My Belgian friend Ine tells me they have a saying that translates roughly as "he's been too long in the wind." (Meaning he's gone a little bit crazy.)
Wellington has a reputation for being windy, as many cities do. When people say a city is windy, in my experience this means the wind blows during a certain season, time of year, or maybe time of day. I went to university in Ellensburg, Washington, where you get a "two-way workout" on bike rides and your hair syle/part changes depending on whether you are walking to campus or from campus.
So I thought, okay, Wellington has a reputation for being windy, but I can handle it. It's supposed to be New Zealand's best city, with all the art, culture and events, so it will be worth a bit of wind. But nothing could have prepared me for the constant, terrifying, howling, freezing hurricane that is Wellington's summer as the south westerlies whip through Cook Strait and beat persistently against the North Island.
Safely behind the glass windows of my flat, I witnessed plastic bags dancing in the car park a la "American Beauty." The alley outside the bedroom created a special wind tunnel where a lone soda can rattled and banged round and round, round and round. (The first sound I heard each morning when i woke up, this was a good barometer for the wind speed that day.) One evening I was chatting with flatmates and gagged on my tea when a queen-sized mattress hurtled by the window, end-over-end. Fortunately, the Wicked Witch didn't make an appearance.
My travel buddy Laure and I decided that we came all this way to the Southern Hemisphere to experience summer, and after three weeks, we have officially been too long in the wind. :)
We found wwoofing work up north near Rotorua (famous thermal wonderland where Mordor was filmed for Lord of the Rings movies). We gave notice to our landlord, advertised the room and quickly found replacement tenants, and said good-bye to all of our newfound friends in the unicycling, rock 'n roll dancing, hare krishna yoga, and karaoke costume party circles. Sorry I was terrible about blogging and have no further details about our volunteering/fun in Wellington here.
We packed Laure's new little red '87 Ford Lazer (named Beauty, she is the sister of Laure's little red Ford Fiesta "Belle" in France), and set off on the 8 hour road trip to Rotorua. I'm still wrapping my head around driving north to find warmer weather.
Laure is a member of the official NZ wwoofing web site, and sent out inquiries to about 10 different operations in Rotorua. Gerry and Sally told us they needed us to cook for the beekeepers on their remote honey farm, and we said "sweetas!" (Kiwi slang for "cool.")
Gerry is originally from Scotland, Sally from England - they settled in New Zealand 18 years ago. They're a middle-aged couple with big ideas and big hearts. They don't have children of their own but have taken in a rag-tag bunch of foreign wwoofers to help them run their three businesses. As Gerry says, they work hard, but they play hard too. They own a health clinic in Rotorua proper, run a large farm with cows and a garden just outside Rotorua, and harvest honey from their property on the East Cape next to the Mangaporo River (a six-hour drive from Rotorua).
Laure and I arrived just in time to join in the harvest party for all the wwoofers who helped with the manuka honey harvest the previous month. We cooked, washed dishes, gardened and also managed to visit some hot springs and experience a traditional Maori hangi/cultural performance during our three nights at the farm in Rotorua. I also took Charlie the aging farm dog for walks each day, as well as helped herd cows from one pasture to another. :)
Now that the manuka trees are finished blooming, the Rewa trees (and honey) are next - so Sally and Gerry sent us, along with four guys, out to "the wop wops" (the booneys) to the rustic house among the bee hives. We drove six hours on ever-increasingly windy roads, and after the final 10 km on dirt roads, we parked Beauty in a meadow, waded across the river with our bags and entered the crazy beekeeper world.
For you musical theater fans, the best way I can describe my experience is that I stepped into a scene from "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers." These four rowdy wwoofers (from England, Holland and Boston) had left the house in a hurry the week before, and with the generator off everything in the fridge had developed a less-than-desirable odor. There was no running water - we had to go outside to fill buckets with rain water and boil it before cooking/drinking. What we could see of the floor was thick with dirt and empty beer bottles covered every other surface. Our bedroom was teeming with spiders, a wheelbarrow and power tools blocked the path to the beds, and the linens were clearly well-used. We arrived at 7pm to this "dog's breakfast" (Kiwi for mess) and had to first clean out the rotten food, then figure out what (and how) to make dinner.
We didn't have any input in the supplies that we had to work with - we ended up making "heaps" of homemade bread. The one thing that did work was the gas stove/oven. That is, until halfway through the week when the knob broke and required someone to sit patiently and push in the button to keep the flame going.
Pretty much everything that could break, did. And the boys blamed our karma on me. When we cleaned out the fridge I suggested Laure feed some fermented blueberries to the wild horses that run around the farm. The next morning, on my way outside to the toilet, I saw one horse lying on its side, looking a bit too stiff. I immediately assumed that maybe I had something to do with it, that horses are allergic to blueberries (I don't know?!), maybe I killed it! Later when I confessed to the guys they did their best to convince me this was true...but finally admitted that they had taken a closer look and the poor horse had died trying to give birth. I never heard the end of that one..."The trailer broke again?! This is all because Molly killed the horse with the berries." (insert British accent)
We also entertained ourselves by reading an Australian wild pig hunting magazine (especially the section of "Babes & Their Boars" photos), playing celebrity 20-questions style guessing games, taking long walks around the property (including the final 9 mile "loop" - merci, Laure), taking rides on the 4 wheeler, and working up the courage to take cold plunge baths in the river.
We left the bee farm on Friday morning and began the 12-hr road trip back to Wellington to celebrate Laure's birthday with our new friends in the city. A highlight was finding the super-secret fishing village where the movie Whale Rider was set.
Meanwhile, our friends were busy organizing a birthday wish for Laure - a superhero costume party for Saturday night. Laure has always admired Wonder Woman and had a ball portraying the super-heroine during the economic downturn, mopping the floor of a hole-in-the-wall noodle restaurant & working as a cashier at the local supermarket. The party had a great turnout - everyone had fun dressing up and of course I never say no to a costume. ;)
After the weekend, Laure, Beauty and I boarded a ferry to cross Cook Strait and begin our exploration of the South Island. We are staying in sunny, quiet Picton, planning to do some bike wine touring in Marlborough and have a swim-with-the-dolphins excursion booked in Kiakoura on Sunday. Then hoping to find more wwoofing work or possibly fruitpicking.
To see photos of all these adventures:
I hope to hear from you!!
Molly
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