Kahurangi

I stayed 3 weeks with my dutch family enjoying some beautiful experiences with them, including a beautiful wedding held in a field which was made up by the couple, and a nature skills day looking at bird calls and animal movement, its great fun trying to walk like a dog, or a crocodile, try it - especially running like a dog! Although give yourself plenty of room...
As one of my tasks I got to make a hurdle (a woven fence) out of sweet chestnut as a goat barrier, which i loved doing, and to cut down 130 sweet chestnut trees with a saw. Although I got to be with the children a lot, which is always revitalising. Unfortunately my time there ended when the father (Rob) had to fly out to Holland unexpectedly to attend his ill father. So the family needed space.
So again i moved on to an acquaintance in the area, a German family, who were further up the valley - closer to the Kahurangi National Park - which i was planning to do a 3 day trek in.

The plans worked out perfectly and the following day I was able to get a lift to an entrance to the 452,002 hectare park (1,745 square miles - bigger than Cornwall). It is mountainous (in the Mt Arthur Range) with peaks coming out of the bush line up to 1800m, but the majority of the park is ancient beach forests. My 3 day walk started by climbing up Mt Arthur - 1800m - where I had lunch in the most perfect conditions, warm, sunny, no wind, perfectly clear, I could see for about 80miles in every direction, including Mt Taranaki poking out of a cloud 300 or so km away on the North Island! My day finished at a Department of Conservation (DOC) hut and I was just boiling some water when 3 Americans my age passed going back the way I had come to a different hut, and I was invited to join them as I was stuck with a bunch of old folk for the evening otherwise! So I walked back the way i had come for 2 hours to spend a really fun evening with them in a DOC shelter, well worth it (not that i really wanted to avoid the old people or anything!) They were actually really lovely people, I shan't slag them off.
The following day I popped up another mountain for luncheon at 1650m consisting of Peanut Butter and crackers and down along a ridge to the valley, and the beautiful clear cold river, which I couldn't resist a swim in. And trudged barefoot the last 20 minutes to the most amazing shelter Ever!

Which I will tell you about in my next post as I really need to go now :(

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Still in Motueka....

I now know how to milk a goat and make a wizard/ spoon. Pretty important life skills really. The blacksmiths had a couple of goats with a kid each that they milked, which was passed to me as their wwoofer, so over the week I obtained a proficiency in goat dragging.
Along with this, I spent a few hours forging out of steel over a few days on a coal forge, something I have wanted to do for years! It was awesome fun and i ended up making a spoon with a wizards face on the handle (there will be a picture...).

Ever onwards I joined Jane, Graham, Mat and Rebecca (Mums old school friends sister) again, just down the road. They are a gorgeous family and i had a lot of interesting conversations about Buddhism, as they practice, and I am interested in meditation but have no knowledge of it. This was very insightful and I had a wonderful relaxing week when i wasn't cycling up a 20km hill. On the Monday and Tuesday I had a little adventure into the renown Abel Tasman National Park, choosing to take the inland track instead of the coastal track (which is a flat graveled walkway cut through the bush where you can get picked up and dropped off by boat from some of the idyllic beaches). I felt this was rather below the experience I was looking for so instead i walked a deserted rough path threaded through the beautiful continuously changing native bush, over trees and around rocks. I saw 3 people in the 2 days I was on that route. It was absolute bliss. It took me just over 6 hours to walk 15k up to 1060m, the views are totally breathtaking. I stayed the night on my own in a shelter at 1000m sleeping on the floorboards in temperatures not far from freezing. I don’t think I will ever forget those 2 days.

I was passed on to a friend of Jane and Graham who needed 3 days paid strimming around the electric fence border of their 12 acre property, that was ok for 2 reasons, one i got paid and two i got to use a quad bike! Something else I have wanted to years and years.

I am now wwoofing with a Dutch family I met through one of my previous hosts, who are again a really beautiful family, who I am learning a lot from.
Last night I sent off my application to Treble Cone ski field to work the winter season (late June to September) as a lift operator, I’m slightly apprehensive, but its the first time I have ever really applied for a proper job, so we will see, and I will find out in May.

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Motueka wwoofs

From Kelvin and Paula’s I hitched to Motueka to stay a night in the Happy Apple back-packers before finding my way 10 km west up the Mot valley to my next host. Their drive starts at about 30m and ends after a kilometre and another 150m up (1:6 gradient), which I had to walk with my full pack. I chose this host because they are in the middle of building their own eco house, which really interests me as the works would involve construction.

