A little part of December that I forgot to address in the above post is as follows:
Glen and I decided to go for a nice lunch in Akaroa on our last day of flower picking. First up, you must be filled in on Akaroa itself. It is a very cute little town situated right by our flower farm that, sometime during the 1950’s, discovered it’s French colony roots – and the marketability thereof. So it is the quintessential sea-side tourist town further coloured with cheesy, grammatically incorrect business names, including:
-L’Essence (the Shell gas station)
-L’Hotel and Le Restaurant
-C’est Bon Boutique
-Le Bons Bay
-Le Bon Accord
-Le Mini Golf
In the spirit of tourist township, everything in Akaroa is really, really expensive. We knew we’d be paying through the nose for our lunch, but decided that it was all part of sampling the local flavour, no pun intended. Our original choice of restaurant was closed for a private function, so we went to a nice looking place called Ma Maison, which was relatively un-crowded and was situated smack on the harbour. The place smelled tasty, has great views, and we would actually be able to get a table. Score.
We ordered coffee, which came in tiny little mugs and cost around four dollars each. We ordered an appetizer, fresh baked bread served with a hummus dip and a smoked cheddar dip. There was about two tablespoons each of dip and five small pieces of bread. Cost: eight dollars and fifty cents. Glen ordered a chicken sandwich - $18.00. I decided that we wouldn’t spend all this time living on a harbour and not have fresh fish at least once. So I ordered the catch of the day, which was a grouper served over what they described as a mash of some description. Cost: $22.00
'That had better be bloody good fish,' Glen and I said to each other.
The food came out. The dip and bread was over priced and delicious. Glen’s sandwich looked and smelled delightful, although the chips served alongside it were the Mcain’s frozen shoestring variety instead of proper house chips. My muchly anticipated fish arrived…and it was a little triangle about the same size of a small Captain Highliner fishstick perched on top of a round of potato salad – not mash – that was about an inch thick and two inches in diameter. And over all this bounty was poured about a cup of viciously flavoured mayonnaise. One cup of mayonnaise for five small mouthfuls of food. It was revolting.
I attempted to scrape the mayonnaise off the fish and then off the potato salad (didn’t work particularly well), then tried to lift the potatoes out of the mayonnaise (that didn’t work either, the little potato round fell apart). I sampled a tiny bit of the potato salad, and was horrified to discover that it was made with Dijon mustard; I hate horseradish, and can detect it in dijon mustard from a mile away. Had I read on the menu that the “mash” contained Dijon flavouring or horseradish, I never would have ordered it, but such information is apparently not a worthy menu addition. I honestly wouldn’t have been able to choke down that salad, which meant that three quarters of my meal was inedible. I tried a very, very small bit of the fish. It was light and would have been quite tasty if it weren’t for the mayonnaise that slathered it. The meal was substandard, poorly designed and constructed, of stingy portion, and not worth the price.
So we tried to send it back. I politely gave the waitress my reasons (leaving out the fact that it simply wasn’t worth the price) and she went to talk to the chef. When she returned she cheerfully informed me that the chef could re-make the fish without the mayonnaise, but not the potato salad, because I had eaten some of it and it doesn’t contain any horseradish, just a special kind of mustard. I replied that I had eaten about one small potato square, not even a forkful, and the “special mustard” that it contains is Dijon, which contains horseradish. Besides, the fish was the most edible thing on the plate, now that I had shovelled off the mayonnaise, but the potato salad was simply beyond reconciliation. I said that I would rather just be made another dish, preferably the same sandwich that Glen was eating as it was quite good. The waitress went back to the kitchen, and came back out saying that the fish had already gone through on the bill so they wouldn’t be able to deduct the four dollar difference between the fish and the sandwich, and that I’d have to wait a few minutes to get the new order. That’s fine, I replied. I had ordered the fish and there wasn’t anything wrong with the way it was cooked, just that it was so far from what the menu described that I wouldn’t have ordered it had I known what it was, and besides, I fully expected to have to wait for my new order, just like everyone else. She went back to the kitchen again, and came out to inform me that this would be acceptable and that while the charge for the fish meal wouldn’t be deducted from the bill, they wouldn’t charge me for the sandwich.
Had they charged us for the sandwich, Glen and I would have simply walked out, then and there. Sorry, kids, but if you want to play with the fancy restaurants and charge an arm and a leg for your food, it had better damn well be perfect. And if it isn’t perfect or it isn’t as you had described it in the menu, you’d better be willing to alter the order when the patron realizes that the food is completely unacceptable.
I got my sandwich, and it was good, and I thanked the waitress for being so accommodating. She did do a lot of negotiating with the kitchen to fix the problem, and I was grateful for that. But I don’t think we’ll be bothering with any of the Akaroa restaurants again – they are uniformally overpriced. We shall save our coin for the larger city restaurants.
Friday, December 28, 2007
December: In Summation
We have spent the entirety of December WWOOFing at a flower farm in the Banks Peninsula. First, I need to say that the Banks Peninsula area is one of the closest approximations to heaven on Earth that I could imagine: verdant green hills dropping straight into harbour waters that vary daily from slate gray to turquoise blue, and weather that changes at the drop of a pin.
The farm where we were working was such a fantastic find that I don’t think I could say enough good things about it. The family of four (the mom, dad, and two teenage sons) usually have WWOOFers around at any given time, and are cheerfully welcoming of those who come through their doors. There was a host of WWOOFers present during the month, with the total count going as high as seven at one point. As most of the orders of cut flowers need to be gathered and sent out in the week following up to Christmas, the family very much needs the help from the travellers, and so the house was bustling with representatives from Britain, Japan, Malaysia, and of course, Canada. Glen and I, being the only couple among the WWOOF crew, got the honours of being given the main guest room, complete with a queen sized bed and closet. We had our clothes out of the backpacks and hung in the closet within 15 minutes of getting our room. These sorts of things are exciting after living out of backpacks for three months.
As a point of interest, the flowers we were picking are called Lucospermum, and they are a variety of protea. The farm grows three varieties:
Highgold
Tango
Harry Chittick
The aren’t that difficult to pick, provided that the picking efforts don’t disintegrate into a snowball-style flower fight. The flower heads make excellent missiles, especially if the flowers haven’t opened completely. They also cause massive hayfeaver (the Japanese guy got hit the worst, and I made good use of the anti-histamines that I brought from Canada), and are filled with bees. No wasps, mind, just bees.
Here is one of the flower fields. The hill is deceptively steep; no need for squats when you've got flower farm hills to climb:
The work was similarly very good. Weather permitting, we made as early a start of the day as possible so that we would be finished picking before the sun got really hot. At the start of the month we had a few days off, and we were given time off when the weather was too bad to go out picking. We were usually in the fields at 7:30, and would often be finished both picking and grading (done in the packhouse, which is quite temperate) by noon or one o’clock.
Here is where we grade the picked flowers - picking off bugs and bird poo, cutting the stems to the proper lengths, etc. The packhouse is wonderfully cool, so we were out of the sun and the heat by the time things got really toasty. Plus, you can flick the cut-off ends of the stems at other people really hard if you get the wrist motion and timing of the stem snipping just right. If you aim is really good, you can bounce the stem ends off people's foreheads.
Once the final flower orders were sent out on the 23rd, we were given several days off until the family clears out the house on the 28th to make room for some visiting friends. We all spend a fabulous Christmas here, eating entirely too much food on the very sunny patio, which overlooks one of the harbours.
Christmas breakfast - the start of a day of gorging:
This is what the weather was like all day, as viewed from the patio. Are you jealous yet?
We’ve done quite a bit that wouldn’t make for a particularly interesting post, so I shall give you something of a point-form summary of a few of the highlights:
-meeting the family’s three legged cat, who drools everywhere when cuddled.
-having an entire travel mug of freshly boiled tea dumped on me by Glen, who felt that the tea would look better on my leg than in the cup. I swore extremely loudly and startled a conservationists’ meeting that John (the resident patrician) was hosting. Yes, it hurt. Yes, there are still burn marks.
-Doing large batch cooking with the most adorably hilarious Japanese girl ever (the food was prepared in advance and then frozen for the busy picking days when we would be too buzy/tired to want to cook dinner for 12 adults).
-Getting nailed squarely in the eye with an unopened and rock-hard Highgold head during a vicious flower fight. Much to my irritation, the eye did not bruise, despite staying slightly swollen and tender for a couple of days.
-Glen getting stung by bees twice in the space of 20 minutes.
-Making and distributing massively rich, creamy, fatty, boozy egg nog for a whole bunch of people who have never before discovered the delights of homemade egg nog – home made, not that vile store-bought stuff, which you can’t get here anyway.
We leave here tomorrow, and will be staying in Christchurch for a few days with Julie’s (the resident matron) cousin, who has kindly extended visiting invitations to the WWOOFers to stay with her while in the city. Indecision and procrastination has led us to be uncertain as to where we will go afterwards; we do have an offer at another WWOOF place, but the more we review it, the less pleasant it sounds. We’re hoping to find somewhere else to WWOOF at in this area, and afterwards we will do a road-trip, sleep-in-the-back-of-the-wagon style tour of the south tip of the island. Maybe we’ll spend a day or two here and there in a hostel so that we can get cleaned up and have a proper meal. There aren’t too many WWOOF places in that area that we are interested in, so we may or may not bother trying to set something up.
And now, in order to make you even more wildly jealous, a few pictures of our lottery-win December situation:
This is the view from the living room and TV room:
A bunch of us trooped off to an isolated beach one afternoon. The resident heard of cows took a keen interest in the vehicle, and surrounded the truck, poking their runny noses inside. They were skittish and backed off as soon as we came up, but they may have very well attempted to steal the radio:
We went to Christchurch during one rainy day. While inspecting the Christchurch Cathedral, we discovered that there was no way to escape the flowers - the Harry Chitticks had followed us to town and took up residence on the pulpit:
Our rainy day trip also took us to the Christchurch art gallery, which was great fun. There was a display of knitted bonsai trees that were particularly ticklish:
There was also a weird exhibit that was basically a big cardboard tube with a gentle suction. We didn't realize what it was until I looked into it and it sucked my hair right up the tube:
Glen wanted in on the vacuum action:
In Christchurch there is an import store that supplied all sorts of foreign items. The store is teeeeeeeeny, doesn't seem to be organized in any sort of recognizable pattern, and is possibly one of the most delightful stores we've ever walked in to:
December was fantastic, and this was due in no small part to our wonderfully hospitable hosts, who went above and beyond to make us feel at home, and the other WWOOFers who we chummed around with. We'll be stopping in again some time to visit on our way back up the island, to say hello and share whatever wine we pick up along the way. We had a blast, we made friends, we struck gold!
The farm where we were working was such a fantastic find that I don’t think I could say enough good things about it. The family of four (the mom, dad, and two teenage sons) usually have WWOOFers around at any given time, and are cheerfully welcoming of those who come through their doors. There was a host of WWOOFers present during the month, with the total count going as high as seven at one point. As most of the orders of cut flowers need to be gathered and sent out in the week following up to Christmas, the family very much needs the help from the travellers, and so the house was bustling with representatives from Britain, Japan, Malaysia, and of course, Canada. Glen and I, being the only couple among the WWOOF crew, got the honours of being given the main guest room, complete with a queen sized bed and closet. We had our clothes out of the backpacks and hung in the closet within 15 minutes of getting our room. These sorts of things are exciting after living out of backpacks for three months.
