Or two even.
The neighbours have a pair of Highland Cattle, which originate all the way from Scotland. These ones are still young, and are WAY too cute to eat. They are actually more pets than anything for the neighbours, who always had a dream of owning Highland Cattle – and now I’ve added it as a dream of mine as well! Some day, some day.
These ones came up and quite happily ate food from my hand, so you know they’ve been hand raised.
The place I’m working is primarily a lemon orchard, but my hosts do have quite a few other neat parts to the farm area.
They’ve got chooks and ducks a plenty:
I’m starting to reach the point of work related exhaustion I think. The place I’m staying now is very pleasant in the house, and the work isn’t bad by any means, but 5-6 hours in the sun each day now, and I’m starting to feel things take it’s toll. Not to say the work so much, just the lack of a break – it’s 7 days a week the way I’ve been going, and I haven’t had a good, long stay of being a ‘tourist’ in quite some time now. Since the Bay of Islands actually. So when my work stay here is up, I’ll be heading south to Napier and staying in a hostel once again, this time for a week in just a single place. It will allow me to recharge, see the sights of an Art-Deco town, and also, catch a Rugby World Cup game featuring Canada!
Speaking of the RWC, Canada played their first game last night – AND WON! They beat the small island nation of Tonga – and it was quite the upset. Canada pulled off a great come from behind victory, and that sets them up well to acheive their goals of not being dead last in their pool!
Posts will hopefully be back to normal now (got my main East-Cape journey one up below, finally!), since I should be getting caught up on numerous emails and everything else tonight. My host doesn’t offer internet (the first one that hasn’t), so that’s hampered my online abilities a bit, but I can manage. For now, it’s dinner time!
Retrieving my travel companion Steff in Whakatane, we set off immediately for the East Cape – Te Araroa was our destination for the night, which is the nearest stop to the East Cape lighthouse – one of the first places you can see the sun rise on a new day.
The drive during the late afternoon and early evening was fairly unexciting. The weather had been temperamental all day and as such, the waves were high and vicious, the clouds often grey and dark.
Survived the trip to the East Cape. Saw grey clouds get slightly brighter in the morning (ARGH). Thoroughly exhausted, will update tomorrow. Or 2 days from now. Or sometime! 😛
With or without White Island, my plan for the afternoon on Monday was the same – head east. My next host is in Gisborne, the only major town in the Gisborne region of New Zealand. North of Gisborne is the East Cape area – a very sparsely populated region of New Zealand, that I’m going to attempt to drive around, with a few stops and one sleep along the way.
There is little up in the East Cape past the apparently beautiful and rugged scenery. No big grocery stores, no major centers, very few gas stations (which often have no gas for sale) and a lot of open land. And one far eastern tip, a lighthouse, where I’ll likely spend the night sleeping in my cozy station wagon awaiting the morning sun. The lighthouse has the distinction of being one of the first places a person can see the sun rise on a new day. So, if the weather can behave for JUST ONE MORNING when I’m travelling, I might just get to see that. Or I might just see grey skies lighten a little bit, which would be just another weather related disappointment. But at least this time I won’t be the only one disappointed with the weather, I’ve picked up another travel companion for the next week or so. Hopefully she won’t steal my car at gunpoint, she is American after all…
This would be White Island, about 50km off the coast of Whakatane. The weather doesn’t look like this today though – it’s rainy, high winds and choppy water. Which is why I’m not currently standing on the island enjoying the barren, foreign landscape. White Island is an active marine volcano, the only one in New Zealand, and one that you can walk onto. This isn’t an easy undertaking though, it’s a 90 minute boat ride all the way out there, and once there you have to take a smaller dinghy to get onto the island. On the island you are issued gas masks, as being an active volcano it can have highly sulphurous parts and there are a lot of steam vents – the clouds above White Island in the picture above are from the steam. Nobody lives on the island, it’s only accessible via one boat tour operator or a helicopter operator. It’s supposed to be an absolutely amazing tour, but it will have to wait for me to return to Whakatane later on – it’s something I’m going to do in NZ, rest assured.