Marie Et Alex Sont Arriveé! (June 20 - 22)

On Monday we handed in our secateurs and ended our (bad pun alert) budding pruning and wrapping careers. The people at Montana seemed genuinely sad to see us go – they were appreciative of any warm bodies they could get to do the necessary work in their vast vineyards. We also bid a somewhat-sad farewell to Chris and Martin; their hospitality made it easy to want to stay even longer.

Leaving Blenheim, we again made the drive south along the eastern coast towards Christchurch, into which Marie and Alex were flying. We had earlier arranged to stash our extra gear with Kieran and Belinda, our Wwoofing hosts in March, which gave us a great excuse to catch up with them again. They kindly agreed to store our stuff and offered us a bed for the night (and a bed for Marie and Alexis if they would also like to stay). We enjoyed a great evening catching up and look forward to a return visit when we retrieve our stuff.

The next morning, we headed to the airport in Christchurch to collect Becky’s sister Marie and her Belgian boyfriend, Alex. They’ve just finished up their PhD’s in environmental engineering at Yale, and are slated to move to Barcelona later this summer for work, so I guess you could consider the trip a bit of a graduation present to themselves. Maybe it’s because we’re used to being so far away from home, but it seemed a bit surreal to have guests arriving from the States, as home sometimes seems like a world away. But here they were in the flesh, and they had no problem getting through customs, so we were quickly on our way and out of Chch.

The mountain view at Hanmer Springs

Reviewing the weather forecast, we saw that the South Island wasn’t looking particularly good anywhere, so we rolled the dice and headed a short ways away to Hanmer Springs in the mountains north of Chch (as it’s home to a natural hot pool resort, Becky was behind this plan of action all the way). Hanmer Springs was really enjoyable – we went on a good short hike and spent the evening lounging in the hot pools. It was pretty cold running from one pool to the next, but the time in the hot water was really enjoyable. Fortunately, Marie and Alexis arrived without much jetlag, so they didn’t seem to mind us running them around that first day.

Becky looking incredulously (or adoringly?) at Andrew at the top of Conical Hill

Andrew, Becky, and Marie make their way down a muddy trail in Hanmer Springs

From Hanmer we headed west through the Lewis Pass and on to Westport. Heading to the west coast is always a risk as the weather there is notoriously bad, and our first few days there was no exception. We don’t mind cloud cover, but were hoping that it wouldn’t be raining full-on all day. Fortunately, we got a few dry moments for picture-taking at the Cape Foulwind seal colony and the Punakaiki pancake rocks, though our pictures may suggest otherwise. By the end of the night we were totally drenched and happy to make our way to our backpackers for the evening.

Alex and Marie enjoy a brief respite from the rain at Cape Foulwind

Marie, Becky, and Andrew unsuccessfully wait for the blowhole to blow at Pancake Rocks (Becky had seen it blow only moments before. Of course, no one believed her...)

We dry out and warm up with a cuppa at Te Nikau Retreat at Punakaiki

The next day the rains continued unabated as we drove south through Greymouth and on to the Fox Glacier. In Greymouth we stopped and took the brewery tour at Monteith’s, the famous west coast brewer, and had a good time. Unfortunately the tour was better than the tasting as their black beer was the only one of seven on hand that we enjoyed. By the time we made it to Franz Josef Glacier in the late afternoon, the temperatures had dropped even farther and we found the glacier park covered in snow. We had the place to ourselves, which was a nice change from Becky’s and my previous visit where we had to contend with busloads of elderly tourists.

We wander through the winter wonderland at Franz Joseph Glacier and marvel at the complete absence of other tourists.