As a point of interest, the flowers we were picking are called Lucospermum, and they are a variety of protea. The farm grows three varieties:
Highgold
Tango
Harry Chittick
The aren’t that difficult to pick, provided that the picking efforts don’t disintegrate into a snowball-style flower fight. The flower heads make excellent missiles, especially if the flowers haven’t opened completely. They also cause massive hayfeaver (the Japanese guy got hit the worst, and I made good use of the anti-histamines that I brought from Canada), and are filled with bees. No wasps, mind, just bees.
Here is one of the flower fields. The hill is deceptively steep; no need for squats when you've got flower farm hills to climb:
The work was similarly very good. Weather permitting, we made as early a start of the day as possible so that we would be finished picking before the sun got really hot. At the start of the month we had a few days off, and we were given time off when the weather was too bad to go out picking. We were usually in the fields at 7:30, and would often be finished both picking and grading (done in the packhouse, which is quite temperate) by noon or one o’clock.
Here is where we grade the picked flowers - picking off bugs and bird poo, cutting the stems to the proper lengths, etc. The packhouse is wonderfully cool, so we were out of the sun and the heat by the time things got really toasty. Plus, you can flick the cut-off ends of the stems at other people really hard if you get the wrist motion and timing of the stem snipping just right. If you aim is really good, you can bounce the stem ends off people's foreheads.
Once the final flower orders were sent out on the 23rd, we were given several days off until the family clears out the house on the 28th to make room for some visiting friends. We all spend a fabulous Christmas here, eating entirely too much food on the very sunny patio, which overlooks one of the harbours.
Christmas breakfast - the start of a day of gorging:
This is what the weather was like all day, as viewed from the patio. Are you jealous yet?
We’ve done quite a bit that wouldn’t make for a particularly interesting post, so I shall give you something of a point-form summary of a few of the highlights:
-meeting the family’s three legged cat, who drools everywhere when cuddled.
-having an entire travel mug of freshly boiled tea dumped on me by Glen, who felt that the tea would look better on my leg than in the cup. I swore extremely loudly and startled a conservationists’ meeting that John (the resident patrician) was hosting. Yes, it hurt. Yes, there are still burn marks.
-Doing large batch cooking with the most adorably hilarious Japanese girl ever (the food was prepared in advance and then frozen for the busy picking days when we would be too buzy/tired to want to cook dinner for 12 adults).
-Getting nailed squarely in the eye with an unopened and rock-hard Highgold head during a vicious flower fight. Much to my irritation, the eye did not bruise, despite staying slightly swollen and tender for a couple of days.
-Glen getting stung by bees twice in the space of 20 minutes.
-Making and distributing massively rich, creamy, fatty, boozy egg nog for a whole bunch of people who have never before discovered the delights of homemade egg nog – home made, not that vile store-bought stuff, which you can’t get here anyway.
We leave here tomorrow, and will be staying in Christchurch for a few days with Julie’s (the resident matron) cousin, who has kindly extended visiting invitations to the WWOOFers to stay with her while in the city. Indecision and procrastination has led us to be uncertain as to where we will go afterwards; we do have an offer at another WWOOF place, but the more we review it, the less pleasant it sounds. We’re hoping to find somewhere else to WWOOF at in this area, and afterwards we will do a road-trip, sleep-in-the-back-of-the-wagon style tour of the south tip of the island. Maybe we’ll spend a day or two here and there in a hostel so that we can get cleaned up and have a proper meal. There aren’t too many WWOOF places in that area that we are interested in, so we may or may not bother trying to set something up.
And now, in order to make you even more wildly jealous, a few pictures of our lottery-win December situation:
This is the view from the living room and TV room:
A bunch of us trooped off to an isolated beach one afternoon. The resident heard of cows took a keen interest in the vehicle, and surrounded the truck, poking their runny noses inside. They were skittish and backed off as soon as we came up, but they may have very well attempted to steal the radio:
We went to Christchurch during one rainy day. While inspecting the Christchurch Cathedral, we discovered that there was no way to escape the flowers - the Harry Chitticks had followed us to town and took up residence on the pulpit:
Our rainy day trip also took us to the Christchurch art gallery, which was great fun. There was a display of knitted bonsai trees that were particularly ticklish:
There was also a weird exhibit that was basically a big cardboard tube with a gentle suction. We didn't realize what it was until I looked into it and it sucked my hair right up the tube:
Glen wanted in on the vacuum action:
In Christchurch there is an import store that supplied all sorts of foreign items. The store is teeeeeeeeny, doesn't seem to be organized in any sort of recognizable pattern, and is possibly one of the most delightful stores we've ever walked in to:
December was fantastic, and this was due in no small part to our wonderfully hospitable hosts, who went above and beyond to make us feel at home, and the other WWOOFers who we chummed around with. We'll be stopping in again some time to visit on our way back up the island, to say hello and share whatever wine we pick up along the way. We had a blast, we made friends, we struck gold!
Monday, December 17, 2007
Road Trip Canterbury
We have come round to our December establishment, faithful readers, and I am pleased to announce that it is a wonderful establishment indeed! After finishing up at the Swedish Cow-Shed, we took a couple of days to do a relaxed drive around some of the highways of the lower Nelson and upper Canterbury regions. Our first evening was spent attempting to find a good place to park the car and sleep in the back. The first attempt to bed down was thwarted by a huge swarm of sandflies that occupied the car as soon as we had pulled over and opened up the doors. We got them out by piling back into Sparkleypoo and driving as fast as we dared down the highway with the windows open. It did work, most of the flies got sucked out, but it was unfortunate that we had to abandon that sleeping spot. It was tucked away in the trees by a river and a swing bridge and was quite pretty, especially compared with the gravel-pile occupied "picnic area" we slept at afterwards.
The following morning was wonderfully sandfly-free. We stopped for breakfast at the Maruia Springs hot pool resort at Lewis Pass, and were so delighted by the prospect of enjoying the stunning and quiet mountain scenery in the peace of a traditional Japanese hot spring that we purchased two guest passes to the pools and stayed there for most of the morning. I would highly recommend stopping there if you are ever passing through the area, and the room prices seemed quite reasonable too.
From Maruia Springs we drove to Hanmer Springs, and wandered around the tourist down before having a late lunch/early supper at the springs restaurant. The food was decent, but aspired to too much and delivered too little, flavour-wise. The bold-as-brass sparrows, on the other hand, were a riot. They would fly right into the restaurant and perform elaborate begging routines at the feet of the diners.
After finishing up at Hanmer Springs, we drove along one of the less-travelled and more-windy section of the Alpine Pacific highway, and found ourselves at Kaikoura. Kaikoura is quite the recreational area, complete with the best whale watching in New Zealand, a sizable fur seal colony, plenty of random shopping, and the Kaikoura Winery. We went for a tour of the winery and their underground cellars, which of course came complete with a rather extensive wine tasting. For the record, I was the one who spat out the samples this time around, while Glen got pleasantly buzzed. We came away from the winery with a bottle of their Kaikoura Cream, a crème liquor similar to Bailey’s Irish Cream, but made from wine instead of whisky. It goes down like slightly boozy liquid milk chocolate. Irresistible.
From Kaikoura we elected to follow south highway 1 straight through (or around, as the case may be) Christchurch and spent the night at a scenic picnic site not too far away from our destination of the Banks Peninsula and our next WWOOF destination.
The Banks Peninsula area is breathtaking. It is a coastal caldera formation and is composed of steep green pastured hills dropping sharply into very, very blue ocean waters. The roads themselves are somewhat hair-raising for someone who did not learn how to drive on them, and while I’m certain that we infuriated many drivers by going much slower than the posted speed limit, we don’t regret going that slowly. The roads were steep and narrow, and the scenery was just too go to want to hurry through.
The road trip ended at Akaroa, the closest town of any size to our WWOOF location. Akaroa is, like so many of New Zealand towns, picturesque and touristy, and that is just fine by Glen and myself. It is an easy place to spend several days in, despite it’s tiny size, and is only about an hour away from Christchurch. There are plenty of harbour-side cafes at which one may soak up the sun, and plenty of scenic hikes and drives in the immediate vicinity. It practically forces one’s spine to unwind. The abundance of fresh fish is a bonus. Despite us having been in the area for a couple of weeks already, there are a few attractions in Akaroa that we’ve yet to investigate. But we will investigate them, and I shall forward you a report when we do.
This map more-or-less plots out our exact driving route. Find Lewis Pass on highway 7, go to highway 7A to Hanmer springs, take highway 70 up to Kaikoura, then highway 1 to Christchurch. It’s a great loop to make, and well worth the time taken:
The following morning was wonderfully sandfly-free. We stopped for breakfast at the Maruia Springs hot pool resort at Lewis Pass, and were so delighted by the prospect of enjoying the stunning and quiet mountain scenery in the peace of a traditional Japanese hot spring that we purchased two guest passes to the pools and stayed there for most of the morning. I would highly recommend stopping there if you are ever passing through the area, and the room prices seemed quite reasonable too.
From Maruia Springs we drove to Hanmer Springs, and wandered around the tourist down before having a late lunch/early supper at the springs restaurant. The food was decent, but aspired to too much and delivered too little, flavour-wise. The bold-as-brass sparrows, on the other hand, were a riot. They would fly right into the restaurant and perform elaborate begging routines at the feet of the diners.
After finishing up at Hanmer Springs, we drove along one of the less-travelled and more-windy section of the Alpine Pacific highway, and found ourselves at Kaikoura. Kaikoura is quite the recreational area, complete with the best whale watching in New Zealand, a sizable fur seal colony, plenty of random shopping, and the Kaikoura Winery. We went for a tour of the winery and their underground cellars, which of course came complete with a rather extensive wine tasting. For the record, I was the one who spat out the samples this time around, while Glen got pleasantly buzzed. We came away from the winery with a bottle of their Kaikoura Cream, a crème liquor similar to Bailey’s Irish Cream, but made from wine instead of whisky. It goes down like slightly boozy liquid milk chocolate. Irresistible.
From Kaikoura we elected to follow south highway 1 straight through (or around, as the case may be) Christchurch and spent the night at a scenic picnic site not too far away from our destination of the Banks Peninsula and our next WWOOF destination.
The Banks Peninsula area is breathtaking. It is a coastal caldera formation and is composed of steep green pastured hills dropping sharply into very, very blue ocean waters. The roads themselves are somewhat hair-raising for someone who did not learn how to drive on them, and while I’m certain that we infuriated many drivers by going much slower than the posted speed limit, we don’t regret going that slowly. The roads were steep and narrow, and the scenery was just too go to want to hurry through.
