The Rollercoaster Ride Continues…

…And what a ride it's been lately. Up, down, up, down. In the end I just keep reminding myself of how lucky I am to be here, having the adventure of a lifetime, which I suppose is bound to come with trials and tribulations.

I guess I never had a chance to write about The Store and what happened to Brian and I after we got to Blenheim. To make a long, unfortunate story short, the jobs we had planned on having in Blenheim fell through, without warning. When we arrived there for our "interview" on February 7th, we learned that we needed to make a new plan, fast. Brian found a two-day job to occupy him while I spent a full day running my resume around town, calling hostels, checking TradeMe (craigslist equivalent) for jobs, editing my resume, emailing it, writing cover letters, etc etc etc. That night, with Brian home, exhausted from 9.5 hours throwing boxes of wine around, and me feeling hopeless and dejected after a long day of failures, we came upon an unexpected interview. Clive, from The Store in a "town" called Kekerengu, offered us jobs at his restaurant. "The job is in a restaurant? On the Pacific coast? It's full time work and comes with free accommodation? We can start immediately? We're in," is pretty much how the conversation went. The next day, Brian worked his second and last day at the bottle factory, and that evening we drove down and moved into our new house, with Joe and Chloe, our English roommates. The situation seemed too good to be true!

The Store is absolutely beautiful. open-aired and spacious, artfully decorated, and situated smack dab in the middle of the Kaikoura coast, the setting is magnificent. Halfway between Blenheim and Kaikoura, our customers are primarily passing through on their gorgeous drive; there's literally nowhere else to stop for food and a toilet. Not only is it convenient, but it's the most beautiful convenience you could happen upon while driving along the coast. I'm used to more touristy/stop-over places with gross,overpriced sandwiches and instant coffee. This place is like a haven for the road-weary; you can sit an enjoy a fresh seafood platter and local sauvignon blanc while gazing at the wild shoreline.

That being said, life at The Store is not all sunshine and rainbows. Like most jobs, it kind of sucks, and once you see the innerworkings of the place, the magic sort of dies. After a few weeks of working there and getting used to things, becoming more comfortable and faster at my job, I've decided NOT to rant about everything that first bothered me about this place, mostly for any of my readers (this means you, Shelley Dalton) who might adore this place and actually go there (unlike the rest of you in the states who will most likely just see this place as I describe it). When you're not working at a restaurant you can just be enthralled by the magic of it and not have to be aware of the bad parts. I don't want to ruin it for anyone. AND, more importantly, a job is a job, and that's what we need right now. The food is fantastic (well, no vegan fare there so I'm just going off of other peoples' opinions, but I can tell), the setting is perfection, and the staff is awesome. I love my co-workers and getting to be at the beach every day (the full windows all around make me feel like I'm actually AT the beach, not on the other side of the wall). To stick with my promise not to rant, ALL I'm going to say is that the owners make the place significantly less pleasant. THE END. So Shelley, I hope I didn't ruin it for you, keep your love for that place alive, and please come visit us!

So, our luck seemed to have turned around. Full time job, big house, great roommates and co-workers, good opportunity to save money (nowhere to spend any!). And after a few weeks we had even started to get used to the job and stopped feeling so stressed out at work or overwhelmed with our schedules. So, since we were feeling much better, naturally something bad had to happen. Enter: car break-in. Well, I guess you can't call it a break-in if the door was left unlocked, because you feel as though you live in the middle of nowhere, in a notoriously friendly country. No more, New Zealand! You got us! We learned our lesson, the hard way (is there any other way?!), and now we know we can't leave things unlocked (and Brian won't be keeping his passport in the glove compartment anymore). So yeah, they took my sleeping bag, tent, backpack, hiking boots, sleeping pad, our cooking stove, and probably some other things that I won't realize are missing until we get back out into the wild. And Brian's passport- the icing on the cake. The passport wasn't even IN anything, a wallet, or a bag, or anything, they just did that to be an asshole. We are dealing with insurance right now but there is a 98% I won't get any of my stuff back, and Brian's passport isn't covered (for some unknown reason) under our insurance, so the trip to Auckland and the price of a replacement will have to come out of his own pocket. What a drag…. this dark cloud has been looming over our heads since Saturday morning, but we're starting to get over it a little now. Today is the exception, since in a few minutes we will be going to the police station to pester them for a police report that they are oh so hesitant to get done for us. I know Kiwi cops are probably so over backpackers (I'm sure most Kiwis are…) but seriously, is it not your job to do an incident report for a crime? Everytime we call the police about it they act like we are the biggest inconvenience to them, when all we want is a simple report to send to the insurance company. Today is a pain, but after I'm able to make a claim and send it off to the insurance co, we'll be done thinking about this for awhile. At least we're making money now and not spending much, so we will have a little bit to spend on all new camping gear when we move on from here… :/

