To Christchurch…And Beyond! (Jun. 1 - 5)

Leaving Oamaru and the squawking penguins behind, we set off further north towards Christchurch with Rachel, another backpacker from the UK along for the ride. I forgot to mention in our last post, but we had a really weird experience in trying to get a hostel in Oamaru. We went to a well-rated hostel there, but when we met the owner, she seemed on the verge of a nervous breakdown, recounting all the other recent guests who all seemed “plausibly nice” like us, but who had stolen her duvets and blankets, leaving her faith in humanity apparently shaken. It seemed like she didn’t want us there and was basically pre-emptively accusing us of wanting to steal her duvets as well, so we said, umm…maybe we’d come back after we went to see the penguins. We can do without psycho hostel owners - hopefully we didn’t squeal the tires too much in getting the hell out of there as fast as possible.

Unfortunately, this is as close as you can get to taking pictures of the penguins in Oamaru

We spent a few days over the Queen’s Birthday holiday in unseasonably warm Chch: on the first day of winter here, June 1, the weather was fantastic: 20C and sunny, warmer than the first day of summer in Chch. They seem to be having some weird seasons here this year, but we didn’t mind, eating ice cream and tossing Frisbee on the beach in Sumner. Amusingly enough, Kiwi’s get a national holiday for Queen Liz’s birthday, while the Brits don’t even get a day off for it. Not to mention that her birthday, according to Rachel, is actually in April, anyway, making it even more puzzling. We’ll let you know if we figure it out, but don’t hold your breath.

On one of the nights we were in Chch the NZ national rugby team, the All Blacks, were playing the French in Auckland in a test match ahead of the World Cup in September. Conveniently we were staying next to a Speight’s Ale House showing the game on about 10 TV’s, and we entered the bar finding it packed with Kiwis to watch the ABs stomp the French 42-11. If you’ve never seen a rugby match, we recommend you try and see at least one WC game this September, especially if you can see the ABs do their haka (Maori war dance) before the game. Watching them do the haka is spine-tingling, and if it doesn’t get you pumped up, you should just stop watching sports right then and there. Plus the ABs have perhaps the coolest kit in sports.

The game actually was pretty close for the first twenty minutes, with the French defense playing pretty stoutly, but eventually the All Blacks wore down the outgunned Frenchies and ran all over them. The French did have one guy, Charal, who looked like a freaking caveman, with a bushy beard and long, greasy hair, and who made a few crushing tackles. Since we were staying really near to where Tony (the Kiwi we couchsurfed with in Chch in February) lived we texted him and he and his girlfriend Keri showed up for the game. It was great to catch up and hang out with them again, and we warned him that it probably wouldn’t the last he’d see of us…

We meet again! Hanging with Tony and Keri at the bar for the All Blacks match

After a few days in Chch we left Rachel at a nearby hostel (some free advice: don’t bother trying to drive through a city when a marathon is being run, unless you’re looking forward to some quality time in gridlock) and headed off to Blenheim, intending to do a few weeks of pruning work somewhere in the heap of vineyards there. We stayed in Blenheim a few months ago and so we went back to same backpackers again, Leeways. Blenheim, or at least Leeways, is like NZ’s Little Germany, as our hostel was nearly completely full of Germans, mostly long-termers doing pruning work as well. We were happy to once again see Thilo, one of our fellow wwoofers from the Lemon Tree in Lawrence a few weeks ago, but were less excited to run into the depressive German girls from the Catlins. As people say in the hostels here in NZ, “See you in the soup,” which is apt since the NZ backpacking world is so small that you’re bound to run into people again in this country.

This doesn't actually relate to the post, per se, I just liked this building in Christchurch - Mondrian!

Talking with Thilo, he apparently had a bad experience at the Lemon Tree as well, getting ‘fired’ one Monday after he and Cam took too long in cleaning the kitchen. Things were getting a bit odd there, he said, with several wwoofers leaving after just a few days. The owners’ attitudes and demands didn’t seem to be sitting well with most of the people going through there, certainly something we could identify with. As we expected, we had joined the canon of bad wwoofers in the owners’ minds, as they had nothing good to say about us after we left. Hardly surprising, but it is a bit funny since they never felt like they needed to tell us how badly we were doing while we were there. At any rate, it feels good to have them in our rear-view mirror in Lawrence.

Looking west (not north) from the South Island towards the North Island

At the moment, we’re hanging at the backpackers, trying to psych ourselves up for our upcoming work. Before we left for here we told everyone we’d do some orchard work at some point, but we’ve been able to avoid it until right about now. With a few weeks with nothing to do before Marie and Alex arrived, and with the NZ$ to US$ exchange growing increasingly unfavorable, it seems like a good time to embrace our migrant worker side. To give you some idea of how the exchange rate has changed over the past few years, when Brian from Renaissance came over to NZ 4 or 5 years ago, he was able to change over money at NZ$1:US$0.39, whereas it now sits at NZ$1:US$0.75, and it’s predicted to go higher still, yikes. Guess we’ll have to get cracking on the pruning!