Mountain Oysters and Duck Tongue

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So after the hardship of my fishing experience as described in the last blog it was return to CC and the big reunion. After an evening of swapping stories, drinking (in moderation of course - hmm) and mediocore planning it was decided that myself, Claire and Tom would remain together as travelling companions and venture to a Wildfood Festivasl we had heard about that was happening on the Westcoast (totally on the opposite side of the South Island to where we were) at a small town called Hokitika (pronounced in a wild high pitched mexican accent as far as we were concerned on the trip over). So after a last evening of stocking up on supplies in CC we got up early and set of on the trunk road through the central divideing range of mountains and drove through Authurs Pass (everyhting is named after somebody over here). The drive took around 2 hours and Claires sturdy driving was accompanied enthusiastically by myself and Tom playing music the whole way there. The tunes ranged between Led Zepplin's Stairway to heaven, to bizarre songs about the scenery to fantastical renditions of The Final Countdown (bear in mind i was playing guitar and Tom a newly aquired recorder) - the results were mixed as were the reactions from a slightly bewildered Claire. Still, the music seemed to power us there in no time and soon enough we arrived to find a town gripped in the middle of a food festival that swells it's population from the normal 4000 people to a hefty 20,000 over the weekend. What this basically meant was that there were people having a good time everywhere, tents all over the place and general chaos - just our kind of caper. So after a mooching around for a short while we set up camp in a field by the towns river nearly overlooking the beach and ventured to the main city green where the food was to be found. Not wanting to jump into anything to exotic staight away we started with not too threatening Paua (much like muscles) which was tasty and bouyed us on to much more exotic things. Hence the list of food after that were as follows...
1) Hu Hu grubs (much like the Aboriginal favourite Witchati grubs - please excuse the spelling) which we were assured would taste of peanut butter. No such luck as we discovered minutes later. The real taste of the critters is best described as moving mud. First on the tongue you feel jellyish movement and slight nibbling from the mouth, swiftly follwed after the first bite by a muddy gritty tast. It actually wasn't as bad as i thought it would be (claire faired less well as you will probably read), but definately not something to be tried twice. It was a good to one of 'those things you can tell people you've done' though. Also the people running the stall were jolly nice about showing off there wares so you felt you got a good experience.
2) Haggis - now this tasted pretty good, quite like a decent pastey type thing - however it must be remembered that it is essentially all the bits of sheep that usually get disgarded - ie brain and lung. All in all though it was something that didn't make me question the logic of Scots too much - for a nice change i guess.
3) Mountai Oysters - sounds delightful doesn't it - almost a treat - they are however sheeps testicals....enough said really. Taste wise they weren't too bad as they were served in bread with lashings of onion to make it go down nicely - i'm sure theres a joke in there somewhere and claire certianly took to them better..
4)Duck Tongue - the suprise winner of the grossest thing we ate award lies here. Really these boys shouldn't be eaten full stop. They have no redeeming features taste wise (quite tough and nothingy) and have an alarming bone on the middle just to freak you out. No, i'm sticking clear of duck tongue for the rest of my life and i advise all reading to do the same. (Having siad this the guy running the stall must have been making a small fortune as so many idiots..i mean customers like ourselves were intrguied enough to try).
5) Worms - Really i think by this time the delicious nectarine cider we had been fueling the day with had taken control. Eating worms is something only children do - and rightly so, they tasted of mud again - served in a red bull (a sickly drink) jelly. You can probably guess what it tasted like - not good.
6) Beef Sandwhich - proper tucker for a growing lad. This was divine as i remeber and was actaully filling.
So there lies the culprits - as i mentioned we also got to try excellent cider with a number of flavours, and got to watch music of varying quality from a number of stands dotted around the site. The festival as a whole was a huge hit for me and certainly one of the best things i've done in NZ so far. More than anything it was nice to go to an event that mainly Kiwis frequented, and it was good to see how the local populus relax and have a good (if oddly tasting) time.
After retiring for a brief rest at the tent, we moved on to the evenings entertainment which was a fire on the beach, with lots of playing of guitar and meeting the people from the festival who had now migrated the same way. The beach itself looked amazing and was a cross between what i imagine armagedon will look like and a beautiful inferno of colour. As far as the eye could see were people gathered around there little fires swapping stories of the days horrors. Our fire in particular proovedf a hit due to the music as we had a fair old crowd before the rian came and washed us away - so back to the car we went for a final final nightcap and eventually bed.