I'm trying to balance out all mis-adventures we're having with all the adventures to help keep things in perspective. After we're done working in Kekerengu, we plan to spend a month or so traveling around more of the south island. Our roommates told us we might be able to do a "swim with the seals" tour in Kaikoura for free since we're employees at The Store, so we plan to take full advantage of that! So many more things to see and do while we're here. Here's to many more happy adventures to come, and the dark raincloud drifting away from its spot a few inches above our heads. :)

**if you want to see extensive pics of our life in Kekerengu, check my facebook page.**

home sweet home

inside The Store

Pacific Coast

always cooking these days

not a bad daily commute ;)

Friend Time

A few weeks ago, my dear friend and former college roommate, Allie, came to visit us for a quick 8 days. We had the most amazing time while she was here! Brian and I were able to hang out in Christchurch's alluring San Francisco-esque botanic gardens while we waited for her flight to get in. The weather was perfect and hot- a nice treat for someone coming from Olympia right as the snowstorm hit!

We drove to Akaroa, a French-inspired town on the Banks Peninsula about an hour away from Christchurch. Thank you, Shelley, for your recommendation, because this was one of our favorite towns so far! The night we arrived we had trouble finding our backpackers, which was a little stressful, but it turned out it was a little outside of town. set up at the top of a hill overlooking a gorgeous valley, the lodge was really quirky, mismatched, and rustic. Not your typical backpackers spot but we really liked it. We made dinner and caught up and laughed and it was so much fun adding Allie's dynamic into our mix. The next day we relaxed; Allie had traveled for like 36 hours or something crazy to get to us, so we just took in Akaroa's beauty while walking around, playing bananagrams, drinking wine, cooking, and planning our next move.

The next morning we left on one of the most stunning drives ever, to Wanaka. I don't think the drive would have been more than 5 or so hours had we gone straight, but took about 8 with all the stops for snacks, gas, and endless photo-opportunities. There wasn't much more on that day's agenda after the epic drive, and the next day was also kind of relaxing. We kayaked gorgeous lake Wanaka, had a picnic, and then drove to a DOC campsite at Lake Pukitiri. We had to pull over several times along that drive as well. Blue skies and dramatic scenery combined with Simon and Garfunkel as a soundtrack resulted in a kind of religious experience. Once we arrived, that mood was hindered slightly by our dear friend, the sandfly. Think of the itchiness-level of a mosquito, then multiple that by 50. That's a sandfly bite. Not to mention they last maybe 5x as long as mosquito bites do, and leave vicious scars. Luckily we just planned to stay there for the night, because the sandflies were unbearable. We endured an itchy dinner outside at a picnic table until we could escape into the safety of the tent (Allie, find the lyrics for your brother's sandfly song and email them to me!). In the morning we drove to the start of the Copland track for our hike.

The hike to Welcome Flat hut was one of the best we've done yet. Even though it was raining most of the 7 hours hiking in, we crossed so many types of dramatic landscapes, from rainforests with sub-tropical plants, mud flats, riverside beach/scrambling over stones, to alpine views with snowcaps. I was in heaven because for once I had someone to hike with!! Allie stayed my pace so Brian could go off on his own as he does, and we got to chat and catch up the whole time. When we arrived at the hut we were welcomed by infinity pool hotsprings. Sitting in the pools in the drizzle with the mountains peeking out from behind fog was so serene. The hut was cool too, really big (sleeps 30!) with a fireplace and plenty of places to sit and play cards. :)

The next day we hiked back out and got a different type of beauty with a nicer day and no rain. It was wonderful. We drove to Franz Josef, the larger of NZ's two glaciers. More cooking, chatting, games, and a night in a backpackers. The next afternoon we took a guided tour up the glacier and got to walk around in crampons on the ice. The weather was cloudy at first but cleared up for us once we were on the top so we were able to get lots of great pics! That evening we celebrated Allie's trip with an Indian dinner, and a very late night partying. :) We drove her to Greymouth the next day so she could take the famous TranzAlpine train across the south island to Christchurch and catch her flight to BALI. Poor girl, haha. I was so, so, so sad when she left; we had the best time and it was so wonderful catching up and having some girl-time. THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR COMING, ALLIE!!!

