A Change of Planaka (May 31)

Howdy there! So if you've been reading our previous posts, you'll know we've spent the past few weeks in Wanaka, looking for housing and employment for the winter season. On most measures most people would say we were successful, as Becky got offered a ski resort job and we found a relatively cheap place to stay. However, under the surface it wasn't all peaches and cream in Wanaka, and we found ourselves questioning whether we really wanted to stay there for the season. As a result, we're coming to you from scenic Oamaru at the moment, en route to Christchurch and perhaps Blenheim in the top of the South Island for a few weeks. Why? I'll tell you why.

First off, our housing situation in Wanaka really wasn't that good. Though we were just sharing a house with a mother and her teenage daughter, they kept the place a fantastic mess. Dirty dishes, dirty clothes, cat food, and other debris littered all corners of the house, with little prospect of getting any better. Our erstwhile landlord kept promising to clean various things for the week we stayed there, but besides the heap of trash bags making it out of the kitchen nothing got better. Trust us on this one, it was bad, and our impartial friend Rachel marveled that we stayed there as long as we did. And I'm not a stickler for ridiculous levels of cleanliness; this was worse than my fraternity house in college. Becky had a pained look on her face so often in that week that I'm just glad her face didn't freeze like that.

As we mentioned before, housing's incredibly tight in Wanaka, with the rooms wanted to rooms available ads ratio running at about 4:1 in this week's edition of the local paper. In other words, we were extremely unlikely to find much else available, so we felt like it was either a dirty place or no place in Wanaka. We felt slightly bad bagging after only a week there, but our landlord was able to find new tenants within 4 hours of us leaving, as she let us know in an angry text she sent us this evening, charming.

Second, though Wanaka is a beautiful and charming town, there really isn't much to do there if you're not working or skiing. Having made the rounds and learned that the local businesses wouldn't be doing any hiring until late-June at the earliest, we were faced with the prospect of sitting out another 3-4 weeks in the dirty house until we could find gainful employment. There's only so many walks around the lake and trips to the small library that we could take before going nuts, and we were feeling dangerously close to that limit only a few weeks into our stay in Wanaka. Becky's actually lucky that Treble Cone offered a job as quickly as they did. In what can only be described as a terribly incompetent and callous maneuver on their part they kept one of our friends in employment limbo for nearly three weeks before texting her to let her know that they wouldn't be offering her a job. There really is no excuse for it; hiring people to take tickets at a ski resort isn't exactly rocket science.

Third and most important, Becky's sister Marie and her boyfriend Alex just let us know that they will indeed be visiting us here, and will be arriving on precisely the day that Becky was slated to start at TC. They were unable to come at any other time, as they'd been working on their doctorates until now.. With people coming to the other side of the world to visit us, we figured we'd rather tour around with them than say "Sorry, we have ticket-taker orientation today, enjoy the walks around the lake." So we woke up today and made the perhaps rash decision to bugger off from Wanaka and get some temporary work (maybe on the vineyards to fulfill our self-imposed fruitpicking commitment?) until they arrive in a few weeks. If nothing else though, it gets us out of the house!

Thus we're in Oamaru with Rachel, who was also ready to make her escape from Wanaka and was eager to go along with our quickly-conceived escape. We went to see the blue penguins tonight, which was actually really pretty cool. The penguins come out of the water each night to climb onto the beach and walk to their nests in the bushes in the cliffs right off the beach. It's a pretty comical sight to see a pack of little penguins waddling up the bank, honking and quacking all the while. They're cute little buggers (1 foot tall, 2-3 pounds), though they smell awfully like bad fish. Tonight was a full moon, which seems to put penguins in a particularly amorous mood, as the bushes erupted in a cacophony of honks and shrieks as we walked back. Funnily enough, a group of penguins also appears to live in a garage next to our hostel in downtown Oamaru, as we found when we walked past on our way home. Where else can you find penguins living in an alley but New Zealand, fantastic!

