Patrick and Kari's Travels

For the last two weeks Pat and I have been staying at the Old Gym in Wanaka. When we first decided to stay at the Old Gym we thought it was a typical wwoof residence. On further investigation we realized it’s simply large dorm accommodation for skiers and snowboarders, many of whom work for accommodation. The living situation isn’t terrible, though the walls of the bedrooms aren’t connected to the roof (the only way the building meets fire code).

The main problem is the cold. The house is poorly insulated and without any working heaters the bedrooms are frigid, often it’s colder inside than it is outside. We've started sleeping in one of the common rooms, this way we can enjoy a warm fire until we fall asleep. Of course after we've fallen asleep the fire goes out and the room returns quickly to the temperature outside. Apparently during the winter the house fills up with over 30 renters so we've been wondering if the body heat helps keep the place warm. Truly it puts the old mobe at Sawbill to shame.


Amazingly the Old Gym has two beautiful Japanese baths. After days of work cleaning, filling and heating the water we realized that without covers the baths would never be able to retain enough heat to be even slightly warm. After some investigation we discovered some sheets of Styrofoam that had obviously been used as covers in previous years. Of course the sheets hadn't been stored well and were covered in filth. After some vigorous scrubbing and loads of dish soap the Styrofoam was clean enough to be used as a spa cover. Sadly even with the makeshift spa cover the baths are only slightly warmer than body temperature (but a nice respite from the cold air).

While the Old Gym fills up during the winter there are only three tenants right now, including the caretaker Matt. Matt, Martin and Michy are German, but all speak decent English. We went out to a bar with them last night, after one drink Pat and I headed home. This morning we found out that after we left they drove to Queenstown and stayed out partying until 9am in the morning! We couldn’t believe it. We’ve also made the acquaintance of a British and German couple; both pairs were staying at the Old Gym when we first arrived but have since found alternate (warmer) housing in Wanaka. Thankfully the Old Gym is free so dealing with the cold isn’t intolerable.

I am waiting to hear whether I'll be working at the ski fields this winter. Pat found out a few days ago that he has been offered a full time position in the rentals department. Sadly I still haven't heard and all I can do is wait. Tomorrow we're planning to go into Queenstown to look at apartments.

Kari

We are at our new Wwoof residence as I write this entry. We don’t have internet easily accessible so I am writing this sitting in our room. This place is very nice and we are enjoying ourselves immensely, but we are both tired of having to live in someone else’s space. We both are feeling like we need to put our time to better use and have a space that we can truly call our own, not to mention trying to share bathrooms, hot water, and space with people we do not know at all. (Note to Manwich, Wwoofing is fun email me for more details, pathughes4@gmail.com)

Our current place is a retreat center that our host Paru runs on her own. The retreat center offers massage, morning yoga, good food, cleansings, an Ozone sauna, and a few other natural healing activities. It caters to pairs, either couples or friends, and Paru runs activities for them throughout the day. Kari is helping run the house side of the retreat, cooking, cleaning the house and Ozone sauna and doing laundry. We both work on the dishes because Paru is the messiest cook we have ever met, she makes a bigger mess than a Sawbill cook who forgot they had dinner until 4:30. I spend my days working in the garden trimming hedges, cleaning the outside of the house and mowing lawns.

Kari starts at 7:15 in the morning and I show up at about 7:45 to help with the morning tasks. Yoga starts around 8 and afterwards we eat breakfast. Then I go outside to work on my tasks and Kari takes care of whatever is on her list for the day. Lunch has been around 1 or 2 and then after we do the dishes we are done for the afternoon. Once you throw in dinner help and dishes we are working longer than normal days and it is very spread out. We have not minded much though since we are about as far away from a town as we have been. Christchurch is about 30 minutes away but the closest town is 20, so we have not been interested in making the drive for just a short afternoon.

Kari and I have both been enjoying yoga. I seem to like it more because Kari finds that it is a little boring for her (not hard enough). We have been eating what they consider very healthy, but it mostly reminds me of mom’s home cooking (unfortunately not nearly as good). Kari and I have been reading up on our Ayurveda body types and what we should try to do to balance ourselves. We have both agreed that there are things in it that can help you be a healthy person but also that as with most things it can be taken a little to far and a little to seriously by some people.

We were able to take an afternoon and drive out to a small beach in a cove near the mouth of the bay. It was a very pretty place but we are finding that we have had a slight overload on beaches; they have a lot of them here. We will be heading out of here soon down to Queenstown for Kari’s interview and then to Wanaka for a place to stay until we hear back about our jobs.

Patrick

We left James and Barbie Wilson’s Green Shed last week following one of our most enjoyable wwoof residences so far. After spending our last 3 days in their wonderful ocean front Bach we had one more hot breakfast before leaving. Leaving took a little work. Kari forgot her Nalgene down at the Bach and had to run and get it while I tried to pack all of our stuff back into Mister Shifty. It is amazing the system we have in place so that things fit and we don’t have too much stuff piled in the back seat.