I have just been under 4 weeks with them - Stephan and Natalie with Chloe (7) and Lotus (4/5 she had her birthday whilst I was there). The work was interesting and to my taste although most of the time I was there we were working on the roof in 30+ degrees. Which, satisfyingly, was finished on my last day with them after having stuck myself to every possible part of the plastic lining with litres of viscous contact adhesive.

My work involved layering the whole roof with ply board in preparation for the waterproof lining using 2000 screws - the plastic necessary as they were having a garden roof. And the roof was by no means simple, the house was interesting designed situated on about a 45 degree slope with absolutely stunning views for 50 or so miles down the valley to Motueka and across the Nelson bay to the Marlborough sound.

In amongst the 7 hours a day work were trips to a friends property on the hottest days where we played and lased in a beautiful pool and listened to jazz and ate organic home grown fruit and berries.

Despite this, life with the family was stressful at time, which was not in a health balance of positive and negative. With a relief my time there was terminated due to one of the hosts becoming ill. Fortunately I was able to move tot he host I’m with now the following day.

I had had my eye on this host as the Husband was a blacksmith, and I have always wanted to do some forging. Incidentally they are a really lovely family, who are interesting and musical and arty. The highlights have been learning to milk their goats! Which is great fun, so there is fresh un-pasteurised goats milk every day and gorgeous cheese most of the time. The food is also very good with allot of veggies coming from their garden. As well as this, Red, the blacksmith, is very open and i have now spent a few hours on the forge with him experimenting with making faces and doing a few other jobs, which has been so wonderful! I am also going to make a bushcraft knife which I have been planning for months and now have the opportunity to forge myself.

I may accompany Red and his son Angus to the Nelson market tomorow morning (6:30) depending on weather I can get up!

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Photos - Queestown

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Nelson, Tahunanui, Kaiteriteri

I had a wonderful 2 weeks with Dorothy and Joe doing a variety of things, and Christmas was good, spending it with their family. I kayaked down the Motueka River for a couple of hours, which was just stunning, it also gave me a feel of some light white water, and I'm hooked.
I also slapped myself awake at 6am to join James (their son) at a market in which he has his rock and fossil stool.
In some of my spare time I studied a few of Raymond Brigs sketches, and made copies, its interesting working out how an artist creates an image and trying to imitate their style, although he has many, so his skills are elusive to me.

I departed from Dorothy and Joe after 2 weeks for Tahunanui, a beachfront area of Nelson where I camped at, apparently the largest holiday park in the South Hemisphere... I had previously been approached by some Christians on the beach and had a really interesting discussion with them about religion, after which they invited me to join them in their free time (there was a large group of them staying at the holiday park on an Evangelical mission). I took them up on this for a couple of days and had a lot of fun in a really happy atmosphere. Sadly there were a number of things over those days that pushed me further away from finding god, through Christianity at least, but that’s another story.

On my last night in Tahuna I decided to live more like a traveler, and I made myself a Ray Mears style bivvy under a huddle to pines skirting the beach, and just before dark I lite a beautiful fire collected from the mounds of driftwood along the beach. Later a waning moon rose from the trees casting a strong shadow, and I swum in the sea without getting cold. It was magic.

The following day I woke up picking twigs and leafs from my hair and hitched an hour up the coast to Kaiteriteri, recommended to me for its beach, and WOW! The sand is Gold, and the water is a lush clean blue. The beach also had a really cool geography, when the tide comes in it fills an inland reservoir, and as it goes out the water rushes out under a bridge, which everyone jumped off to get carried on a lazy river down the beach, where you jump out and run back to the bridge to do it again.

Opposite me on the campsite was gorgeous family that decided to take me in, and I spent a couple of days with them and their 13 and 17 yr old daughters on the beach. On the second evening when it was well dark I was taken by Robyn to see the glow worms up in the woods, where at the beginning of the trail you turn off the torches and grip a guide rope (and other people occasionally) that leads you through the eerie, dark, cool, but sublimely quite woods to specs of heavenly blue light scattered along the stream and path. You are lead to a bench where you can sit and gaze at the stars through the silhouetted canopy and wonder where they finish and the glow worms begin. So you stare at them from millimeters, but they are still as far away as the stars. I think 'if I had been on my own I would have been scared, but the presence of some one else allows this to be one of the moments I am never, ever going to forget'.

I hitched a lift with my family back to Nelson, where I am now with Dorothy and Joes other son and his wife for a couple of night’s before I’m off to my next wwoof host to build an eco village.

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