Week 1
For a week now Pete and I have been working at Sequoia Lodge Backpackers in the little port town of Picton. It's located on the northern tip of the south island. Anyone traveling to the south island comes through here since the ferry from Wellington stops at the port.
Working at Sequoia has been going quite well. The owner, Peter, was
on duty this weekend instead of Lynley who is the manager. Both are very
nice and Peter even gave Pete and I a day off together. We were quite busy. First we mailed off Christmas presents and cards, then we test drove a third car (after looking at a Toyota and a Nissan). But, after a few days of comparing and deciding, we finally made an offer on the Nissan and will be driving our very own Maxima now.
And since I've been driving the hostel's van for the last couple of days, I feel ready to drive on the left side of the road. The job of driver requires driving the huge van and parking it outside of the ferry station with a sign to advertise for the hostel. Some people come over because they have reservations and are expecting to be picked up, but a good driver is supposed to get "walk ins," those people who don't have reservations. There are about 5 vans lined up from 5 different hostels, and the backpackers kind of shop around for the hostel they want to stay in. Peter (the owner) was quite impressed when in my first day I brought back something like 8 "walk ins" in just a few trips to the ferry. I'm pretty good at bringing back the business. Better than Pete. :-) The owner even joked and told Pete he would be fired from driving since my average is better.
But after 3 days I have to go back to bathroom duty until the end of the week. Yuck. But I can't complain too much because I think it's a pretty OK job compared to cleaning the kitchen or bedroom duty. Poor Pete is on
laundry and bed changing for a few days, and this is a bad job because
there are so many beds to change and make up again in just a couple
hours. He'll go back to driving when I go back to bathrooms. :-(
Also on our day off we went on a 4 hour hike called The Snout. Picton is just so pretty - kind of set in a valley with water on three sides. The view from the Snout was off the end of a point overlooking the bays all around Picton. The weather yesterday morning was rain and wind, but by lunch time it was sunny and nice again. Today is warm and sunny. On my first drive to the ferry today I took an old guy from Colorado. He's retired and he just sold his house. He's an artist and he said that a month in New Zealand gave him new inspiration.
This morning, while Pete and I were making breakfast, we overheard a guy telling some people that he lives 50 miles from Mt. St. Helens. Pete went over to ask him where he lives, and he's from Vancouver. He even went to Evergreen with Dad. Another strange coincidence!
We're really enjoying Picton and the other travelers we work with, but we leave in a week. Hopefully we'll get to the Queen Charlotte Track. It's a 3-4 day hike with overnight stops at DOC (Department of Conservation) campsites. We think it'll make for a good "practice" track since water taxis carry your packs from one campsite to the next. "Sweet as!" (a little Kiwi slang). :-)
Week 2
The fun days are over... Edna's back in town. Edna is a hard-working Pictoner that the lodge hires to work during the busy summer months (now-February), and everything changed when she came to work last week. Pete's lucky to have been re-hired for driving duty, but I've had to start cleaning bathrooms. Awful. Luckily my request for rubber gloves was granted.
But the nice thing about working for a week or two at a time is that the staff changes frequently, and we now have some new WWOOFers - Dorien, Millie (this is not her real name, but no one can get the Dutch pronunciation of Merel right), Sascha, and Birdy (I imagine this is also a nickname). We get to have an afternoon tea and cookies together... as soon as Edna is pleased with our work. :-)
A couple of days ago Pete and I hiked to a waterfall near the lodge. It was sunny and warm and the trail took us along a winding river. Along the way we thought we detected evidence of a nearby possum or two, so as I was giving them a warning to leave our trail, I froze on the track. This was no possum. I wasn't sure what I'd seen, but it was large, black, had a horn, and when it ran its hooves made the ground rumble. Slowly Pete and I rounded the bend to try and get a better view - and there were 2 of the giant beasts! I picked up a rock and Pete got his camera. He missed the photo opportunity and the animals ran off toward the water. When we finished the hike - most of which I completed with the rock still in hand - we talked to Lynley, the manager on duty, who told us we'd probably seen some goats that had escaped their owner's field. But see if you stay calm when stampeding goats sneak up on you!
One thing that makes Sequoia Lodge really great is the free chocolate pudding and vanilla ice cream that is served every night. Usually the manager on duty makes the pudding, but one night this week Birdy was busy and asked a WWOOFer to make it. No one spoke up because none of us are bakers, apparently, so it became my job. I successfully made chocolate pudding for a hostel full of guests - a recipe that serves 36. When we pulled it out of the oven at 8:00 I was so nervous and guests were standing all around waiting. It smelled good but looked unusually runny. I was sure I'd ruined it, but the pudding was delicious, just a little more syrupy than normal! However, I did ask someone else to do it the following night, and Pete still needs a chance to make the pudding, too.
