Newborn Dexter calf

Imagine you are ready to carve out your own self-sustaining existence in the countryside — produce all you need to survive. Where would you begin? With dreams of a self-sufficient future, Pat and I were quite pleased to make the acquaintance of Marion and Lee. From nine to five they practice landscape architecture and accounting, respectively. During all other hours they are slowly beginning to live off the land.

chocolate delivery vehicle from the good old days

Marion works from home, so we were able to arrive in the middle of the morning and jump right into our wwoofing. (A work exchange program we’ve participated in between bouts of backpacking and sightseeing). After a quick run to the local nursery for supplies, we spent the afternoon digging up baby tussocks (New Zealand ornamental grass) and bagging them — maybe to be sold at the Farmer’s Market in the spring?! We spent the next day digging ditches to drain swamp-prone areas and weeding.

During the course of our stay, we learned about the type of cattle (Dexter) they’ve chosen to breed, how they plan on using their land, how they’ll manage the stock (including a small flock of sheep) over winter, how they chose their chicken breed, and what the master plan is for their garden and orchard. Exciting!

Brewing Kettles at Speight’s

Their main project for us was a greenhouse assembling project, which had to wait until the weekend. In anticipation of long weekend work days, we were free to spend Thursday catching up on some much needed recovery-time and Friday doing errands and seeing some of the sights in Dunedin. Our vehicle was due for it’s bi-annual Warrant of Fitness inspection (which turned into a total nightmare and will be an entire other blog entry). While it was being inspected, we embarked on our first ever chocolate factory tour! YUM!

The voracious, almighty dollar hasn’t taken over New Zealand culture quite as much as it has in the U.S.A. (Plenty of places are still closed on Saturdays, and almost nothing is 24/7 excepting the dairy industry which has grown like a tumor.) As a consequence, our 11:45 (nearly lunch) time slot left our small group with less to see than usual. Our Cadbury guide felt bad and plied us with heaps of chocolate. We did learn how they

greenhouse before lunch

make hollow figures (spinning molds), coated candy (spun in a cement-mixer-like machine as coatings are ladled in), and liquid chocolate (sweetened condensed milk, cocoa power, cocoa butter). We also got to taste almost everything, including a cocoa bean. I was really surprised by the lack of mechanization (many things packaged by hand) and the fact that the factory doesn’t run 24/7. Fun fact: the factory produces 10 hollow Easter eggs for every New Zealander every year!

After Cadbury, we made our way to the Speight’s factory. This place is like the Budweiser or Coors of New Zealand. The tour was really polished — very Disney — and the ancient factory was different than any other brewery I’ve been to — basically because all the vessels used in the process retain the copper shell of days past. The brewery ordered steel, but copper is what was delivered to this small-ish South Pacific Island so very long ago and they couldn’t afford to wait for new materials. I even learned how ancient Egyptians made beer from bread. The end of the tour was the best — 30-40 minutes in the tour bar pouring as many samples as we wanted! We then explored the downtown shopping district until it was appropriate to get behind the wheel for our return trip on the freeway to Marion and Lee’s.

Now, we’d heard about Dunedin’s amazing Farmer’s Market, and it looked like our Saturday with Marion and Lee would be the only opportunity to check it out. They treated us to a delicious breakfast of crepes before we wandered around enjoying all the sights and smells of the market and buying the gnarliest block of bleu you’ve ever smelled! Upon return, the breeze was too strong to erect the lightweight greenhouse kit, so we set about preparing the ground and getting things in order. We got up bright and early Sunday and were tackling the project before the sun made it over the hill.

assembled before sunset!

The greenhouse kit was shipped from China and contained mystical directions about fitting L-02 with T7 and securing it all with W-04 and part S-21. You can imagine that it was an amusing, frustrating, and eventually gratifying process to match everything up. By lunch, we’d only finished 15%. We got into the groove after the meal and managed to install the remaining framing, panels, bracing, doors, and weather stripping before dark! After one more day working on small projects, we said goodbye to a fantastic experience and wonderful couple and headed back to the city.

Click here for a few more photos.

Raw oysters on the half-shell & my first sea urchin (bottom right in shot glass)!

