Hello friends and family! It is a cold wet and blustery day in Wellington. It's really the first day like it since I've been here, despite warnings from all of the locals of terrible weather in the winter time. Wellington apparently had one of the most amazing summers it has ever seen-and I came right at the end! Oh well, hopefully its a trend and I can make it through the damp cold days to enjoy the warm beaches. Before I get into my life right now, I wanted to tell you all about my journey to get here! I stopped a few places along the way that are worth mentioning.
So, if you read back in my old posts, I mention that I was leaving the au pair job I had in the Coromandel to go traveling for a bit with my friend Judith. I was able to get a ride back to wilderland from where I was living with the family. I packed up my bags and said goodbye to the family. I went to the town next to pauanui to wait for my ride and had a celebratory beer for getting the hell out of that place! I spent a great weekend at wilderland, bunking up with Judith in her little caravan. We were really lucky because the new au pair who took my place ended up giving us a ride to Auckland on her day off! Her name is Beth, she is from England, and she took the au pair job immediately because she wanted to save up to go on a kiwi bus tour in July. Good luck to you Beth! We drove through the rain, and discussed our travel plans. We were going to couch surf in Auckland for two nights, then catch a ferry to the beautiful Waiheke Island for a few nights and then head to Piha, one of the major surfing towns of New Zealand before winding our trip back up in Auckland, where we would go our separate ways.
We arrived in Auckland to our couchsurfing house. A big beautiful old house stood before us. The front door was wide open and there was loud music being blasted through the landing. We let ourselves in and had trouble locating our host. Many people were in and out and it was hard to tell who lived there and who didn't. It turned out they had a coffee shop operating from a little shed in the front yard, and that this house was a social community project in progress. The house was in a preservation process, so that it could eventually house a organic restaurant and sustainability center. All of the walls were stripped down to their wood pillars. Some windows were missing glass, and there was no electricity in portions of the house. Awesome! A step up from camping at wilderland, but not entirely a FULL step back into normal society. We stayed at this house for two nights, bundled in sleeping bags in a spare room. We weren't sure if our host was even legally allowed to be living there. We probably would of left the house and gotten a hostel if it weren't the short length of time we knew we would be there, and the fact that the house was so centrally located in the city. Plus, despite the odd situation, we were grateful for our host and people inviting us into their homes. Oscar was our host, a guy from Finland. His best friends were a guy from Zimbabwe and a guy from Brazil. We spent a night talking and drinking wine, the five of us sitting there, speaking english, and I thought how cool this is, we all come from such different places around the world and here we all are, speaking to one another in the same language, sharing the same experience.
While staying in Auckland, Judith and I spent most of our time walking around the city in search of the next best meal. When traveling around a new place, eating is probably one of the most exciting things to look forward to in your day. In Auckland there is SO. MUCH. SUSHI! Its probably one of my favorite things about New Zealand and Australia. All over the cities are these little sushi take away stands, and the sushi is so cheap. It's definitely not a restaurant sit down kind of food over here, its more like grab and go. But its delicious, quick, and pretty healthy as well. Also, Auckland has great Indian and Middle Eastern take away spots. Tons of Samosa shops and a cute Chinese savory pancake stand.
We headed to Waiheke Island with our big backpacks in tow, taking the ferry over, again, in the rain. We got to the Island and went into the visitors center to find out about the hostels on the Island. Judith had gotten a phone number from a friend of a guy named David who lived on the Island who might be able to host us. We had tried contacting him the day before with no luck, but after seeing how expensive the hostel was, we decided to give him one last call. Luckily he answered and was willing to host us for a couple of nights! We made our way down to the main road and hitched a ride from a local to get to David's house, which was on the other side of the Island.
