Waybyond Farm

Jasmine: an annoyingly invasive plant for farmers that also happens to be incredibly fragrant and parked right outside my bedroom window. Every morning I open the window and alongside the cheerful chirping of little birds, the scent of jasmine wafts into my room, and I inhale its intoxicating perfume. I have officially escaped winter.

Right beside the bed. Heaven and a haven.

The bedroom window and the rest of the house and farm belong to Jeni and Greg, who are my first farm hosts on this big adventure. We're an hour north of Auckland, and the nearest town is Wellsford (not too much happening there). The landscape is gorgeous. Whenever we drive anywhere, we're surrounded by nature, but different from BC. More grass, leafy trees and livestock. Green as far as the eye can see - I now truly get the idea of the phrase 'rolling hills'.
The house is old but wonderfully homey, with all sorts of country style and artsy decor. And spiders. Lots and lots of spiders. However, I already encountered lots of them back in September on my first farming endeavor, so it's just a continuation of my peacemaking time with spiderfolk. We're going to be best pals (or at least tolerant neighbors) by the end of this trip. The rest of the farm has veggies, orchard trees, some cows, chickens, ducks and two nice cats (they're veg so nothing is used for meat).

Why do all the animals look so unimpressed?

Jeni doesn't like to get up early for farming, which suits me fine - but we often don't come inside and eat dinner earlier than 8:30pm. The second night was tasty pizza night, and after prep and eating, it was 11pm. Food hangover!
Oh, and I tried Vegemite for the first time the other night (not in the original country, but close enough). Actually, it wasn't that bad with butter on toast, though extremely salty. Nevertheless, a new culinary experience.

Work-wise, I've been assigned to lots of weeding jobs. Nothing too thrilling but it definitely perks up my obsessive nature. Speaking of obsessive, there's a puzzle in my room that according to Greg is ready and willing for when I am deathly bored. It looks both amazing and excrutiating.

Baked beans. Only 550 pieces.

On Thursday I took a day off to go exploring. On his way to work in Auckland, Greg dropped me off at Wenderholm National Park (on the east coast). As I got out of the car I thought to myself, what the hell am I doing awake at 6:45am? And then I looked at the early morning light on the trees and the quiet beach and I jumped up and down like a schoolgirl. There may have been some squealing.
It was a field day for both tree admiring and shell collecting, if you're into that sort of thing. I checked out the beach and did a short hike around the national park before heading over the bridge into the town of Waiwera. The big thing they have going on for tourists is their hot springs, which turned out to look like a waterpark on the outside but has heated pools inside. I sat in the 37 degree pool for an hour and a half, trying to soak off the 6 hour weeding session from the day before (and nodding off in the process).

 

 

Lastly, I bussed to another town Orewa (my chauffeur pickup spot) and proceeded to access the sweet sweet internets, walk around and buy THESE:

 This is for the AD fans. Clockwise: Grumpy, Hungry, Cheeky (of all things), Silly, Sleepy, and Happy. No Hangry, though.

Saturday was farmer's market day in Makatana. We only had salad, eggs and some plants to sell, so I got a lot of time to check out the market. It had the perfect setup in an enclosed circle that reminded me of the German Christmas market - very cute. It was next to a little river, too, so you were able to buy some hot food and sit down by the water and listen to the cutest old man band ever. Two of them went around playing along the market path and I got winked at both times. Score.
They had some tasty food there too, so I managed to have 5-6 snacks for breakfast. One of them (pic below) was a really yummy and warm sweet potato mixture covered in sesame seeds. Then there was mushroom stroganoff on top of polenta. And a mini mince meat pie. A croissant. Then add a cannoli to the mix.
Yikes...
(Actually, I think I can blame a certain Pratt for this. I'm too used to eating food for two to share.)

 

 Matakana Farmers Market

On another note, been randomly looking through my travel guide for some places to visit. A lot of the place names are in Maori, so the book has some tips on pronunciation. It's pretty similar to English, only with a few differences. For example, 'ua' sounds like 'ewe' as in 'fewer'; 'ao'/'au'/'ou' are like 'ow'; 'wh' is supposed to be a soft 'f' sound, and most syllables are a consonant followed by vowel clusters (ex. 'wai').

So here's your pronunciation challenge. Somewhere in the guide it suggests going to a hill in Hawke's Bay called:

'Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu'

(which is somehow the abbreviated form of 'The Brow of a Hill where Tamatea, the man with the big knees, who slid, climbed, and swallowed mountains, known as land eater, played his flute to his brother'). Don't cheat - say it out loud. I can sound out 3 swear words in English (remember, 'wh' is an 'f' sound), Spanish and Cantonese.
How about you?

Lastly, the time has come to head north. I don't have a farm planned out yet but I've done some hard work here and I'm itching to travel, so tomorrow I'll be taking the bus for Whangarei, about 2 hours from here. There are caves and glowworms and such. And more internet.