My favorite part of not having firm plans is ending up in unexpected places. With less than 12 hours to go til our “Pure Chevre Farm” departure, we discovered the annual Bluff Oyster Festival was slated for the following day. Bluff is famous for its oysters. With the Invercargill Brewery providing another lucrative reason to head that direction, we made up our minds pretty quickly!

Proof of having made the right choice was forthcoming when a local man approached me in the ticket line and offered me a free ticket — no strings attached. Score! Soon we were in, holding tasty bottles of Mac’s microbrews, and standing in line to educate

S-L-U-R-P!

ourselves at the numerous food stalls while various musicians graced the stage. I confess to being a seafood lover, and most of what we tried was great! I ate my first sea urchin. It melted in my mouth, and I became an instant fan! We also had fried oysters, seafood pizza, marinated scallops, blue cod in coconut cream, and raw oysters on the half shell. Slurp!

Pat with our host, Scott, at “the world’s smallest bar.”

Tour over, we were off for the south island’s most vibrant city — Dunedin! A good college friend of mine, Laurel (whose wedding we went to this past summer) studied abroad here, and I looked forward to retracing some of her steps. We finally got up the nerve to “couchsurf,” and we weren’t disappointed! Usually sussing out a good host is a long, arduous, fun-free process, but this time we lucked out! We turned up at Rachel and Scott’s, shared our Invercargill Brewery souvenirs, and set out for the world’s smallest bar (Mu Bar). By the end of the night, we’d been to half the evening establishments in downtown Dunedin. We finished off our soiree dancing on the glass floor of “The Fever Club” – colored lights flashing from below while a disco ball threw light on the white, 70’s, moulded fixtures.

Dunedin as seen from Buttar’s Peak

A cultural aside — Dunedin nightlife definitely has a dresscode. I am comfortable enough in my own skin that it took me until the wee hours of the morning to notice that I was the *only* woman not wearing a dress/skirt. Given that blue jeans are basically out of style, not a single other female was wearing them. This, coupled with insanely high hem-lines, made for entertaining people-watching stints playing the “shortest skirt” game. I’m thankful I don’t reside in a place where I’m subjected to mainstream clothing standards — I don’t think I could stomach skinny jeans.

King of the Hill

The plans to hike a nearby peak overlooking the city were slow to get moving the next morning as we all stumbled around on precious few hours of sleep, etc. Nonetheless, we crested the summit of Buttar’s Peak to blue clear skies and stunning 360 views. A jutting spire of rock tested our courage as we took turns ascending for photo ops. We also visited the “Organ Pipes” – an outcrop of columnar basalt — where we ate lunch and got lost trying to bushwhack our way down.

Rachel and Scott were back to adult life the following day — she is working on her PhD and studies seabirds and island restoration, Scott is teaching at a Dunedin school thanks to his ESL experience. We spent the day driving out the long peninsula with great harbor views. We checked out the aquarium and the albatross visitor’s center before hiking down to the gorgeous Sandfly Bay. The

sandfly bay!

return trip, along the crest of the peninsula was an amazingly scenic drive. We were able to see St. Kilda Beach, visit the infamous St. Clair Beach and watch all the surfers, and find our way to Tunnel Beach before the afternoon was up. As daylight faded, we hiked up the “world’s steepest street” (have they been to Bolivia or Peru?) and wandered around the botanic gardens (another amazing aviary!). After dinner and a quiet evening watching a flick with our hosts, we set off for the countryside to wwoof with Marion and Lee!

Click here for photos of the free-ticket giver, the steepest street, pinnacle photos and more!

humboldt falls!

Oops! I’ve been forgetting to do the “if you’re just tuning in…” part of the entry. Right. So, we’re in New Zealand. We’ve been here for seven months. For a month we settled in and wwoofed quite a bit. Then we worked four months during the southern hemisphere summer. Now it’s been two months on the road in one of three modes: backpacking, wwoofing, or sight-seeing.   They complement each other nicely and keep us from needing a vacation from our vacation!   The autumn has been wonderful, and winter is slowly starting to nuzzle its way in the door.

This is definitely a sight-seeing entry! Fresh of the Routeburn Great Walk, we jumped in the car and drove the rest of the curvaceous, high-alpine road to the famous Milford Sound. The southern west coast of New Zealand

milford sound and mitre peak as seen from shore

has a handful of huge fiords/sounds and dozens of smaller ones — icy fingers of the sea sneaking between soaring peaks. Milford is the only sound that has a paved public road for access and a breath-taking, picturesque spire as it’s inland focal point (Mitre Peak).

