Westcoast Weather

Last week was my second week planting little Manuka trees at a Landcorp-Farm on Cape Foulwind. That means, digging hundreds of holes with a duffer, a heavy cone on a stick that you need to repeatedly slam into the soil. Sometimes easy, when we are working on wet soil, but mostly frustrating and exhausting and after some time quite uncomfortable. If I don't get Popeye-Arms from punching this almost rock-hard dirt for hours, I will be sorely disappointed.

At least the weather was alright from monday till thursday, so we didn't get wet. We didn't get short rain days like last time either. I didn't get to bake anything! Cooking for twelve people kept me busy enough...

On Friday, it was raining and we planted seedlings again. I like that kind of soothing, easy work far better than Landcorp-work. I had to plat trees for a farm with 1800 cows, and I don't even eat dairy! Well, at least our work has made the horrific impact that dairy farms have on New Zealand a little bit smaller.

The weekend did not get any less rainy. I went to Franz Josef, a small town near the glacier that some German dude named after Austria's last Emporer. Originally, I wanted to do a helicopter tour and look at the glacier from above, but flying in rainy conditions is dangerous, so every trip for the weekend was canceled.

I walked to the closest viewing platform. It almost looked sunny for a few minutes, but once I was halfway there, it just started pouring down. I got completely drenched. The water even ran into my boots. The view wasn't great either, unfortunately.

You can catch a glimpse of the ice between the mountains.

Even though the weather was bad, there were still tons and tons of people. Tons!

At least the waterfalls looked very pretty because of all the rain.

All this moon-lanscape grey...

That's the closest you can get without a helicopter. I was at the viewpoint when the weather was just at it's worst.

I always love the little, clear creeks

This entire valley used to be covered in ice. Everything you see was glacier when it was first discovered. It melted in a few centuries. But man-made climate change is just a hoax made up by the chinese, aye

On Sunday, it rained. Surprise!! Appart from breakfast, I didn't even leave the room until two, when the rain got a bit lighter. I walked to the Tatare Tunnels and Gallery Gorge.

Kat takes pictures of cold, wet things VOL 3546

The tunnels are an old mine, and it is very wet in there. The water was over ankle deep for the most part and water was constantly dripping down. You can't even hide in a cave to get out of the freaking rain! But still, it was kind of cool and I saw a few glowworms again.

When walking to the gorge, I came by this interesting sign

I don't know why there would be explosives in the rain forest, but they were in that locker. It's also closed pretty tightly.

The gorge itself was nice, but of course not as pretty as last weekend's

A smaller river

With a bit of fantasy, this mossy tree stump looks like a sheep's head.

In the evening, I saw a little birdie treating itself to some flax nectar

I'm a bit disappointed that this weekend trip didn't turn out quite like I wanted it to be and that I really didn't get to do much, but I guess you can't be lucky every time. At least this gives me a reason to come back to New Zealand.

Sorry If I sound a bit "shaken", but this place is gorge-ous

After a week of relatively little rain, I went to the little town Hokitika. Less than 3000 inhabitants, tons and tons of little motels, and an Airport. They have tons of airports on the west coast. Greymouth, about 40 kilometers north, is the biggest town there with roughly 6000 inhabitantsand has an airport as well. Probably because there is a bunch of mountains between the coastal towns and Christchurch, and the roads could get blocked easily by disasters like landslides and earthquakes. Oh yeah, earthquakes, wasn't there something?
Monday morning, a few minutes after midnight I woke up because my bed was shaking. A lot. I sleep on the lower bunk and even though the top is empty, my  brain immediately thought "Someone is doing something inapproproate on that bed". Until I completely woke up, I pictured the shaking-camper-cliché. What can I say, appearently I am dirty minded.
When I completely regained conscience, the place was still quaking and I quickly ruled out adult activities, drugs and drunkenness. By the time I actually realized that it was a real, actual earthquake, it was almost over. For some reason I was not even scared or freaked out, just thrilled to experience it first-hand. Just a few days ago I thought that it would be really cool to experience a little one, just to know what it feels like. At that time I also didn't know how big it was and what damage it had caused. I also have to admit that no one actually did the safety procedures we were told to do. It always sounds so obvious and easy when you hear it, but if you are woken by an earthquake, it's hard to actually act on it. Anyways, I was in a lower bunk, which already is one of the safest places you could be, and it wasn't strong enough here to cause damage.
The many aftershakes were a bit annoying, since they woke me again a couple of times. We felt little trembles till the middle of the week and apperently, there still are little quakes in the same area.
In the morining, I scared my friends and family with the newspaper articles. I think they were a lot more worried about the situation than me or the people here. Here, everyone just thought it was kind of cool, and they said it was stronger than the 2011 Christchurch earthquake. Well, the people of Kaikoura aren't too chuffed about it, probably, and I as well as other people I know would have loved to go whale watching there.

