Skiing over the Southern Alps

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So I’ve finally left the West Coast after over six weeks, collectively, of changing beds, scrubbing showers, cleaning the rainforest and, in Lisa’s more insane moments, hoovering the rocks!! Actually I’m quite sad to have left the place I’ve by far spend the most time in since I arrived in nz. Te Nikau was an amazing place to be, I meet some great, and some very, very weird people. I don’t think there is anywhere quite like Punakaiki and I can think Lisa enough for putting up with me for so long!

Enough of the Oscar speech, and back to the travel writing, events of the last few weeks in Puni include. Convincing Jo that she really wanted to kayak up the Pororari River - this was great fun despite the fact that it was more like ‘take your boat for a walk’ on the way up! A guided visit to the first eco-friendly house in nz (from one of Lisa’s mates - not really a tour) that was mostly destroyed by the council for not having a permit when the guy popped out for some milk!! There’s no-one else here, why would you need a permit? My first experience of Kiwi pot-luck dinner parties, where we realised out of the eight of us there no one was from the same country, like the UN of Puni.

Another highlight was the last night watching the sunset from Breda’s house. Her house was built by the guy who designed the main building of the hostel. Waiting for the bus at 6.45am, we also got treated to the most amazing moonset I’ve ever seen. Come to think of it, have I seen that before? Maybe its like lunar rainbows!!! You just don’t notice this stuff. Anyway thanks to Breda’s organisational skills and general loveliness we got a skiing trip on the Southern Alps. Okay so on my part ‘skiing’ might be a bit of an over exaggeration! I had the beginners’ lesson, working out staring and stopping but very little in between. I demonstrated this when attempting to follow Jo and Breda across a few lines of traffic and under the T-lift. Realising that I was moving without warning a fell to find people’s feet coming towards me, which wasn’t as bad a not being able to slow down after I restated and having to throw myself into the snow to stop!! Jo did at least say I looked very calm!

The prospect of going back to Greymouth not appealing I quizzed the car park with, ‘Going to Christchurch tonight?’ and eventually got half way with a lift to Springfield, thats Canterbury, nz. There was no Homer in sight at Smilies YHA that was instead organised on a Japanese theme, banning shoes and providing slippers. Hitched to Christchurch with a guy that turned out to know our friend Dean from Puni, took advantage of the nightlife and culture, and then visited the port of Akoroa. This is the only French settled place in the country, and did feel very, very different to well everywhere else. It reminded me of a trip to Crete with Helen, when we go the bus ‘to France’, the anti-English resort. Make me realise how English nz can really be.

Half way back to Christchurch I meet up with new host for wwoofing, and said sad farewells to Jo!! She headed out to Australia on Monday, was my mate in Hasting picking the apples, travelling in Wellington and Christchurch and reason I wwoofed at Te Nikau. We were shocked to realise that we’ve know each other five months!

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Comments

[Paul]

The wonderful world of wwoofing
Hey Pete, Great to hear you're still in NZ and enjoying the wonderful world of wwoofing. Spence and I have been back in Scotland almost a 3 weeks now, and he's already fecked off to Amsterdam to go see Madge in concert. Keep in touch, and let us know when you'll be visiting us in Edinburgh.