The drive to the sound is amazing. First the Eglington Valley, then a climb up through the forest and above treeline to the Homer Tunnel — a project more than 30 years and several avalanche deaths in the making. Once you’ve bumped your way through the rough-hewn tunnel, it’s down, down, down, down, down to the sea!

the “Chasm” – a short stoll to sculpted stream bed

We spent a full day just relaxing at a hostel, going on short nature walks, enjoying the scenery, and playing the New Zealand version of Trivial Pursuit until they booted us out of the lounge!. We opted out of the cruise option. Milford Sound is not that lengthy, and $150 is a lot of money. After so many days in the backcountry, we were madly in love with our lentils, popcorn, etc. And of course we were loving ourselves for having the foresight to stock up on a six-pack of microbrew!

takahe – native NZ bird

Our trip back to the main town made for a casual day. We took advantage of several nature walks, including a visit to the Humboldt Falls! In town, we went to a showing of the locally produced imax-like film. It was good to see some of the gorgeous places that we didn’t get to visit. Thanks to a sweet bartender who pointed us to the hidden locals night upstairs at a pub, we had a great evening of live music and Old Dark (beer).

kiwi burn hut

Since the weather forecast for the weekend was miserable, we decided to give up the chance to do another great walk (i.e. the chance to be pelted by freezing rain and slog through the mud all day long), and instead we moved into a hut for the weekend! We weren’t due at our wwoofing spot until Monday, so we found a hut with a short hike in, stocked up on luxuries and necessities, and spent the weekend at a cabin. It was great!

Click here for photos of more sights, the tomtit that flew into our mirror repeatedly, Pat at Trivial Pursuit, etc.

The getting-started sign.

Before we left on our Port Craig hike, we’d gotten word back from our hoped-for wwoofing host in Tuatapere. He was full up, unfortunately, but had a “friend who just opened a backpackers” that needs lots of remodeling and TLC. Locals pointed us in the right direction in vague ways, recalling many a set of directions I’ve received traveling in Latin America — the place was “just up the corner there.” We manage to pay a visit before hitting the trail and decided we’d be down for a few days of work trade at the Last Light Lodge.

Our first experience with passionfruit (center) and feijoa (top and bottom). Both are YUM! And gone in the photo.

Tuatapere is the farthest south, farthest west collection of people on the south island, and so it is the place where the last wisps of daylight can be seen each evening. Craig, our host, is a laid-back music lover who manages to look a bit French with his gentle features, worn jeans, plaid overshirts, and olive green railroad cap. He’s also a chef, among other things. He’s talented enough not to have to throw in heaps of butter to get his creations past the taste test. I’m sure the cafe he is opening will be a roaring success!

We told Craig we’d arrive Saturday morning. Friday evening, however, saw us off the trail before sunset. Given the come-and-go impression we’d gotten when previewing Craig’s place, we turned up early to see if he might agree to adjust our arrival date. He welcomed us, and we cracked into a great evening with a few bottles of wine.

Now if only the posts were square…

During our preview visit, Craig had given us a tour of the expansive property while explaining his many visions for improvements. He has a great eye for detail and overall flow — I’d love to see the place when it’s finished! We chose the “fence project” – a bid to narrow up one of the entries to the property and provide privacy for the main house. Instead of fence posts and cross braces with fence boards nailed on, this creation was to be panels of corrugated metal. I couldn’t see how we were going to get an attractive outcome with these materials, but I thought, “hey…. it’s not my fence!”

Pat and I set to digging post holes with a heavy pinch bar — pounding through the asphalt and digging down 500mm. Lots of measuring, concrete mixing, measuring again, leveling, wiggling, adjusting, and more measuring later, we had finally cemented in a respectable number of fence posts! It

The almost finished product…

was my first construction project using the metric system, and I would love to never go back. Measuring in millimeters (said “mils”) is where it’s at! At some point in our post-setting, it was decided we should start assembling some panels to be sure our calculations were spot-on. Craig borrowed a nail gun that would shoot galvanized nails, but the cartridge was the wrong model. Stuck with nails meant for a gun (no other galv available) we cursed our way through many bent nails and we put up panel after panel. As I should have know, the fence looked pretty sharp when all was said and done! (or rather, when we ran out of corrugated sheets).

