Merry Christmas

The sun is shining and it is getting a lot warmer here...doesn't really feel like Christmas time. Just the other day we were swimming in the ocean and lying on the beach. Ok, I will stop before I make you Northern Hemisphere people jealous. ;)

We just finished our first farm visit on the South Island. It was a lovely little place with lots of flowers. Our jobs were to sort flower bulbs from boxes of dirt, weed a little in the greenhouses, pick up branches to be burnt and (the best part!) bunch up carnations for the market. We had a nice time even though it was just for a week. Now we are going to slowly head to Nelson through the Marlborough Sounds. We have also called about a job near Nelson starting around Jan. 4th. We would be doing apple thinning. We will probably only do that for a few weeks though. I will let you all know how that turns out. And don't worry, we aren't hard up for money, we just want to earn some before we get that way! :P Plus it will be a new and interesting job that neither one of us has ever done before. And that is what this trip is all about, isn't it.

Anyway, we hope you all have a Merry Christmas! We will be thinking about you all during this time.

Windy Wellington.

Guess what? Yep, that's right, we used our coupon for a free cheeseburger with any purchase from Burger King yesterday. The purchase was a large order of fries. This was the first, and hopefully last, time we will go to Burger King over here. We're in Wellington now, and replaced our front tire/tyre on the way from the farm to here. That's a whole long story really, that I'm not going to bore you with right now. Instead, I will make it exciting. We asked around for a tire/tyre in Paraparaumu and Waikanae, and got one in Waikanae. The next morning, we notice it's a directional one, which means it wouldn't pass the next Warrant of Fitness, so we take it back, and find an honest place that sells us a nice used tire/tyre, for a very fair price. Sounds like no big deal. However, "the next morning" we were already in the Hutt Valley, which is on the other side of the natural harbor of Wellington. Which means we had to backtrack quite a bit. If there's one thing we've learned so far, be very careful with car repair places when travelling in New Zealand.

Anyway, I realized that my knowledge of New Zealand's geography increases with every day we spend here, and that before we came, I was absolutely clueless. Now I'm not proposing that my sophisticated and knowledgable readers are as ignorant as me, but just for convenience's sake, here's a map of the North Island and the South Island. You're welcome. I'd love to write some more, but I have to help Christina pick the pictures we are going to upload here in a minute, so look forward to that. Oh, and thanks to everybody that's sending us letters and cards. We really appreciate it. Oh, by the way, it seems that using that box number with our address causes more problems than it makes it easier, so just leave that out from now on and use just this:

Christoph Schumacher / Christina Miller
c/o Fat Camel Travel Desk
38 Fort St.
Auckland 1010

New Zealand

Alright, and just in case we don't get on this here internets before then, Merry Christmas.

Headin' South

So here goes, a quick update of our adventures. After leaving the first farm in Te Puke we headed towards Mt. Taranaki or Mt. Egmont. On the way down we drove on the Forgotten World Highway (named that for a very good reason). But it was an amazing drive. We drove through 2 tiny one-way tunnels and saw some amazing waterfalls. We also drove about 34 km on a gravel road off of the main road to see the Bridge to Somewhere, which led to absolutely nowhere. It was cool! Around the mountain the weather was so bad that we didn’t even get to see it the whole 3 or 4 days that we drove around it. It was very eerie because we knew there was a mountain there but we absolutely couldn’t see it at all. It rained a lot and we gave up our quest to see the mountain and continued on. We even went down a random back road to find an amazing and isolated camping spot right by the ocean where we camped, but because of a thunderstorm and rain we had to leave it the next day. We eventually got to see the peak of the mountain from far away as we were heading out of the area. Oh well, so it goes.

Anyway, for the last week we have been at our second New Zealand farm as farm helpers. It is located about 40 minutes north of Wellington near Peka Peka Beach, which is between Otaki and Waikanae. It is a very lovely farm and a lovely home. Our hosts Brent and Joan are wonderful. They introduced us to the fascinating world of alpacas and llamas. They use them for wool (which is 3 times lighter and 3 times warmer than sheep wool) and breed the ladies to sell their babies. They have about 13 or 14 alpacas with names like Felix, Juanita and Linda, 3 ducks, a bunch of chickens and a few roosters, a cow named Bessy, some black and brown sheep, 2 gargantuan cats Tom and Tiger and a hyper black poodle named Pipi. We get to feed the chicks in the morning and the evening and we feed the alpacas and llamas some hay every once in a while and for the most part we have been doing some planting of fruit trees, weeding and hedge trimming. The house is up on a hill right in front of some big hills and facing the ocean and Kapiti Island, both of which can be seen from the wrap-around deck. It is an amazing place. Check out their website: www.awatealodge.co.nz

We will leave here on Monday and head to Wellington. We will visit Wellington for a few days and then we will head to the South Island. We have our ferry booked for December 14th at 1 p.m. Once we get to the south we already have our next farm lined up. We find that to be the best way to save money and meet interesting people along the way. Plus we have fun on the farms and enjoy the work that we are given…at least that has been the case so far. Well, that is the update for now. We will try to get pictures posted once we find a faster Internet connection. I hope you are all well and enjoying the Christmas shopping rush. We are delighted to skip out on that this year. In fact, we don’t have a clue what we will do for Christmas as of yet. I bet time will tell though! J Later taters!