We headed south back to Sophie and Mark’s place in Blenheim on Wednesday the 9th . They were happy enough with our paint job on their roof to invite us to leave some of our stuff in their house while we went for a tramp into Nelson Lakes National Park. The drive to Nelson Lakes took us up through the valley that is home to the best Sauvignon Blanc vineyards in the world. It was a truly amazing site to watch row after row pass the window for almost 100 km.

Patrick enjoying the evening trek past Lake Rotoiti

In the shadow of Mt. Roberts

St. Arnaud is the town at the entrance to the park. In many ways the area reminded us of Lake Tahoe, only New Zealand size (small). There are two beautiful lakes that are surrounded by towering 6000 ft peaks. Our tramp took us out along the edge of Lake Rotoiti to Lake Head Hut for our first nights stay. It was an amazing 2 hour walk from our car along the edge of the lake to a river crossing that took us another hour to navigate. When we woke the next morning there was a hard frost on the ground that made the ground look white and the river steam. This created a bank of fog that hung just off the ground not far from the hut. We ate breakfast, warm oatmeal instead of muesli and dried milk for this trip, and headed out on what was to be our only taxing day of the trip.

Kari next to the morning river crossing

After the morning river crossing the sun breaks into the valley

It started with crossing back over the river and then following it up the valley for about an hour. At this point the track turned off the main river valley to follow a side stream up into the mountains. What we had ahead of us at this point was just over 1000 vertical meters (≈3400 ft) of elevation change over the last 6 km to Angelus Hut on top of the Travers Mountain range. The trail followed along the stream as it quickly climbed the mountain giving us many beautiful waterfalls to look at as we trekked upwards. After a few hours we broke through the trees and into a clearing caused by past rock slides and were able to see our destination. Only it was straight up the side of a steep and rocky slope that the stream cascaded down. The rest of the hike danced between the rocks and the intertwined sections of the stream as we headed for the source of the water, Angelus Lake, our hut for the evening.

Stream side on the Trek up the mountain side

Patrick crossing the high mountain stream

First look at Lake Angelus

Kari exploring the deck at Angelus Hut

The hut was conveniently located right at the top of the climb so it was a true sense of accomplishment to crest the ridge and be done for the day. When we arrived there were only about 6 other people at a hut that we had been told could be one of the busiest in New Zealand. We got a good pick of bunks and set out our stuff and took some time to relax and enjoy the lake as we read our books. A few people started to trickle in and we thought that maybe it would be close to full for the night but nothing to bad. Since people were arriving we decided to eat early and get out of the way…Good Thing… Just as we were started cooking 6 Israeli men about our age showed up and we heard them talking about the rest of their group coming in behind them, a large group. By the time we finished cleaning our dishes and dusk had fallen the hut was packed. We woke up early so we could get back to Blenheim before dinner and found that the hut was a bit of a disaster. There were beer and wine bottles scattered around the tables and tons of food and cooking equipment on top of the cooking areas. We moved this aside and cooked breakfast before the sleeping hoard woke up and took over again.

Early sun hitting the peaks around Lake Angelus

The Travers Ridge looking down past a small alpine tarn

Kari above Lake Rotoiti

Our hike this day was going to take us along the ridge of the Travers Mountain Range and then down a steep slope right above Lake Rotoiti. But we didn’t leave before soaking up the early morning light on Lake Angelus. We made a quick climb up to the top of the ridge from Lake Angelus and got another wonderful view of the small lake before we headed off to the north. The view from the ridge line was amazing and showed us both valleys and the mountains stretching away to the south. The way was easy and Kari and I had no problem navigating the rocky outcroppings and slips of stone. We came to the last peak, Mt Roberts, before the slope down to Rotoiti and saw a few buildings scattered around on a small plateau below us. We later found out that these buildings made up a hike in ski resort in the winter months. The hike down from there was mostly switchbacks and as Kari and I have discovered we don’t like switchbacks at all. I don’t like them because I have to listen to Kari complain about how much she hates them the whole time, otherwise I can tolerate them. They did however provide for more stunning views of Lake Rotoiti and we were quickly off the trail and into the car.

Patrick

We crossed Cook Strait with some uncertainty in our hearts. After two months of WWOOFing without a real base we were beginning to feel a bit homesick and with our finances dwindling we were anxious to find a place to either get jobs or just settle down for a few weeks. The beauty of Marlborough Sounds combined with the hospitality of our WWOOFing hosts James and Barbie banished our worries.

We spent our first two nights on the south island camping in Kenepuru Sound. It is renowned for its beauty and marine life. The cove we camped in seemed like it belonged in the Caribbean or some other tropical paradise; with its turquoise waters we could hardly believe the area shares roughly the same latitude of southern Oregon.

