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blueberry harvest season
Hi there,
I wrote an artikel about my New Zealand experiences and because there is not that much time left for me and my boyfriend Sebastian I want to tell u how the following time of my journey here was :) The last essey stopped at my start of my wwoofingjob at the blueberryfarm in levin. Well, I was pretty excited at our first workingday - it was wednesday the 13.10. The hosts were both Germans so the communication was great cause we are also from Germany but I guess for my English it would have been better to talk some more english. So we started with weeding in the paddocks, surrounded by sheep and alpakas. 5 hours crawling and picking but I have to admit it was a good feeling to work outside. We started at 9, worked till 12, than we had a coffee break with blueberrymuffins or cake and a chat with the owner and some builders, after that we worked for 2 more hours. The builders were there because the plan was to build a new shop on the street before the berryseason started to have a better place for selling. After a week weeding Sebastian and I helped there with painting, digging soil and gravel and removing nails. After nearly two happy month we decided to go somewhere else near New Plymouth. The funny thing was that Sebastians brother decided a short time after we made our decision to go to new zealand that he wants to do 6 month on a high school in New Plymouth as an exchangestudent. So we worked for an old lady in Oakura and visited Sebastians brother as often as possible. We had also a wwoofingjob in Oakura in a very steep garden with really big spiders and cokroaches. It was tougher than in Levin though we had only 4 hours work per day and not 5. But the woman was nice and I guess my muscels are a bit stronger than before so it was also a good thing :) After this experience we took a week off from work and went camping at a holidaypark in Oakura. We had a great time, slept a lot, read some books and had a gorgeous view over the ocean. But as you can imagine we got bored after a week and decided to call the blueberryart cause we promised to come back for the harvestseason. And yeah, we came back for another 1 1/2 month. That was a really fun time cause we got the B&B flat with other young people. We lived together with guys from the USA, France, the Netherlands and Switzerland. We´ve done 5 hours picking or sorting a day and after that we were able to earn money with some extra hours which is always a good thing... In the evening we went to the beach or did some mussles on the barbecue - probably the best barbecue ever, and i would have never expected to see such big blueberrys - wow! A good thing was that we also liked the daughter of the farmowners and her husband so we went there the week before we left for the South Island and did some wwoofing there. It was a great time and we went for fishing around Kapiti, catched some fish and learned how to make it eatable and we went to the forest with a friend of the wwoofinghost and shot some possums to help New Zealands nature. We have done a lot of things we would never be able to do at home. So, after a long time on the North Island we went to the South Island with the Bluebridgeferry cause it was a bit cheaper for us than the Interislander. We went to Picon for a week, camped on a DOC Campground and celebrated my birthday on the 2. of February. I can recomend you the DOC brochure with all the Campingplaces (free or cheaper than the "normal" ones!) After one week we travelled to Kaikoura and had a great time at the Puhi Puhi Reserve, also a free DOC Campground. We did the Kaikoura Looptrack, its a bit more than 2 1/2 hours but you see beautifull landscape and some seals. We´ve done it twice and I really reccomend it. We also got a new WOF for our beloved car. It was a bit of a thrill but thank god our car is perfectly fine and we can drive the next month without problems. After that relaxing time it got a bit more activ. We decided to walk the St. James Walkway and bought some hut-tickets at the i-Site in Hanmer Springs then we drove to the Lewis Pass to do some camping before the start of our tramp. We decided to drive to the start of the walkway and take a look how the nature and the weather looks like. When we arrived we saw a letter with the information that Ann-Hut burnt down last year in April and they want to rebuild it in May this year. They also wrote about the cold weather at this time of the year and reccomended not to walk the track. We were really disappointed and drove on to Hokitika. We explained our story to the DOC people cause we had no further use of the tickets. She told us it would be not her problem cause we bought the ticks at the i-Site and so we had to go to the i-Site in Hokitika. A bit stressed we went to the i-Site as she told us and the lady at the counter told us its not the problem of the i-Site but of the DOC. We talked a while and after a few minutes we decided to sell her the ticks for 10% less. We were more than happy to get a part of the money back and booked a night in a cheap hotel after all the nights in a tent. We were excited about a TV and a bathroom in our room and also the matress was the highlight of the month :) After that we went to the Franz Josef Glacier and made a short walk for some pictures and after that we drove on to the Fox Glacier and spend some nights at the Gillespies Beach (highly recomended cause the landscape is beautiful and we saw dolphins every morning). Than we went on to Te Anau and wanted to camp at Lake Hauroko but after 24km we saw that the campingplace was closed. Don´t ask me why, I have no clue but we were really upset that there was not even a sign at the beginning of the road, i mean fuel is not that cheap and 48km on gravel is not the easyest thing. We found an other place and on the next morning we drove to the Catlins. Its a beautiful landscape and we hoped to see some penguins at Curio Bay, there were none but it was still a great place. The Campground was by the way closed because of the heavy rain in the last days, surprise... At the moment we are near the Moeraki Bboulders, we were camping at the DOC campsite but because of the rain a nice guy told us to leave the place - the ford was under water and would become impassable...:) We booked already our room for the last week in auckland, we will sell our car 6 days before we leave and we are happy to have our buy-back guarantee cause some people told us its really hard to sell a car before the backpackerseason in august/september. Check the internet for Kiwi-Cruise-Control and look for our blue Mitsubishi in 1 Month :) So, we put some new pictures on our blog but we have not that much internet and i think we will complete it at home, its not that long till then and im really surprised how fast the time is gone:) If there are any questions, please contact me, im happy to help :))
Submitted by: Anna Jakob Date submitted: 7/04/2011 8:22:24 AM
