After leaving the Fox Glacier and Franz Joseph area without any hikes up the glaciers and with some very wet camping supplies, we made our way to a hostel in Greymouth to dry out for a bit. Mattieu, who also worked at Poplar Lodge in Arrowtown was now working there, and so we booked ourselves in for a couple of nights of catching up. Our first night there some people from the hostel had organized a tour of Monteith's Brewery, and so we joined the group and went out to see one of the main breweries on the west coast. The tour consisted only of our group from the hostel which was pretty nice, and took us through the various rooms and stages of the beer and cider making process. The best part, of course, came at the end when we sampled their main selection of beers and ciders, and then took turns pouring our own draught beer. Afterwards, and as a continuation of the tour, we all went out for supper at a nearby restaurant, where we stayed to drink Monteiths by the pitcher and play pool. Greymouth continued to be moderately damp for us and so we hung out all of our camping equipment (tent, sleeping bags, sleeping mats, etc) in our room, which meant that it smelled a lot like... old dirty water, which ends up smelling like an old bathroom after a few hours. Luckily, however, there was a large common room and a few cool people to take us away from our smelly room and soon enough we were all packed up again and on the road.
As we left Greymouth we picked up a few essentials and continued up the west coast, along a highway whose only destination were the small towns towards the very north of the west coast. The drive from Greymouth to Westport (one of the first cities you come to along the highway, and the last main hub for continuing on to other parts of the island) is listed by lonely planet as one of the 10 best road trips in the world, for the stunning scenery you see along the way. It is largely a coastal drive with long stretches of beach, some farmland, many trees, flowers, bushes, etc. It was quite pretty, but I thought the continuation from Westport up to Karamea (pretty much the end of the road, about 2 hours past Westport) was even nicer. This drive was largely through rain forest on a winding road that gradually brought you up a large hill / mountain area and then back down again and into the town.
Pancake Rocks
One of the "must sees" along the highway are the pancake rocks in Punakaiki, which look like stacked flapjacks and spurt water our their "blowholes" when the tide is coming in right. We didn't get there at high tide and so we saw only the rocks themselves, and as it turned out it was actually quite a tourist trap, but it was still kind of interesting to see them...
Greymouth to Karamea
If the west coast thus far had thwarted our plans with its mass amounts of rain, our travels since then have more than made up for it with ridiculously nice weather throughout. The drive from Greymouth to Karamea was clear, hot, and sunny - allowing us to fully take in the scenery of the road trip - and it has held since then. We stopped at a great little cafe along the way that looked like a cottage nestled into the flora and had a cappuccino. The meals looked way too delicious and so it was lucky we had just had breakfast. We also went for a walk in Cape Foulwind to see a seal colony.
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| The Bay House Cafe |
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| Cape Foulwind... no relation |
Karamea
Karamea is a funky little coastal town of about 500 people with a few shops (grocery, general store, and "the traveling gypsy") at one end, and one loooong road afterwards (houses, restaurants, and hotels) through to the beach. We stayed at a fantastic hostel called Rongos, which is the Maori word for peace, along this long road, where our tent and sleeping bags got a real airing out and we soaked in the sun and the surroundings of a town free from the usual bustle of tourists and commotion.
Rongos is pretty unique for a hostel in many ways: it has its own radio station (Karamea radio, 107.5) in the garage out back, with a full DJ set up connected to a computer, a record player, an ipod connector, a CD player, and a cassette player (along with quite a library of music for playing, in all of its various forms). Anyone can go in and be the DJ when they feel like it, and the music is always broadcast throughout the hostel, and of course to whomever is tuned in in the town. It also has a fairly large organic garden in the back, where anyone staying at the hostel can help themselves to fresh herbs, vegetables, and fruit, for free. There is also a fire pit where bonfires are lit most nights, with travelers and employees sitting round it on stumps and benches and listening to the DJ or roasting food, as well as a fire bath, which is literally a bathtub in the backyard with a space underneath it, and a chimney set up, for a fire to heat the water. The hostel doubled as an art gallery, and there are always several artists in residence working there, who focus on their art while helping to change beds and take bookings - the walls were covered in beautiful paintings, drawings, and photographs. We had ourselves booked in for one night but, needless to stay, we ended up staying quite a bit longer. They give you the 4th night free if you stay the first three, and so that is exactly what we did.
