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Published: October 31st 2007
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Well, it's Halloween here, which doesn't really mean much, trick-or-treating is just starting to pick up in popularity but most people don't do anything. So...back to where I wrote last...
The rest of our time in Rotorua didn't offer much exciting but then we headed up to the town of Whakatane (pronounced fu-kah-tah-nee). We got there long before we could check into our hostel so we headed to a beach and relaxed and read - and I went running and felt like I was in better shape than I have been in a long time. We walked through town on our way back to the hostel and we found a cd shop and decided to spend some money on some music. For $10 each, which is much cheaper than anything else, we got the Garden State soundtrack, a Velvet Underground cd, and Rage Against the Machine. In the 2 days that followed, we listened to them each 3 times....time to buy an ipod adapter.
The first night we were in Whakatane, the local observatory was open to the public for one of 2 nights per week. This worked out really well for us - we went up to it
Lighthouse
At the beginning of the world (according to time) along with an Irish and a German girl who were staying at our hostel and got about 3 and a half hours of looking at stars and being taught things by a few local amateur astronomers. They had a pretty nice 14 in. telescope and the atmosphere is really clear so we could see the bands on Jupiter and 3 of its moons. We also checked out a globular cluster of thousands of stars, a nebula, alpha centauri, and the moon - which was very close to full so there was no part to look at without it being really bright.
The next day we headed up to a town about an hour away called Opotoki and wandered around the town for a while, then went on a hike through a river gorge which involved crossing a 50 foot wide river that was a couple feet deep twice - this was not mentioned in any of the books talking about it or by the person who told us about it while there. On our way back we stopped by a reserve for native plants to NZ and it was pretty cool, there was one tree estimated to have been
standing since 500 BC that the Maori used to bury the bones of their important dead under. Conversation, card games, and even Jenga then followed once back to the hostel.
The drive to our wwoofing hosts took about 5 hours and the first half of it was along the coast and had some great views almost the entire time. On the way, we drove out to a lighthouse that is the farthest east point in New Zealand and from what I'm told, if you're there for a sunrise and there aren't any boats in the ocean to the near east, you will be the first person in the world to see the sun on that day - but it's a long drive out there and we won't be experiencing this.
We have now been wwoofing for 3 days and it is very interesting. The people we are staying with (Gordon and Julia) are in their late 50's and he is a fisherman who is now in his off-season and she is mainly retired. The house they have they bought for $800 in the late 70's and have been working on it off and on since then. It has one bathroom with a huge window right in front of the toilet looking out (and in) to the back yard. There is also no light in the bathroom so you have to leave the door part way open at night. The light in our bedroom also stopped working since we've been here. Our beds are very comfortable though and we've been having very good and very large meals.
Our work has consisted mainly of pulling weeds - silver poplars and mostly jasmine - which have very large root systems entangling themselves in everything else. This makes the work somewhat slow and definately hard on the body - a pad to kneel on while gardening is a terribly silly American idea so we've been bending over and squatting a lot. We put in about 6 or 7 hours of work our first day so that we could have the whole 2nd day off. On the 2nd day, we hiked with Gordon and Julia to the next bay over - which was about 3 hours and involved pretty steep climbs through cow pastures, a trail very overgrown with brush and some steep climbs down to the bay. It was a very difficult hike for Daniel and me but they seemed to do it pretty easily. While at the bay - it had a rock beach and a campsite just up the hill and there was no way to get to it other than the climb we made - I went swimming in the ocean for the first time since being here, we climbed a large, steep, muddy hill to get to a waterfall, we ate lunch and lounged around for a while. We went home a different way which involved walking through the water a lot at low tide and looking for abolone (called powe here). We spent a long time turning over lots of large rocks and finding a few, then farther along there were dozens just sitting in plain site. So we gathered around 30 good sized abolone and brought them home with us. The way we went on the way home involved much more climbing up steep cliffs which was very intense and difficult. I am very scratched up and sore today from all this.
We have finished our work for today and this evening we are going to go out on Gordon's boat and do some fishing. While eating and sleeping for free is nice - plus getting in on some cool activities - I definately want to get back to the feeling of being more free and on our own. We have a few more days here then we head down to Wellington for a few days then off to another wwoofing site so I'll keep you posted as we go. Now to see if this dial-up can handle adding pictures.
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Kam the man
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hey paul, you take good pictures, i've been thoroughly impressed with some of them. sounds like you guys are doing well and being well entertained, just wait till i get around...then the boredom will really set in.