Advertisement
Published: September 11th 2006
Edit Blog Post
Blenheim
A new career, errr no. My plan all along had been to
get back home for the World Cup and spend the next month comfortably watching it unfold on the
sofa/down the boozer, only to be interrupted by a full on week in Germany my mates.
Seven odd months should have been more than enough time.....late April, 6 weeks to the WC
I'm in Taupo and have only just scratched the surface of NZ. I've now got a
terrible dilemma, rush the rest of my travels but make the WC or continue travelling at my preferred pace but miss the WC. I have to say this was one of the hardest decisions I've ever had to make (that's right I've had a tough life so far....). Spent the next 2 weeks, from Tuapo to Wellington, up and down mountains contemplating what to do. I wasn't getting anywhere fast when a
Portuguese footballer tipped the balance, Ronney broke his metatarsal bone in the Chelsea game. I read every internet news story I could find and nobody, expect Wyane and Sven gave him a chance of playing. After sitting in the
Estadio da Luz and watching England run out of ideas after Ronney went off in Euro2004
I was pretty certain without Rooney England would struggle. Along my travels I told a few people about my WC dilemma, those that liked football said I should definitely make it back in time those that didn't wondered what the fuss was all about! Deep down I think my
preferred option had always been to keep travelling for as long as poss. I'm having such a good time and don't know if I'll be able to travel in this way anytime soon.
So much much more pondering, a trip to Germany versus watching it in the middle of the night here in NZ. I came to a decision walking the
streets of Wellington, stay put. Decision made I can get back on with normal travelling life.
My friends
Mark & Georgina set off on New Years Eve heading the opposite way round the world, we always talked about meeting up. A couple of emails and phone calls later we hatched a
plan to travel the South Island together. Excellent! All I had to do was
kill the next 3 weeks waiting for them to arrive. Not wanting to spend anymore cash some sort of seasonal work seemed the
Blenheim
Grape Pruners from Leeways Hostel best plan, my choices kiwi, apple or grapes.
Grape pruning looked to be the easiest aswell as best paid option.
From Wellington it was a 3 hour ferry crossing to the South Island through the infamous
Cook Straits, which was calm (a little disappointing) then an hours bus to Blenheim. I moved into a 10 person dorm at
Leeways Hostel got a top bunk, slightly sagging - I always go for top bunk. Pretty basic hostel but plenty of character, run by a English & German couple Pippa & Mat the place had a real
community feel. Getting a job was easy the hostel was linked with a local contractor, Vine Power.
My first day, I was really looking forward to
working outdoors! we left the hostel at 7ish started work in the vineyard at 7:30am. Pretty quickly I realised this wasn't for me, the job was pruning grape vines, the grapes had already been removed. With a set of
secateurs I had to strip away all the unwanted branches and pile them up then move onto the next tree in the row. We got paid between 30 and 45 cents per tree, minimum wage wage was 10NZD
p/hour, that means pruning at least 30 trees an hour, 200 a day. In the 3 weeks I worked there only a couple of days I made above the minimum wage! hard work, my hands ached in the evenings from all the cutting. The part I remember most was the
first hour in the morning, 7:30am-8:30am just waiting for the sun to rise and start warming the day up. There is nothing worse than stripping a tangled tree and getting
slapped in the face by a wet cold vine at 7:30am! Local radio kept me going,
Sounds FM! lots of news items on lost pets and cakes, my favourite was the morning phone-in vote for the next record to play. The result was always 6v7 or 4v10 there couldn't have been more than a handful of people actually listening.
Hostel life was good wednesday nights where pizza night, Domino's
El Sorchio can't be beat! There was a real mix of nationalities, Dutch, American, German, Irish, Chilean, Japanese, Israeli the
most diverse I met in NZ. I also found out I shout in my sleep, every few days someone from the dorm would tell I me shouted out another random
Blenheim
Pizza Night! sentence in the night! The evenings we're spent cramped round the TV watching soaps and films which had more adverts than actual film time. I even got to watch the Champions League final, KO 6:45am! shame I had a tenner on the Arsenal from the second round. Saturday nights where the big one in Blenheim not that you'd have guessed, couple of busy bars and a doggy nightclub.
Mark and Georgina arrived on schedule, with Markus sporting a goatee he'd been working on in Oz. Whether they arrived on time or not there was to be no more grape pruning for me, I had well and truly
ticked the seasonal work box.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.163s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 18; qc: 88; dbt: 0.0813s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Mark
non-member comment
Goaty
I think the goaty allowed me to look like a local...