Grab Your Harmonica, We’re In Wanaka (May 15 – 28)

Greetings from lovely Wanaka! After trying unsuccessfully to stop here in March (remember... no room at the inn), we finally made it back and, making sure to call ahead, were able to secure a room in a hostel. All along, our grand plan for our trip around NZ has been to tour around the country while the weather was warm, and then to work at a ski area for the winter, to make a couple bucks and maybe improve our skiing/riding. Though it’s only autumn here at the moment, Becky’s interview for work at Treble Cone Ski Resort was set for the middle of May, so here we found ourselves for the time being.

Andrew gets a hardy handshake to welcome us to town

Just from an aesthetic standpoint, Wanaka really is a beautiful area. It’s situated on a mountain lake, with huge mountain ranges all around. While not as spectacular as Queenstown, it’s been fortunate in that it hasn’t been built up like its nearby sister city. Still, as we’ve been learning, Wanaka is a very popular skiing destination, making it really desirable for ski season visitors and workers.

View of Wanaka from Mt. Iron

Arriving in town in mid-May a day before Becky’s interview, we figured we’d be able to get a jump on finding accommodations, jobs, and getting situated in the area before the crush of the ski season in mid-June. However, it seems our plan is not so novel; many other backpacking-type folks have also had the same idea. For example, the manager of the hostel we’re staying in here told us that May is typically the slowest month of the year for the area. However, in our first week in town the hostel was full up for several nights, the first time that’s happened in his four years here.

Housing has proved to be a trickier-than-expected issue here in Wanaka. In getting here so soon before the season, we thought there should surely be a good amount of reasonably priced housing to be found, especially for such pleasant and clean-cut folks as ourselves. Ahh, not so much, as we’ve seen. On the day we arrived, we printed off a copy of the Messenger, the local announcement and advertisement paper, and started calling all the places on the list. Unfortunately, the paper had already been out nearly a week at that point, and by the time we called, all those places were already taken.

Undaunted, when the new Messenger came out a day later, we began calling all the possible renters at 9 am, setting up a number of visits. We visited a handful of places, a number of which were out of town and therefore less desirable. The places that were in town were either pricey, had already had heaps of other people through, or both. Most of the visits had the feel of a job interview mixed with a popularity contest. With so many people to choose from owing to the tight market, landlords could afford to be as choosy as they like. The visits require a tricky behavioral calculus: must seem friendly, but not too friendly as that could creep some people out. You try to figure out if they’re looking for quiet tenants, or more party-hardy ones, or whatever, and then act accordingly. And at the end of the visit you don’t even know if you’ve made a positive impression. It’s fun.

So, obviously, it is definitely a seller’s (or landlord, I suppose) market in Wanaka, and realizing that, some landlords have quoted us some ridiculous numbers. One guy wanted NZ$370 a week during the ski season for a double room in his house! We declined on the phone, but figure that he’ll almost certainly get that from some hapless couple who arrive later in the season, the market is that tight.

As for work, competition for jobs is pretty strong here, as there are apparently heaps of people willing to work here for low pay and pay high rents for the pleasure of being close to the slopes. That would explain why I couldn’t get an interview for a lift job. In hindsight, I perhaps should have gone with a less corporate jargon-heavy resume and foregone detailing what I did at my last job at an intellectual property strategy consulting company. Definitely a Bad Idea Jeans moment, live and learn!

On the bright side, there are many restaurants, bars, and other stores catering to winter visitors here in Wanaka, but unfortunately most of them aren’t hiring until late June. Most places won’t even take a resume (make sure to call it a CV here), and if they do, they’ll likely throw it out in the next week anyway. So wanting to stay here pretty much entails hurrying up to getting here early to secure housing, then hanging around for a month until they start hiring and the weather turns cold.

One of the many local establishments not yet hiring for the season

Well, from the above statements I realize it looks like a truly dire situation for us here, but it’s not so bad. Becky interviewed well and got an offer from TC, so we’re set on at least one job for the season. I’ve also been around to most of the places in town, and have resigned myself to having to wait a few more weeks until I can do anything from a work standpoint. However, I may get to do some brewing work for a local brewery in Wanaka, which though unpaid could be quite educational.