Luckily I was pulled out of my rut by a time with a couple more friends, Zosha and Matt! Brian and I were in Hokitika, a coastal town in the West, for a night, staying in the cutest backpackers (Birdsong, even the name is cute), before meeting up with them at a nearby DOC campsite at Lake Mahinapua. In case I haven't mentioned the story before, Matt and Zosha are a couple who were living in San Diego, who I was introduced to via Facebook through a mutual friend from Seattle. Our mutual friend, Jessica, told me that Zosha and Matt were also getting ready to move to New Zealand, and she thought we'd get along, and the best part was that when she "introduced" us, I was a few days away from a trip to San Diego! So I got to meet Zosha in person, and we had a great time talking and comparing NZ plans. They came to New Zealand a month or so after us, and so we kept missing each other, but finally we were able to meet in Hokitika! We ended up camping for 3 nights at the DOC site with them, and spending 4 days relaxing and lounging around. We drove out to Hokitika Gorge, which has a nice swingbridge with views of inky-turquoise water and some more of those lovely sandflies. We mostly spent the rest of our time chatting, going on a few walks, hiding from the rain in their van, and playing cards. Mom, they knew Nerts! We played in a coffee shop for hours one day while it was raining, and Matt was the champion of almost every round. :) We had so much fun, and we were extra thankful for the timing of our meet-up, because our camp stove has a gas leak and isn't working, so they were so kind as to share their van-stove with us. I hope we will be able to meet up with you guys again soon! Plus they have wonderful WWOOF karma, so I might just have them choose our next host for us, not take any chances. :)

Friend time is important. I was just talking to Brian about this last night; we have met a lot of people and made a few close friends while here, but making those connections like you have at home is difficult. Not to mention most of the backpackers in NZ are 18-20, with the a few 21-22 year olds sprinkled in. Nothing against you young 'ens, but it would be nice to meet more people who are closer in their life-phase to us… on the flip side, I am a bit envious of all these Germans we meet who are just freshly out of high school and on an extended trip to New Zealand or even better: an around-the-world trip lasting a year that lets them go to several countries. All of that experience right out of high school, before they have to make decisions about university and what they want to do with their life… it's amazing. I think that is a wonderful system that people in the US could really benefit from.

Here's to all my friends at home, the ones I've made here, and hopefully many more to come over the next 8 months!

When WWOOFing goes bad…

Here I am again, at the good ol' library. Seriously, what would backpackers do without libraries? Does it make me a bum if I have brushed my teeth in the library bathroom twice in the last week? Well, I guess that's what happens when you are kicked out of the house you're staying in without any warning!

It's true, we seem to be very skilled at choosing only the weirdest/darkest WWOOF hosts most of the time. All more material for when I write a book later about how to (and how not to) move to new zealand. ;) Sorry for the delay, because as I mentioned in my last post, soooooo many things have happened in the last month or so, but just when I think the internet couldn't get any more scarce, it does. So I'll have to backtrack a bit…

We spent a few nights WWOOFing with a family of Dutch expats in Rangiora, which is about 20 minutes away from Christchurch. The house and property were amazing. Designed and built to be ecologically-friendly by the husband, Jan; the house was insulated by straw and the property was huge, with huge pastures for 3 happy cows, 5 goats, and a handful of sheep. Chooks and ducks ran around as they pleased all day, and the inside of the house was full of natural light, high ceilings, and homemade charm. Sounds perfect, right? That's what I thought too.

I should backtrack a little more so you know that when we got in contact with this family, we let them know that I'm vegan, as we always do, just to make sure they still want to take us in, with my horribly difficult diet in mind. ;) The mother, Meryl, responded positively, saying she was trying to become vegan but was having trouble finding recipe-inspiration, and hoped I could help her. So you can imagine how excited I was about this place!

Reality: Meryl was insane. A waif with all kinds of wacko ideas about health and diet, obsessed with juicing as a way to "heal herself" (if I had to hear those two words one more time…), subjecting her family and herself to an incredibly restrictive diet during the kids' formative years. The kids are on a diet of milk, yogurt, meat… that's about it. She asked me right away to help her with dinner ideas. I had plenty; the only problem was that her diet consists SOLELY of vegetables, fruit, coconut oil, flax seed oil, and… nope, that's it. So pardon me for my lack of "creativity." She was visibly disappointed when I couldn't help her on her vegan journey with those foods as my only tools. Sorry, lady, I'm no magician. I give you about 6 months on that diet before you starve to death.