The road trip ended at Akaroa, the closest town of any size to our WWOOF location. Akaroa is, like so many of New Zealand towns, picturesque and touristy, and that is just fine by Glen and myself. It is an easy place to spend several days in, despite it’s tiny size, and is only about an hour away from Christchurch. There are plenty of harbour-side cafes at which one may soak up the sun, and plenty of scenic hikes and drives in the immediate vicinity. It practically forces one’s spine to unwind. The abundance of fresh fish is a bonus. Despite us having been in the area for a couple of weeks already, there are a few attractions in Akaroa that we’ve yet to investigate. But we will investigate them, and I shall forward you a report when we do.
This map more-or-less plots out our exact driving route. Find Lewis Pass on highway 7, go to highway 7A to Hanmer springs, take highway 70 up to Kaikoura, then highway 1 to Christchurch. It’s a great loop to make, and well worth the time taken:
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Up to our necks in...
Right, so here is a mighty attempt to get our adventure stories back on track and all caught up.
The last two weeks in November were spend in the Nelson region, close to a little town outside Nelson called Wakefield. This is a significantly drier area than much of New Zealand, and there was hardly a drop of rain to interrupt the scorching temperatures during our entire stay.
We stayed with a family who operate a permaculture hobby farm, with two donkeys, two goats, a cat and dog, a flock of chickens (significantly less interested in humans than the chickens at the Grampians Halls Gap YHA hostel), and a lovely dark brown Jersey cow. As this was a WWOOFing expedition, we traded a few hours of work in the morning for room and board. It was awfully nice to be able to look at a kitchen with a reasonably varied compliment of ingredients and know that there would be no need to wonder what sort of single-meal food items we would have to purchase. Our accommodation was a specially constructed - and comfortable - shed, complete with two twin slat beds, a TV and DVD player, and a composting toilet; we had uninterrupted views of the night sky, as the shed was at the far end of the property, away from the main house in the rear of one of the pastures:
Our host was delighted to learn that Glen is a sculptor, and immediately suggested that he make them a few art pieces for their eclectic garden as his WWOOF work. Both Glen and I thought this was a fantastic idea, as it would mean that he would be able to dedicate a good four to five hours a day to working on his sculpture technique and play around with different materials than he usually uses - materials which our host would provide.
Behold! The artist at work:
And so Glen sculpted while I weeded/watered/composted the garden, oiled verandas and doors, and cooked. Both of us took part in the most common activity: collecting donkey poo. The poo collection occured every couple of days and took a good hour. Fortunatly it doesn't stink and is relatively dry - something that cannot be said for the cow poo, which was also collected and frequently mixed with sawdust to make a garden fertilizer. The donkeys were a bit of a nuisance, as they liked to stick their noses on our backs to beg for attention as we collected their leavings.
The place was very quaint. We learned how to cook on a wood burning stove, ate freshly laid eggs from the chickens and drank fresh milk from the cow. That cow must be one of the most sedate bovines around. She liked to be scratched, fed treats, and would aggressively trumpt her displeasure if she wasn't let out to her daily grazing pasture at the proper time or if it her daily milking was late. She also liked to lick Glen's leg, which was far from ticklish and resulted in the removal-via-sandpaper-tongue of a patch of leg hair and probably a good layer of skin.
But she loves people so!
Other activities included a couple of trips into nearby Nelson and Richmond. We dined at Harry's Bar in Nelson, and became acquainted with the reasonings behind the multiple awards the restaurant has won. Damn, they've got some fine cocktails there... I managed to take in a local belly dance class, and we went to a lovely fundraiser market event at one of the nearby vineyards. The market was great fun, and the views from the winery were simply lovely:
We enjoyed our time at the farm, but were ready to move on when our two weeks were up. Glen kept very busy and produced some pretty darn good work, if I do say so myself. So for your aesthetic enjoyment, I shall close with a little show of the fruits of his labour:
Male torso, constructed in separate muscular groups. Chicken wire and cement.
Female torso, classical position. Chicken wire and cement.
Sneering face. Chicken wire and cement, coloured with red paint, white paint, house stain, and grass.
Male face in tree. Wood, carved from a still rooted stump.
And finally: Lauren, encased in duct tape. (It was an experiment to make a mould for a cement cast torso figure. It...uh...didn't really work.)
The last two weeks in November were spend in the Nelson region, close to a little town outside Nelson called Wakefield. This is a significantly drier area than much of New Zealand, and there was hardly a drop of rain to interrupt the scorching temperatures during our entire stay.
We stayed with a family who operate a permaculture hobby farm, with two donkeys, two goats, a cat and dog, a flock of chickens (significantly less interested in humans than the chickens at the Grampians Halls Gap YHA hostel), and a lovely dark brown Jersey cow. As this was a WWOOFing expedition, we traded a few hours of work in the morning for room and board. It was awfully nice to be able to look at a kitchen with a reasonably varied compliment of ingredients and know that there would be no need to wonder what sort of single-meal food items we would have to purchase. Our accommodation was a specially constructed - and comfortable - shed, complete with two twin slat beds, a TV and DVD player, and a composting toilet; we had uninterrupted views of the night sky, as the shed was at the far end of the property, away from the main house in the rear of one of the pastures:
Our host was delighted to learn that Glen is a sculptor, and immediately suggested that he make them a few art pieces for their eclectic garden as his WWOOF work. Both Glen and I thought this was a fantastic idea, as it would mean that he would be able to dedicate a good four to five hours a day to working on his sculpture technique and play around with different materials than he usually uses - materials which our host would provide.
Behold! The artist at work:
And so Glen sculpted while I weeded/watered/composted the garden, oiled verandas and doors, and cooked. Both of us took part in the most common activity: collecting donkey poo. The poo collection occured every couple of days and took a good hour. Fortunatly it doesn't stink and is relatively dry - something that cannot be said for the cow poo, which was also collected and frequently mixed with sawdust to make a garden fertilizer. The donkeys were a bit of a nuisance, as they liked to stick their noses on our backs to beg for attention as we collected their leavings.
The place was very quaint. We learned how to cook on a wood burning stove, ate freshly laid eggs from the chickens and drank fresh milk from the cow. That cow must be one of the most sedate bovines around. She liked to be scratched, fed treats, and would aggressively trumpt her displeasure if she wasn't let out to her daily grazing pasture at the proper time or if it her daily milking was late. She also liked to lick Glen's leg, which was far from ticklish and resulted in the removal-via-sandpaper-tongue of a patch of leg hair and probably a good layer of skin.
But she loves people so!
Other activities included a couple of trips into nearby Nelson and Richmond. We dined at Harry's Bar in Nelson, and became acquainted with the reasonings behind the multiple awards the restaurant has won. Damn, they've got some fine cocktails there... I managed to take in a local belly dance class, and we went to a lovely fundraiser market event at one of the nearby vineyards. The market was great fun, and the views from the winery were simply lovely:
We enjoyed our time at the farm, but were ready to move on when our two weeks were up. Glen kept very busy and produced some pretty darn good work, if I do say so myself. So for your aesthetic enjoyment, I shall close with a little show of the fruits of his labour:
Male torso, constructed in separate muscular groups. Chicken wire and cement.
Female torso, classical position. Chicken wire and cement.
Sneering face. Chicken wire and cement, coloured with red paint, white paint, house stain, and grass.
Male face in tree. Wood, carved from a still rooted stump.
And finally: Lauren, encased in duct tape. (It was an experiment to make a mould for a cement cast torso figure. It...uh...didn't really work.)
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
Mussel Country
Leaving off from Picton, ferries, and nausia, now, and heading towards our WWOOF engagement in Wakefield, just outside of Nelson. The drive was very pretty indeed, taking us along gentle mountains and a coastline more rugged than those in Hawke's Bay. We stopped in Havelock and as neither of us had really eaten since 10:00 that morning (it was now around 6:00 pm - the ferry was over two hours late getting into dock due to the weather conditions) and still had a good hour long drive ahead of us, we stopped for some food.
Havelock is a very small place and mostly caters to a summer tourist crowd in search of prime seafood and giant green mussels. Indeed, every year it hosts a mussel festival. Small towns focussed entirely on mussles become veritable ghost towns after five in the afternoon, and our quest for food was looking rather futile as there was nary an open food store or cafe in sight. There was, happily, a small restauraunt open called The Mussel Pot. It serves mussels and is decorated with mussel shell art. There was little on the menu other than very expensive mussels, and we decided that we'd go for the cheapest thing available - a $10 bowl of chowder each and a $4 basket of plain bread (non-refillable).
The bowl of chowder was very big and the soup itself was absolutly delicious; it is worth trying, but I honestly just can't reconcile myself to the prices there. There was a nice big green mussel served as garnish, and the beastie inside the shell was so large that the internal organs were clearly identifiable. I've never stared at the mussel equivalent of a liver before, and I hope I never do again. Determined to keep an open mind about the mussel - the soup was, after all, very good and I've eaten this mussel's smaller cousins before - I yanked the creature from it's home, popped it in my mouth, chewed a couple of times, and swallowed before I could taste more of it. Glen thought it was delicious. I thought it was disgusting.
The remainder of our voyage to our WWOOF hosts was uneventful and mostly occurred in the dark, so I won't bore you with details. But there is a side note about The Mussel Pot. We had sent in a job application to them as they were in need of staff during the busy mussel festival and summer months of January to March. The restauraunt manager was there when we visited and we chatted briefly with her. A couple of days later, we recieved a response that they would like to hire the two of us for those months. After a great deal of investigation as to our accomodation options in the area, we declined their kind offer. We didn't want to be stuck in a hostel for over two months in one go, and any other feasable option was far too expensive to make working there worth our while. So we remain free, unemployed agents (aside from our WWOOF endeavours), and shall continue to look for jobettes that suit our requirements.
Havelock is a very small place and mostly caters to a summer tourist crowd in search of prime seafood and giant green mussels. Indeed, every year it hosts a mussel festival. Small towns focussed entirely on mussles become veritable ghost towns after five in the afternoon, and our quest for food was looking rather futile as there was nary an open food store or cafe in sight. There was, happily, a small restauraunt open called The Mussel Pot. It serves mussels and is decorated with mussel shell art. There was little on the menu other than very expensive mussels, and we decided that we'd go for the cheapest thing available - a $10 bowl of chowder each and a $4 basket of plain bread (non-refillable).
The bowl of chowder was very big and the soup itself was absolutly delicious; it is worth trying, but I honestly just can't reconcile myself to the prices there. There was a nice big green mussel served as garnish, and the beastie inside the shell was so large that the internal organs were clearly identifiable. I've never stared at the mussel equivalent of a liver before, and I hope I never do again. Determined to keep an open mind about the mussel - the soup was, after all, very good and I've eaten this mussel's smaller cousins before - I yanked the creature from it's home, popped it in my mouth, chewed a couple of times, and swallowed before I could taste more of it. Glen thought it was delicious. I thought it was disgusting.
The remainder of our voyage to our WWOOF hosts was uneventful and mostly occurred in the dark, so I won't bore you with details. But there is a side note about The Mussel Pot. We had sent in a job application to them as they were in need of staff during the busy mussel festival and summer months of January to March. The restauraunt manager was there when we visited and we chatted briefly with her. A couple of days later, we recieved a response that they would like to hire the two of us for those months. After a great deal of investigation as to our accomodation options in the area, we declined their kind offer. We didn't want to be stuck in a hostel for over two months in one go, and any other feasable option was far too expensive to make working there worth our while. So we remain free, unemployed agents (aside from our WWOOF endeavours), and shall continue to look for jobettes that suit our requirements.