Most importantly, we were able to find a place to stay. Scouring the message boards at the grocery store and local internet cafés, Becky found one that sounded good, and we gave them a call. We visited and a few days later we were moved in! Now it’s certainly not the most flash place to stay, but it sure is cheap, has free wireless, is close to downtown, and has a washer AND a dryer (quite novel for NZ we can assure you). The only downside is that the house makes my fraternity house from college look pretty clean in comparison, so many of you can picture just what that must mean. Ironically, the woman we’re renting from is a housekeeper, by profession – truly, I couldn’t make that sort of thing up. We’re hopeful, however, that we can set a good example and convince her and her daughter to repent and change some of their severely messy ways while we’re here.

Final thoughts: we’re going to stick it out in Wanaka a bit longer to see if we can make it work for the season. Our housing situation is not ideal, but it is workable. The work situation is not ideal, but hopefully it will improve. In the meantime, we’re spending heaps of time at the library (free entertainment!), making up for missed online time perusing our free wireless Internet, and taking advantage of the abundant outdoor opportunities the area has to offer. We’re definitely in the midst of some downtime right now, but we’re trying to make the best of it. To be continued…

Hiking with Rachel, another backpacker seeking work, housing, etc. There are lots of us around!

Reviews of Selected Fijian Snack Foods and Beverages

In an attempt to maximize the educational content of this blog, instead of the usual entertaining travel-related entries, we now include some observations on a topic that everyone wants to know about - Fijian snack food. Of course, we find this topic to be very compelling, and we hope that you do too. Obviously, we wrote this post a few months ago during our travels through Fiji, but we saved it for a rainy day in our New Zealand travels. Plus, we are currently enjoying unlimited Internet at our new pad, so we're posting this one for free. Without further ado...

UFOs – The packaging promises both “Unusually Flavored Objects” and “Burger Flavored Snacks. Only one of these statements seems to be true, per our taste test. That is, UFOs taste unlike any American snack food that we’ve encountered, tasting like a ketchup-flavored Andy Capp’s fry. I’m not really sure how one might actually flavor a snack food to taste like a burger, and I’m not sure I want to know what sort of chemical alchemy might be required for that concoction. In any event, these were quite good, thumbs up.

Bongos – These are basically cheesy rings with a crispy texture. Not bad, but our bag ripped much before we got the chance to eat them, making them stale. Incomplete grade, but not bad from what we could glean.

Monster Foot – One of, if not the only, snack that I’ve ever had that requires a bit of cognitive dissonance to enjoy. The snacks are nacho cheese-flavored, but look like feet. If that doesn’t immediately strike you as a problem, enjoy. In my taste test, however, I had smash the contents of my bag to enjoy them, as a food product that smells of cheese but reminds me of feet is not particularly high on my list of desires. In this case, Monster Feet you ask too much of me, why couldn’t you be shaped like something more appealing, like brains?

Peanut Ruffs – A curious product that has the texture of a firm foam packing peanut and a flavor surprisingly close to that of real peanuts. Peanut Ruffs taste so similar to peanuts and not like peanut butter that I wonder if real peanuts are prohibitively expensive to bring to Fiji. A versatile snack that would probably go well with beer or soda, Peanut Ruffs go both ways.

Fiji Bitter – Ah, the sportsman’s beer, the beer that has captured the imagination of all Fijians. Well probably not quite, but it’s about the cheapest beer and available everywhere in Fiji. Bitter has a solid and pleasing label design, which is good since it’s plastered just about everywhere, including most entry and exit signs for towns in Fiji.

A lager that tastes probably on par with a Busch or something similar, Fiji Bitter isn’t great, but I can guarantee that you’re in a much better mood drinking Fiji Bitter than Busch, since to drink Fiji Bitter you’re almost certainly sitting in Fiji at the moment. Seen in that light, who are you not to enjoy Fiji Bitter?

Fiji Gold – Basically Fiji Bitter Light. Most people would probably drink more of this than Bitter if those were the only two choices, but I wouldn’t, as Gold’s label is way inferior to Bitter’s. As a logo enthusiast, I can’t fight my nature. Fiji Gold marketing geniuses, back to the drawing boards!