Hitch hiking is something that I would NEVER even consider doing in the States, its just too risky. But New Zealand is different. I would never do it alone anywhere, but at the same time, on a tiny little island, where most of the people work in vineyards and or are over the age of 70, it felt totally fine and safe. Plus, Judith had been using it as her main transportation for the last ten months of travelling all over the country. I was a rookie but was hitching with a pro. We got dropped off in front of a couple of painted water domes connected with a front door. "The Domes" is where David lives. It is an amazing house, built from 3 water domes, all connected with a hallway and patio out the back. Every room is circular, no right angles anywhere. It makes the sound inside so crazy, especially when having a conversation. The sound carries in such a interesting tricky way in circular space. David has been living in the domes for years now, and often will rent out a spare bedroom to travellers or people coming over to work at the vineyards on the island for holiday work. We stayed in the spare bedroom with a few other travelers, a guy and girl from Argentina and a guy from Holland. Waiheke is absolutely breathtaking. The island is covered in grapes and olives and it creates some of the best wine and olive oil in the country. The two days we spent there were rainy but we still got in a good coastal walk and got to bond with some really nice fellow travelers we were staying with. From Waiheke we took the ferry back to Auckland, where we were greeted by my friend Dan. Dan and I had met at the full moon festival I went to in Opoteure. He was the Dj for the party and had offered for us to come and stay with him and his family in Piha. We made a quick stop at the grocery store and then headed south of Auckland towards Piha, stopping on one of the windy mountain roads to watch the sun set over the ocean. Dan and his Mom live in a beautiful house overlooking the ocean. The ocean on the west coast is different than the ocean on the east. The Maoris say that the east ocean is feminine and the west is masculine. The waves in Piha are POWERFUL. There is a loud buzzing sound from the water, constantly creating truly massive waves. Being in such a beautiful place, in such a beautiful house, we were so grateful. We woke up early in the morning on our first day in Piha to go bushwalking with Dan to the natural spring behind their house. We brought empty wine bottles and filled them up full of the water from the spring to drink through out the day. The water is so fresh and clean that it is totally safe and good for drinking. We brought it back to the house, did yoga and then went out exploring for the day. We hiked up a big hill over looking the ocean and watched surfers catching the giant waves far off in the ocean. Dan taught us about foraging edible plants and we all collected things to make a salad with for dinner- beach spinach, wild sorrel, kawa kawa leaf, plantain leaf, and so many more things that I never knew existed or were edible! We had a huge feast of wild salad, roasted root vegetables and FRESH mussel fritters, the mussels being collected just hours before off of the beach. They were incredible, and I felt like my life was so full and abundant, eating a meal with warm and welcoming people, enjoying food that was almost totally grown or lived a few feet from where we sat. We spent two days in Piha and forever I will have such fond memories of the family that hosted and fed us, and hope that someday I can return the favor.
It was a sad day for Judith and I to part when we got back to Auckland. Sometimes you meet people in your life and you immediately get along and don't have to try to understand or make any extra effort to get along. Judith was on her way back to Germany and I was heading down to Wellington, to try it out and see if I liked it as much as everyone told me I would. We said our goodbyes and I jumped on a overnight bus down to Wellington while Judith checked into a hostel for her last few nights in Auckland. I thought the overnight bus sounded like a great idea in theory. Cool, so I can just sleep on the bus and when I wake up I will be where I need to go and didn't even waste any of the day getting there! Not so much the case in reality. Our bus driver was hilarious. He was so loud and old and when he answered the calls from other bus drivers he shouted to them so that there was NO way of sleeping. Plus, the bus makes stops all along the way, so 11 hours of stop and go isn't ideal for sleeping. I was quite exhausted from the ride when I arrived to Wellington so instead of trying to find my way through the bus and train system, I decided to take a taxi to exactly where I needed to go. Taxis are incredibly expensive over here and really considered a splurge, especially in a small city such as Wellington. Relying on the good connection graces of the universe yet again, I was going to stay with a friend of a friend in Wellington when I first got there. Her name is Amy and she is canadian and lives with her husband and another couple. I spent the first week and a half in their spare bedroom, before finding my own rental and a job! I will tell more about that bit of my trip later, enough for now. Will hopefully get to upload some photos of Waiheke and Piha for all of you to see, but for now you have a sense of whats been happening in my life. More to come...
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