We jumped back into things quickly and have been busy labeling beers, planting shrubs, cutting trees, moving rocks, packing cases and pitching in wherever we can.  We’ve actually been here for 10 days already which is almost as hard to believe as the fact that we have less than a week left in New Zealand. Four and a half days to be exact.  It’s a little bit crazy to think about that.  We’ve gotten used to life here in the most peaceful place on earth.  If we could just convince our family and friends to come we wouldn’t need to leave!  That said, we are also feeling incredibly excited about returning home to see everyone and figuring out where our path across the country will take us.  It’s a good thing we extended our stay in NZ because we’ve seen so many amazing things in the past couple of weeks.  There were the kiwi and octopus sightings, the giant kauris, the Three Sisters area, but we just recently had a true NZ experience in sighting our first wild weta.  Take a look at this thing!

We’ve also been able to watch one of the most talented digger drivers we’ve ever seen.  If that doesn’t sound exciting, check out this picture of him getting the digger off the truck sans ramps.

In a few days we’ll be off to Auckland to sell our car and get ready to fly to California.  We’ve got a lot to do to get ready to leave.  We’ve acquired some things along the way that we’d like to bring home and we’ve worn through some things that aren’t worth bringing back.  We need to sort through it all but haven’t found the motivation to actually do it.  If you don’t hear from us in another week or so you probably know where to find us!

We’ve again got a lot of catching up to do and I even need to look through the photos to remind myself of what we’ve been up to.  Oh right, the Wellington Beer Festival.  The festival was, of course, a blast.  We think that we’ve really found our niche working at these events.  Despite some pretty heavy rain there was still a good crowd of Wellingtonians who turned out and seemed unfazed by the weather.  As I would expect, as the day went on and the beer flowed, people seemed to become less and less bothered by the rain.  A few folks even showed up in their wetsuits and made the most of the rain and the beer.  One of the best parts of working these beer festivals is being on the receiving end of a wide variety of ploys, tactics, winks, nods, and begging all in the name of free beer.  We served beer for eight hours.  Which means that people were drinking for eight solid hours.  Which means that we were once again treated to entertainment of the highest quality.  But, the best part of being in Wellington for the beer festival was getting to meet up with our good friends Ron and Jill Trigg, Ursula (WWOOFer extraordinaire from South Africa), and the brewery’s newest brewer Tom.  It was like meeting up with old friends, and we had a great night out on the town the day before the festival.  We had quite a bit to drink, which worked in favor of us not drinking up all the profits the next day (It’s very easy to drink and pour at the same time during these events).  We really enjoyed the company of our good friends here and we will certainly miss them for the next few months as we head to the South Island.  We don’t know what are plans will be when we head back north, but it will be tempting to pay another visit to “Taradise” and White Cliff Organic Brewery.

We spent one more day in Wellington at Te Papa–the national museum.  It’s a fairly new museum–only 8 or 9 years old I think, and it shows.  All of the exhibits are very up to date and modern looking.  None of that stale green colored background with white lettering in all of the wildlife taxonomy exhibits that are so universal.  It’s really a gem of a museum, and we wandered around until we both had a serious case of museum foot setting in.  We had pretty much been through the entire museum at that point, so it was a good time to head out of the city and get back to exploring the countryside.

For the next couple of days we drove around to the sparsely populated Cape Palliser coast.  Joanie flirted with fur seals, we checked out the lighthouse and its 250+ steps, and we paid a visit to the Putangurua Pinnacles.  The little fishing town of Ngawi was also a highlight with their collection of colorful bulldozers that are used to launch fishing boats right from the beach.  Check out all the new pictures on Flickr to see more of what we’ve been up to.  The days went by quickly and soon we were back on our way to Wellington for our North Island Tour Part 1 Grand Finale!

Speaking of beer festivals. we had an incredible time at the beer and wine festival that we worked this past weekend.  It was held at Okurukuru Winery right on the coast south of New Plymouth.  The winery is set on a series of hills that overlook a beautiful stretch of coastline.  You can see Mt. Taranaki, New Plymouth, and miles upon miles (or kilometers upon kilometers) of beautiful blue ocean.  A number of other wineries and food vendors set up booths at the festival, and there was also a nice variety of delicious food (including one of my new favorites–biltong).  And, of course, we were there selling Mike’s Ale and Lager to the thirsty crowd.

It was the perfect day for a festival–sunny and warm, the live music was good, and folks seemed pretty eager to have a cold one, or two, or three as they danced around.  So, we spent the day pouring beers, drinking beers (what better way to advertise, right?), and watching people who drank beers.  This was big fun!  We saw, among other things, several very sunburned people, an unsunburned but very bare ass of a man whose mates pulled his pants down, and a few people who must have been very tired because they fell asleep lying halfway into the bushes.  What an interesting experience being on the other side of things for a change!  There was also a “fashion” show which consisted of folks from the crowd strutting their stuff on stage–I’m still not sure if this is something they signed up to do, or something their friends signed them up for.  Either way it was entertaining.

As good as all of the beer drinking and pouring was, our highlight of the festival had to be the “extreme” helicopter ride that we took.  For a small fee, we went for a 15-20 minute ride along the coast, over the hills and New Plymouth, and around the festival site.  This was not the average helicopter ride though.  We took off in a flash and went straight up and then turned hard and dove toward the sea.  The pilot did what was probably the closest thing you can do to a flip in a helicopter, and it felt sort of like being on a roller coaster.  Joanie lucked out and got to sit in the front seat next to the pilot.  She had a headset on, which came in handy when the pilot pointed out the naked guy sunbathing, who he then proceeded to buzz past closely.  Once we were back on the ground we went back to the beer booth, but watched many more flights zip overhead.  The festival seemed to be a big success–we sold all the beer we brought with us.  Hopefully we provided some help and didn’t drink all the profits.  We can’t wait to see what the Wellington festival brings!

