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.

A very shaky video of ducklings I met in Christchurch

...that I only uploaded now since I didn't have good Internet last weekend and then kinda forgot about it.
I filmed it on my phone, and it is a bit shaky. They're still cute though.
The music is stuff I improvised on my native American wooden flute, but it could be a medlody I knew from somewhere and accidentaly copied, so if that's the case I'm sorry, and if I actually made it up completely, I hope you apreciate my composing skills.

Hey Hey W(aih)eke

x

I was very lucky to get to work on Waiheke. CVNZ only goes there for a few weeks every year, and the other team had to stay on the main land at Atiu Creek. It is a island of wine and beaches, but sadly I only got to enjoy the latter. It was a busy and chaotic week. Not everything worked out quite perfectly, but we coped. The house was in the most romantic spot ever. Directly at the beach. Living in a place like this has always been a childhood dream of mine. 

Since there is no road directly to the house, we had to walk for a few minutes. That’s not too bad, even though we had to carry everything, luggage, groceries, water – there was no drinking water, and we had to preserve the tank water for showering etc. As pretty as it is from the outside, no one lives there apart from volunteers every other month. That means it is not very well maintained. Upon entering the kitchen, we found a few mouse droppings on the counter, and of course more spiders than there are people on the island. However, at this point, I’m used to it. A few little bugs don’t impress me anymore. Cockroaches, moths, spiders, rats,... – They are as much my house mates as the other volunteers. 

A hand full of spiders wish you a good morning in the toilet, then you find some chilling in their nets over the stove as you make breakfast and say hello to the ant family in the food cabinet and maybe clean up the fresh mouse poo from the fruit bowl. Then you go to brush your teeth together with the cockroaches. At night, you fall asleep listening to dozens of little rat feet on the roof. That’s just the life.

What bothered me a bit more than our unrequested pets was that we were almost out of gas. And the energy outlets didn’t work. Neither did the microwave. And we didn’t have any hot water for the showers. Awesome. At least the gas lasted long enough to cook couscous. And since we would get sweaty and smelly again the next way anyways, it didn’t really matter if we didn’t shower. That day, we had only spread out some mulch. Boring, but not that hard. Luckily, we could sort out most of that the next morning.

On Wednesday we fixed bait lines. That means filling rat poison in traps and smearing on a bit of peanut butter on it as bait. It was a nice walk, at least for me. I volunteered to go with the ranger. It’s always great to work with the professionals, they can tell you so much about native plants. And that way I wouldn’t get lost somewhere in the deep forest. I saw a great old Kauri, and a tree that might have been used by the Maori to store dead bodies. Our route was easy for the most part, but appearently the other teams had a hard time climbing around in the jungle. The ranger might have kept the easiest route for himself.

This may have been a burial tree

Thursday morning, a not-so-pleasant surprise waited for us: The tap stayed dry, the toilets didn’t flush, we had run out of water. Or at least we thought so. Later we found out that there was still a lot left, it just didn’t get pumped out of the tanks. At least we didn’t have to do the breakfast dishes. We had to resort to flush with sea water, one resource that was not limited.

We got to do my favourite job: Killing gorse. I was excited, even though I just managed to pick the last thornes out of my hands. This time with great seaview. We worked at the top of a cliff. I’m glad I’m not scared of hightes anymore. Our team leader Sirri told us very specifically not to risc too much and that we should not climb down too much to cut the gruesome weed, only if we were 100% sure that we would not slip and fall to our death on the rocks down below. I am not sure if I was always truly 100% sure, but I think I managed a good 76. The cliffside, though, was definately over 100%.For the most part, I could get a good grip on other trees or use them as foot support. It only got a bit icky when the soil started crumbling. They should have given us a climbing harness and tie us to a tree, that would have been cool, and safe.
Since we had worked so hard, Sirri convinced the ranger to give us an hour off in the afternoon and we went into town and to some beaches.

"Please Respect"

Me and German Steffi 

Somehow, and with a lot of screwing and unscrewing, the water came back after dinner, right in time for all the dishes.

Like every Friday, we had to start the day by cleaning the house. I don’t even know why I try to do that properly every time if I don’t even get to profit from it. Most places I have lived in are a unhygenic  health hazard with dead cockroaches everywhere and ten year’s worth of dust. And the shower drains were blocked, which made cleaning them very annoying. Also, I was approaching a bad laundry situation, since the washing mashine in the house, of course, didn’t work, even if we had had enough water to wash clothes.

We were supposed to mulch some more that moring, which I was not excited about. It’s dull and not rewarding and doesn’t feel like proper conservation work. So when I heard that someone was supposed to go back to where we cut the day before to fix up some bits that were missed, I volunteered immediately. I thought it would just be some really small ones on the top that we specifically left there since they could be sprayed easily. I was wrong. He made me and another girl poison the ones down very low that we specifically left there since they were too dangerous to get there. The dude was sliding around on loose soil and falling several times with a running chainsaw in his hands. I honestly was a bit freaked out and constantly thinking “If Sirri saw this, she would not be happy” Well, it was fun, in some ways. What good is living if you don’t feel like you are going to die painfully on the scenic shore every once-in-a-while?

Then we went back to Auckland on the ferry.

From the Water

It might sound as if I am complaining and having a horrible time, but honestly, it’s just the truth. And I still enjoy my time, I still love the work. It’s still great, at least it’s exciting!

Then the sad part came: I had to say goodbye to all the new friends I made and went to the Airport.

I arrived in Christchurch at night and naturally, it was raining. Because Christchurch is much nicer to you than Auckland, there is a public bus service from the airport to the city centre and you don’t have to pay for the insanely expensive Skybus. It’s still not cheap, but better. As always, the bus driver was almost uncomfortably nice. I just wanted to go to the city centre and walk the two kilometers to my hostel from there. He actually wanted to help me find the bus that I had to get on at the city centre bus stop so that I didn’t have to walk. I didn’t listen and walked anyways. It’s far more exciting, and after a flight it’s always nice to get some fresh air.

The next morning, I finally could sleep in a bit longer. I did not have anything special planned for my stay, just walking around and relaxing a bit. And I needed to do my laundry in the morning. I really needed to. So I slipped into my cleanest dirty shirt and took care of that while catching up with the world online.

Parts of Christchurch are still in ruins, even if it’s been over five years since the big earthquake. But they dealt with the disaster beautifully. For example, there is a mall completely built out of shipping containers.

I found this traffic sign sculpture very interesting

"Everything is going to be alright"

The botanical gardens are also pretty, even though I can’t forget that all these colourfully blooming plants are weeds. There is a New Zealand garden as well. 

There was a charity race and their outfits were just too good!

Sunday morning, I stumbled by a Thriller-flashmob, and of course I got nice Zombie-Make-Up done and jumped in.

I woke up like this

I was also interviewed by a local TV Station. You could say I'm internationally famous.

That's what I look like every Sunday morning

I proceeded walking around town pretty like that. It was funny to see how the people reacted. I think I freaked out a little girl.

Now I’m on the bus to Greymouth and get to see the mountains of the South Island.

A shame the bus didn't stop for pictures

 I just want to go up to these summits and build a snowman. I have officially reached the listening-to-Austropop-a-lot-stage of my journey now and would kind of like to go skiing, even if it’s too early. It took me longer last time, in the USA, maybe because that had more of a homey-feel to it. I’m not sad-homesick or anything, more like happily sentimental in an almost nostalgic way. I enjoyed being on my own for a bit, especially with my single room, but now I’m  looking forward to meeting new people and re-meeting my friends that left Auckland to go to the south before me.