Wellington

We finished our last stint of woofing at John and Karens and headed south so we could do the Tongerio crossing. Sandrine, one of our Woofing companions wanted to head south too and since we had a car we were more than happy to give her a lift. John and Karen have been perfect hosts, nothing is too much trouble and before we left they told us that if we had any problems, ran out of money or needed somewhere to stay all we had to do was give them a call and they would help us out.

We headed off to do the Tongerio crossing and drove south for about 5 hours and spent the night in a hostel, before we checked into the hostel we called into an information centre to check out if the crossing would be possible to do the next day, we were told that the weather forecast was not too good and we should call back in the morning, if the weather was fine we would be able to do the crossing then. When we woke the next day it was raining so we didn’t even bother going back to the information centre, we decided to load up the car and head for Wellington so we could continue our way onto the south island, Sandrine decided to head further south with us too, it’s nice to have someone else to travel with and it also helps with the petrol money too! The driver to Wellington didn’t take too long when we arrived we found ourselves another hostel and got ourselves settled in. We decided that night to go out for a few drinks, it turned into a heavy drinking session with shots of Bourbon/Jagermeister and countless beers been downed…and lots of silly dancing all in all a great night out. Lloyd and I decided to blame our hangovers on Sandrine since it was her idea to drink shots. We had a quiet day due to the hangovers and Lloyd and I decided to go and see the Avengers, it’s not a bad film if you’re into your comic books you’ll probably enjoy it.

The next day we went up to Mount Victoria from the top you get an amazing view of Wellington, as you may have heard Wellington is called the windy city and it’s true that it always seems to be windy here especially when you get to the top of  the mountain. After we had finished at the top we walked down to Wellingtons museum, the museum itself is really nice, we looked around a few floors and then decided to go and have a coffee.

Wellington, the windy city

Lloyd and I are ready to look for work now, we both seem to be in the same frame of mind and are ready to find somewhere to settle for a while now and stop moving for a few months. We’ve been on the move since the 5^th December and have moved locations every few days; the longest we have stayed in a destination is while we have been woofing, don’t get me wrong travelling has been great fun so far but it would be nice to unpack the bags for a bit and settle somewhere, make new friends and really get a feel for a place.

Today (30^th April) We headed for the south island, its about 3 ½ hours on a ferry, Sandrine did the crossing with us and then she jumped on the Kiwi bus to see some other parts of the south island, she is heading for the Queenstown too so I am sure we will all meet up at some point to have a few more shots of Bourbon and Jagermeister! Lloyd and I have just arrived in Nelson where we might spend a few more days before we head further south as I have said we’re both eager to find some work in Queens Town or Wanaka so the way I see it the sooner we get there the sooner we can get ourselves settled 

Age

Okay I thought I’d do a blog piece that has nothing to do with travelling since I’ve been in the same place for a while now and nothing much has happened since my last post. We’re still WOOFing and we’ve been working alongside two other WOOFers who are quite bit younger than Lloyd and I. It seems when you meet people when travelling the same question always seems to rear its head and it’s the only question that does my head in, one of the WOOFers asked me the question today… ‘’HOW OLD ARE YOU’’, the rest of the conversation went something like this.

Me: ‘’Old enough’’

Woofer: ‘’25’’

Me: ‘’No’’

WOOFer: ‘’27’’

Me: ‘’No’’

WOOFer: ‘’29’’

Me: ‘’No’’

WOOFer: ‘’30’’

This could have gone on for a while but I got up, left the table and went back to my work. To me age doesn’t really matter (unless your're really old and cracking onto a girl at least 20 years your junior, see previous posts) and I can’t understand why it comes up in a lot of conversations, maybe I don’t like it because I haven’t yet done what I want to with my life and feel that time is slipping away or maybe I’ve made one two many mistakes in my life and wasted years doing things that I’m not really happy doing. Should I by the age of 32 be settled, have a mortgage and kids, have a career and know what I want to do with my life or is it how society determines what we should have done by a certain age? Maybe I should go buy some anti ageing cream and learn to stop thinking too much about it….

WOOfing adventures

It feels like a lot has happened since my last blog, Lloyd and I arrived in Napier did a bit of camping and then headed out to our new WOOFing host. When we originally booked our new WOOFing host we looked at the reviews at we thought that this was really going to be a great place to work but when we got there I pretty much had a bad feeling straight away. On our arrival we were led to a tiny caravan at the bottom of the garden (this was to be our accommodation for the week), the caravan was that small we barley had any room for our bags. Lloyds bed was barley wide enough and my bed was not long enough, we barely slept our first night there and we were quite tired the next day.  It was raining so we couldn’t really do any work so we spent the day hanging around waiting to be able to do some work, that nights sleep was not really the best either and we both woke again feeling shattered, been tired is not too bad but the caravan was also full of mosquitos and sand flys. We started work that morning and we were both disappointed with the work we were given, pulling leaves off of trees so they don’t rub against fruit is not the most interesting work and we were both totally fed up and tired. We decided to go and have a chat with our hosts and explain to them that we were leaving. 

We packed our stuff and headed out, we originally planned to go out and do a bit more camping but Lloyd suggested sending our previous hosts a text to see if they needed any help. John got back to us in a few moments and we were soon on our way back to John and Karens. We were given such a nice welcome back we felt totally at ease with going back. The work here is good and I feel like I am learning new skills, far better than picking leaves off of trees, in fact Lloyd and I have been helping john build his out door wine cellar. Most of it has been built so Lloyd and I have been chipping out concrete and repointing the wall. It's really peaceful here and chilled out and the sunsets here are amazing , I've posted a few pictures below. We have now been back here over a week and will be leaving on the 21^st to start our journey south towards Queens Town!