Gin and Tonic in a can – Absolutely tremendous product, I would buy a case of these if they were available in the States. Every so often I want a gin and tonic, but buying tonic is fraught with peril, as you have to either use big bottles which go flat really quickly, or buy more expensive small bottles. Plus the twisting of caps and mixing of drinks is usually more than I can be bothered to do. Which I suppose is a bit sad, but probably nothing I’m going to do anything about.

The convenience and awesomeness of this product really speaks for itself, I think. Just crack open a can, and you’ve instantly got a classy party in the making. I might add a bit of lime juice, but really I’m not going to quibble about a product that blows my mind in all the right ways.

Vodka with Orange Soda in a can (not pictured) – Also a good beverage, you could easily drink these all night, and then live to regret it the next morning. No muss no fuss, what’s not to like, besides the probable hangover exacerbated by the sugary soda?

Fiji Water (not pictured since it’s available all over the US) – It’s water. I have little comment other than the fact that it’s flavorless, which is a plus, but a rather subtle reason for which to charge a premium price in my mind. The Fijians seem particularly proud of it, so more power to them. I can’t say I’ll be buying too much of this in the States since it’s expensive and tastes like nothing, like many other bottled waters that we pay too much for already.

Mouth-Watering Pavlova (May 9)

Sometime shortly after we arrived in New Zealand, we heard about Pavlova, considered to be the Kiwi national dessert, the antipodean answer to the apple pie, if you will. Nevermind that Australia has also laid claim to the dessert’s provenance; as more than a few Kiwis have reminded us, who can trust a country of convicts? (To any Aussies reading this, please don’t have your pet kangaroos beat us up…) As Pavlova is basically a giant meringue topped with fresh fruit and cream, though, its origin seems moot since you’d have to imagine the concept of meringue was developed at some point before anyone was baking anything in Australasia.

Anyway, we decided that, strictly in the interest of furthering our cultural awareness, we would have to sample Pavlova at some point. And for authenticity’s sake, not just any grocery store-bought version would do. To get the real experience, we felt it would be best to have a real home-made, Kiwi-made Pavlova. Not to mention that having made many a meal at a hostel, we knew we’d feel a little out of place eating a grand dessert whilst people around us ate beans out of cans, instant noodles, and spaghetti out of the pot (to save cleaning another dish, natch).

Isabel spreads out the pavlova for the oven

Up to date, we’d struck out so far. Apparently making a good Pavlova is a dying skill, or we’d just been unlucky where we’d stopped. However, when we got to Lawrence, we found out that a good friend of Thomas and Alex’s, an elderly local woman named Isabel, not only made a mean Pavlova, she often had their wwoofers over to show them how to make one. Becky was eager to see, so she had Thomas book us a visit on one of our days off. We suspect Thomas was happy to arrange it as he mentioned eating a huge portion of the last Pavlova from Isabel.

After trekking across Lawrence (that makes it sound far; in reality a 10-minute walk) we arrived at Isabel’s small hillside home. Isabel is a spry and lovely 83-year old Kiwi lady who knows her way around the kitchen. Besides Pavlova, she has a repertoire of heaps of other desserts. It isn’t often you meet someone who’s an expert on plum pudding these days. She recounted stories of past baking exploits, and it certainly sounds like she deserves a plaque of gratitude from the local hospital for the goodly sized portion of it that her donated baked goods must’ve paid for.

Her plum pudding was a special hit at the annual bake sale when she prepared 27 of them for the raffle one year. Becky, in her naivety, asked Isabel where she got all the plums to make the pudding (as Kiwis often have fruit trees in their backyards). That was the funniest thing Isabel had heard recently, as plum puddings apparently contain no plums at all. She was kind enough bake (or rather boil) us one of these as well. Isabel recommends only a small spoonful of her brandy sauce with the dessert, but we think you can hardly go wrong with a ladleful.

Plum pudding only looks like a plum. Or a brain, which is decidedly less appetizing.

Isabel was a really terrific host; we had a relatively proper tea with scones after she baked the Pavlova - I knew I should’ve brought my white gloves along. OK, maybe not that fancy but quite nice.

Pavlova in the beard, you know it's good!