One of hundreds of jellyfish carcasses that lined the beach

After two nights of relaxing by the beach we headed to our next hosts, at the “Green Shed”. We arrived to find that James (whom I had spoken to via email) had promised his wife Barbie that when we arrived he would “send us away”. They had just had a pair of American WWOOFers who proved to be less than ideal. With Easter coming up Barbie had declared that she wanted no more WWOOFers. We sat at the kitchen table which looked out onto Queen Charlotte Sound and took in the bleak news. James told us we were welcome to stay; he’d discuss our situation with Barbie when he picked her up at the airport. Needless to say our first dinner with our new hosts was slightly tense. The next morning we got up and started killing passion fruit vines (a particularly virulent invasive species) and tried to charm Barbie. Apparently it worked. James and Barbie offered us the use of the Bach (holiday home) just down the cliff from their house and we thoroughly enjoyed our five day stay. Since they wanted a quiet family Easter weekend we found new hosts in Nelson and “buggered off”.

The “wild” Weka we befriended at the Green Shed
We spent Easter weekend camping outside of Nelson and exploring Tasman Bay. We walked a small section of Abel Tasman National Park, took care of getting our car’s warrant of fitness updated (which involved having a small piece of metal welded onto some rust inside the driver’s door) and spent one night in town at a hostel where we checked our email and found or next hosts had cancelled on us. Without a host we knew we’d continue to eat our money and go a bit stir crazy. We posted a piece about ourselves on the WWOOF website and emailed James (he and Barbie had mentioned if we ever wanted to come back we’d be welcome) letting him know that our plans had evaporated.




We are now WWOOFing for James and Barbie’s daughter Sophie and her husband Mark. We went back to the Green Shed for a few nights and then moved slightly south to Blenheim. Here we’ve shared meals and conversation with our youngest hosts (mid thirties) and worked for room, board and PAY. We’ve been working full days painting their roof (roofs are almost exclusively tin in NZ) and scrapping off the paint our notorious American forbearers had neglected to do properly.

Though we’ve been working hard we found time to borrow bikes and ride the highly publicized Marlborough wine tour route. We managed to bike 30 km and visit four different wineries for tastings; the crisp and fruity Sauvignon Blanc that Marlborough is famous for exceeded my expectations so much so that I purchased a bottle of Matua Valley Paretai Sauvignon Blanc. It was my first time in a vineyard and I thoroughly enjoyed myself (even if the women administering the tasting were a bit aloof).
We’re heading back to the Green Shed tomorrow. We’ll spend three more nights enjoying James and Barbie’s stories of traveling through Africa and living in Malaysia before we depart for our next tramp in Nelson Lakes National Park.

Kari

As expected Tongariro National Park was breathtaking; being in the presence of three active volcanoes was quite humbling. As we drove into the park we were able to see the glaciated top of Mt. Ruapehu, which had a minor eruption just last September. With the dangers of our intended trek in mind we booked two nights in the Tongariro Northern Circuit huts. Most backpacking tracks in New Zealand are regulated by night and have huts of varying luxury. So for slightly more money we decided to leave our tent in the car and enjoy the world of hut camping. We also decided to catch a shuttle (for the modest price of a dollar per minute per person!) to the base of Mt. Tongariro in hopes that we would have time to climb Mt. Ngauruhoe (Mt Doom).

We started the hike surrounded by people attempting the Tongariro Crossing (a way to see the scenery without camping). In a line, that amounted to follow the leader through the national park, we walked through lava fields and to the base of the Devil’s Staircase (we later learned that 1,200 people completed the crossing the day we started out). Though the staircase didn’t seem to get the best of Pat it left me huffing and puffing, humbled once more as people more than twice my age zoomed on up the jagged boulders.

At the top of the staircase (cliff); we reached the base of Mt. Doom. After a few minutes discussion we decided we’d better climb it lest we regret not trying later. An hour and a half later we rewarded by looking into the caldera of a live volcano (no there was no lava) and enjoying the panoramic view. After a few quick pictures it was back down the mountain to finish the three hour hike to our hut.

The hike to the hut took us through a large crater created by eruptions a millennia before and the Emerald lakes. The lakes are colored by sulfur and are the most vivid turquoise, a stark contrast to the craggy volcanic rock that surrounds them.

We reached our hut as sunset was beginning to color the sky, there we found almost all 26 beds were filled. We were lucky enough (though I wasn’t feeling too lucky at the time) to find two beds next to each other on a top bunk with a German couple for bunk mates. The huts are quite interesting because while camping in the United States has a strong focus on solitude and reflection camping in New Zealand is slightly more like moving from one dinner party to the next.

After falling asleep to the voices of fellow campers we awoke early and hit the road. The track to our next hut took us through some exposed ground with strong wind and clouds. Then we were back in a sheltered crater and enjoying the alpine vegetation.

After covering 12 km or so we entered a beech forest (beech trees are one of New Zealand’s dominate plants species). After spending the day exposed to wind and sun the forest was amazing, we found ourselves unexpectedly cut off from all the harshness of the volcanoes. After the forest we reached our hut and spent another similar night nestled next to strangers (friendly strangers though).

The next morning we hiked out, and headed south towards Wellington.

Wellington proved to be a beautiful city. We stayed in a hostel near downtown and enjoyed the sites. We visited the Wellington Zoo (where we saw our first live Kiwi) and the Te Papa museum. Te Papa is New Zealand’s national museum and it was gorgeous –great design and waterfront location, with over 6 levels of exhibits. Other than that we relaxed and explored the nation’s capital.