Napier

All right people, this blog is a bit of long one since it’s been almost a week a since I last wrote one, I'll also update it with pictures soon since the camp site I am currently on has limited,slow internet access but in the meantime I hope you enjoy!

Lloyd and I left Raglan and drove over to Rotorua, the drive didn’t take us that long so when we arrived we booked ourselves in to a hostel then went out to explore. Rotorua literally stinks the whole town smells of sulphur as it was built on a geo thermal site and I have to admit there’s not a great deal to do in the town centre. We decided to spend 2 nights there so we could go and do some white water rafting, I wasn’t too sure at about rafting at first, I’m an artist, I value my life, I don’t like the thought of throwing myself off bridges or from planes but I’m glad I did it as the whole experience was a good laugh even going off the end of an 8 meter high waterfall was good fun. I have to say as well I look pretty damn good in a wet suit, I think I’m going to buy one and start rocking the surf/rafting look around Leeds city centre when I get back.

We left Rotorua the day after and decided to pick up some camping equipment and start camping for bit, so with tent and sleeping bags in hand we set off again and found ourselves a camping ground, the grounds keeper seemed a bit weird and I wasn’t sure if she was going to come and kill us in the middle of the night so we decided to go get a bottle of vodka and get drunk, we had a few beers left from previous nights in Raglan so we thought we should finish those as well. Getting drunk while camping was great fun and the booze helped get me off to sleep!

We left the camp site at around 10am the next morning and set off for Gibson, we decided to take the scenic coastal route. I’ve decided that I really love New Zealands coast line; it’s really rugged and baron and beats Bridlington and Scarborough hands down. This scenic route took us longer than we expected and we arrived in Gisbon quite late and with a storm brewing we had to get our tent up pretty quickly, that night it absolutely chucked it down, I was woken by the rain splashing off the tent and the wind howling outside luckily it stopped raining long enough for us to pack out tent in the morning.

Since we are going back to Gisbon to do some more WOOFing we decided to head down to Napier to camp for 2 more nights. When we set off to Napier we had a quarter of a tank of petrol left, I noticed this and said to Lloyd ‘’do you think we should get more petrol’’ Lloyd remarked ‘’no we’ll be fine’’ If I ever hear those words leave Lloyds mouth again I’ll probably burst into tears and start screaming. We were about 100 Kilometres from Napier when the low petrol light came on, at the time we were driving through the hills with no houses or petrol stations in sight, the only thing we could see were rolling hills, rain and low level cloud. We drove along nervously half expecting the car to crawl to a stop but luckily just as we were arriving in Napier we found a petrol station.

Napier is a nice looking town, all of the buildings are in an Art Deco style, I think I read somewhere that the city was destroyed by an earthquake in the 40’s and rebuilt in the Art Deco style (let me know if the dates etc are incorrect). The city is built by the coast so we took a walk down to have a look at the beach; the sea was absolutely wild I’ve never seen it as rough as it was here. We’re due to travel back up to Gisbon to start our next WOOFing job, our hosts seem very friendly and have been given really good feedback plus they can also get us discounted surf lessons, I really enjoyed surfing In Raglan so weather permitting I’m sure as hell going to give in another go, we also have another job lined up after that and then we plan to start moving our way down towards the south island where fingers crossed we will get a job working a ski season somewhere. I’m just about ready to get a job and find somewhere to settle now, I’ve ben travelling for about 4 months and it really has been a great experience but I’d really like to be able to at least unpack my bag for a while and really get to know an area properly.

Raglan

We left our WOOFing hosts and headed off towards Raglan, on our way we stopped off at Cambridge to look at camping equipment. Lloyd and I plan on doing a bit of camping between WOOFing as we work  a bit of camping on 111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111our way down the north island. I’ve never really been bothered about camping but it will be good to give it a go plus the equipment we’re buying is on sale so in the long run it will be cheaper than staying in hostels.

Raglan is a really nice town, very small but very chilled out. There are a few licensed cafes so if you want a coffee or beer there is a good choice of places to choose from there are also lots of independent shops. There are lots of activities to do that are mainly water based like surfing or kite surfing. The majority of people in Raglan are surfer types apparently Raglan is one of the surfing hot spots so I can understand why.

Lloyd and I have checked into a Back Packers hostel it’s really nice and the other people in the hostel are really nice and laid back, check out the view from the hostel balcony!

On Saturday Lloyd and I signed up for surfing lessons, I was quite nervous to start with but the instructors made sure everyone was at ease and relaxed before we got in the water. The first part of the lesson was on land where we were given instructions on how to get onto the board and how to stand once you caught a wave. The second part was where we got in the water and gave what we had learnt into practice. The hardest part for me was getting out deep enough; the waves absolutely batter you as you try to get out deep enough. Once you get out deep enough and you see a wave coming you have to lay on your board and when the wave is close start paddling, you really feel the speed when the wave starts to push you along. Depending on your balance you then have to try to get to your feet, it does feel amazing when you manage to stand and balance for quite some distance. Lloyd and I did plan on going out again on Sunday but I am aching all over from the previous days efforts so we decided to give it a miss, I will give it a go again if the opportunity comes along.


We spent our last night in Raglan drinking with a bunch of people we met in our hostel, like I've said before it's all about the people you meet that make travelling fun. I've posted a few pictures below from my time in Raglan, if you ever make it over to New Zealand this place is definitely worth visiting. 


Just a quick note too, I've finally updated my travel pictures, just click the travel pictures tab at the top of the page!