Saturday, December 1, 2007
And the ship goes up, and the ship goes down, and the ship goes up...
Apologies to all those faithful readers who have been wondering were Glen and I have dissapeared to for the past couple of weeks. I shall pick up this missive where the last post left off, for our woes with the ferry are well worth mentioning.
After our one pleasant night at the Barnacles YHA hostel, we hoofed it for the Wellington ferry terminal to catch our 1:00 ferry to Picton on the South Island. Being but a few dozen kilometers from Wellington, we thought that our 10:15 departure would leave us plenty of time to fill Sparkleypoo's gas tank and grab a few snacks for the road. It would have been enough time, too, had it not been for the wrong turn Glen made into a Wellington suburb.
Wheeling our way through the suburb made us appreciate how very, very confusing the British-style traffic planning system is. With the clock creeping ever closer to our final reserved check-in time for the ferry - noon - we started panicking that we would lose our spot on the boat (if you have a reserved ticket and arrived late, your spot could potentially be given to a customer purchasing a last-minute ticke). I called the ferry company and asked them if they could make a note not to surrender our spot on the ferry as we were indeed on our way but would just be a few minutes late. They said it would be no problem, as the ferry itself was late and had not yet even docked. Relieved somewhat by this news, we found our way back to the motorway and continued on to Wellington.
The ferry dock was within sight when we hit the traffic jam. And what a jam it was! Traffic was moving at a snail's pace along the motorway for several kilometers, and we sat in frustrated futility, watching the clock tick past 12:15...12:30...12:45... Glen noticed that the ferry was still in the process of getting into the harbour as we were tied up in traffic, which was definitely some comfort. Apparently the very rough harbour waters was holding everyone up, not just us. Eventually we got past the bottleneck and rolled into the correct terminal at about ten minutes to one. At this point I was still convinced that we had quite literally missed the boat, and therefore forfeited our fare and tickets (no refunds for late-comers).
Normally we would have been far too late to board the ferry, however due to the weather conditions, the boat hadn't even yet unloaded it's previous load of cars and passengers. We got into the boarding line-up, handed over our ticket, and waited. Somewhere around 1:30, the ship was unloaded, we drove into the car bay, and abandoned the vehicle to find a place to hole up for the voyage.
Happily, we discovered a little reading-room type area that had electric jacks for laptops, so we settled in there and I pulled out my book* while Glen cracked open the laptop and our games. The reading room couches filled with other passengers shortly thereafter, and while the boat pulled away from the dock the shipwide announcements cheerfully proclaimed that it was going to be a "rough ride".
A pair of passengers who had taken this journey many, many times, looked around with surprised expressions and tremulously said "they've never said that before."
Being as I was the one who got seasick while asleep on the ferry from Tasmania to Melbourne, it would be safe to think that I would also be the one to get seasick on this significantly choppier journey. The boat heaved and rolled and the passengers heaved and rolled, and despite being somewhat alarmed at the first few rises and falls of the prow, I happily read my book and chatted with whoever was feeling up to chatting. One hour into the voyage, people were falling silent and were attempting to find some comfortable way of lying down and quelling their rising gorges. I was still feeling as right as rain.
Glen, however, was not. He stood up from his laptop nook, delicatly removed his headphones, and calmly made his way to the bathroom. I assumed that the Man with the Iron Gut was simply going to the bathroom for normal reasons. Ten minutes later, Glen not having reappeared, I decided to leave my book for the time being and play some computer games. As soon as I saw which game Glen had been playing, I knew what was up.
He had been playing Unreal Tournament.
For those who are familiar with this game, you will immediately understand the implications of playing it while on a boat that is pitching so badly that even the crew are having problems. For those who are unfamiliar with it, let me say that it is a first-person shooter with extremely fast-paced visual effects, lots of blinking lights and explosions, lots of movement, sound effects, and everything else that is bad to stare at when susceptable to motion sickness. I immediately understood the situation, turned that game off, settled in for a nice long round of the much slower-paced Baulder's Gate, Shadows of Amn, and left Glen to his misery in the men's loo.
He came back much later, looking awfully green and sickly. Once the cruise had ended and as we were disembarking, he reassured me that while he may have left half his guts in the toilet, the guy dry-heaving in the stall next to him was far worse off.
*Note: In case you are curious as to whether or not the slowest-reading librarian in the world had been using this opportunity to actually get some reading done, I am proud to state that I have. What's more, I've been exclusively reading fiction, which takes me much longer to get through than non-fiction. Some books have been long and some have been short, but so far I've completed Colleen McCullough's The First Man in Rome, two Terry Prachett books: Guards! Guards and The Last Continent, and am currently working on Jane Austin's Emma.
After our one pleasant night at the Barnacles YHA hostel, we hoofed it for the Wellington ferry terminal to catch our 1:00 ferry to Picton on the South Island. Being but a few dozen kilometers from Wellington, we thought that our 10:15 departure would leave us plenty of time to fill Sparkleypoo's gas tank and grab a few snacks for the road. It would have been enough time, too, had it not been for the wrong turn Glen made into a Wellington suburb.
Wheeling our way through the suburb made us appreciate how very, very confusing the British-style traffic planning system is. With the clock creeping ever closer to our final reserved check-in time for the ferry - noon - we started panicking that we would lose our spot on the boat (if you have a reserved ticket and arrived late, your spot could potentially be given to a customer purchasing a last-minute ticke). I called the ferry company and asked them if they could make a note not to surrender our spot on the ferry as we were indeed on our way but would just be a few minutes late. They said it would be no problem, as the ferry itself was late and had not yet even docked. Relieved somewhat by this news, we found our way back to the motorway and continued on to Wellington.
The ferry dock was within sight when we hit the traffic jam. And what a jam it was! Traffic was moving at a snail's pace along the motorway for several kilometers, and we sat in frustrated futility, watching the clock tick past 12:15...12:30...12:45... Glen noticed that the ferry was still in the process of getting into the harbour as we were tied up in traffic, which was definitely some comfort. Apparently the very rough harbour waters was holding everyone up, not just us. Eventually we got past the bottleneck and rolled into the correct terminal at about ten minutes to one. At this point I was still convinced that we had quite literally missed the boat, and therefore forfeited our fare and tickets (no refunds for late-comers).
Normally we would have been far too late to board the ferry, however due to the weather conditions, the boat hadn't even yet unloaded it's previous load of cars and passengers. We got into the boarding line-up, handed over our ticket, and waited. Somewhere around 1:30, the ship was unloaded, we drove into the car bay, and abandoned the vehicle to find a place to hole up for the voyage.
Happily, we discovered a little reading-room type area that had electric jacks for laptops, so we settled in there and I pulled out my book* while Glen cracked open the laptop and our games. The reading room couches filled with other passengers shortly thereafter, and while the boat pulled away from the dock the shipwide announcements cheerfully proclaimed that it was going to be a "rough ride".
A pair of passengers who had taken this journey many, many times, looked around with surprised expressions and tremulously said "they've never said that before."
Being as I was the one who got seasick while asleep on the ferry from Tasmania to Melbourne, it would be safe to think that I would also be the one to get seasick on this significantly choppier journey. The boat heaved and rolled and the passengers heaved and rolled, and despite being somewhat alarmed at the first few rises and falls of the prow, I happily read my book and chatted with whoever was feeling up to chatting. One hour into the voyage, people were falling silent and were attempting to find some comfortable way of lying down and quelling their rising gorges. I was still feeling as right as rain.
Glen, however, was not. He stood up from his laptop nook, delicatly removed his headphones, and calmly made his way to the bathroom. I assumed that the Man with the Iron Gut was simply going to the bathroom for normal reasons. Ten minutes later, Glen not having reappeared, I decided to leave my book for the time being and play some computer games. As soon as I saw which game Glen had been playing, I knew what was up.
He had been playing Unreal Tournament.
For those who are familiar with this game, you will immediately understand the implications of playing it while on a boat that is pitching so badly that even the crew are having problems. For those who are unfamiliar with it, let me say that it is a first-person shooter with extremely fast-paced visual effects, lots of blinking lights and explosions, lots of movement, sound effects, and everything else that is bad to stare at when susceptable to motion sickness. I immediately understood the situation, turned that game off, settled in for a nice long round of the much slower-paced Baulder's Gate, Shadows of Amn, and left Glen to his misery in the men's loo.
He came back much later, looking awfully green and sickly. Once the cruise had ended and as we were disembarking, he reassured me that while he may have left half his guts in the toilet, the guy dry-heaving in the stall next to him was far worse off.
*Note: In case you are curious as to whether or not the slowest-reading librarian in the world had been using this opportunity to actually get some reading done, I am proud to state that I have. What's more, I've been exclusively reading fiction, which takes me much longer to get through than non-fiction. Some books have been long and some have been short, but so far I've completed Colleen McCullough's The First Man in Rome, two Terry Prachett books: Guards! Guards and The Last Continent, and am currently working on Jane Austin's Emma.
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Wine Trail
After a quick drive to Napier, a lovely little town renowned for it’s amazing Art Deco architecture, we decided to stay there for a couple of nights and see if we could pick up some WWOOF work on our way to Christchurch.
For any New Zealand travellers in the audience, I would highly recommend the Napier Prison Backpacker’s Hostel. It’s a great place to spend a few nights; good clean facilities, very comfortable beds, and a whole lot of fun. Spending a night or two in the cells is pretty entertaining.
It only took a couple of phone calls for us to secure a WWOOF appointment at a really cute sounding place; we will be at a small hobby-type permaculture farm shepherded by a Swiss lady with a voice and accent that could immediately conjure boxes of Swiss chocolates wrapped with grosgrain ribbon. I’m quite intrigued by the presence of a hand-milked cow.
We left Napier a couple of days before our scheduled arrival at the WWOOF farm, as the farm is on the south island and it will take us at least a day’s travel to get across on the ferry. The Hawke’s Bay region is renowned for it’s wineries, and there were plenty of wineries along the Naiper-to-Wellington highway. We planned on stopping of at about eight or so wineries, but by the third winery I was completely hammered and Glen, despite diligently spitting out every mouthful of wine, was worried that if we visited any more cellars he was going to end up absorbing too much alcohol to continue driving. The first vineyard’s wine was nothing to write home about; pleasant but not particularly interesting. The second vineyard was quite a bit of fun; the woman conducting our wine tasting was a hoot, the wine was delicious, and the samples were generous. There were a couple of reds that I would have liked to purchase, but they were very costly and well outside our budget. At the third vineyard we came across a really fantastic dessert wine – the first dessert wine I’ve actually enjoyed – and a lovely Shiraz, so we bought a bottle of each.
Wine purchased and safely stowed, we stopped for lunch at a highway eatery known as The Chook and the Filly. If you are ever driving the South Highway 50, stop by this place and have a meal. Actually, if you are planning on driving the SH2, change your plans and take the SH50 instead just so you can stop at this place. The food is mouth-watering, the prices are reasonable, and the proprietor is a great man to talk to about the wines you have (or are about to) sample.
