This isn’t one hour later I’m talking, but 5 days. The wonderful…odour has gotten less noticeable, but next time I’ll just go with the tried and true method.
Category Archives: Personal
Money well spent
When WWOOFing, the host provides you with all the needed tools/equipment to do the job. So that ranges from pruning shears, shovels, baskets, rakes, or whatever else might be required to do work. That often includes gloves, especially when working outside. Much like most people’s houses, these gloves are often various sizes and various states of decay. My hosts have all provided the gloves necessary, and they’ve done the job, but it’s something I figured I might want to look into myself. 10 minutes and $8 later, I found a pair I really really liked:
Protects my hands, water resistant and rubberized grip, much better tactile feedback and maneuverability AND I look good while wearing them. What’s not to like? Once I had finished the pressure washing, they came in VERY handy.
Wh? F that.
One of the interesting things about the history of New Zealand is the Maori language, and it’s integration with New Zealand’s culture today. Many of the towns and cities have traditional Maori names, though it seems more prevalent on the North Island than the South Island. It’s taken me a bit of getting used to being able to pronounce some of the names, because looks can sometimes be deceiving. One of the main ones that you come across is words using ‘Wh’. The Maori language doesn’t have the letter ‘F’, so ‘Wh’ is used to create an ‘F’ sound. Naturally, I had been getting this wrong for quite some time. So when I had been describing my skydiving experience in Whangarei, I had been saying ‘WaynGahRay’, and getting quizzical looks from time to times. Someone finally informed me that the proper pronunciation is more akin to ‘FaynGahRay’.
I’ve gotten used to it by now, so when passing through a place like ‘Whakatane’, I can properly say the name as ‘FakahTani’. Say it out loud and you might understand where this post title is coming from. 😉
I’ve now travelled from Tauranga, past Whakatane and am at my next host stay in Opotiki. The drive itself was fairly uninteresting: lots of flat land and beaches. Pleasant but nothing too noteworthy. The town of Opotiki is at the far east end of the Bay of Plenty, and the host I’m staying at has a small acreage just outside town. Looks like I’ll be doing some yard and outside cleaning for the next few days at least – not bad sounding, since the forecast is 16-18C and sunny for the foreseeable future!
A Deflating Experience
It’s not 100% apparent, but that is my rear passenger tire (or ‘tyre’, as they spell it here in NZ), flat to the ground. ARGH. Found it today after pruning raspberry bushes – it likely had picked something up on my drive to the black sand beach the day prior. Driving on gravel roads is a common occurrence here in New Zealand, it was only a matter of time that this happened. I found the jack and got to work on putting on my spare tire. Considering I had never had to change a flat in my life, I was quite pleased I succeeded in changing my tire without somehow causing bodily harm to myself or the car!
One Month
So it’s been one month to the day since I arrived here in New Zealand. Thus far, I really haven’t travelled very far – I’ve been up and down the Northland region and Auckland, but have yet to truly get into the main part of the North Island. But you know what? That’s been perfectly fine with me! I’m really enjoying the slower pace style of travelling – being able to settle in for days at a time, see things that most travellers normally would skip right over, experience life at a more relaxed pace and simply be one with the world.
Okay, that last little part was just a joke, I’m far from having an existential experience down here. But still, New Zealand has be a pleasure for 31 days, and I’m looking forward to the remaining 300+ I still have. There are so many more things to see and do while I’m here – White Water raft the largest raft-able waterfall in the world (7m!), multi-day hiking, exploring the glaciers, bungy jumping, swimming with dolphins (I WILL swim with them at some point!), hang gliding, marry a kiwi girl, car camping, rock climbing, surfing, large scale farming, thermal pools, track down a kiwi bird, take in a rugby match…learn the rules of rugby, hit the beach on a warm enough day to lounge around on one, go fishing, and I’m sure much much more. I know some of them probably won’t happen (and I was kidding about marrying a kiwi), but there certainly is a lot I’m looking forward to doing. At a very slow, unplanned pace.