Our first night there we chilled out in the radio station and played DJ for awhile, moving between the hostel computer's store of tunes, the many records hanging around, and Brent's ipod. Throughout the days after, we spent a lot of time walking - into the "town," where we talked to the traveling gypsy (who traveled solo around the world for 20 years and uses his shop as a selling point for his many photographs and books, among other things), to the beach, and to some of the good fishing spots around the area. Rongos also offered up several fishing rods, free to use, and we finally caught our supper one night, which we ate with some freshly made pumpkin soup that one of the hostel guests had made using one of the pumpkins from the free-to-use garden. Some interesting stories from our time there....
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| Rongo Backpackers (hostel) |
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| The cactus garden |
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| The Firebath |
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| street view |
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| On the beach to go fishing |
These marks may not appear to be much, but they are actually the evidence of a swiftly moving seal that came after Brent when he dared to get between it and the water (without realizing, of course). We had brought a rod to one of the good fishing spots near the beach, and as I was having a turn casting, Brent decided to take a walk along the beach. He didn't realize he had any company until he heard a loud grunting noise and saw a seal fixedly moving towards him at a steady pace. Brent ran quickly away from the water and the seal, and so the seal ended up in the water instead, which was really a better outcome for all involved.
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| seal running marks of doom |
This video is on our walk back from the beach that same day, when a different seal (apparently this beach was a popular resting spot for the seal population) was coming out of the water. After he saw us walking towards him he decided to go back for the water as well.
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| Brent attempting his best running seal moves |
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| an artistic creation from a few of the many zucchinis in the garden |
During one of the bonfire nights, one of the guys that works at the hostel popped a tin foil wrapped package into the flames and left it there to cook for awhile. This, we discovered fairly quickly, was a Pukeko, one of New Zealand's many flightless birds, and it had first been roadkill when he hit it with his car. Not to waste the body, I suppose, he picked it up and popped it in the freezer (intact, as far it could be), where he withdrew it for this particular night. After the bird had been fully cooked - charred, actually - in the foil, he unwrapped it and proceeded to singe off the feathers, holding it over the flames with a garden fork. After this, he cut into it with a knife and ate it in front of the fire, citing that this would have been a most excellent meal for primitive man. The German woman (who cooked the pumpkin soup) told him he got a ten for ingenuity, but a zero for class. I felt a little nauseous sitting next to him.
Ah yes, and how could I forget Friday movie nights, when the adjoining portion of the garage (the part not used as the radio station) gets transformed into a movie theatre with a projector, seats, and mattresses. The Friday that we were there they played "Ponyo," a Japanese animation compliments of Shota, one of the artists in residence. It was a children's movie, but it was well done and interesting - about a goldfish that turns into a girl and saves a coastal town in Japan from her father, who tries to put it all under water. Okay, perhaps that wasn't the best explanation in the world. It really was quite good.
We also went for a few hikes in the area around Karamea, through a few caves and tunnels, and to a natural archway...
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| Inside one of the caves. You can't tell from this photo, but there were glowworms in the caves |
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| Light filtering through from the mouth of the cave |
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| The archway |
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| Just past the archway |
Te Hapu
After our four days were up, we packed back up the car and headed south, east, and then north again to the Golden Bay area, where we had arranged to WWOOF again for a couple in their 60s who own over 900 acres of rugged, coastal, and hilly land on a property called "Te Hapu." The drive to Te Hapu takes an hour and a half from the nearest town with a proper grocery store, Takaka, and follows a gravel road for about 40 kms before arriving to the beautiful property, which is home to Sandra and Ken (our wwoofing hosts), 7 working dogs, 1700 sheep, 300 cattle, many free-range chickens, geese, and turkeys, and a horse named Calif.