Stay classy, world.

Auckland: no sheep yet

First week in New Zealand and I'm already leaving Auckland today. Time flies when you don't have any responsibilities!

Me and alien tree at Albert Park

I spose I should backtrack and relay how the flight went. Gather around, children.

The 2 hour transfer flight to LA was surprisingly stress-free, and it wasn't only until I had to board the flight for Auckland that things got a little hairy.
Before I left, I didn't book a flight to Australia since that's all the way in April 2012. When I got to the boarding gate in LA, they told me I couldn't get on the plane without a flight out. There were only 25 minutes left and they were spent with 1 attendant calling another office to book a last minute flight, while another was trying to get my bag off the plane (ie. to spend the night in LA - ugh). Part of me was curious to see how this dramatic scene in my life movie would play out, while the other part of me really didn't want to leave the airport and find a place to sleep in LA. In the nick of time, they got a hold of somebody on the phone and got my credit card number patched through.
The climax of the movie: a figure books it down the hallway towards us, the heavily panting attendant slaps a receipt on the counter for me to sign, they shove me on the plane where everyone is seated and waiting, and I make it on.
An extremely short 14 hours later, we land in Auckland 11am local time. Victory.

Now, let's just say that I didn't come to New Zealand for Auckland - it's a city not too different from home.

This isn't the real entrance to my hostel but it's the same address and the first door you see. I still haven't gone through it.

Here are some observations:

Sights: Even though I was going on no sleep, the first day I pushed myself to walk around just to get a feel of the place. Turns out that you can see all of central Auckland in 2 hours, from K Road where my hostel was (with strippers and adult shops) to the wharf.

Food: Asian restaurants (especially Japanese) are as commonplace as Starbucks. A lot of sushi places have the food laid out for people to take buffet-style, only I got sketched out because none of it was refrigerated.

People: TONS of international students and immigrants. I heard as much Chinese as I did English. The Asians spoke either fluent Chinese/Japanese/Korean, or English with Kiwi accents.

Roads: I wasn't weirded out by cars driving on the other side of the road, although I still haven't gotten used to looking the right direction when jaywalking (dangerous). It took me a long time to realize that at some intersections when the walking sign comes on, everybody can walk and all the cars have to wait. There are lines marked for people to walk diagonally across. I did it a couple times even though I didn't need to be on the other side of the street :)

Prices: more than Canada. Especially books. 45 NZ$ for Ishmael, come on! Taxes included and tipping not expected! (you order and pay up at the counter for most places, anyway)

Nature: Ample grass napping space yay! Lots of different kinds of beautiful trees (see alien tree picture).


Actually, Auckland City is a nice place to be. I eventually realized that the downtown core is like Vancouver's, in that the local people hang out in the outer neighborhoods. The downtown is reserved for business buildings, international students and tourists.

There were definitely some highlights to my few days here. The second day, I spent a few hours at the awesome Auckland Art Gallery and Albert Park, which are basically attached to each other. That night I met up with Ciaran, a British dude who was my plane buddy. We hit up a French restaurant and each had a fancy crepe flambe style.

Mirrored infinity inside the gallery.

Yesterday was the best day in the Auckland experience, mostly because I stayed outside the downtown core the whole day. In the morning I checked out Ponsonby, which is a suburb that reminded me of a cross between Main st. at home and Portland - full of trendy shops that I couldn't afford, cute cafes that I'd actually eat in, and lots of cool restaurants. The only missing thing were the North American hipsters.
After that, I met up with Ciaran again and we headed to Devonport, which is just a 10 minute ferry ride to the North Shore. It was basically like going to Deep Cove. VERY quaint, not too 'twee' at all (a Britishism you'll just have to look up). It was a bluebird day too - apparently the sun gods approved of our daytrip.

 

 
Best legend ever. Actually, there were at least 5 notable trees up on that hill.

We had dinner at an Italian place before we left Devonport. I've discovered that I'm a terrible budget backpacker when it comes to food. After, we headed back to Ponsonby for 'Art in the Dark', which was a sweet exhibition of light installations at a park. Our favorite one hands down was a projector facing 2 wavy slides that projected a loop of neon kids sliding and climbing up and down the slides. And people were welcome to slide down too, so they often 'collided'. Then to make it even better they had loads of cartoon images around it and fun music. It had the spirit of the Magic School Bus!

  

Anyway, it's time to say bye for now to Auckland and head to the first farm. This was a rather long post but I won't be updating for a while because I'll be in the middle of nowhere.

 
Smoked fish hash at Alleluya Cafe

Right now I'm eating a fish hash in this cool cafe that has its tables out in the courtyard. Thriller's just come on their speakers. Life is good.

Here we go!