Here's the recipe: (feeds 36) :-)
Base
6 cups flour
6 Tbls cocoa
12 Tbls oil
3 cups sugar
6 Tsp baking powder
3 Tsp salt
6 Tsp vanilla
3 Cups milk
Topping
4.5 Cups brown sugar
10 Tbls cocoa
9 Cups hot water
Directions
Sift flour, baking powder, salt, white sugar & cocoa together. Add milk, vanilla, and oil mixing until smooth. Pour into ovenware dish.
Mix brown sugar, cocoa and hot water and pour over pudding.
Bake at 150 C for 1-1.5 hours. When you take it out of the oven the top should have a sticky/spongy feel and there will be runny sauce. Serve up - YUM YUM
After chocolate pudding and a glass of wine/beer, some evenings have become game nights with WWOOFers. Recently we played Pictionary - 3 teams (the Americans vs the Dutch vs the Germans). Pete and I took a quick lead but felt bad when our friends who spoke English as a second language started making guesses that didn't make a lot of sense (Helena guessed "jazz guitar" when Johanes drew a brush... there were lots of vocabulary misunderstandings). I don't think I've ever laughed as hard as when poor Dorien guessed, "electricity going into shaving machine" when Merel drew an electric razor. Pete and I backed off but ended up losing the game. Oh well. Maybe we boosted the Dutch speakers' confidence by "letting" them win. ;-)
Yachting
So one morning we were having breakfast and I heard a guy say "I live 50 miles from Mt. Saint Helens". I went up to him and asked where he was from and sure enough he was from Vancouver, Washington. We started talking and it turned out he knew Erin's Dad and had a pretty amusing story about him (most people who know Buck tend to have a good story or two about him). Anyway, after talking for a while he mentioned that the night before he had gone yachting and if I wanted to go all I had to do was go to the boat club at 4:30 on Tuesday and they would set me up.
So at 4:30 on tuesday I went to the Boat Club and hung out for a while until a guy named Tony approached me and asked if I wanted to go on a boat, I replied that I did and he warned me that the winds were high and if I went on his boat he claimed no responsibility. I am never one to back down from adventure so jumped on the chance and agreed to join his crew. He instructed me to go get some beers and meet him at the dock at 5:15. I was pumped, not only did I get to go sailing, but it was also race night.
I met him at the boat with a dutch girl (Merel) I met at the hostel (Erin knows, she just didn't want to go) and Tony gave me a run down on my job. It was pretty simple, I was to pull one rope when he said pull and then release it when he said release. We started going and it was easy at first, but then the winds picked up and all of a sudden the orders came quicker and "less descriptive". "Peter, release the red one on the right" turned into "release the starboard bearings" (or something like that - I'm not down with the lingo - the point is I never knew what he was talking about or if he was even talking to me). Plus the fact that the 30 knot winds were turning the boat sideways so I was pulling ropes with my nose in the water. At one point I fell backwards and almost took myself and another crew member overboard.
After it was all over we pulled up to his dock and had a beer. Even though I got yelled at quite a bit Tony said I did a good job for my first time. He took us up to the house and introduced us to his wife and zebra skin rug. Then we went down to the yacht club where we were invited to dinner and drinks. Great time and I really think I have a future in yachting.
The Queen Charlotte Track
We took our first multi-day hike along the Queen Charlotte Sound. The first day we started at 9 am from a pretty little spot called Ship Cove, where we took a picture of the 71 kilometer marker that began the walk. The weather was perfect for walking - cloudy and cool - but rain a few days before left the track quite muddy in spots. We didn't see many other hikers that first day, but when we got to Camp Bay and set up our tent, there were 3 other tent campers joining us. Unfortunately we couldn't talk or visit with anyone else because the sand flies were attacking and we were forced to hide in the tent.
On the second day (Thanksgiving) we woke up to rain and had to tackle the most difficult portion of the track. We walked for about 8 hours, completing about 23 km before evening. When we stopped along the way for snacks and a lunch break, we were assaulted by weka birds. They are flightless birds about the size of chubby ducks and they are ruthless. One tried to steal an apple out of my day pack. That night we dined on a Thanksgiving dinner of ramen noodles with carrots and peas, a dessert of ANZAC cookies, and tea.
Day 3 was lovely. The sun was shining and we had camped the night before at Cowshed Bay, a beautiful spot on the water with views of mountain ranges all around us. The walk started with a nasty uphill climb that took most of the morning, but the views were great. We walked at a really good pace until we realized at one point that we were no longer on the track (kind of impossible really, but we had missed one of the signs). This added about 40 minutes onto our walk time, but we still finished the hike in pretty good time. At the end we were rewarded with a snack cart that sold ice cold water and ice cream while we waited for a boat to pick us up and take us back to Picton.
The hike wasn't one of New Zealand's hardest, but it was a good start. It definitely prepared us for some of the tougher tracks we hope to try... as soon as our feet recover...