Our work there consisted largely of chopping firewood - it was my first time swinging an axe, and I certainly took enough swings to get the hang of it - although we did have a few more interesting jobs as well. More on that to come. One of the first things we did was explore a portion of the property (it would take days to actually, fully, explore the property in its entirety). We donned our hiking boots and headed over the hills and for one of their private beaches, where we walked along some interesting rock formations, past a few paddocks of grazing sheep, along the sandy beach, and back up along a trail to the house. While in Te Hapu we slept in a small "sleep out" on top of a hill just behind the main house, which consisted of a couple of bunk beds (where we sprawled our stuff, as we inevitably do each place we go) and a double foam mattress that we pulled onto the floor at night to sleep. We ate our meals at the house with Sandra and Ken, and Brent and I would often be the ones to make supper, picking the veggies for supper fresh from Sandra's garden each day before preparing them.
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| Our sleepout |
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| view from "horse palace" |
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| you can see horse palace toward the right, and the house nestled in towards the left of the photo |
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| light winds for our walk down to the beach |
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| their very own pancake rocks! |
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| one of the private beaches |
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| my trailer full of freshly chopped wood |
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| Calif, the very friendly horse (especially so if you come with corncobs and apples) |
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| the view from the table on the patio |
On our off time at the farm, we found quite a few interesting things to do, such as...
Swimming in the Tasman Sea
They had several private beaches by virtue of the fact that they own such a large quantity of coastal property, and so on hot afternoons (every afternoon was a hot afternoon while we were there) it was all too inviting to take a walk down to one of them and jump in. The first time we did it we found that the cattle had also taken a shine to hanging out at the beach, and they stared us down awhile before moving off as we got closer. It was, perhaps, a little chilly at first as we got in, but absolutely beautiful once you were brave enough to dunk your head underwater. We brought Brent's waterproof camera for this jaunt, and pretty much cracked a few ribs laughing at the shots we got underwater. Afterwards they aren't quite so funny, but here are a few samplers anyway.
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| cow beach party |
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| underwater shot #1 |
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| and #2 |
Mustering
Ken and Sandra's method of farming involves paddock rotation - as they do not even reach a frost in the winter they are able to keep the animals fed through the pastures alone (aka, they don't have to stock any winter feed), which involves systematically moving the animals from paddock to paddock and allowing the grass proper growth time in between movements. Getting the animals to move from one paddock to another is called "mustering," and this is where their 7 working dogs come into play. We were there for a week and they went out mustering 3 times, so I am sure that this happens fairly frequently. We got to come with them and watch as the dogs did their work, which was really quite cool. Ken has 4 dogs and Sandra 3 - they each train their own dogs, who work together in their respective teams of 3 and 4, and their dogs will only respond to the commands of the person who trains them. Each dog has about 5 whistle commands unique to them alone, and they are really quite good at what they do.
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| Ken and his dogs, walking to the paddock with the sheep |
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| The dogs doing their job |
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| Walking back after a successful muster |
Here is a video of the mustering process - you can see the dogs moving the cows through the gate and into the paddock. Also kind of cool is the cow that fights back. But not for long...
Hike around Te Hapu
For Brent's birthday we had a day off, and so we did the "big walk," which is a sort of marked trail that makes a large loop of the property. Ken and Sandra also rent out several holiday homes they have on their property, and so they have put quite a bit of effort into marking out the more interesting places to explore and providing maps for those who wish to do so. The hike takes anywhere from 3 hours, if you were to go quickly without stopping, to all day, if you were to take in all the views, go for a swim along the beach portion, explore the optional side tracks to the caves, etc. We took somewhere in between these two times. The first portion of the hike takes you up along some of the bigger hills of their property for some great views of the surrounding areas. Then we came to an area where we could explore a cave, complete with stalactites, after which we made it down a ladder through a bit of a drop off, and down to one of the private beaches. Here we had an option to take a 1-2 hour detour to explore some more caves, but by this point in the hot afternoon, we opted to lose the hiking boots and change into bathing suits to play in the surf. There were some pretty great waves when we got in, and so we made a game of, uh, "body surfing," where we would wait for a large wave to come, swim in the same direction as it, and let it carry us on top as it broke into white froth. Two hours later, we quickly toweled off and walked back to the house for beer and cake.