To get to our hostel we then had to drive in dusk to Fox Glacier, which is only 24k away, but which took a ridiculously long time to get to. The roads were slick and barely plowed, which made for really slow going through the torturously windy mountain pass, and when we made it through unscathed we all breathed a sigh of relief. When we arrived at our hostel for the night the owner was surprised to see we’d gotten through, as the road had apparently been closed for the past few hours, but we must’ve missed the signs as the park was beyond the town by a few kms. We were actually lucky as the southern half of the South Island was in the midst of a great icy and cold winter front, dumping heaps of snow and covering roadways with ice throughout the Southern Alps, Otago, and Southland areas. There were tons of accidents throughout the island, and Queenstown had most of its winter festival shut down. Jokingly, we like to blame Marie and Alex for bringing an Antarctic blast with them to NZ.

Marie, Becky, and Andrew pose safely next to the beware of avalanche, tidal wave, and drowning sign.

Driving through the country over the past few days, we have to say it’s great to have Marie and Alex here. They provide a good injection of enthusiasm to our travels, which truth be told has been quite nice to have. If we can just convince them to do some reading in their travel guides (or provide us with more direction on what they’d like to see), we’re sure that we’ll have a great couple of weeks. We’ve also been enjoying sharing meals (and especially cooking duties), and just hanging out with them. We’ve met some great folks here in NZ, but it’s always nice to see a familiar face from home. It also makes you appreciate the NZ landscape anew when you get to see it through fresh eyes. It really is beautiful here, but sometimes you start to take it for granted once it starts to become familiar. Good on ya, Marie and Alex!

Return of the Couchsurfers (Jun. 14- 18)

Devoted readers will probably have noticed that we haven’t couchsurfed for some time lately. It certainly isn’t for lack of trying, but we’ve spent a bunch of time in the lightly-populated Otago region, where there simply aren’t many couches to be surfed. We spent our first week and change in Blenheim in a backpackers, but even though we had a double room, there was Sky TV and a ping-pong table, Becky wasn’t really feeling the place. Perhaps it was because the fact that there was no private changing area for any of the showers there, or the place was full of somewhat-unfriendly German backpackers, there was often no room in the kitchen to cook or even to sit, or because it just made us feel like depressive migrant workers. Whatever the reason, we were compelled to find some more couchsurfers in Marlborough.

Fun times in Marlborough

For a few nights we did a bit of couchsurfing with a couple from Seddon, Angie and Graeme. Their house was full with Angie’s children, so they put us up for a few nights in their caravan, which had lights and a heater; deluxe accommodations compared to some of our previous stays! Angie and Graeme were really hospitable, cooking dinner for us one night and letting us have run of the house. Angie’s youngest child, Bri, really seemed to enjoy having us around, and insisted that she and Becky paint their nails together.

Graeme and Angie, our Couchsurfing hosts in Seddon (and Mt. Gay Rum afficionados)

Interestingly, Angie and Graeme had just returned from a trip they had won to the States and Barbados, through Mount Gay rum. We were thinking it was funny to meet someone who had actually won a sweepstakes, but figured that the odds of winning must be much better in a small country like NZ as opposed to the good ol’ USA. They showed us their pictures of the trip, and the main takeaway seemed to be that in Barbados apparently just about any time of day is a good time to drink rum. The only downer to staying there was that Becky stole more than a few of the dozen (literally) blankets we used at night, freezing me out a bit. Also, Seddon is about 24 km from Blenheim, meaning that we had to get up even earlier than we’d been doing, around 6:00 am, to pack lunch and drive into work in the morning.

The road to Seddon is a typical Kiwi affair, twisting and turning up and along a mountain range, with little room on either side. Driving into Montana one day, we blew our rear driver’s side (the right side, of course) tire just before we turned into the work driveway. This was pretty fortuitous for us, as if we’d blown one on the narrow road to Seddon we’d have had nowhere to change it for several kms and would’ve had to roll along on a very flat tire. When we went to change the flat we found our spare just fine, but discovered there was no jack or lugwrench, d’oh! The mechanic we bought the car from swore up and down that there was a set in the car, but we’d forgotten to look when we bought Ron and hadn’t had reason to look since then. Luckily, some of the other vineyard workers stopped and helped, and we got our spare on in no time. They even called into town and got us a good deal on a new tire – gotta love friendly Kiwis!

