Sorry its been so long. I am in Hervey Bay in Australia its hot and humid up here. Tomorrow or day after I will go on a 2 day tour of Fraser Island (the largest sand island in the world). Since the last time I wrote I flew to Brisbane and stayed at a Meher Baba retreat. I had an amazing time there. I caught up with old friends that I met in India and met many new friends. When I was leaving I saw a kangaroo! It was so cool. It bounced up a hill as we were driving. Last [View Full Entry]

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I'm in Auckland now about to head to a museum. Since the last entry I went to Wellington, Waitomo Caves and saw glowworms and did abseiling and rock climbing and saw cool stalactites and stalactmites. Then I went to the Coromandel peninsula and spent 2 days going around the peninsula checking out various deserted beaches with clear clear water. I spent about an hour sitting in a hot water pool at Hot water beach where hot water comes out of the sand and you dig a hole and its really hot so you get some ocean water in to make it [View Full Entry]

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Yesterday I spent the day in Golden Bay. It was pretty sweet. There is this beach with windswept sand dunes and rocks on the beach with caves that went through them. I also went to the Farewell spit, but that was pretty uneventful. Today I woke up at 8 and got to Abel Tasman at about 10:15. I waited until about 11:15 for the aqua taxi that was supposed to come at 10:45 before giving up on that and heading in on foot. That park is amazing. I hiked for about an hour through tree ferns, ferns, and green trees over [View Full Entry]

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Hey Everyone, I left Cromwell on Sunday and made my way up the west coast. Today I'm going into Abel Tasman. I'll put up pics when I have time. I'm having a great timel. This is an amazing country. [View Full Entry]

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Sorry its been awhile since I've posted. I've been working for about a month straight. I've had three days off since Easter Weekend. Today was one and the previous one was 17 days ago. We've been working 10-12 hour days, 7 days a week. Over the last 5 days we've each had one day off. I don't think we will see another day off until we are done here. We will finish in a week from today. Then its off to traveling. I've been well, no injuries or colds. I've been learning a lot about wine making, working in the cellar, [View Full Entry]

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Te Anau to Milford On the Wednesday before Easter Weekend, we got our third flatmate. His name is Dan and he is from Vancouver. He is a really easy going guy who has worked a harvest in the Okanoggan in BC. He also studied for a year at an intensive wine program in Adelaide, Australia. So now the house is complete. On the Thursday before Easter Weekend, we all went to a party for the cellar rats in the Cromwell area. It was a lot of fun. I tasted some really amazing wines and some that I wanted to dump as [View Full Entry]

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On Sunday April 5th, I drove to Wanaka and went for a short hike and did a wine tasting. I was going to go for a longer hike in Mt Aspiring Park, but the road to the start of that hike has many creek fordings and I didn't think my car would make it. Driving out to that point wasn't a complete waste of time because it was a very beautiful drive. There were steep hills on one side of the road and a lake and then a river with steeps hills behind it on the other side of the road. [View Full Entry]

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We had the 4th and 5th of April off. So Alina, Andre, and I went to The Catlins in Southland. It was amazingly beautiful. The drive down there consisted of green mountains with huge drop offs and sheep as well as rolling green hills that reminded me a little of Petaluma, but with sheep instead of dairy cows. We went to Nugget Point which kind of reminded me of Pt Reyes because of the lighthouse and the coastline. We could see seals in the water and on the rocks, but there was no way down to get any closer. We saw [View Full Entry]

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Timaru On March 21st Alina, Sam and I headed down to Timaru. It was a beautiful drive. It took us about 2 or 3 hours to get to Sam's parents' house. His parents took us out for dinner. I wanted fish of some sort and the only one on the menu was blue cod Cajun style. It was good, but definitely not Cajun. I also had a couple bites of Alina's lamb shanks and they were delicious. On Sunday we went to the Timaru Wine and Food Festival. It was awesome. The wine was good, the food was good, and there [View Full Entry]

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13 March 2009 Theres snow on the mountain tops around Cromwell. It looks beautiful, but its not a good sign for the harvest. We need warm weather not freezing cold mornings. Luckily there wasn't any frost on the vines. When I booked my tickets a month ago Matt expected the harvest to begin in Mid-March, but now he says it looks like Mid-April. I think I will be able to work in the vineyards until then. My housemate and I just bought a car so now we aren't trapped at home. Thats the way many people who are staying for a [View Full Entry]

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