Checking In

By now at least a handful of you must be wondering what we’ve been up to over the last few weeks. We apologize for not being able to put up any real updates lately, but fear not, you dedicated few, as we haven’t fallen off the face of the earth. Although it’s felt that way sometimes over the past few weeks since we left Queenstown, traveling through Central Otago.

To be honest, the last couple weeks haven’t been the most thrilling, though there have been some pretty interesting moments. For the past week we’ve been wwoofing for a German couple at their café in Lawrence (more on that in a later post), a rural town in Otago. We escaped ‘to town’, Dunedin, on Tuesday, one of our days off to get back to civilization for a bit, where we tried to update the blog. Unfortunately Blogger wasn’t in the mood to cooperate that day, so we had to punt til today. We’ve just been to a rugby match between Otago’s team, the Highlanders (in a town named Dunedin the Scottish influence is strong), and an Australian side, Brumbies. The Highlanders were unfortunately crushed by a score of 22-10, but we still enjoyed the match.

As far as our trip goes, right now we’re at a bit of an impasse, trying to figure out what to do until the winter season really starts. Becky has an interview for a ticketing position at Treble Cone coming up soon, but bummer for me as I didn’t score even an interview. Hindsight being 20/20 I probably should’ve applied for less sexy positions than lift operator without previous experience, theme park or otherwise, but oh well, perhaps it will work out better somehow?

You can definitely feel that it’s in-between seasons here at the moment, with colder weather gradually making its presence felt, and not much going on of note. (As a side note, you can always tell when the weather is getting cold in NZ: the telltale smell of wood and coal burning in towns. We were somewhat amazed to learn that in Christchurch, a city of 300,000 people, they have a smog problem due in large part to wood fires in people’s homes.) Although our viewpoint may be at least partly influenced by the fact that we’ve been in some pretty sparsely inhabited areas lately.

Hopefully, we’ll be able to grab jobs in Wanaka, but even then that won’t start until mid-to-late June, so we have a bit of time until then. Which leaves us 5-6 weeks without much of a definitive plan. We don’t really feel like doing much more driving through NZ right now, as we’ve driven through most of the areas that are within about 8 hrs from here, and it would feel too much like backtracking to go back up the South Island now. We’d like to save some sights for when Linda visits in a few months, as well. Wwoofing has also been steadily losing much of its appeal, as it has been dawning on us why people generally insist on getting paid for their labor.

So, perhaps we’ll go to Australia for a few weeks now! But more likely we’ll just try to get some temporary work near somewhere like Dunedin. I’m sure we’ll figure out something to do over the next few weeks, and I’m not just comment fishing here, but if anybody has any brilliant ideas, the suggestion box is officially open!