Anyway, after a few days in the caravan, we said goodbye to Angie and Graeme and headed off to another couchsurfing location. Chris had been in contact with us on a Friday and said we could spend the next couple nights with them, which we were happy to hear. After a cold day in the vineyard on Saturday, Andrew and I had a few hours to kill before we could meet Chris and her partner at their home. After a chilly, damp, and overcast day, we were set on finding a cozy coffee shop to sit and have a hot drink in until we could head over to their house. New Zealand prides itself on its coffee culture, and even in small towns you tend to find heaps of cafes, but this sadly wasn’t the case in Blenheim on a Saturday at 4:00 PM. Many New Zealand shopkeepers tend to keep fairly limited hours, which we as Americans tend to be unaccustomed to (you mean I can’t by a flat screen TV at a Wal-Mart Supercenter on a Sunday night at 11:00 PM?), closing early on Saturday if they’ve opened at all. We were even missing good old Starbucks that Saturday when we had to instead head to one of the only establishments that seemed to be open – a pub. There, we were able to drink a beer (not exactly a warm cuppa) and watch the rugby match, which I suppose was nearly as good.

Next we were off to our couch surfers, Chris and Martin. Though we’re becoming a broken record on the subject, let us say again that couchsurfing is an amazing thing! Chris and Martin gave us a warm greeting and welcomed us into their home for a home-cooked meal. Our accommodations there were deluxe. It was a lovely guest bedroom, with a heater, and an electric blanket, which are really luxury items in the New Zealand winter. We even had an ensuite bathroom, which I can venture to guess was the first time we’ve had our own bathroom since leaving the States (and living in Vermont). And while all of these things were lovely, the best part was really in meeting Chris and Martin. These two are an amazing couple with a lovely story about how they arrived to find one another. This is a second marriage for both of them, and they have created a really wonderful life together. They are both into outdoor activities such as rock climbing and abseiling and teach a mountain safety course. Martin used to be a pretty regular mountaineer in a previous life and described some of his interesting treks in the UK (his first home), Australia (his second home), and in New Zealand (his current home). He is a civil engineer who’s primary post is inspecting all of the bridges around the South Island. His partner Chris is an artist who makes her living by painting pet portraits on commission, and who also does lovely landscapes. Together they are both interested in the practice of Reiki, which is an alternative healing technique. All of these things meant that we shared many interesting conversations together over the dinner table.

Martin and Chris, our Couchsurfing hosts (and Reiki afficionados)

It’s always great when we are able to spend some quality time with our couchsurfing hosts outside of the home. We spent a great Sunday with Chris and Martin taking their dogs (two Weimerauners) for a walk by the river. Later, we bundled up and went to an outdoor obstacle course area where they teach their mountain safety classes. Their was a grownup size hamster wheel, zip line, sliding board, etc., which were all good fun on a Sunday afternoon. Later we stopped into a local winery and distillery for some sampling and went back to their home to enjoy another delicious meal together. It’s people like Chris and Martin that really make couchsurfing great. We feel truly fortunate to keep coming across people like Chris and Martin on our travels and hope to see them again in the future. After two short days, it almost seemed too soon to leave. I’m sure we could have stuck it out longer in the vineyards if we were able to come back to Chris and Martin’s every evening. But with my sister Marie and her boyfriend Alexis on their way, we said our goodbyes and look forward to seeing them again on our return trip through Blenheim to catch the ferry back to the North Island.

Becky and Martin on the giant hamster wheel

And Andrew on the zip line!

