Settling in Blenheim

That's Cassie, the black lab, who is such a good puppy.

The pool that unfortunately we have only gotten in a few times because it is starting to cool down.

So Jordan is all taken care of and it took us to about 4 days of vineyard work before we quit.  Not a huge surprise to most of you, but it turns out we didn't care much for cutting out the diseased grapes.  We were on contract work which means we had to go at a pretty decent pace in order to make money.  But when you go at a decent pace then you miss some of the diseased grapes and the supervisor comes around and yells at you and tells you to go back and do it again.  So you have a choice, to either do it slow the first time and make no money or try to get away with going fast and then get yelled at and have to go back again and make no money.  We decided it wasn't worth the body aches to make 3 dollars under minimum wage.  So it looks like its back to cafe work for us, we just can't get enough (sarcasm).  Johnny's told me about a thousand times how much he can't wait to teach again.  Other than that we are doing great, we still love our new house and flatmates.  A couple of my friends will be here in a few days and we are going to travel around with them.  We are really excited about that!  

Car Talk - Fix Jordan

I now live the life of a migrant worker.  Not being able to understand your boss, him not being able to understand you, not understanding what you are actually supposed to be doing, being more of a number than a person (who's name is not important), and driving other foreigners around to different job sites daily.  On this particular day, there was a German girl in the front with me and three Japanese girls in the back seat.  We were driving down Old Renwick Road to the vineyard we would be working on all day while our minds atrophy.  We were in the middle of a long row of cars all following the boss when we heard a loud clunky grindy noise that chunked for awhile and then turned into a really loud whirring noise (unfortunately I'm not as good at car noises as Click or Clack).  The boss turned around and took three of the four girls, leaving the fourth with me.  We called AA and got a tow truck.  He hooked the cable to the tow hoop on the front bumper and started to pull Jordan onto the truck, of course pulling off the whole bumper in the process.  After all it turns out the timing belt is shot and it will cost exactly as much to fix him as we paid for him in the first place.  We will be accepting donations, checks or money orders made payable to "Jordan, the great white legacy".  He should be up and running, taking us back to lose our minds in the fields by Tuesday.  

Cheers,

Johnny

#4 this time around West Coast

Our trip was quickly coming to and end which meant departing from Bobby and Natalie and starting to make our way north towards Blenheim where we hoped to find vineyard work.  The campsite above was outside of Queenstown and the picture below is of Glenorchy which was a beautiful drive but not a very exciting town.  We spent a few days messing around Queenstown and then Johnny and I started up the west coast.  It was sad to leave Natalie and Bobby, we've had an awesome 6 months with them.  They are going to travel around the south island and eventually make their way up to do vineyard work, so we'll see them then.

This is fantail waterfall, all along the west coast we saw beautiful waterfalls.  It is one of the most green places I have ever seen, the rain-forest is so thick you can't see through it.
We stopped by two glaciers- Fox and Franz Josef which were incredible.  It was amazing to see a glacier right next to the sea and rain-forest.  I have a couple of friends coming to visit in a few weeks and we plan to take them back and actually go on a hike on one of the glaciers, so we are really excited about that.



These are correctly named the pancake rocks because they are layered right on top of each other.  Below you can see the staircase you walk up to see the ocean.

After a few days spent on the rugged west coast we made our way over to Blenheim.  We camped on this beach the day we arrived in Blenheim.  On the way to this beach we stopped at another and actually got to swim!  It is the first time since we've been in New Zealand that we laid out on a beach and the water was warm enough to get in.  I loved it, it's funny that all four of us thought when we jumped off the plane that we'd be in our swimsuits on the beach.  Little did we know.  

So know we are living and working in Blenheim.  We lucked out and are flatting (renting a room in a house) with a teacher and her husband and an engineer from the Philippines.  The houses we looked at previously were awful.  5 to 7 people living in filthy houses, and Johnny and I didn't know what we were going to do, I guess camp forever (yeah right).  So luckily we found this awesome clean house with 3 really nice people living in it.  The husband actually works out of town so it's only the 4 of us during the week.  The backyard is sweet, it has a BBQ, veggie garden, and a pool!  We'll put pictures up soon.  Johnny started working on a vineyard yesterday and said it was extremely boring but is was okay because he didn't have to deal with customers.  I will start in a few days, and luckily we can listen to our ipods while we work.  So we'll let you know how that goes.

Hope all is well with everyone, Maegen 

Blog #3 this time around, the Routeburn Track

We had spent the previous night at Deer Flats in a swarm of sandflies and actually got quite cold, so at this point we were a little cold and kind of nervous.  Luckily it stayed cold enough that we left the sandflies around this sign, and we were walking enough that we warmed up quite well also.  
At this point we had been walking (mostly uphill in her defense) for about 45 minutes and Mae had pawned off the tent, all the clothes, and all the food to me.  Her bag had our sleeping bags and ground pads, it actually had a negative weight as if it was filled with helium.  Her smile is very genuine, mine ??????
We dropped our bags at a short, one hour side route.  It brought us up here to Key Summit which was well worth the walk.   The next picture was taken from up here as well, it looked like these two pictures 360 degrees around us.  Unfortunately when we set up our tents that night, Bobby and I discovered we no longer had our wallets.  After all our precautions in the country, the one place we thought would be perfectly safe got us, we should have hidden our bags.  

This is Earland Falls about 10 km from the start of the walk.  It is 170 m high and falls into a perfectly clear pool.  
These mountain daisies were growing wild everywhere.  The pedals are much narrower than a normal daisy, and there were many more of them, they were stunning.
Most of the walk to this point was through pretty thick bush, but every time you got a view it was something like this.  It was hard to put the camera away all along the track.
From a point up above the bush you got a glimpse of Milford Sound and the Tasman Sea beyond it.  