Pavlova turned out to be really pretty simple to make. Beat egg whites, sugar, and some other ingredients (including vinegar for a dessert?) for awhile, then bake for an hour and leave in the oven overnight. Afterwards top with whipped cream and fresh fruit. Becky was happy to get a new, novel recipe, and I was happy for dessert, erm, to enjoy the cultural experience the next night.

As for the Pavlova itself, we found it to be tasty and quite rich. It had a nice crunchy outside and was soft like a giant marshmallow on the inside. Since it’s basically a ginormous meringue it’s really light, so you feel you can eat heaps of it. It should come with a warning not to do that though, as eating too much will leave you with the “wow I didn’t realize it was that rich” feeling you’ll regret for awhile.

The finished product... Diagnosis: delicious!

P.S. In the spirit of full disclosure, I’ll admit that a good part of the reason that I wrote this post was because the title basically wrote itself. Much like pavlova itself, who could resist?

Recipe:

Ingredients:

4 egg whites
Pinch of salt
4 tablespoons cold water
1 large cup of sugar
4 teaspoons cornflour
1 teaspoon vinegar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Beat the egg whites, salt, and water until soft peaks form. Add the sugar gradually beating all the time until stiff. Fold in cornflour, vinegar, and vanilla. Put damp grease proof paper on oven tray. Gently pour mixture on to the paper and form a high round cake. Place in the middle of an oven set at 355 F for 3 minutes. Turn down the temperature to 210 F. Leave in the oven for an hour. The pavlova may sit in a cold oven over night. The pavlova should be topped with fresh whipping cream and seasonal fruit (although, we must state a preferance for the kiwi).

Keep us posted on all your pavlova making ventures!

A Lemon Tree Grows In Lawrence (Apr. 26 – May 15)

Leaving the dusty fields of the Alexandra area behind, we headed south to Lawrence, site of our next wwoofing mission, working at The Lemon Tree Café and Restaurant. In a bit of an unusual twist, the owners of the café were a German couple who rely on wwoofers to do much of the café work since the town has few eligible workers from which to draw.

Lawrence, a wee village of 500 nestled in a small valley an hour inland from Dunedin would seem to be the quintessential sleepy New Zealand town. It’s a fairly unremarkable town, but has a quaint charm with verdant sheep farms and logging-pine laden hills surrounding the town. In the town itself are a heap of churches and a main street, on which all the town’s shops and surprisingly numerous cafes (3 in a row!) are located. Walking around town at night, the nighttime sky is brilliant and full of stars, if you don’t mind the smoky haze from burning coal that most locals use to heat their homes. The locals like their rugby, their Speight’s, and their duck hunting, if our time there is any indication.

Becky, Andrew and Andrea in front of the Lemon Tree. Our last day of work!

As with many towns in the South Island, particularly in the Otago region, Lawrence was formerly a gold town, and like so many of those towns has all the obligatory historical memorabilia, tourist sites, and businesses with names in that vein that inevitably follow. We took the historical gold mining ‘interpretive walk’ in nearby Gabriel’s Gully one day, and while it made for a nice bushwalk, the informational plaques scattered around the trail didn’t really make it a ‘must-visit’ spot. One wonders whether there is that much interest in the New Zealand gold rush among travelers that it can sustain basically the same tourism activities in what has to be dozens of towns on the South Island.

Our buddy, Cam, the sous chef at the Lemon Tree

Not that Lawrence seems to be banking on that most days. As it’s a popular route from Dunedin to Queenstown, Lawrence does get a fair bit of traffic from those travelers, especially on weekends, but other than that it’s a somnolent little burg. We were told that in summer the café really gets hopping with over 100 lunches served a day, but while we were there in the chill of autumn we generally served only about 30-40.

The Lemon Tree Cafe and Restaurant

We found our hosts to be pretty interesting, as you wouldn’t expect to find too many German transplants running a successful café in what can only be described as the middle of nowhere in Otago. Their house, for starters, is a nice, big Victorian-style home with bookshelves in seemingly every room, which are necessary since they must’ve brought a whole shipping container of possessions here. Without trying to be too unkind, you could describe their home as German-Attic-Exploded-In-Kiwi-Mid-Century-Victorian.