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| walking up one of the first large hills |
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| the view from one of the high points |
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| ...and again |
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| and once more |
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| one of the inlets of land where the sheep were grazing |
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| Brent climbing down one of the ladder portions |
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| exploring the cave |
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| Hapu beach |
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| one of Ken & Sandra's friends comes to visit via chopper |
Our Birthdays
While we were at Te Hapu we both reached the milestone of 24, and so we celebrated with some great meals (that we cooked for each other), as well as the aforementioned hiking/swimming adventure. For my birthday, we first joined Ken and Sandra in the rock pools formed by the tide and collected Paua (a shellfish, better known at home as abalone) with a beautiful vibrant blue opal-looking inside of the shell, which Ken cooked up for us. I was maybe a little apprehensive as to what it might taste like but it was actually quite delicious, it has a very mild seafood flavour, not unlike calamri. Brent cooked me a delicious ratatouille with veggies fresh from the garden, as well as a chocolate cake, which he topped with freshly sliced strawberries and whipped cream. We also had some champagne, which was certainly a treat.
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| some of the rock pools, with crystal clear water |
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| Brent jumping from seaweed to seaweed... he may have fallen in |
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| the view as we started walking back to the house with some Paua |
For Brent's birthday, after arriving late from the hike, I didn't have the time to be quite so elaborate with his dinner, but I did make him a nice Thai curry, and Ken cooked him some mutton as well. For dessert we had the same cake (he made a lot, and yes, that probably does make me a terrible person for allowing him to make his own birthday cake), topped this time with fresh blackberries and icecream, and served with beer. Two pretty great birthdays in a row, we were certainly pleased with our choice of birthday location / celebration!
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| getting ready to blow out the candles |
The next day was our last day of work on the farm, and we got the interesting job of helping Ken dag and drench the lambs. What's dagging? You may ask. Well, I will tell you. It is shaving the feces from the wool around their butts, and it is much harder than one might imagine. "Drenching" occurs at the same time as dagging, and this is giving them a measured dose of medicine that prevents worms they may pick up from the pastures. We had 250 - 300 lambs that we had to dag and drench, and we did all of this in a small-sized wool shed in the morning / early afternoon on a hot day. It involved moving them from the fenced in area outside the wool shed, into different areas with the shed, and then physically carrying them and turning them over (the average weight being 30 kg) to go through the process of, ahem, dingle berry removal. Needless to say it was quite a demanding job, and I think the point in the day when I realized I could never really entertain the thought of ever being a farmer came when I was sweating so hard it was literally dripping off my forehead onto the floor, and when I reached for the bottom of my shirt to pull it up and wipe some off, I realized that was not an option as I was completely covered in sheep shit. Ah well. a couple of hours and a very warm, soapy shower later we were finished working on the farm and ready for our next adventure.
Nelson
We drove to Nelson where we spent the night at a hostel and finally managed to get caught up on all of our emails and connect with the real world. We went out for a fantastic supper at a nice restaurant compliments of Brent's parents (our birthday present, thank you Greg and Gale), and then returned for a good night's sleep before our drive to Picton, where we currently are staying while we take scuba diving lessons.
--> As a final note - I'm sure everyone has heard about the devastating earthquake that hit Christchurch on the 22nd. We tuned in to it on the radio on our way out from Te Hapu (a passing motorist stopped us to tell us what had happened and to listen to the news). We did not feel any effects of the quake, though apparently it could be felt as far away as Invercargill (a 10 hour drive from Christchurch). Thank you to everyone who inquired as to our safety - we're certainly fine, though it is quite a shock to see a city we spent 2 weeks in not too long ago completely in ruins.