Marlborough Man (and Woman) (Jun. 6 - 18)

First off, I know this post is long, and Becky even said so, but she was unwilling/unable to edit it, and I couldn’t bear to part with any of my laboriously constructed prose, so it pretty much all remains here, unabridged. So we understand if you’ve got to skim, but we haven't posted in awhile, and if you have even the slightest interest in grape pruning, you really owe it to yourself to settle in and read the whole thing, I think. And really, are you in such a hurry to get back to your real work, c’mon… (Although I realize now that by adding this intro it only lengthens the post, can't win for trying)

One of the things that I can’t say I expected to take away from the trip, but indeed will, is the idea that work can be a healthy and necessary thing. Who knows, that could just be my travel-fried brain talking, or a bizarre cry for help? Anyway, we’ve found that continuous traveling is fun at first, becomes tiring after a few months, and after 4 or 5 months has convinced us that an honest day’s work has its merits! Not an outcome I would’ve bet on, maybe it’s just our strong American work ethic shining through…

To that end, we’ve been up here in Blenheim (up here being a relative term, Blenheim is only north compared to the rest of the South Island, and Antarctica) to do vineyard work. Blenheim is the major city of the Marlborough region, famed for its sunny climate and wines, specifically the Sauvignon Blancs that NZ has made much of its oenophilic reputation on. I’ve never been to the Napa Valley or any other major wine-producing region before coming here, but with the amount of vines in this area, I have to imagine Marlborough is becoming much like those places.

Seriously, driving along the highway here one sees row upon row of wire-trained vines, stretching as far as the eye can see, to the dry brown hills in the distance. There aren’t many other crops to speak of, which makes sense since we’ve heard that the amount of area covered by grapes in Marlborough has doubled in the last 5 years. It’s pretty amazing, and if you’re a fan of wine, you’re definitely in luck around here. One of the big things for tourists to do here is to rent a bike and tool around, doing tastings at various wineries, which seem to be only a few hundred meters apart in the country here. As a motorist though, it is a bit disconcerting trying to avoid all the bikes, more than a few wobbling their way down the highways after the 5^th stop on their Tour de Plonk.

The Montana vineyard in the early morning

Getting jobs in pruning season in Marlborough is, as the Kiwis would say, easy as. There are heaps of vines in need of pruning and wrapping and plenty of contractors or companies to work for. However, we’ve heard horror stories of people being mistreated or even being stiffed on their pay by unscrupulous contractors, so we were a little leery of most of them. For instance, many contractors advertise on the internet, but they’re apparently not good, since if they were any good they’d get enough workers from word-of-mouth in the area and at hostels. Pruning work is basically the perfect job for backpackers, as it doesn’t require much training, doesn’t pay very well, and is very casual, meaning you can start or quit basically whenever you want. That’s the only way it’s casual; based on our few weeks of doing it we’d say that it’s pretty hard work.

Since we had a car, we just took jobs for a few weeks with Montana, which is probably NZ’s biggest wine house, and reputed to be a place that paid on time, which was our major criteria. Because when you’re doing manual labor, we could think of few things worse than not being paid. At Montana the jobs are pretty much divided by gender, with guys doing pruning, which is more strenuous, and girls doing the wrapping, which is fussier work. Since girls are fussy this makes good sense to me. I’d also note that even though it was only women doing wrapping, they had a male supervisor – this also makes good sense. Pruning and wrapping work is largely done on a piecework basis, but at Montana they’ll pay the minimum wage for awhile, after which you can go on a piecework rate or be asked politely to leave.

Blenheim before the sunrise. Andrew wanted photographic evidence to prove that he was actually awake that early.

Pruning involves using a big cutter to cut off most of the big canes from the vine, then stripping out the cut canes and trimming off all the little branches from the canes that are left to grow in the next season. Doing the big cuts was easy, except when you’d have to cut through some really thick wood stumps. After a bunch of those your forearms begin to complain that this wasn’t what they’d agreed to. Stripping was probably the most strenuous part, since you’re basically yanking canes which are tangled up in wires and other parts of the vine. The canes are very springy and will whack you across the head, face, or back without mercy – best not to do this work if you’re in the habit of paying a swear jar. Dropping in my two cents, wearing a hat and safety glasses is a must while stripping, as it’s surprisingly dangerous. Trimming wasn’t bad, except if you do too much without stretching your hands your hands might swell up like Becky’s, or you’ll find it strangely hard to do demanding tasks like squeezing toothpaste, as I did one day.