They both must love New Zealand, though they seem horrified by small town attitudes and the lack of amenities. Perhaps we shouldn’t have told them about some of our happenings at the pub, as it only seemed to galvanize their opinions even stronger. I didn’t really mean to instigate there, but couldn’t help it… It seems pretty apparent that they would readily move back home except for the café and having a young family.

A view of Gabriel's Gully on a beautiful fall day

One funny anecdote that encapsulates their experience is story of the Giant Ice Creams. When our hosts bought the restaurant property it was the local fish and chips shop that featured giant ice cream cones (an advertisement prominently hand-painted on a shed along the highway a few miles outside of town that is so damn cute and NZ-country you’d be hard-pressed not to want to stop). While they were renovating the property, one day two rednecks roared past in their pick-up and shouted “Where the f*** are the giant ice creams?!” as they looked on in horror. As he said to us, “I was thinking, what have I gotten myself into?”

As far as the actual work went, since we’d just escaped the fields o’garlic, we were hopeful for a better wwoofing experience at the café, especially since Becky is so fond of restaurant work. As I noted in the last post, working for only room and board has served to enhance our appreciation for work that you know, pays. I have to admit that my enthusiasm for wwoofing has been flagging, not to mention that I had to cajole Becky into not quitting garlic farming within an hour of our beginning to haul rocks out of the fields.

A squid salad, replete with ornate presentation. You should've seen the BLTs!

When we arrived in town at noon on a Thursday, we were quickly thrown into the fire at the café, starting work immediately, with none of the cozy get-to-know-you period that we’ve grown accustomed to (typically a dinner and night’s rest before the work begins). Instead, Becky and I suited up in the bright yellow Lemon Tree tee shirts and café aprons to begin our first day of wwoofing.

Our work at the café was pretty typical as far as café labor goes. When it’s busy with customers, Becky does a variety of things: baking, taking orders, running food, busing tables, washing dishes, prep work, etc. There’s also no shortage of cleaning to be done. Because I’m a dude, I’ve ended up with most of the grunt work, like chopping up heaps of pumpkins for their soup (Becky thinks I’ve earned my merit badge on that one), cutting frozen chickens, and other fun things. I actually don’t mind that work, as I’d rather do that then ferry coffees to the tables.

I’ve also done lots of groundskeeping work at their sprawling Victorian property, with some paint-scraping and sanding thrown in, as well. Becky thinks it should qualify as an “estate” by NZ standards, since most are nondescript ranch homes with no landscaping. Again, not bad work, especially when the weather has been nice, though they may have been a bit anal about the lawn, or they were just been giving me busywork. To wit, I raked the property twice one week, and nearly a third, while there were still leaves on the trees. The futility factor of such work gets dangerously close to rock-pulling in garlic fields.

We’re not actually sure how much we enjoyed our time at the Lemon Tree. We found Lawrence to be nice enough, if a bit too sleepy, and despite long hours on our working days, the work was pretty agreeable, making time fly by, in stark contrast to garlic planting. When our hosts were engaging, we got along well with them and enjoyed talking to them, as they’ve had some really interesting experiences. Food at the café was also generally very tasty, and we enjoyed our daily coffees tremendously. One of the wwoofers, Andrea, made some awesome espresso drinks at the Lemon Tree that must be the best in Otago: we were hooked almost immediately and will truly miss our daily gratis mochaccinos/lattes. Camaraderie with our fellow workers was also great, as we really got on well with Andrea, Steffi, Cameron, Thilo, Jessica, and James and Vicki. They were all hard workers, full of good spirit, and a pleasure to work with. Special thanks to Steffi for the German lessons. We learned a bunch of useful German phrases, which will come in handy when we get to Oktoberfest someday.

We did indeed like a number of things about the café, as we asked to stay for a week longer than the two week period we’d originally promised. However, we soon regretted making the request, as we started to get a strong vibe from our hosts that they weren’t very keen to have us around. We often felt that we weren’t meeting some unexplained criteria, and so we just didn’t know how to improve the situation. We did wonder why they said we could stay on longer, and we joked together more than a few times that we wouldn’t really have minded if they’d asked us to leave. I guess not everyone will like you, but we really wish we knew what we were doing to offend them.