The whole week, apart from wednesday, we worked on Cobden Island near Greymouth. We mostly weeded blackberry, gorse, willow, lupin, and other bad stuffs. I got to cut down big thorny gorse bushes again, which was awesome. I still find thorns in my skin.
You have probably heard that there was this supermoon, which also ment higher tides than usual. That kind of caught us off guard a couple of times. It's an island with drains through it, in order to increase the Whitebait-numbers. We went to plant on the other side of a little, not even ankle-high creek, and when we tried to go back a few hours later, the water was well over knee-hight. We had to take off our boots and socks. Another hour or so later, we would have had to wade though a hip-high river.

On Wednesday, we planted for a charming lady who received us with sweets, coffee, tea and home-made chocolate cake because it was raining in the morning. Needless to say, we worked extra hard. She even had vegan espresso-chocolate. Heavenly...

We finished work early on Friday and went to Greymouth where I had to say goodbye to two people that I had had a lot of fun with over the last few weeks. It's always sad to know that you'll most likely never see these people again that you spent every minute with. Then I jumped on the bus to Hokitika.
It's basically just motels and Jade sellers. Many people in town carve that famous green stone as a hobby and sell it by the roadside.

I found one store with a different kind of rock: NZ Ruby Rock. That was honestly one of my most memorable New Zealand-experiences.
From the outside it looked dark and closed. There was a sign saying "Open", though, and I was kind of curious and had time to spare. When I entered, I saw that there were two old men in there, talking, but one of them quickly left after spotting the potentional customer. I felt kind of bad for disturbing the conversation and I knew I wouldn't buy any vintage-looking yet pretty ruby-earrings so I tried to subtly leave. The man in his seventies seemed thrilled that a young person had stepped into the store and asked me if I maybe just wanted to learn something, and that he didn't even want to try and sell me anything if I didn't want to buy it. For some reason I stayed and let him tell me about his art at first, then his family and eventually the entire story of his life.
Appearently he was the only gemcutter working with this very rare stone that he called ruby rock, It's New Zealand only precious stone and can only be found there, at the west coast of the South Island. It contains Ruby, Sapphire and Tourmaline crystals in emerald green mother rock, Fuchsite. It's pretty! 
After watching a couple videos of him and his work, his daughter's music videos and his young grandchildren singing, I decided I had to leave if I didn't want to stay the night. When I left, he gave me a yellow sapphire - for free! So yeah, I am now the proud owner of a small precious stone.

Our teamleader gave me some tips in advance and told me what to do: Go to the gorge and the museum. The museum was, unfortunately closed since the building was deemed unsafe and the gorge is 33 kilometers away from the town, which is a bit too far to walk. There is a shuttle, but that's just crazy expensive, so I decided to hire a bike. The guy at the shop seemed a bit worried when I told him what I wanted to do, but it was alright, at least the ride there. On my way back, I there was wind from the sea, so very adverse. That made it a lot harder! I also didn't have proper pants, so my butt got really sore after some time, and my pants got caught in the chain, even though I tried rolling them up. The gorge was worth it all, you could say it was gorge-ous!

I went further up the road and took a little walk as well.

I thought these pipes looked a bit like binoculars

For some reason, there were a bunch of bees around on the pebbles. Just on the ground.

On my way back, I took pictures of the beautiful, crystal clear rivers and creeks.

And I met a Llama.