Being from a “hunting” state, Pat and I were amazed that you’re allowed to kill as many deer as you can find!

Fun times at Craig’s also included excellent muddled vodka drinks, including kiwi fruit and feijoa, under the pretext of using up a failed jam experiment, several evenings worth of movies (to include Bruno), a night of pictionary, a Saturday evening on the town where a local rugby player took off his pants to show me his injuries, and getting to meet Craig’s brother and his son — in town on a deer hunting mission. They managed to spotlight five deer before having to head back north. Hopefully we’ll get to visit them as we wander northward!

Toward the end of our stay, we took the afternoon off to explore the local limestone caves — a favorite pasttime of mine. Managing acrobatic feats in the face of possible peril is great fun on its own, but the caving experience was topped off by a local natural phenomenon — glow worms! These larvae live on the cave walls. Sort of like a spider, they dangle a whole mess of sticky threads a few inches from their tiny

Sticky glow worm threads (on a tree. Not my photo.).

bodies. Then, a chemical reaction at one end of the worm causes it to glow an awesome, bright green — a pinpoint of light the same color as a traffic light. In theory, flying insects are attracted to the light, get stuck in the sticky threads, and are reeled in for lunch. In the dark, a ceiling full of these glowing pinpoints looks like a surreal night sky — very cool!

Faux night sky of glow worms – amazing!

All in all, I would highly recommend that one and all will make or break a stop over in Tuatapere based purely on accommodation choice.   Last Light Lodge is where it’s at!

Photos of the red-head who took his pants off at bar (and other things) by clicking here.

beach view on our first day of the South Coast track

Not that I haven’t met many truly wonderful Kiwi’s, but I have to say my experiences at large have been disappointing. While anecdotal, a Kiwi restaurant patron where I used to work raved to me about how wonderful her time in America had been and how struck she was by American friendliness. No offense to our amazing wwoofing hosts and awesome kiwi friends, but when it comes to interacting with strangers, I’ll take the U.S. over Kiwi-land any day.

swamp! thankfully we got to go around it.

And so it was that we arrived in Tuatapere (Too-uh-tap-er-ee), a bit jolted by a complete absence of polite geniality from the woman at the Invers I-Site to the proprietor of the internet shop to the Hump Ridge booking office. Friends and colleagues had put us on to a well-known hiking trail in this area, but we failed to catch wind of the fact that it’s not managed by the NZ forest service (DOC). As such, there is absolutely no way to hike the loop without paying $130 each. That’s not a typo. And of course the blow was strengthened by the I-Site worker bullying us toward a “booking” on the trail — an unfortunate hallmark of New Zealand’s weird commission-based tourism booking industry. To add insult to injury, the doors to the home of the famous Tuatapere sausage had been boarded up a week prior to our arrival, and the town’s streets were all but deserted.

beginning of port craig hike

After re-grouping and a night of rest, we tackled the South Coast track — the public trail that connects the elite Hump Ridge track to the outside world. We raced the sun along a beautiful coastline — sometimes on gorgeous secluded beaches with stunning backdrops, and sometimes in the mossy New Zealand forest. Constant aggressive signage about the Hump Ridge track – warning walkers not to even think about going near it without paying – showed up frequently along the trail. The wording would make the unknowing hiker assume he or she was already on the precious track and practically committing a felony with every step. Not winning a lot of tourism dollars here, Tuatapere!

