Look at us!

Just letting y'all know we posted some new pictures. As always, you can also click on the "our pictures" link to the left. Female readers, please be careful, there is a picture of me in just my togs (that's NZ English for swimming trunks). You have been warned.

Anyway, we are still thinning apples, but after this weekend, we are really gonna be done. Then we're gonna do the Abel Tasman Coastal Track, and head to Mt Arthur and Tablelands in Kahurangi NP. Then we will finally head west, but stop by Nelson Lakes NP on the way. We decided that since the West Coast is so rainy, we will just look at the glaciers and some other stuff, but not stay at a farm there. See how our plans always change a little bit? That's one of the great things about this year. We make a rough plan on where we wanna head, and the details fall into place as we go along. One thing that will not change though, is stopping in Reefton, nope, no way. Reefton is a tiny little town of like a thousand people, with a huge skatepark, that has recently been built. There is a pic here if you're interested. Alright, time to go and eat some dinner.

The good life.

Alright, apple-thinning is over and done. Considering the usual wages in New Zealand and what we earned for the amount of work we did, I think we can be pretty happy. Now we're gonna hang around here for a few more days and check out some stuff, and then head over to the West Coast. Hopefully we can stay at a farm there before going south. Anyway, working wasn't too bad and we met some nice people too, who all stayed at the accommodation provided by the employer for a very reasonable charge, where there was also a freezer where we could store some ice-cream. Yum! And we got Bratwurst from the Motueka market and had a barbecue as well. We also roasted some potatoes in the oven and had a nice salad with that. Let me tell you people, life for us couldn't be better right now. Oh, we also picked some raspberries and had real fruit ice-cream. But that was the day before we started working. Anyway, everything's still great over here, and instead of reading this useless information, why the heck aren't you planning your trip to New Zealand yet? Or at least Canada, where you can also do working holidays. There's really no excuse.

James Bond.

Happy New Year everybody! What have you been up to? Here's how we spent Christmas and New Year's, I know you've been anxious to know, losing sleep over it and chewing on pine needles just to calm down. On the 23rd we camped near a river, and swam and tubed and waded in it the next day and Christina also tried to pan for gold, but had no luck. We also skipped stones quite a bit. Do you also like skipping stones? I think it's really fun, but we also started playing this game where you have to pick a rock that's close to the water and hit it with a smaller rock, so that the rock you threw will bounce into the water. It's super-exciting. Then we went further up the northern coast of the South Island and drove through Nelson and found a nice place to camp close to the Abel Tasman National Park in Marahau. The next day we pretty much spent at the beach and then went on to explore the Northwest of the South Island, including Harwood's Hole, some cave with Moa bones in it, and all kinds of other cool stuff like Farewell Spit and the seals there. It was amazing.

Then it was getting really crowded for New Year's Eve, and we decided we needed to find a lonelier spot, which we found in the Cobb Valley in Kahurangi National Park. Well, actually, we spent it up near Lake Sylvester (all you Germans know why we picked this one), which you can reach from the Cobb Valley. It's a 2-hour walk that climbs about 450 metres, and puts you right by the bushline. The day before that we went to a different glacial lake and saw heaps of cool flowers. We went from beach to subalpine in just one day. Of course I'm also talking about flowers, so you decide how cool it really was.

Anyway, now we're chilling a bit and hope to start our job soon. And Snag, the apples are thinned by an experimental method carried over from the Middle Ages, which has music being played to the apples. Recent research suggests that the waves created by the music make all the difference. Of course the music was played by ensembles back then, but they use speakers today. However, the presence of humans seems essential in this method, so we have to act like we're playing instruments, which is cheaper than hiring real musicians.