The remainder of the drive was quite uneventful, and we spent the night in Paraparaumu at the Barnacles Seaside Inn YHA hostel. This is another place that I will add to my list of recommended accommodations. It is very, very homey and comfortable. The kitchen is a little small, but the delightful dining room/TV room more than makes up for it, and it meets my cleanliness standards.
For any New Zealand travellers in the audience, I would highly recommend the Napier Prison Backpacker’s Hostel. It’s a great place to spend a few nights; good clean facilities, very comfortable beds, and a whole lot of fun. Spending a night or two in the cells is pretty entertaining.
It only took a couple of phone calls for us to secure a WWOOF appointment at a really cute sounding place; we will be at a small hobby-type permaculture farm shepherded by a Swiss lady with a voice and accent that could immediately conjure boxes of Swiss chocolates wrapped with grosgrain ribbon. I’m quite intrigued by the presence of a hand-milked cow.
We left Napier a couple of days before our scheduled arrival at the WWOOF farm, as the farm is on the south island and it will take us at least a day’s travel to get across on the ferry. The Hawke’s Bay region is renowned for it’s wineries, and there were plenty of wineries along the Naiper-to-Wellington highway. We planned on stopping of at about eight or so wineries, but by the third winery I was completely hammered and Glen, despite diligently spitting out every mouthful of wine, was worried that if we visited any more cellars he was going to end up absorbing too much alcohol to continue driving. The first vineyard’s wine was nothing to write home about; pleasant but not particularly interesting. The second vineyard was quite a bit of fun; the woman conducting our wine tasting was a hoot, the wine was delicious, and the samples were generous. There were a couple of reds that I would have liked to purchase, but they were very costly and well outside our budget. At the third vineyard we came across a really fantastic dessert wine – the first dessert wine I’ve actually enjoyed – and a lovely Shiraz, so we bought a bottle of each.
Wine purchased and safely stowed, we stopped for lunch at a highway eatery known as The Chook and the Filly. If you are ever driving the South Highway 50, stop by this place and have a meal. Actually, if you are planning on driving the SH2, change your plans and take the SH50 instead just so you can stop at this place. The food is mouth-watering, the prices are reasonable, and the proprietor is a great man to talk to about the wines you have (or are about to) sample.
The remainder of the drive was quite uneventful, and we spent the night in Paraparaumu at the Barnacles Seaside Inn YHA hostel. This is another place that I will add to my list of recommended accommodations. It is very, very homey and comfortable. The kitchen is a little small, but the delightful dining room/TV room more than makes up for it, and it meets my cleanliness standards.
Abort! Abort!
After forking out for our muddy yet refined adventure at Hell’s Gate, Glen and I were feeling the effects of living on a fixed budget and a high cost of living for two months. Taking advantage of the unsecured wireless internet connection we discovered in our motel room, we scoured the New Zealand seasonal backpacker’s work websites for some temporary employment.
We weren’t expecting much in the way of results from this job hunt, as we would only be available to work for one week at most. Nevertheless, one of the employers responded. He had advertised needing workers for squash weeding, and if we could make our way to Hastings, in the scenic and very fertile Hawkes Bay area, he would have work and accommodation for us.
We drove down on a Sunday. From the multiple phone conversations Glen had with him, we believed we would start work on Monday. Our contact would meet us in Hastings and escort us to the farm, where we would have beds at the modest price of $80 each for one week’s stay. Upon arriving at the arranged meeting point, we called our contact and he said he would be there in ten minutes. One hour and twenty minutes later he arrived, hardly acknowledged either of us, said absolutely nothing in regards to his extreme lateness, and led us on a ten minute drive to the farm and hour housing.
To say that the place was a roach motel would be putting it politely. I’m well aware that there are cockroaches in New Zealand, as there are in 99.7% of the world, but to have so many crawling around in such a filthy excuse of a bunkhouse was disgusting. I personally prefer my food cupboards to be relatively cockroach free, wheras these roaches used the food pantry as a thoroughfare. The beds were stained and boasted crusty patches on the mattress coverings, the garbage in the kitchen was completely infested with ants, and the bathroom had no toilet paper.
Our contact said that there wouldn’t be any work available for us on Monday (which was supposed to be our starting date). There would probably be no work for us on Tuesday either. We might be starting on Wednesday, at the earliest, but he explained that there were some German backpackers waiting for work and they would be given priority as they have staying there for several days on the farm. We might only have two or three days work a week, our fine fellow explained days, maybe four days at the most. He promised to call us with more information the following morning, and would drop off a key to the accommodations.
After we resigned ourselves to the general grottiness of the place, we hauled our bags in and wandered around the multi-winged backpacker’s complex. And who did we come across in one of the wings? One of the travellers we had been hanging out with at the Auckland hostel! He had been at the farm for a week already, had only worked a couple of days, and was spending most of his time twiddling his thumbs waiting for more work. A large number of the other people staying there were in a similar situation. Some of them did have work, but the impression we were given was that working days were few and far between. This bleak outlook, combined with the cagey, vague information given to us by our contact, the disgusting accommodation, and the sheer number of people who would be giving priority for work over us, led us to the conclusion that there was no work to be had, and that it would be a waste of time and money to stay.
So we did a runner! Early the following afternoon, after neither seeing or hearing from our contact, we flung our backpacks back into the car and took off before anyone could ask us to pay rent for our one night’s stay. So long dodgy work contractor! So long roach-filled backpacker’s shack! So long prospectless days of thumb-twiddling!
POOF! Gone with ninja-like stealth!
We weren’t expecting much in the way of results from this job hunt, as we would only be available to work for one week at most. Nevertheless, one of the employers responded. He had advertised needing workers for squash weeding, and if we could make our way to Hastings, in the scenic and very fertile Hawkes Bay area, he would have work and accommodation for us.
We drove down on a Sunday. From the multiple phone conversations Glen had with him, we believed we would start work on Monday. Our contact would meet us in Hastings and escort us to the farm, where we would have beds at the modest price of $80 each for one week’s stay. Upon arriving at the arranged meeting point, we called our contact and he said he would be there in ten minutes. One hour and twenty minutes later he arrived, hardly acknowledged either of us, said absolutely nothing in regards to his extreme lateness, and led us on a ten minute drive to the farm and hour housing.
To say that the place was a roach motel would be putting it politely. I’m well aware that there are cockroaches in New Zealand, as there are in 99.7% of the world, but to have so many crawling around in such a filthy excuse of a bunkhouse was disgusting. I personally prefer my food cupboards to be relatively cockroach free, wheras these roaches used the food pantry as a thoroughfare. The beds were stained and boasted crusty patches on the mattress coverings, the garbage in the kitchen was completely infested with ants, and the bathroom had no toilet paper.
Our contact said that there wouldn’t be any work available for us on Monday (which was supposed to be our starting date). There would probably be no work for us on Tuesday either. We might be starting on Wednesday, at the earliest, but he explained that there were some German backpackers waiting for work and they would be given priority as they have staying there for several days on the farm. We might only have two or three days work a week, our fine fellow explained days, maybe four days at the most. He promised to call us with more information the following morning, and would drop off a key to the accommodations.
After we resigned ourselves to the general grottiness of the place, we hauled our bags in and wandered around the multi-winged backpacker’s complex. And who did we come across in one of the wings? One of the travellers we had been hanging out with at the Auckland hostel! He had been at the farm for a week already, had only worked a couple of days, and was spending most of his time twiddling his thumbs waiting for more work. A large number of the other people staying there were in a similar situation. Some of them did have work, but the impression we were given was that working days were few and far between. This bleak outlook, combined with the cagey, vague information given to us by our contact, the disgusting accommodation, and the sheer number of people who would be giving priority for work over us, led us to the conclusion that there was no work to be had, and that it would be a waste of time and money to stay.
So we did a runner! Early the following afternoon, after neither seeing or hearing from our contact, we flung our backpacks back into the car and took off before anyone could ask us to pay rent for our one night’s stay. So long dodgy work contractor! So long roach-filled backpacker’s shack! So long prospectless days of thumb-twiddling!
POOF! Gone with ninja-like stealth!
A Stinking, Scalding Tub Full of Goodness
Rotorua is well known for its geothermal wonders. The entire town is built around these natural hot springs and geysers, and holy smackers do the locals ever make good use of it. Every place of accommodation lists natural mineral pools among their amenities, and despite the purveying reek of sulphur that blankets most of the town, the town is one of New Zealand’s top tourist destinations.
Our own motel had a mineral pool, of course, which we decided to try out one evening. I’m not entirely certain if my intestines were completely poached by the end of our brief dip, the arteries in my legs certainly were. Glen managed to submerge himself up to his neck in the scalding water, while I only managed to get in up to my waist. It took us about ten minutes of ginger, inch-by-painful-inch entry to get to that point. I believe that the water was around 43 degrees Celsius, and our skin was a blotchy lobster-red for a good hour after we got out.
A much more gentle experience was had at the Wai Ora Spa at the Hell’s Gate Geothermal Reserve. We were signed up for a combo package, which included our entry fee to the geothermal reserve park, a private mud bath, and a soak in the spa’s sulphur pools. I would like to add that the park has a complimentary shuttle bus for visitors. It might be wonderful to have our own car again, but it is delightful to have someone else do the driving and thinking for us.
The walk was defiantly nifty; despite having seen natural hot spring sources before, the violence with which the mud and water bubbles up from this area is surprising. The smell is sometimes eye-wateringly pungent, but after a while one’s nose deadens somewhat at it becomes more bearable. All cliches aside, 'alien' would be the best way to describe the landscape, as it is a blasted, pitted place marked with pools of black mud that says "gloop gloop" and shockingly yellow sulphur crystal formations.
The spa was delightful. The properties of the hot springs create marvelously silky mud that is excellent for one’s pores. Both the spa’s mud and sulphur baths are sourced directly from the geothermal reserve, so it’s a thoroughly local indulgence. All snooty expounding upon the curative properties of the mud aside, it was darn fun to wallow in it and get completely filthy.
After we rinsed off (in a freezing cold shower, I might add: the water came straight out of a garden hose set-up and promoted severe testicular retraction) we went to the sulphur baths. The water was smelly but extremely soft. Happily, the temperature of those baths weren’t nearly as hot as the mineral pool at our hotel, so we were able to get in up to our necks quite quickly. I’ve begun to wonder, however, if the pools were designed to extract human energy and use it to power the facility; we were completely drained after getting out of the sulphur pools. A word to the wise traveller: don’t make any plans for the evening following a day at Hell’s Gate/Wai Ora. You will be useless for any activity apart from blobbing in front of the television and occasionally drooling.
Our own motel had a mineral pool, of course, which we decided to try out one evening. I’m not entirely certain if my intestines were completely poached by the end of our brief dip, the arteries in my legs certainly were. Glen managed to submerge himself up to his neck in the scalding water, while I only managed to get in up to my waist. It took us about ten minutes of ginger, inch-by-painful-inch entry to get to that point. I believe that the water was around 43 degrees Celsius, and our skin was a blotchy lobster-red for a good hour after we got out.