Meryl is one of those people who instantly makes you feel uncomfortable upon meeting her by divulging very personal/sad/awkward information about herself and her family, the kind of information a stranger has no idea how to respond to. Miscarriages, sibling issues she's had since childhood, every health issue she and her family have suffered from in life. And as the oldest girl of 3 in the house, she took a shining to me and took me on as her sidekick for 4 days. I spent my days helping her with her juices (7-10 times a day), cooking meals for hours on end (which included me getting to peel the chicken bits off a carcass, and being told to please cut the heart into little pieces), accompanying her to the farmers market, and being her confidant for about 9-10 hours a day. It could have been worse I suppose, the two younger WWOOFer girls had to do more cleaning than I did, set the table for every meal, pick berries for hours, and be the source of CONSTANT disapproval from Meryl. Actually, I would have preferred that to hanging out with her all day.

I could go on ALL DAY LONG with stories of how ridiculous of a time I had there, but I suppose I should include Brian (and the rest of the other 7 males in the house)'s side of the story, which went like this: wait for the women to wake you up, eat breakfast which has all been cooked/set out for you, walk away from the messy kitchen table to work for a couple of hours doing "manly" things like shoveling gravel, take a lemonade break, don't worry, the women will get it for you, work for a couple more hours, eat the lunch that's been made/set out for you, walk away from the dirty lunch table, play with guns, chop wood, ride scooters, set off homemade rockets, take a nap, whatever your heart desires, until dinner when a lovely homecooked meal will appear in front of you, devour it, and then relax with your feet up as the women clean up.

So, yeah, it was a little sexist around there. The male WWOOFers had a great time; who could blame them? Ah, the burden of womanhood…. some of my favorite moments were a dinnertime chat between all 12 of us about what is manly and what's not (well, I guess there IS a place for women as cops, I mean, if a woman gets raped, she needs a female cop to comfort her), and how incredibly funny and bizarre it is that someone who wanted to WWOOF with them considered themselves "genderless" and WHAT ON EARTH DOES IT MEAN??! IT'S SO FUNNY AND WEIRD!?!?!?!? HOW WOULD I TREAT THIS PERSON!??! DO THEY DO MANLY STUFF OR GIRLY THINGS??!?!

I'm not kidding- this stuff all really happened. GOOD RIDDANCE to you, Meryl, may your poor sons have a chance at a normal life away from you one day… hopefully before it's too late. Well, at least I got a lovely room for my "hubby" and me(oh yeah, Brian and I are married, Meryl decided, and heaven forbid she ever found out it wasn't true!), and some wonderful food (even if I had to cook it myself for 4 hours) out of the deal. Thanks for the… hospitality?

Meryl and Jan's straw bale house

on their property

the boys playing soccer after dinner (girls not shown in kitchen working)

more of their farm

on our day off, we went into Christchurch to check out some of the devastation...

really sad :(

but there was a GORGEOUS botanical garden in Christchurch

Well, perhaps I was too harsh in my judgement of Meryl. It wasn't until I met Sande, our latest WWOOF host that I realized how good I had it there. After Hokitika, Brian and I went to Punakaiki and stayed in the most amazing lodge hidden away in the rainforest. It was like Doe Bay on Orcas Island… New Zealand style. A charming kitchen, with a comfortable sitting area and record player, treehouse-style dwellings… we were in heaven. When we left there we had a plan to drive to a backpackers a little north of Westport, but when we got there the place seemed creepy and it just wasn't the right vibe (haha, maybe I should have gone against my instincts on that one). We drove a few minutes south through the tiny, sleepy town of Granity, and saw the cutest little bungalow right on the beach, called Granity Sands Backpackers. We wandered in and couldn't find anyone there, but the property was amazing! Antique glass bottles filled with wildflowers lined all the windows, a fireplace, big kitchen with black and white checkered floors, a back patio overlooking the hammocked beach… Finally a little woman who just SCREAMED crazy in her appearance showed up, apologized that she hadn't heard us, and showed us around the place. We agreed to stay there right away and everything seemed great, even though in the back of my mind I was thinking we had a psycho in our midst. There were two WWOOFers there, and they slept out in the "boatshed," an adorable little space converted to a cabin. We got along with the WWOOFers, Celia and Adrian, right away, and decided we should ask Sande if we could WWOOF there (money is tight, folks!). She seemed to really like us, crazy as she was, and she said she'd be more than happy to take us on as WWOOFers.

We spent two nights there as paying customers, and then when we woke up on our 3rd day we started the work-day with Celia and Adrian. Easy, nice tasks, like painting a fence, gardening, baking bread, organizing linen closets, etc. It took me a couple of days to notice a pattern… during the day Sande would pop in and out of the rooms where we were working, making awkward conversation, insisting that we put music on in the common rooms, and then disappearing to her room again. After a bit I noticed a boozy scent wafting off her whenever she came in the room, and started to pick up on the fact that despite the fact that the house was stocked with food and we WWOOFers were always eating, she never had a bite to eat. She sent Celia and Adrian to the store for groceries and instructed them to buy lots of boxes of wine.