Speaking of unplanned, it both has and hasn’t been a departure for me so far on this trip. I still need to plan in advance WWOOFing host stays – usually 1-2 weeks in advance. But, I’ve been taking the more ‘let others decide my route’ type approach – I’m going where hosts have invited me to stay, rather than emailing specific hosts and asking to help them for a week or so. There have been and will be exceptions (I emailed my host in Kerikeri to stay up north), but 3/4 of my hosts so far have emailed me first. That number includes my next one, quite a bit further away from where I am now, in the area called the Bay of Plenty. I’ve got a week in between my current host and my next one, so I’m going to be returning to doing more touristy things, and possibly trying a 4-6 hour hike or two. And possibly doing a little car camping, if the weather looks good enough. Either way, I hope you have enjoyed following and reading my blog so far and continue to do so! If you have any suggestions, things you’d like to see me do or have ideas for me to try, I’m always up for changing my non-existant plans to something else. 🙂
1 step forwa….nope, just 2 steps back
Another enjoyable day here in Kerikeri. I have one more day of work and on Tuesday, I’ll start heading south again. But for today, I got to work on a slightly different computer project today:
A digital turntable! This converts your LP into mp3s. Setting it up thankfully wasn’t too difficult, and I converted the first record in about 40 minutes – you have to play the record from start to finish to record it to the computer, and then spend time editing the music into seperate songs (if you so choose), add mp3 tags, and save the files. All in all it was relatively intuitive thankfully, just time consuming.
After my work for the day was complete, I took off to nearby Aroha Island.
I aim to please
I have to be a bit more careful with how I phrase certain things here in New Zealand. In Canada, we simply call Kiwi Fruit, Kiwis. However, down here in New Zealand, Kiwi either refers to the bird or the people. You have to use the full ‘Kiwi Fruit’ name for things to be understandable. Which led to confusion and a ‘Soylent Green is PEOPLE!’ kind of moment this evening.
Previously I had mentioned picking up Whittaker’s Chocolate Caramels (and have been enjoying them immensely…and in moderation), and that Whittaker’s had other, slight more unique flavours. One was Chocolate with Kiwi Fruit, which others have expressed curiosity in, so in the name of science, I had to experiment.
When I got home this evening with the chocolate in tow, I asked my hosts if they had tried ‘Chocolate with Kiwi’ in it before. They expressed their confusion – that didn’t sound very appealing and weren’t sure exactly what I was talking about. It could have been in the shape of a bird or something they thought. At least they didn’t assume I’d already taken to eating the kind folk of New Zealand, covered in chocolate. After clearing up for me that Kiwi and Kiwi Fruit have to be specified down here, we gave the chocolate a try. Now I understand why Whittaker’s prominently puts the FRUIT with the Kiwi name on it’s packaging – don’t want to have any potential worry of nibbling on your fellow countryman.
The consensus? Pretty good, but not great. The chocolate itself is fantastic – Whittaker’s makes GOOD stuff. The bits of kiwi fruit are quite akin to raisins – not exactly what I was expecting. I do enjoy chocolate covered raisins quite a bit, so I still enjoyed the Chocolate and Kiwi Fruit, but I know many *hate* raisins in food, so I can see it being a pretty big disappointment for some.
This is how things go from bad to worse…
While down here in New Zealand, I’ve kept my chocolate cravings in check by frequenting the supermarkets for deals. 3 for $3 and 4 for $5 for various chocolate bars from Cadbury or Nestle. Apparently though, I’ve been doing it all wrong. Yesterday was my last night in my hostel in Paihia, and the place was pretty much deserted – only myself and a gal from Scotland left. This was after nearly 70 people were staying there during the weekend, so it felt empty! Anyways, we got onto the topic of chocolate, since she loved chocolate as well. When I told her of my snacking on Cadbury/Nestle chocolate, her response was (and I quote): ‘Why are you putting up with that shite, they have Whittaker’s here!’ When she came down here she was much like me – enjoying Kitkats, Mars bars and the like. Until someone down in Wellington showed her the light – Whittaker’s is a New Zealand made fine chocolate. available everywhere.
While I love my Kit Kats and the like, I was intrigued. Investigation on their website showed many standard types (milk, caramel, multiple varieties of dark), and some non-standard, like Chocolate Kiwi, Fruit and Nut, or Coconut. Either way, I was naturally intrigued. Today I found myself in a grocery store in Kerikeri, and my curiosity got the better of me.
250grams is the standard size for these things (in other words, monstrously large). At under $4NZD, Whittaker’s is actually a better deal per gram than buying the Cadbury/Nestle that I had been in the past.
Of course, none of that matters if the chocolate tastes poor. So how did it fare?
I’m in trouble.