A much more gentle experience was had at the Wai Ora Spa at the Hell’s Gate Geothermal Reserve. We were signed up for a combo package, which included our entry fee to the geothermal reserve park, a private mud bath, and a soak in the spa’s sulphur pools. I would like to add that the park has a complimentary shuttle bus for visitors. It might be wonderful to have our own car again, but it is delightful to have someone else do the driving and thinking for us.
The walk was defiantly nifty; despite having seen natural hot spring sources before, the violence with which the mud and water bubbles up from this area is surprising. The smell is sometimes eye-wateringly pungent, but after a while one’s nose deadens somewhat at it becomes more bearable. All cliches aside, 'alien' would be the best way to describe the landscape, as it is a blasted, pitted place marked with pools of black mud that says "gloop gloop" and shockingly yellow sulphur crystal formations.
The spa was delightful. The properties of the hot springs create marvelously silky mud that is excellent for one’s pores. Both the spa’s mud and sulphur baths are sourced directly from the geothermal reserve, so it’s a thoroughly local indulgence. All snooty expounding upon the curative properties of the mud aside, it was darn fun to wallow in it and get completely filthy.
After we rinsed off (in a freezing cold shower, I might add: the water came straight out of a garden hose set-up and promoted severe testicular retraction) we went to the sulphur baths. The water was smelly but extremely soft. Happily, the temperature of those baths weren’t nearly as hot as the mineral pool at our hotel, so we were able to get in up to our necks quite quickly. I’ve begun to wonder, however, if the pools were designed to extract human energy and use it to power the facility; we were completely drained after getting out of the sulphur pools. A word to the wise traveller: don’t make any plans for the evening following a day at Hell’s Gate/Wai Ora. You will be useless for any activity apart from blobbing in front of the television and occasionally drooling.
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Sparkleypoo the Magic Wagon
We are now in Rotorua. How did we get to Rotorua?
IN OUR CAR.
Yep, we’ve bought ourselves a higher class of crap-can than is normally iconic of self-driving backpackers. It is a 1995 Subaru Legacy station wagon, automatic, with a sunroof and a moonroof, and a very temperamental air conditioning control system.* The price was cheap (you've got to love the promise of a quick cash sale for negotiating a lower purchase price), the timing was perfect, and the vehicle is in good condition. It contains a great deal of concrete chips and dust, as the previous owner was a construction worker and put his work stuff in it. It is definitely in need of a vacuuming, which will happen once we find a self-serve car vacuum place. There is room for us to bed down in the back and plenty of space for hauling our gear. We have named it Sparkleypoo.
We left Auckland on the very same day that we purchased the car, and headed to Rotorua to enjoy the sinus-cleansing sulphuric smells and the fantastic natural wonders of the geothermal hot-spots. We will be taking in the natural beauties, the natural geysers and hot water boiling up from the ground, and the mud baths. Thanks to a wonderfully budget-friendly choice of motels, we have our own suite, shower, and kitchen for three days at the same rate as a double room in a hostel would cost us. It is a fat time, a time of plenty (despite the initial cost of getting the car, which will quickly pay for itself due to the cost of bus fares), a time of personal space and self-determined mobility.
For the record, driving around in Aukland's central downtown area is terrifying. I was behind the wheel on the first two very short excursions, and as it was my first time driving on the left in a left-oriented car, it involved a great deal of cursing. All cursing was done at the top of my lungs. Needless to say, Glen's been doing the driving ever since.
In other news, Glen’s hair is now red:
*Note: The air conditioning works just fine, it is just that it takes some very persistent prodding to get the buttons to recognize your commands when you first turn it on. The easiest way to deal with it is to simply not turn it off, but to adjust the fan, thermostat, and intake until it maintains a comfortable cabin temperature.
IN OUR CAR.
Yep, we’ve bought ourselves a higher class of crap-can than is normally iconic of self-driving backpackers. It is a 1995 Subaru Legacy station wagon, automatic, with a sunroof and a moonroof, and a very temperamental air conditioning control system.* The price was cheap (you've got to love the promise of a quick cash sale for negotiating a lower purchase price), the timing was perfect, and the vehicle is in good condition. It contains a great deal of concrete chips and dust, as the previous owner was a construction worker and put his work stuff in it. It is definitely in need of a vacuuming, which will happen once we find a self-serve car vacuum place. There is room for us to bed down in the back and plenty of space for hauling our gear. We have named it Sparkleypoo.
We left Auckland on the very same day that we purchased the car, and headed to Rotorua to enjoy the sinus-cleansing sulphuric smells and the fantastic natural wonders of the geothermal hot-spots. We will be taking in the natural beauties, the natural geysers and hot water boiling up from the ground, and the mud baths. Thanks to a wonderfully budget-friendly choice of motels, we have our own suite, shower, and kitchen for three days at the same rate as a double room in a hostel would cost us. It is a fat time, a time of plenty (despite the initial cost of getting the car, which will quickly pay for itself due to the cost of bus fares), a time of personal space and self-determined mobility.
For the record, driving around in Aukland's central downtown area is terrifying. I was behind the wheel on the first two very short excursions, and as it was my first time driving on the left in a left-oriented car, it involved a great deal of cursing. All cursing was done at the top of my lungs. Needless to say, Glen's been doing the driving ever since.
In other news, Glen’s hair is now red:
*Note: The air conditioning works just fine, it is just that it takes some very persistent prodding to get the buttons to recognize your commands when you first turn it on. The easiest way to deal with it is to simply not turn it off, but to adjust the fan, thermostat, and intake until it maintains a comfortable cabin temperature.
Thursday, November 8, 2007
Between a Rock and a Whorehouse
Thanks to the salesmanship efforts of a backpacker’s travel agent at the Peterpan’s Adventure Travel shop and against the express recommendations of a dear friend, Glen and I booked our first few nights in Auckland at the Nomads Fat Camel hostel. We were lured by the enthusiasm of the backpacker agent, the promise of free meals every evening*, the availability of a double room, and the hostel’s habit of refunding traveller’s their airport shuttle transfer fee (which ended up being about $30 for the two of us).
The room was reasonably clean and the bed comfortable. The hostel itself is divided into multiple floors, two communal areas on each floor, and each communal area divided into dorms or twin/double rooms. There is an interesting apartment-style communal set up in every room cluster, one kitchen for every 20 or so hostellers, a 24 hour manned reception desk, travel agent, and a bar on the main floor.
And for the frisky, there are two massage parlours and three strip clubs flanking the hostel walls!
Right next door to the hostel is Cleopatra’s (yep, that's the entrance awning to the Nomads Fat Camel hostel in the picture).
Just in case you were mistaken as to the nature of the establishment, Cleopatra’s has kindly placed a sign advertising their services in the front-entrance stairwell:
If Cleopatra’s isn’t exactly what you are looking for and you wanted something with slightly less class, you can go one door over and visit Lipstix. Lipstix has a seedier, naughtier flare than Cleopatra’s. They can’t afford a fancy printed sign in their entrance, so they opted instead for a more budget-friendly chalkboard.
Should you be wanting something a little more – ahem - energetic, just walk to the other side of the hostel. On the other side of the hostel, right beside the hostel’s bar, is The Mermaid Bar (yes, they actually have a website), where there are "enchanting mermaids performing for you nightly."
Once you have piqued your appetite at The Mermaid Bar, you can head next door to The Moon Gentleman’s Bar. On a grocery shopping expedition during our first night in Auckland, we passed by The Moon and found that some kindly nurse had positioned herself right in front of the door. I believe that she was present to help out with any men who may have been experiencing a spike in their blood pressures. I’m surprised that no one offered her a coat, however, as she must have been very chilly in that little uniform. She needed a larger size, as she couldn’t even zip her top fully closed!
After sating one’s thirst for scantily clad nurses at The Moon, you may stagger next door again for our final stop, The H.Q. Club Gentleman’s Retreat. At this point, you should be relatively exhausted from your night on the town, so the upper-class genteelness implied by the exquisite signage and the fact that this is a "gentleman’s retreat" should be something of a comfort.
Truthfully, it seemed that the people coming out of the strip clubs and massage parlours were far less rowdy than the people spilling out of the Fat Camel’s bar. As one of the hostel staff put it, "having whorehouses for neighbours just means that there's that much more security people around." Phew! And I thought that we might be dealing with something serious!
*Note: The free "food" was atrocious. When I say that it was nearly inedible, I mean it; one evening I was actually unable to chew the beef. The chewed-up piece was indistinguishable from the non-chewed pieces. The meals were, in general, drowning in salt and grease containing meat of such low grade that it would gag a goat. Fortunately we were able to get our free portion "supersized" for free, because Peterpans has a deal that you can get your food at the Fat Camel upsized for free upon presentation of the yellow rubber Peterpans bracelet - otherwise it would cost $4. While I would have shrunk away in horror at the idea of even larger portions of that dodgy food, upsizing the meal usually meant that you got some vegetables as a side dish. We ate it because it was free, but I'm still not entirely certain if the indigestion and cramping was worth it.
The room was reasonably clean and the bed comfortable. The hostel itself is divided into multiple floors, two communal areas on each floor, and each communal area divided into dorms or twin/double rooms. There is an interesting apartment-style communal set up in every room cluster, one kitchen for every 20 or so hostellers, a 24 hour manned reception desk, travel agent, and a bar on the main floor.
And for the frisky, there are two massage parlours and three strip clubs flanking the hostel walls!
Right next door to the hostel is Cleopatra’s (yep, that's the entrance awning to the Nomads Fat Camel hostel in the picture).
Just in case you were mistaken as to the nature of the establishment, Cleopatra’s has kindly placed a sign advertising their services in the front-entrance stairwell:
If Cleopatra’s isn’t exactly what you are looking for and you wanted something with slightly less class, you can go one door over and visit Lipstix. Lipstix has a seedier, naughtier flare than Cleopatra’s. They can’t afford a fancy printed sign in their entrance, so they opted instead for a more budget-friendly chalkboard.
Should you be wanting something a little more – ahem - energetic, just walk to the other side of the hostel. On the other side of the hostel, right beside the hostel’s bar, is The Mermaid Bar (yes, they actually have a website), where there are "enchanting mermaids performing for you nightly."
Once you have piqued your appetite at The Mermaid Bar, you can head next door to The Moon Gentleman’s Bar. On a grocery shopping expedition during our first night in Auckland, we passed by The Moon and found that some kindly nurse had positioned herself right in front of the door. I believe that she was present to help out with any men who may have been experiencing a spike in their blood pressures. I’m surprised that no one offered her a coat, however, as she must have been very chilly in that little uniform. She needed a larger size, as she couldn’t even zip her top fully closed!
After sating one’s thirst for scantily clad nurses at The Moon, you may stagger next door again for our final stop, The H.Q. Club Gentleman’s Retreat. At this point, you should be relatively exhausted from your night on the town, so the upper-class genteelness implied by the exquisite signage and the fact that this is a "gentleman’s retreat" should be something of a comfort.
Truthfully, it seemed that the people coming out of the strip clubs and massage parlours were far less rowdy than the people spilling out of the Fat Camel’s bar. As one of the hostel staff put it, "having whorehouses for neighbours just means that there's that much more security people around." Phew! And I thought that we might be dealing with something serious!