After our first day of WWOOFing, we were hanging out in the boat shed, getting ready to watch a movie, when Sande came STORMING in and screamed at us about how the kitchen was a mess. Dumbfounded, we sat there silently (the kitchen was, in fact, very clean), until she clarified that we had left dishes in the drying rack. "We're just letting them dry and would put them away first thing in the morning," we said, to which she replied, "THAT IS NOT HOW IT WORKS! THIS IS NOT A HOTEL! THE KITCHEN NEEDS TO BE CLEAN AT NIGHT SO THAT IN THE MORNING PEOPLE ARE NOT CONFRONTED BY A TON OF DISHES IN THEIR WAY!" We were scared, and she left, and Celia and Adrian said they'd go put them away. Before they had a chance to do so, Sande came back and yelled at us again, for the same thing. It was really frightening, seeing that faraway look in her eye, probably totally blacked-out drunk, sounding totally coherent but unfounded in her anger.

The next day I felt super weird and uncomfortable. She went on as if nothing had happened, was nice to us all, but was hidden away in her room for most of the day. In the late afternoon, at the high-point of her drunk, she came out and reveled about the beauty of the foggy view out of her kitchen window, and smiled as she returned to her hiding place. We had a lazy day; it was rainy so after work we read, watched movies, and Brian baked some delicious bread. We all gathered in the kitchen around 5 and started playing cards, and listening to music (since Sande was ALWAYS telling us to play music at all times). Since we were snacking on Brian's bread all afternoon, no one was hungry for dinner until 9:30pm or so, when we started cooking pasta. Just before 10, Sande stormed in and flew into a rage. What the hell were we doing, this isn't a frat house, what the hell, this kitchen is a mess (it wasn't), how could you think you could cook at this hour (even though she had never told us anything about what time we couldn't cook, and we weren't being loud at all), what is this plastic doing in the garbage can when it's supposed to be in the recycle… etc etc etc. It was TERRIFYING. No one knew what to do, so we just started frantically cleaning and trying to get out of the kitchen as fast as we could. A minute later she came back and started yelling again and had the most frightening look in her glossy eyes. After her rant she said "tomorrow you all leave. Pack your bags and turn over your bed-sheets and clear out of the boat house." We grabbed our pasta and sauce and practically tripped over each other trying to get out of that kitchen. Oh, and I forgot to mention, there was another WWOOFer, who had only been in NZ a little over a week, and this was his first WWOOFing experience, and only his second day there. What a welcome into the world of WWOOFing…

That night was somber, and we were all scared she might come back out and yell again, and agreed to leave in the morning at the same time, safety-in-numbers style. Luckily as we cleaned up in the kitchen and grabbed our things the next day, she only appeared for a second to thank us for taking the sheets off the bed, then disappeared, probably to cry into her pillow about how her abandonment issues had come back to bite her again. Because I know Sande REALLY liked us all, and we were a great group, we assume she, in her drunken/sad state decided to find a way to get rid of us before we could leave her, like everyone else in her life has.

Alcoholism is a terrible, terrible, ugly disease. It broke my heart the way everything happened there. Sande will never get help, because she has no one in her life. Everyone has left her because of her ugliness when she drinks, and it is so tragic to see someone destroying their body in that way. It was also such a sad end to our time there, because we had a great friend group, a lovely place to stay, and an all-around good time, all which was soured by the untimely end to our stay there.

I just have to say, it made me so thankful that in my life I have never had to endure the ugliness of alcoholism amongst any of my loved ones, and my heart breaks for anyone who has dealt with that in their life. :(((((

Sorry to end this post on such a sad note- but I promise everything else been EXCELLENT around here. Many more blog posts to come describing the beauty, adventure, and fun we've been experiencing lately! Now, PLEASE send positive vibes our way when it comes to choosing our next WWOOF spot… with our track record we really need all the help we can get. ;)

LOVE FROM MOTUEKA!

view from the drive to Punakaiki

Wild West Coast

from Te Nikau lodge, our little NZ Doe Bay

one of the many dramatic views from the secret Motukiekie beach on the west coast... hidden gem and one of the most beautiful places I've seen in NZ yet

!!!

Pancake Rocks at Punakaiki

...and in the blow hole

the flowers appear sunny in this place... looks can be deceiving (Granity Sands)

the location of our kick-out

more sunny Granity Sands Backpackers pics

our safe haven... literally. The WWOOFer hideout

the beauty of this place is really heartbreaking

Charming Creek Walkway... was indeed very charming!

especially with this little Bear dog as your companion :)

new friend on the beach

this is how I want to remember this place.