Ahhh, there’s nothing like beer.  Even better, there’s nothing like good, organic beer.  Picture this:  A small organic brewery set on the west coast of New Zealand above the White Cliffs.  Two beers, ale and lager, masterfully brewed with the finest ingredients–barley, hops, yeast, and rainwater.  That’s right, four ingredients.  Nothing else.  Outside of the brewery is an avocado orchard full of fruits, and when things are quiet, the sound of the waves crashing on the cliffs.  At night, a brilliant starry sky with Orion and the Southern Cross shining bright illuminates the path to a small cottage among the avocados.  Can it get any better than this?

For the past four days we’ve been here at White Cliff Brewery enjoying our first week of WWOOFing.  The brewery was easy to find–it’s just off the main road that takes you down the west coast and a giant beer bottle greets you from the road–there’s no missing it.  We arrived here on Sunday and have spent the last four days working (there must be a better term for this) and having fun.  The brewery is a true family business–Mike, Rene, Ron, Jill, Dylan, and Christie run the brewery and adjacent White Cliffs Estate function center.  Our hosts are an incredibly generous family and it’s a real pleasure to get to share their company, work alongside them, and help out however we can.

Helping out has come in the form of weeding the grounds, transplanting comfrey, cutting firewood, tasting beer, bottling, and our favorite task–labeling!  Ever since we visited Maker’s Mark, Joanie has wanted to try her hand at labeling bottles.  Now she is a real pro at the job and hopefully Smuttynose will take notice!  The brewery just underwent a rebranding and the labels are just one of many improvements that have been made in the past two years.  Check out the brewery website here for a look at the new brand.  You might even want to order a shirt once they update the online shop–and at the same time see my first “modeling” gig.  I think I’ve found my true calling in life–beer shirt model.  There must be someone out there willing to pay me for that!

We work about 4 hours each day and then join everyone for a delicious lunch usually consisting of lots of fresh food–tomatoes, avocados, lettuce, plums, breads, cheeses, an African style beef jerky, etc.  There’s a bunch of chickens on the property here too, so we’ve got our pick of fresh eggs every day.  After lunch we’re usually finished with work, grab a pitcher of beer and are on our own for the rest of the day.

We’ve been taking advantage of that time off to walk along the beach below White Cliffs (only accessible at low tide), head into New Plymouth to see the Festival of Lights and listen to live music, or catch up on skype calls, reading, or finding the next WWOOF farm.  There’s a beer and wine festival on Saturday that we’ll be helping with and the next few days will likely be busy with preperations for the festival.  We’ll be sure to post some pictures–it’s being held at a winery a bit south of here with an absoultely incredible view of the ocean.

Our first stop was a bit north of Auckland at Maharungi Regional Park.  After showing us our campsite, the camphost then showed us the showers–a beautiful teal blue bay.  It didn’t take too much convincing to get us to “shower”.  Morning swims, afternoon swims, evening swims–no matter what time of day the water feels great!  We ended up spending two nights at Maharungi–one at Sullivan’s Bay and one at a backcountry site on Mita Bay.  The hike from Mita Bay gave us our first taste of New Zealand ferns which are nothing like ferns back home–they’re more like trees.  It’s pretty exciting to have an entirely new set of plants, birds, animals, etc. to experience and learn.

After Maharungi we continued north up the east coast to Waipu.  In full New Zealand adventure spirit we took on what I call the Waipu hat trick–three stops in one day.  First we took a short hike out to Piroa Falls–a destination that one of our guidebooks considered “nothing special as afar as the scenery goes”.  It was a beautiful water fall with several deep swimming holes right at the base.  Check out the pictures and see if they seem sub par–if our guidebook is right, then I guess we’re really in for a treat at some other falls.  After the falls we took off for Waipu Caves.  These caves (and others in NZ) are open for exploration–no user fees, no bars closing them off, no guides to hire.  The caves are well known for the glow worms that cover the cave ceiling like a small milky way.  After trudging through the muddy cave floor and wading through a shallow underground stream we turned off the headlamps and were treated to this incredible sight.  The picture does no justice to what it actually looked like.  Finally, after the cave trip, we headed for our final destination of the day–Uretiti Beach.  There’s a DOC campground there that was full of folks getting in their last full weekend of the summer (school starts back up here on 2/2/09 -folks here put the month second and the day first, but today this works for all of us!).  We picked out our spot and made a quick beeline for the beach–a long stretch of white sand and blue water.  We took the obligatory swim and then settled in for a good night’s rest.

The water is so warm here that a 7:45 am swim on a cloudy day was perfectly comfortable.  What a way to start the day!  We picked up where we left off and had another busy day planned–Whangarei Falls, A.H. Reed Kauri Park, and Abbey Caves.  Since then we’ve made it back down the west coast and have landed at our first WWOOF stop–White Cliff Brewery!  More on that later–it’s great!

Week one has been phenomenal, and we know that we’re just getting started.  We’re enjoying every minute of every day and having an absolute blast.  At the same time, we miss all of our friends and family back home and love getting the skype messages and emails–so keep them coming!

The first bit of exciting news that we already got from NZ is that the first farm we’ll be visiting–an avocado farm and organic beer brewery–is having a beer festival while we’re there.  The folks we’ll be working for asked if we could stick around to help out at the festival, which, of course, didn’t take any arm twisting!  The next time you hear from us we’ll be in NZ, and we can’t wait to hear more from all of you.  It’s great to get updates from home and hear how everyone is doing–please keep the comments, emails, skype calls, etc. going!