Our sunset arrival at the “hut” – the old school house from a logging town of days past — was idyllic. The schoolhouse itself — Victorian architecture painted white with apple-red trim was too adorable. Inside we discovered three tiers of bunk platforms that made me feel like I was back in grade school

school house from early 1900’s remote logging settlement. Now hikers get to sleep here!

exploring the world. An ominous conversation with hikers we’d met on the trail sort of prepared us for the only disappointment of the trip — Jenny and Theresa, a mother-daughter duo from a farm on the North Island (Hamilton). No matter how often or humbly we tried to make conversation, they luxuriated in snobbery like pigs in muck. “So… what’s your favorite trail meal?” “Oh… when you’re out in the real rough and tough back-country for days on end like we are, it all just tastes the same.” “Hmmm… so was the track coming down off Hump Ridge (they had paid to do the hike) muddy?” “Nope. It was great.” “Oh, It says here in this pamphlet that it usually is muddy (and our entire hike in had been full of mud).” “Well, you have to

A must visit place!

understand. We’re *farmers.* If it’s only ankle deep, it’s *hardly* mud.” And finally , when asked about their trip plans (aka when are you LEAVING?!) the mother’s nonchalant story about losing two toe-nails on the hike down off the ridge and “not realizing it.” She “just thought a piece of bark was caught” on her sock.   Ew!

We escaped the pair for the day and hiked a few hours up to “the oldest, largest wooden viaduct in the Southern hemisphere” – part of the elaborate and remote logging operation that ran for a decade in this farthest south, farthest west corner of New Zealand. When we returned to the schoolhouse, we searched around for one of the village-remains-walking-tour-pamphlets promised by signage. There were none about. I quizzed our hut companions

percy burn viaduct

who gave me blank stares. I explained slowly and clearly before daughter made eye contact with mother and reluctantly dug one out of her pocket. “You can use mine. But I want it back.” Sheesh! It was neat to see all the lingering components of the former town, and the literature managed to paint a picture that few historical sites usually do. The beach and former port were gorgeous and we even got to see Hector’s dolphins! The ladies vacated early the next day, leaving us with a peaceful morning and return trip to the parking lot.

More photos of this gorgeous place by clicking here.

Queen's Park "bench"

An eerie feeling swept over me as we pulled into Invercargill. Our sensory barriers were firmly in place thanks to endless warnings about the south island’s southern-most city being a horrible wasteland. So, it was in a daze that we slowly lowered our defenses to find tidy suburbia that could be Almost-Any-City, USA. As we rolled toward the heart of town I still couldn’t shake the feeling or pin down what my subconscious was picking up. Until, that is, I depressed the clutch and shifted into neutral to coast up to the red TRAFFIC LIGHT!!

Astounding birds at Queen's Park aviary. (Not native.)

It’s been months…five at least… since I’d been to a place with a truly modern heartbeat. Even Queenstown — adventure capital of the country — is quaintly free of traffic lights. And so it was this entry back into the “real world” that had me in a bit of a daze.

Invercargill — better known as Invers or In’gill — treated us like royalty. We stayed at a quirky backpackers with an overeager, well-meaning proprietor our first night. On a run the next morning I was shocked not to encounter another fitness-oriented soul. Wanaka — little international town that it is — is full of athletes and gives newcomers like myself an inaccurate sense of what New Zealand is all about. Despite it being Easter Saturday, the Farmer’s Market was still crawling with people. I fetched Pat, and we returned to enjoy our first passionfruit, local baked goods, and a carton of farm-fresh eggs.

The city's most recognizable landmark. Guess what it is...?

Having arrived on the eve of a holiday weekend, we were more or less forced to relax and do nothing. We debated at length the pros and cons of ticking Stewart Island off our NZ bucket list. All told, we decided getting a few miles from the mainland to see a few new things didn’t outweigh spending a few hundred dollars. Instead we treated ourselves to the British film “Paul” with scenes purported to take place just a stone’s throw from my hometown. To our disappointment, the “Moorcroft” in the film looked nothing like the real thing as the credits at the end of an otherwise enjoyable film would confirm.

children's playground

Highlights of the Southland Museum included learning about the sub-antarctic islands belonging to New Zealand, realizing the ‘roaring 40’s’ referred not to a decade but to winds circulating uninterrupted at said latitude, and seeing the ancient Totara lizard-relative in the flesh. We also got to visit Queen’s Park — a place sophisticated enough to attain the atmosphere of New York’s central park. Funky sculptures, well-tended gardens, a lush greenhouse, an astounding aviary exhibit, and a virtual petting zoo full of endless species made for an awesome afternoon. Before leaving town we capped off our Invers adventures with a visit to the picturesque water tower — the town’s most recognized landmark. More like a capitol building of days gone by, it was a nice finishing touch for our final moments in In’gill.

Photos that probably tell it better than I do by clicking here.