Our home in Lawrence for three weeks - "The Property"

Well, we don’t want to make this a completely whingey post, so we’ll skip it for now. We will take some good memories away from this experience and we certainly feel like we tried to make the best of it while we were there. However, our wwoofing days are probably over for the time being. Working hard for room and board and living in close quarters (where quiet hours are always in effect) with a young family and five other twentysomethings may not always be the best combination – we’re learning new things all the time here!

House of Pained Supporters (May 5)

While in New Zealand we felt we’d be remiss if we missed attending a big-time rugby match in person. We’ve kept meaning to get to a game, but thus far it hasn’t been convenient, so we’ve kept putting it off. Unfortunately, the Super 14 (the professional rugby union league) regular season ended the first week of May and wouldn’t begin again until after we leave, so there was no more putting it off. We had to finagle an early departure from the café one Saturday afternoon, but that turned out to be no problem. Luckily for them as well as us, since if they’d said we couldn’t go, we probably would have had to just up and leave. Hey, you’ve got to take your trip objectives seriously…

Since Lawrence is just an hour’s drive from Dunedin and the Highlanders had a home game, the trip to Carisbrook Stadium was really pretty easy for us. Being from the States, when we got to the stadium, we were surprised to find it in the middle of a residential neighborhood, without its own parking lot. I can’t think of the last time I went to a pro sports game and found free off-street parking 10 minutes from the stadium. Try doing that at Fenway Park sometime.

Welcome to the House of Pain. Plenty of good seats still available.

When we got into the stadium, we saw that we hardly needed to buy tickets earlier in the week, as the stadium was half-full, if that, despite the fact that it was an absolutely brilliant fall night for rugby. The low attendance was attributable to the fact that it was the last game of a forgettable, disappointing season for the Highlanders. The Otago side finished lowest out of all the NZ teams in the league, but we were hoping they’d give the visiting Australian side, the Brumbies, a good match. Because of the low attendance and generally small size of the stadium, it kind of felt like a big minor-league game, not unlike the Hershey Bears, for example.

Enjoying a Speight's, Becky realizes her dire need for a haircut. We miss you, Marija!

Carisbrook bills itself as rugby’s “House of Pain”, but on this night, the only pain was for the home team and the few fans that turned out. Brumbies, fighting for a playoff berth, pasted the Highlanders 29-10, scoring four tries to Otago’s lone try. After 15 minutes, it became clear that the Highlanders weren’t going to be in it, so we settled into our Speight’s. The alcohol concession at Carisbrook basically consists of booths where they sell beer in cans from pallets. We were amazed that they sold it by the six-pack, as you’d never be able to buy a six-pack of cans at a game in the States. It seemed like the thing to do, so we grabbed one and took it back to our spot on the Terraces.

When at a Highlanders game, Speights is the beverage of choice. Preferably a six-pack.

Our tickets were for the standing section of the Terraces, and standing for the whole game reminded us of sitting in the student section at Penn State games; well, except that we had a six-pack of beer, Carisbrook was much smaller, and we weren’t jammed on top of one another. We did have the bad fortune of being in front of a big group of American students (we guess studying at Otago University), smoking and chattering on, ignoring the game to talk about how amazing NZ is and how wasted they were getting, so that was fun. We found we had to keep somewhat of a close eye on our beer, as there were kids running around who couldn’t have been more than 13 or so, scavenging unguarded beers. Tsk tsk…

Super 14 Rugby action!

All in all, despite the fact that the home team took quite a beating, we had a good time at the rugby match. We can check another to-do off our mental checklists, and if nothing else, we found it incredibly novel to be able to buy a six-pack at a pro sporting event. It was good to get to a game in person, and who knows, maybe we’ll be lucky and be able to catch another match (e.g. an international friendly) sometime later this year.

Bummed not to get on the "kiss cam"!