*Note: The free "food" was atrocious. When I say that it was nearly inedible, I mean it; one evening I was actually unable to chew the beef. The chewed-up piece was indistinguishable from the non-chewed pieces. The meals were, in general, drowning in salt and grease containing meat of such low grade that it would gag a goat. Fortunately we were able to get our free portion "supersized" for free, because Peterpans has a deal that you can get your food at the Fat Camel upsized for free upon presentation of the yellow rubber Peterpans bracelet - otherwise it would cost $4. While I would have shrunk away in horror at the idea of even larger portions of that dodgy food, upsizing the meal usually meant that you got some vegetables as a side dish. We ate it because it was free, but I'm still not entirely certain if the indigestion and cramping was worth it.
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Welcome to New Zealand! Go See Canada!
One short flight and in-flight screening of Live Free of Die Hard brought Glen and I to Auckland, New Zealand. Guess what we found when we got through customs!
Mounties! Doesn’t everyone find representatives from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police when they get off the plane in New Zealand?
Granted, their hats were wrong and the uniforms weren’t exactly regulation issue, but they were unmistakably Mounties. Apparently Air New Zealand was running a promotional campaign for their new direct-to-Canada flights, which were being launched that very day. Do you think we could get hired by Air New Zealand to pose as Canadians?
Mounties! Doesn’t everyone find representatives from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police when they get off the plane in New Zealand?
Granted, their hats were wrong and the uniforms weren’t exactly regulation issue, but they were unmistakably Mounties. Apparently Air New Zealand was running a promotional campaign for their new direct-to-Canada flights, which were being launched that very day. Do you think we could get hired by Air New Zealand to pose as Canadians?
We Found Orientalism. It Threw Up All Over a Restaurant.
One final note before leaving Brisbane: we went out for a nice light dinner at a restaurant, and chose Ahmet’s, a Turkish-themed joint on the South Bank. This was the restaurant with belly dancing on Friday and Saturday nights. There would be no performance that night, but we thought it looked like a fun place to have a bite anyway.
It was…entertaining, to be sure. The service was terrible, we nearly had to trip up our waitress to get her to even look at us. Glen had a beer, while I ordered their "Turkish Apple Tea". It sounded nice. It smelled nice. It tasted nice. It wasn’t tea. All it consisted of was heated apple juice. It was tasty, but one would think that to have something branded as “Turkish Apple Tea” as opposed to “Hot Apple Juice”, there would be something, oh, special about it. Maybe the juice could be heated with a couple of cinnamon sticks simmering in it. Just a thought.
The food was good, albeit a little slow. The waitress forgot about our dessert, but that didn’t make the baklava any less delicious.
The décor was – ah – Turkesque. Orientalism at it’s finest and boldest was splashed everywhere. Jewel-toned sheer fabrics were draped all over the ceiling, every inch of furniture was upholstered in some fantastically clashing pattern, and there were bad fresco-style murals all over the walls. Here is a little visual tour (the photos are a little dark):
This was our table. With food. And upholstery.
This is the mural beside the table.
The mural worried me. The painted women were watching our every move.
Here is one view of the restaurant.
Here is another view of the restaurant. Behold the magnificence of the ceiling drapery!
And finally: a turban shelf, for all your turban needs!
I can only marvel at the bipedal weaving skills of the dancers who perform there on the weekend. Those tables were mashed together very, very closely. Besides, the orientalism in that place is so thick I’m amazed the diners don’t get choked by the faux gold threaded drapery.
It was…entertaining, to be sure. The service was terrible, we nearly had to trip up our waitress to get her to even look at us. Glen had a beer, while I ordered their "Turkish Apple Tea". It sounded nice. It smelled nice. It tasted nice. It wasn’t tea. All it consisted of was heated apple juice. It was tasty, but one would think that to have something branded as “Turkish Apple Tea” as opposed to “Hot Apple Juice”, there would be something, oh, special about it. Maybe the juice could be heated with a couple of cinnamon sticks simmering in it. Just a thought.
The food was good, albeit a little slow. The waitress forgot about our dessert, but that didn’t make the baklava any less delicious.
The décor was – ah – Turkesque. Orientalism at it’s finest and boldest was splashed everywhere. Jewel-toned sheer fabrics were draped all over the ceiling, every inch of furniture was upholstered in some fantastically clashing pattern, and there were bad fresco-style murals all over the walls. Here is a little visual tour (the photos are a little dark):
This was our table. With food. And upholstery.
This is the mural beside the table.
The mural worried me. The painted women were watching our every move.
Here is one view of the restaurant.
Here is another view of the restaurant. Behold the magnificence of the ceiling drapery!
And finally: a turban shelf, for all your turban needs!
I can only marvel at the bipedal weaving skills of the dancers who perform there on the weekend. Those tables were mashed together very, very closely. Besides, the orientalism in that place is so thick I’m amazed the diners don’t get choked by the faux gold threaded drapery.
Thursday, November 1, 2007
In the Lap of Luxury
Ah! The joys of a private shower! Ah! The splendour of personal space! What could possibly cause these paroxysms of joy? Why, dear reader, Glen and I have temporarily cast aside the communal living arrangements of hostel life and indulged in the rental of a more upscale place.
We decided that our last two nights in Australia would be spent in a nice hotel. As we need to catch the train to the airport at 6:30 on the morning of November 2nd, we wanted a hotel that was in easy walking distance of the CBD main train station and transit centre. After much hunting around for a hotel and consulting the tourist information booth in one of the major outdoor malls in the Brisbane CBD, we landed upon Abbey Apartments, a hotel/apartment building featuring completely self-contained apartments geared to business travellers. The location couldn’t be better – it is literally across the street from the train station, which will allow us to roll out of bed and stumble to our airport train with minimum time and fuss. The rate was very reasonable – a heck of a lot better than the Holiday Inn hotel that is attached to the train station. And really, I prefer the apartment setting. The building still has a pool, hot tub, and sauna, but now we have the niceties of single-bedroom apartment sized space, and a full kitchen. We were able to simply move all our groceries right into the apartment fridge, and don’t need to blow our budget and guts eating all meals at restaurants for two days. To add delight upon delight, this apartment has in-suite laundry washers and dryers! I shrieked with happiness when I asked the receptionist how much the coin laundry cost and she told me that we would have our own laundry facilities and washing powder in the room. I’ve never been so excited to do the laundry, but I suppose that is what you get after nearly two months of hostels.
We checked in as early as possible – in case you are curious, it was at 10:05 am, precisely ten minutes after we checked out of the YHA hostel (which is only two blocks north of the apartment building). Basking in the glorious privacy of our little suite, Glen and I started the day with some lazing about, computer games, and cable television at a moderate volume. After a while, we wandered down to the CBD outdoor mall, went souvenir hunting without much luck, and purchased groceries for lunch. We came back to the apartment for a leisurely late lunch (how’s that for alliteration?) of kangaroo steak, pasta, peas, and Aussie shiraz. The steak was to die for, I sincerely wish we had picked up kangaroo steak earlier into our holiday and ate more of it. We went for a soak in the hot tub, made a brief evening excursion to find some Hallowe’en bar action. Finding no action of interest – Hallowe’en here is not a big event, so the party was basically just louder-than-normal music and a few guys taking the opportunity to cross-dress – we went back to the hotel to eat salad, bake cookies, and drink Australian wine.
The wine in question is well matched to supermarket just-add-egg-and-butter cookie mix. At this moment we are finally slugging back the strawberry wine we purchased in Tasmania. It smells like strawberry jam and has a liqueur like taste to it. It goes down very, very smoothly and I could easily see a gaggle of women getting hammered off it at a hen party. It is delicious and extremely sweet. I honestly didn’t expect it to be this good! You can’t drink a lot of it at once, as it does get rather cloying, but it is unmistakably strawberries and I’m quite enjoying it. There is also some free entertainment occurring out on the street below our apartment balcony. There is some sort of altercation out by the train station, with a few young fellows running around and train station guards shooing them away. The Paddy Wagon just drove by, and the guard directed the cops to where they could pick up the young rowdies. The Hallowe’en parties at nearby bars must be ending, as there are a few drunks weaving their way past our building. It appears that most of them are drifting up to hostel row, which is not surprising.
As you can tell, we are more than enjoying our purchased moments of privacy; we are positively basking in them! And we have another full day of privacy basking, a nice trip to the art gallery and museum in the early afternoon, and an evening at whatever South Bank restaurant strikes our fancy for our last meal in Australia. Then it shall be off, off to New Zealand!
See you there!
We decided that our last two nights in Australia would be spent in a nice hotel. As we need to catch the train to the airport at 6:30 on the morning of November 2nd, we wanted a hotel that was in easy walking distance of the CBD main train station and transit centre. After much hunting around for a hotel and consulting the tourist information booth in one of the major outdoor malls in the Brisbane CBD, we landed upon Abbey Apartments, a hotel/apartment building featuring completely self-contained apartments geared to business travellers. The location couldn’t be better – it is literally across the street from the train station, which will allow us to roll out of bed and stumble to our airport train with minimum time and fuss. The rate was very reasonable – a heck of a lot better than the Holiday Inn hotel that is attached to the train station. And really, I prefer the apartment setting. The building still has a pool, hot tub, and sauna, but now we have the niceties of single-bedroom apartment sized space, and a full kitchen. We were able to simply move all our groceries right into the apartment fridge, and don’t need to blow our budget and guts eating all meals at restaurants for two days. To add delight upon delight, this apartment has in-suite laundry washers and dryers! I shrieked with happiness when I asked the receptionist how much the coin laundry cost and she told me that we would have our own laundry facilities and washing powder in the room. I’ve never been so excited to do the laundry, but I suppose that is what you get after nearly two months of hostels.
We checked in as early as possible – in case you are curious, it was at 10:05 am, precisely ten minutes after we checked out of the YHA hostel (which is only two blocks north of the apartment building). Basking in the glorious privacy of our little suite, Glen and I started the day with some lazing about, computer games, and cable television at a moderate volume. After a while, we wandered down to the CBD outdoor mall, went souvenir hunting without much luck, and purchased groceries for lunch. We came back to the apartment for a leisurely late lunch (how’s that for alliteration?) of kangaroo steak, pasta, peas, and Aussie shiraz. The steak was to die for, I sincerely wish we had picked up kangaroo steak earlier into our holiday and ate more of it. We went for a soak in the hot tub, made a brief evening excursion to find some Hallowe’en bar action. Finding no action of interest – Hallowe’en here is not a big event, so the party was basically just louder-than-normal music and a few guys taking the opportunity to cross-dress – we went back to the hotel to eat salad, bake cookies, and drink Australian wine.
The wine in question is well matched to supermarket just-add-egg-and-butter cookie mix. At this moment we are finally slugging back the strawberry wine we purchased in Tasmania. It smells like strawberry jam and has a liqueur like taste to it. It goes down very, very smoothly and I could easily see a gaggle of women getting hammered off it at a hen party. It is delicious and extremely sweet. I honestly didn’t expect it to be this good! You can’t drink a lot of it at once, as it does get rather cloying, but it is unmistakably strawberries and I’m quite enjoying it. There is also some free entertainment occurring out on the street below our apartment balcony. There is some sort of altercation out by the train station, with a few young fellows running around and train station guards shooing them away. The Paddy Wagon just drove by, and the guard directed the cops to where they could pick up the young rowdies. The Hallowe’en parties at nearby bars must be ending, as there are a few drunks weaving their way past our building. It appears that most of them are drifting up to hostel row, which is not surprising.