Andrew proves that you need a stud to prune vines.

Pruning one plant on a piecework basis earns you NZ$0.65 per plant, which means you need to do about 18 plants an hour before reaching minimum wage. Pruning upwards of this many plants an hour requires some serious-ass hustle. Unless you’re a pruning prodigy it would probably take you a few weeks to get up to contract speed. Since we were only there for a few weeks, getting minimum wage was alright with us.

On my first day, I got about 48 plants pruned, which is nowhere near the minimum. Over my two weeks at Montana I got up to about 110, which is still about 30 plants short, but I’d be hard-pressed to figure how to do them much faster. Perhaps I would’ve developed even better technique and a nicely-conditioned upper body to crank through the required quantity, but I can’t say I’m too disappointed at not getting to find out. Even though I was on an hourly rate, I was often working as hard as I could, which I blame on a goofy competitive streak. Granted I wasn’t brilliant at the work, but it was still way harder than I’d ever worked for minimum wage before. In that light, it was a bit disheartening to watch other workers, mostly European backpackers and older Kiwi blokes, in nearby rows cruising past you, especially when you can’t figure out how exactly they’re doing it much more quickly. Best to let it go I suppose…

Wrapping consists of taking the pruned canes and fixing them to the horizontal wires strung along the rows with what are essentially baggie ties. Wrapping a plant will earn you NZ$0.28, meaning a lady needs to do about 40 plants/hour to earn her keep. Unfortunately for the wrappers, their speed is largely dependant on whether the pruners in their row did a good job or not. If they left nice canes without a lot of old viney bits on them, the wrappers can cruise along, sweet as. If they left thick canes or canes that still needed to be trimmed, they’d be seriously slowed down. Since pruning is a piecework job and there isn’t what you’d call heaps of supervision out in the middle of a sea of vines, you’d be right if you guessed quality wasn’t always Job Number One.

That's a wrap!

Like me, Becky got better at her job over time, but never got really close to making more than minimum. Sorry Montana, guess we’ll be laughing all the way to the bank with our hardly-earned minimum wage! I do find it pretty amusing that I have moments where we feel like we took them slightly, although that’s pretty ridiculous when I consider that we were working really hard, pruning in below-freezing weather with the sun barely peeking above the horizon.

Since we were in Blenheim, I also got some time in with Brian and Andy at Renaissance. We dropped by unannounced one day and had a great time catching up, and Brian invited me back to help do some labeling work. We didn’t end up doing much labeling, but Becky and I did spend a day there as I helped Brian with a brewing session. All in all, I didn’t really do too much work, and we probably distracted Brian from real work as much as anything, but we had a blast and he enjoyed having us around as well. We even stopped by his house for dinner with his family and will certainly be back through before we leave the South Island.

Brian and Andrew working on a tasty brew

As a pruning post-mortem, we’d say that pruning and wrapping for a couple weeks was novel, but it was just about to lose its novelty, say after one or two more days. To any aspiring backpackers who think that it would be romantic and just incredible to work on a vineyard, we’d say “Eh, not so much.” Having an iPod to listen to was clutch, as it made the day go by more quickly, so unless you can hum the whole Beatles songbook, we’d recommend bringing along some tunage. We worked on the vineyards for a couple weeks largely to do it, learn something new, and kill some time before Marie and Alex got here, and so we didn’t have a terrible time. But if we were stuck here with no money and had to do a season of pruning in the NZ winter, we’d be singing a much different and way more depressing tune. Our advice: work hard in your home country where you can make a decent hourly rate and bring along plenty of money so that you don’t have to bust your hump for months in the cold and possibly develop repetitive stress disorders. If you insist on pruning though, be sure to bring plenty of warm layers!

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!