Put The Coach Before the Horses (Apr. - May)

Most nights in Lawrence (home of the Lemon Tree Cafe) were pretty quiet for us, but we spent a number at the local pub, the Coach and Horses Inn, with Andrea (the most senior wwoofer, having been here for almost a year), who couldn’t get enough of the place. Apparently they don’t have bars with pool tables, jukeboxes, and people dancing around in Germany. Who knew?

Andrea, the senior most Wwoofer at the Lemon Tree and Cam (sous chef at the Lemon Tree cafe and a Lawrence native), who really looks like he is enjoying himself

The Coach and Horses seems to be a lot like any small town NZ pub, full of boisterous locals on the weekends and after big local rugby matches, and with plenty of cheap beer on tap, trophies and mounted animals on the walls, and rugby on the telly. Most of the locals could be called Kiwi rednecks, and if you’ve been to a bar in the sticks anywhere, you get the picture.

Though we have to say we even were a bit surprised when one of the local rugby players, full of beer after a big win over a local rival, began to use the bar as a urinal, and no one so much as batted an eye or told him to maybe take it to the bathroom 15 feet away. Luckily, Andrea was able to capture it as she took a video with her camera. We’re sure her friends in Germany will be really impressed. I have friends who genuinely would appreciate a bar with rules like this, though; Eric, you’ve got to come to New Zealand, man!

We enjoyed a round with fellow Wwoofers James and his girlfriend Vickie

We did have one great time at the pub, on the night of the local duck-calling competition. We thought it would probably be some good fun, but it turned out to be even better, a hilarious display of drunken antics. The event was MC’ed by the ‘local expert on all matters regarding duck-calling’, who dressed, looked, and spoke like an English professor, albeit one who must’ve been a few sheets to the wind, who repeatedly referred to the bartender as ‘Lusty, busty, Dusty the Barmaid’, and carried a toy ray-gun to zap any hecklers.

Even after the MC introduced himself, we thought it might be a semi-serious competition. But then the competitors came forward to play the duck-calling kazoo, one by one, and it wasn’t clear whether any of them really knew how to call a duck, with some playing the wrong end. We, and the rest of the audience, thoroughly enjoyed the competitors trying to one-up each other with their hammy, drunken duck calls. We also thought their nod to sanitation was a nice touch, with the kazoo being dunked in beer between competitors. If any ducks were shot that weekend, it was probably due in very small part to their skill in calling the ducks.

Towards the end of the competition, some of the locals managed to pry Andrea up to the front of the bar to play the kazoo, so she could show them what a ‘German duck’ sounded like. She was mortified at first, but was a good sport and got up and played along by herself. Then, in a run-off to determine the winner, she played again in a bit of a duet with a local bloke, it what can only be described as a bizarre and hilarious combination of duck-calling, mating dance, and small-town inebriation that had the entire bar roaring with laughter for minutes. It was definitely a highlight of our trip so far. Needless to say, they won the competition handily.

Steffi and Thilo, fellow Wwoofers at the Lemon Tree

We had a few other memorable nights at the pub, including one where one of the locals, a middle-aged bloke named Ross, recognized Andrea and started chatting with us. At first it wasn’t clear why his companions at his table were grinning as he came over to our table, but we figured it out pretty quickly, as Ross was pretty sloshed. It wasn’t bad at first, as he was somewhat entertaining, but after about 15 minutes we learned that Ross was from the genus repeating drunk. So by the time that we heard him twice bring up his recent trip to China, how much he liked America, and how he thought George Bush was a great president, we were quite happy to leave him to his Speight’s. He did inadvertently give a great line that night, however. He had told us he had three children, so Becky asked him “So what do you have?”, to which he responded “One of each.”

So if you ever find yourself in Lawrence, we wholeheartedly recommend The Coach and Horses Inn, as it’s pretty much the only option for weekend night entertainment. That is, unless you’re invited to a woolshed party, where the local kids are known to throw back a few late at night in the mud. In either event, gumboots are optional, but if you have them it certainly wouldn’t hurt to bring them along.

Phillipa (Cam's sister and a Lawrence local), enjoys a jug at the pub. She also spent a summer working at Lake Dunmore in Vermont!