As you can tell, we are more than enjoying our purchased moments of privacy; we are positively basking in them! And we have another full day of privacy basking, a nice trip to the art gallery and museum in the early afternoon, and an evening at whatever South Bank restaurant strikes our fancy for our last meal in Australia. Then it shall be off, off to New Zealand!
See you there!
Bob Dole Wants His Peanut Butter!
We’ve been back in Brisbane at the trusty Brisbane YHA hostel for all of one night, and Neil has made another appearance! This time the asshole stole our jars of peanut butter AND jam. They were in a labeled cubby shelf! The jars themselves were tagged with our names! He again had to go looking through all our other food to find those jars! I was going to make peanut butter and jam sandwiches for our afternoon trek, but that is now out of the question.
FURTHERMORE, this time Neil was not satisfied with nicking food from just one place. This time Neil has raided the communal food shelves in addition to taking our food! He made off with a nearly new bag of sultana raisins (it was on the communal food shelf when Glen and I arrived, and we opened it and used a cupful in our oatmeal), a tub of butter, and a bottle of pancake syrup. Clearly he is on a condiments rampage!
Conclusion: hostellers are jerks. Also, Neil is stalking us.
FURTHERMORE, this time Neil was not satisfied with nicking food from just one place. This time Neil has raided the communal food shelves in addition to taking our food! He made off with a nearly new bag of sultana raisins (it was on the communal food shelf when Glen and I arrived, and we opened it and used a cupful in our oatmeal), a tub of butter, and a bottle of pancake syrup. Clearly he is on a condiments rampage!
Conclusion: hostellers are jerks. Also, Neil is stalking us.
More beaches, more surfers, more shopping
That is essentially what Gold Coast is. After our break-from-noise in Murwullimba, we went about half an hour north to Coolangatta. The YHA hostel there promised free breakfast, and we are not ones to turn down free food, so there we went.
In addition to the free breakfast, the other advantage of Coolangatta is that the city runs into Tweeds Heads, and Surfer’s Paradise, and every other little party suburb that populates the Gold Coast. It is beach after beach after beach after beach. Glen and I aren’t exactly interested in beaches. There are also markets after markets after markets. Glen and I do like markets quite a bit.
The first market we hit was the Surfer’s Paradise night market. It involved a half-hour ride on their excellent public transportation to get from Coolangatta to Surfer’s Paradise, and it was worth the trip. What little we saw of the beach lived up to its name – the waves looked like a surfer’s dream come true. The night market had plenty of random artisan tents, and some of the items were quite lovely:
After we strolled up and down the market purchasing absolutely nothing at all (as usual – although I still think we should have gotten a basket of those really fragrant strawberries), it started to rain quite heavily. We dived into one of the many pubs that lined the open air mall behind the night market. We nursed a beer for about an hour while waiting for the rain to stop, and had an uproarious conversation with a Scottish ex-pat who was feeling chatty.
The next morning we headed to the Carrara open-air markets. Advertisements and fliers for the market were all over the hostel and it declared itself to be smashing good family fun, so we figured it would be worth checking out.
To say that it was a flea market would be polite. To say that it was a flea-bitten, Chinese knock-off filled, crap strewn thieves den would be more accurate. It was grody, there were knock offs of every conceivable super hero, and most memorably a kid’s toy cell phone shaped recording device titled something to the effect of "Uninteresting Girl". I believe that the original toy name was completely different but the meaning got lost in translation. After about half an hour we gave the place up as a bad job and headed back to the city.
We didn’t to much the following day, as it was pouring rain all afternoon. That night there was a massive thunderstorm that woke up the entire hostel, fried some of the hostel lights, and blew out the nearby traffic control lights. It sounded like a cannon was being shot off the hostel roof.
Three days in Coolangatta were enough for us. It is a great place if you are into surfing and did a great deal of visiting with some really nice hostellers, but there wasn’t much else to do. Had we been 18, full of booze, and eager for the bar scene we may have stayed longer, but we decided we would rather spend the remainder of our time in Australia back in Brisbane.
In addition to the free breakfast, the other advantage of Coolangatta is that the city runs into Tweeds Heads, and Surfer’s Paradise, and every other little party suburb that populates the Gold Coast. It is beach after beach after beach after beach. Glen and I aren’t exactly interested in beaches. There are also markets after markets after markets. Glen and I do like markets quite a bit.
The first market we hit was the Surfer’s Paradise night market. It involved a half-hour ride on their excellent public transportation to get from Coolangatta to Surfer’s Paradise, and it was worth the trip. What little we saw of the beach lived up to its name – the waves looked like a surfer’s dream come true. The night market had plenty of random artisan tents, and some of the items were quite lovely:
After we strolled up and down the market purchasing absolutely nothing at all (as usual – although I still think we should have gotten a basket of those really fragrant strawberries), it started to rain quite heavily. We dived into one of the many pubs that lined the open air mall behind the night market. We nursed a beer for about an hour while waiting for the rain to stop, and had an uproarious conversation with a Scottish ex-pat who was feeling chatty.
The next morning we headed to the Carrara open-air markets. Advertisements and fliers for the market were all over the hostel and it declared itself to be smashing good family fun, so we figured it would be worth checking out.
To say that it was a flea market would be polite. To say that it was a flea-bitten, Chinese knock-off filled, crap strewn thieves den would be more accurate. It was grody, there were knock offs of every conceivable super hero, and most memorably a kid’s toy cell phone shaped recording device titled something to the effect of "Uninteresting Girl". I believe that the original toy name was completely different but the meaning got lost in translation. After about half an hour we gave the place up as a bad job and headed back to the city.
We didn’t to much the following day, as it was pouring rain all afternoon. That night there was a massive thunderstorm that woke up the entire hostel, fried some of the hostel lights, and blew out the nearby traffic control lights. It sounded like a cannon was being shot off the hostel roof.
Three days in Coolangatta were enough for us. It is a great place if you are into surfing and did a great deal of visiting with some really nice hostellers, but there wasn’t much else to do. Had we been 18, full of booze, and eager for the bar scene we may have stayed longer, but we decided we would rather spend the remainder of our time in Australia back in Brisbane.
Murwullywoolambubby-something-or-other
Four nights in Byron Bay and we were ready to head onwards. We chose to head slightly northwards and start making our way back up to Brisbane, so the next place that appealed to us was a hostel in the town of Murwillumbah (I have no idea if I spelled that correctly) at the base of Mt. Warning. Mt. Warning is the center of the largest volcanic caldera formation in the southern hemisphere, and so has excellent hiking, lots of wildlife, and as there isn’t a single beach in sight the hostel is a damn sight quieter than anywhere else on the Gold Coast. We were ready for some quiet nights and real sleep. Besides, the hostel in Murwillumbah serves free ice cream every evening at 9pm!
There wasn’t much to see or do in the town itself, but the hike up Mt. Warning was fantastic. There are three distinct zones of vegetation: sub-tropical rainforest at the bottom, temperate rainforest in the middle, and heath vegetation at the top. Plenty of wildlife roams around the walking track, mostly lizards and birds. As far as lizards went, we saw big fat skinks, various unidentifiable lizards, and a teeny little juvenile snake. Most frequently sighted are the bush turkeys. They are everywhere, males and females alike, and are excellent scavengers. We had a male follow us up the walking track for some distance, and two males were waiting for scraps at the very top of the mountain.
Ugly sucker, ain’t he?
There are also flies. I’ve become convinced that every fly around the Gold Coast decided to host a reunion on the lookout decks at the top of the mountain. The noise from the buzzing was incredible, it was as though we walked into a swarm a million flies thick, but we could only see about 20 of them at any given point in time.
The flies couldn’t compete with the views, though. They were exceptional – from the peak of Mt. Warning you can see the full caldera formation all around. It feels like you are at the top of the world, only there’s no snow and you don’t need a respirator to breathe. Provided, of course, that you don’t keel over after reaching the top. It takes about 2 hours of good, quick paced hiking to get up the mountain, and the final 100 meters is a vertical scramble aided by rough rock formations and chains. Believe me, you need the chains.
It’s really, really, really freaking steep. On the way back down, Glen decided that we needed more undignified pictures of my ass:
So I yelled at him:
Back at the hostel, we were spending our time eating ice cream, feeding water dragons (the resident hostel dragons will take bits of apple right out of your hand, and apparently one of them got so bold that it would climb onto the laps of people eating on the deck chairs), and chasing various forms of local wildlife. The highlight of this urban wildlife bits was the advent of a magnificent carpet boa that was slowly wending its way around the hostel ground, shedding it’s skin.
Isn’t it magnificent? And we were able to watch it shed its entire skin, in two pieces. Carpet boas are really lovely creatures and are quite harmless to humans. They’re great to have around houses, though, because their primary source of food is rats and mice, so they are excellent for pest control.
There wasn’t much to see or do in the town itself, but the hike up Mt. Warning was fantastic. There are three distinct zones of vegetation: sub-tropical rainforest at the bottom, temperate rainforest in the middle, and heath vegetation at the top. Plenty of wildlife roams around the walking track, mostly lizards and birds. As far as lizards went, we saw big fat skinks, various unidentifiable lizards, and a teeny little juvenile snake. Most frequently sighted are the bush turkeys. They are everywhere, males and females alike, and are excellent scavengers. We had a male follow us up the walking track for some distance, and two males were waiting for scraps at the very top of the mountain.
Ugly sucker, ain’t he?
There are also flies. I’ve become convinced that every fly around the Gold Coast decided to host a reunion on the lookout decks at the top of the mountain. The noise from the buzzing was incredible, it was as though we walked into a swarm a million flies thick, but we could only see about 20 of them at any given point in time.
The flies couldn’t compete with the views, though. They were exceptional – from the peak of Mt. Warning you can see the full caldera formation all around. It feels like you are at the top of the world, only there’s no snow and you don’t need a respirator to breathe. Provided, of course, that you don’t keel over after reaching the top. It takes about 2 hours of good, quick paced hiking to get up the mountain, and the final 100 meters is a vertical scramble aided by rough rock formations and chains. Believe me, you need the chains.
It’s really, really, really freaking steep. On the way back down, Glen decided that we needed more undignified pictures of my ass:
So I yelled at him:
Back at the hostel, we were spending our time eating ice cream, feeding water dragons (the resident hostel dragons will take bits of apple right out of your hand, and apparently one of them got so bold that it would climb onto the laps of people eating on the deck chairs), and chasing various forms of local wildlife. The highlight of this urban wildlife bits was the advent of a magnificent carpet boa that was slowly wending its way around the hostel ground, shedding it’s skin.
Isn’t it magnificent? And we were able to watch it shed its entire skin, in two pieces. Carpet boas are really lovely creatures and are quite harmless to humans. They’re great to have around houses, though, because their primary source of food is rats and mice, so they are excellent for pest control.
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