The two pictures above are of Lake Mckenzie.  Our campsite was basically right behind us, just back off the shore of the lake.  The water was intensely green and clear, it was a great place to spend a couple nights.
We were running out of fuel and in spite of a fire ban, we risked it.  Our fire was in the middle of the rocky shore and we really struggled to find anything dry enough to burn.  Somehow we pulled off a fire kept alight with tiny twigs, that put out enough heat to cook potatoes, rice, and curry sauce in three different pans.  We had just finished dinner and some self-righteous locals came up yelling, "The ranger's on his way!  Do you speak English?  He's going to evict you!"  We put out the fire, looking and feeling a little guilty, ate dinner, cleaned up the fire ring and ashes and ran into the ranger walking up to the campsite.  He casually asked if it was out (didn't want to check it), told us not to do it again, and delivered another fuel tank to our tent the next morning.  "No drama" as he said. 

The next day we walked to the top of the saddle, about 8 km in one direction all above tree line.  It was incredibly alive and green for alpine, and just as startling as the previous day.  
The track itself was really impressive.  On many occasions you would find yourself walking up or down beautiful stone staircases.  The DOC does a great job with trail maintenance. 
This big "split rock" was a short walk from our campsite.  It was a huge rock, split cleanly in two.  You can't quite see in this picture but there are full grown trees growing out of the six inches of soil and moss on the top of the rock.  It was a 40 km walk in total, and even though we lost our wallets, it was well worth it.

Cheers,

Johnny

Blog #2 this time around, Doubtful Sound and Lake Manapouri

After the Catlins we were off to Fiordland to kayak and then walk.  The picture above is Doubtful Sound, where we started our two day kayaking trip.  To get to Doubtful Sound (which is actually a fiord) you have to take a boat 30 km across Lake Manapouri, and then take a bus 30 km over a mountain pass; the picture was taken from the top of that pass.
It was much drier than when we went to Milford Sound, so there weren't as many waterfalls.  There also weren't as many people.  Once we got off the boat to started kayaking we didn't see anyone else, and we didn't hear any motors, it was really incredible.  We paddled down the length of Hope arm and halfway back in some pretty strong wind.  
The black line coming down from the saddle in this picture is actually a fault.  Just a huge crack in the mountain, which is pretty much solid limestone.  I have never seen anything like it.
It was cloudy the whole day and in the afternoon we got this eerie yellow light.  It was caused by smoke that had travelled over 900 miles across the Tasman Sea from the Australian bush fires.  It was stunning to be paddling on the ocean and have mountains shooting practically straight up over 1,000 m all around you.
Mae sat in front and took pictures while I paddled us over 10 km in some pretty strong wind, what a deal!
That night as we came back across Lake Manapouri they dropped us off on this island beach to stay the night and paddle back the next day.  We had the whole island to ourselves, fulfilling all of our childhood dreams.  In our dreams however, there was no rain and definitely no sandflies.  In reality there was plenty of both.  
The scenery on the Lake was just as mystical as the Fiord, partly due to the massive amounts of rain.  We woke ready to paddle the circumference of the lake at least once, got into the kayaks and realized paddling straight back was questionable, but we made it.  At one point I had my paddle straight up trying to sail on the wind like we did in Doubtful and a boat flipped a U-turn and came to rescue us.  I was highly embarrassed and yet greatly tempted to fake an injury and get a ride back. 

This was the sunset over Lake Te Anau that night, still largely due to the Australian fires.  We stayed this night under a roof, recuperating for the next leg of the journey; the Routeburn Track

Blog #1 this time around, The Catlins

Huh, it turns out you can just walk into Mordor, Johnny (and Boromir) were wrong all along.  Not that we have, we've just heard about it.  We did however walk into some beautiful country and have seen some amazing things since we last blogged.  Our first stop after Dunedin was the Catlins which is just south of Dunners (as we lovingly came to call it).  We stopped at Nugget Point which had huge boulders going out into the ocean.  The color of the water here is so amazing, crystal clear and turquoise. The waterfall is Purakaunui Falls which is a really popular spot for some unknown reason compared to the rest of the scenery.  We camped the first night at Purakaunui Bay and had fun climbing around on the boulders and Bobby even got to fish a couple of times.  While climbing around on the boulders we ran into a few yellow eyed penguins.  It was awesome to be so close to them and watch them in the wild.  The next night at Curio Bay we also saw hector dolphins in the bay, and they're very  friendly.  They swim all around and jump in and out of the water.  If it hadn't been cold and windy we could have gotten in and tried to swim with them.   It was a great start to the trip!

Kia Ora, Maegen 

Last Days in Dunedin

So we are out of the house on the hill and Mae and I are done working.  The house we are staying in for our last week (few days now) is beautiful, you can hear the waves anywhere in the house and see the beach out every Eastern facing window.  We took a little walk around the house, and this is what we saw.  This is the length of Tomahawk Beach, the one we see out our window.
This picture was taken from the cliff-top golf course.  The small village of Ocean Grove is in the background.
This is the main beach in Dunedin, St. Kilda and St. Clair.  The suburb of St. Clair is tucked back in the corner by the hills, right on the beach.  
I don't know what flower this is but the are absolutely beautiful, and they are everywhere right now.
This is a really old cemetery we walked through, with a good view of St. Clair in the background.  As excited as we are for our upcoming trip, we are kind of sad to leave Dunedin, it is really a great town.

Cheers,

johnny