The nest day we rose and wandered back into town (amazingly clean considering the mess we had seen the previous night on the walk home) for a slap up cheap 'english' cooked breakfast and cup of tea. After this it was off to the wharf to try out hand at a bit more fishing. This time my hopes were high as we were set up near to where lots of experienced chaps were. So we cast, changed bait, changed line..everthing - but still to annoyingly little avail. In fact it was the worst haul yet...nothing..still we had a good day in the sun, chatted to more West coast locals (most whom sport long white beards and non-sensical accnets) and continued with catching up stories.

After the festival we camped for the night near a lovely lake where we made a great camp fire and saw glowowrms along the driveway to the main camping area. Tom excelled on the cooking front and the night again whirled away into renditions of the now competent recorder and guitar duo. The next day was reasonablt similar as we were having such fun and we moved on to another DOC (dept. of conservation - i.e. cheap and basic) campsite for a day of firewood collecting, walking around the lake, chatting and musical genius. No glow worms that night but a very captivating fire.

The next morning we had to decide again where to head and we plumbed for a place 50km up the coast called Greymouth. Previous to arriving i had been told that Greymouth is one of the more boring places to go in NZ, but on reflection i don't think this is fair. We were very lucky to stay in a great hostel called Global Village, which boasted a spa (very eagerly used by the three of us), very african decor, lots of space and a nice blend of people including a slightly crazed American who ended up being a worthy card playing patner. We stayed in tents to save money as much as possible and had yet another fire in the hostels backyard as we concluded we already had pretty miserable smelling clothes from the days of camping.

So what did we do the next day i hear you cry - yep fishing again - but this time it was well worth it as Tom came up trumps and caught a proper one that could be eaten appaerently. Well we certainly did, and so for dinner we had beefburgers (homemade) and mash - BUT with a starter of FISH !!!!!! So we felt vindicated of all our efforts. Fab.

The next day (sorry about all the ...'the next day' but dyas really seem to roll into one out here - last night we had a long drawn out debate about whether it was wednesday or thursday - we still don't know) it was decided finally the trio had to be broken as Tom was headed north for Abel Tasman (we dropped him at a hitch point just out of Greymouth to the sounds of our recored efforts of the previous few days as a duo of songsters), and myself and Claire were to go southwards to the glaciers.

For the record Tom i salute you - you were at least as Englsh if not more than me and were a worthy travelling partner. Good luck sir.

So anyway nearly bringing you up to date after cruising down route 6 for 2 hours we finally reached Franz Josef glacier and yet another free spa - we did feel maybe we didn't deserve it , but hey. So the eveing was spent learning what the best things to do here are and relaxing with a lot of English people - more than anywhere in NZ. We've decided that tommorow we're off to walk on the glacier and so rathere than carry on with more about glaciers now i'll fill you in with great details of ablation zones, accumulation and one of the most precipitous areas of NZ when we've walked the beasty.

See you soon guys.

marc

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Photos

Hu Hu Grubs
Bit like mud

I've got worms
no literally

The captivating fire
Made by us - ace

Guitarman
On the baech after the food fest

Duck Tongue
Claire's face says it all

One of the fires
Long exposure - i love it

Comments

[Tom]

My extreme pleasure
Hitting the HokitiKKAAAA Wild Food Festival was the highlight of my trip, which is saying something because on other occasions I got to milk a cow and drive a tractor. It was made all the more enjoyable by the extremely excellent company that took me there, and no number of Duck's tongues can take that away from me. I have also now mastered the Final Countdown on the recorder thanks to the musical genius that is Marc. By the way, I think we ate Bull's testicles that day instead of sheep, unless they were extremely well endowed sheep.