At night, I went to the glow worm dell, which was amazing, like a bunch of stars. It's not a cave, It's just a part of the forest, so you need to go when it's dark. The later the better, I guess. If you go after midnight, it will be completely dark and there won't be that many people around. After my 70k bike tour, I was a bit too tired to wait that long, but I still saw them good enough at 10.

On sunday, I walked around in town for a bit and looked at the jade shops. Then I took a walk at the beautiful beach. Sadly, it's still too cold to actually go swimming and have a pleasant experience.

You don't see it on the pictures, but the sand is a bit shimmery, so when the sun shines on it, the beachi glitters golden!

Some of these stones could be jade! If you look closely and are lucky, you could find some yourself.

 At night, I was kind of excited to eat a cooked dinner again. It's not too bad, but I wouldn't want to live off weird "bread" and hummus for more than a weekend. I made curry tonight, it was great. Goes really well with mustard and jam *wink*,

Famous Blue Raincoat (that I didn't take with me this weekend also my rainjacket is black but for some reason I feel obliged to reference Leonard Cohen since he died and I couldn't think of a better title so RIP and Hallelujah)

Another week has passed. A particularily wet week. And also very sad week. I don't even want to get started, you probably know what I mean and how I feel about it anyways, even if you don't agree with me.
 We planted at a farm Monday to Thursday. Since the weather was too bad, we got a few afternoons off, and on Friday, we didn't even go there and did some nurserywork instead. We put tiny little baby plants into their own pots.

The seedlings go from here...

...to there

It was a lot nicer, just standing in the dry shed and potting little Mingimingi instead sliding around on hillsides while getting showerd for hours.

That's the nursery from the hill behind it. They take care of basically everything you see.

I walked around a bit on the weekend, went to the Punakaiki Cavern, and went Horse riding.

The river above makes this little freshwater lake at the beach

There are tons of starting Stalagtites and Stalagmites in the Cavern

I found the cave very cool, very fascinating! Of course, it's dark in there and the pictures aren't that great. The pancake rocks and the cavern are both free, by the way!

Truman beach

The horse riding was nice! We even went to the beach, which was a great experience. It had looked wonderfully sunny and warm when we started the tour, so I only wore a short sleeved shirt. A big mistake. Pretty soon, it just started pouring down. My horse made it pretty clear he didn't like the weather, he was a bit grumpy. Still, it was cool to ride at the beach. Even though I was freezing the entire time.

Me and Jeb

I was definately looking forwards to a hot shower and a cup of tea. I just put in a bunch of spices, like ginger and coriander and cloves and cayenne pepper and got cozy in my sleeping bag. Luckily I had made apple toffee cake the day before and could enjoy it with the tea. I think I am slowly but steadily convincing my workmates that you can cook and bake edible vegan stuff. The cake, at least, didn't even last a day.

Pancake Rocks and pancakes rock

My first week in Punakaiki is over, and what can I say, it was great! The house is great! Most of the utensils are not broken and the kitchen is basically free of spiders! And most importantly, there is working wifi! I am in awe! The new team is super nice as well and I am happily reunited with two Belgians I met in Auckland.
The work was alright: Planting, removing the protective plastic around last year's plants, weeding in the nursery and organizing plants. Next week we will be planting at a farm every day.

On the weekend, I went to the beach and to see the Pancake Rocks. They are very impressive. Neither words nor pictures nor videos can capture how cool this eroding limestone formation is, so you have to see them youself.

I was especially fascinated with the powerful Westcoast Waves, and those really can't be captured with pictures, so I made a video.

The shakyness of all my videos is annoying me, but filming steadily without a tripod is really hard.

This morning, we also made pancakes, which were really good. Somehow, this house inspires everyone to cook and bake a ton of things. I already made cookies, cake and failed at baking bread.
Waffles, brownies, homemade flatbread,... It's probably a bit over the top! We are definately not starving. We even refused to buy sweet snacks this week since we can make better stuff on our own.

I have a bunch of stuff planned for the next weekends: Horse trekking, visiting a glow worm cave, maybe rafting,.. and I'm very much looking forwards to that.