wwoof #1 complete

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Well, our work has been completed for our first week of wwoofing, and overall it has been a good experience.

On Wednesday afternoon (just after I wrote last) a couple of other wwoofers showed up who were from Pennsylvania. They were 27 and had gotten sick of their post-college jobs - he was a business major who reviewed patents and she was a high school US History teacher - so they have now been in New Zealand for 10 months doing a lot of wwoofing and working. After they got here we headed out on Gordon's boat and did some fishing. We had 1 real fishing pole and the rest of us got plastic wheels wrapped with fishing line that we had to pull in by hand. This device worked well enough for me to catch a somewhat small, but still edible snapper and then a shark that was a little over 3 feet long (we didn't keep the shark). Pulling in a shark by hand and then dealing with it on the boat (that part I didn't do) was a rather intense experience and a lot of fun. A delicious dinner then followed which included pasta made with the abolone we collected the day before, 3 types of fish that we caught, venison which Julia's son got while hunting and wine which was made by Julia's sister.

Yesterday we put in our work and drove down the coast to Gisborne where we did a little shopping - got an ipod adapter for the car - and went to the local brewery. They gave us a nice explanation of how they made each of their beers, gave us free samples of all of their varieties, and then we bought a few bottles (of the 2 liter variety) to bring home with us. The other wwoofers stayed last night also and we talked, shared music, and watched The Whale Rider - a movie about a Maori village which was filmed on this bay. Today it started raining so our work was cut short and we have had most of the day to relax while our hosts are gone. We have a long, winding drive tomorrow (about 8 hours) down to Wellington but we heard about some nice hot springs on the way so we'll probably take a little break there and then on to Brighid's house for a few days.

Cheers all -
Paul

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Photos

Our work
This whole area was at least as thick as the bottom - there was no sign at all of the existence of the fence.

Our garden
This is the small garden we've been working on.

Comments

[motenko-neal]

shark fun
I'm glad to hear you all set the shark free and I can imagine how interesting to have been honored by the presence of such a creature. How great is that -- to have the whole family involved with the sustenance of life, the way people used to exist in a fundamental support system.