reading, everyone, and feel free to drop me a facebook message any time...it's always great to hear from back home.  Kia ora!

This is Jack Wright, signing off from the adventure capital of the world

Pictures!!