Kiwi Conspiracies

I guess you know it's REALLY raining when the Seattle-ites say so. After visiting beautiful Raglan (known for something something... really famous surf spot... long wave, something something... I'm not sure, ask Danielle) and staying in Solscape, a hostel that allows WWOOFers (a program called Willing Workers On Organic Farms- free stay and food in exchange for four hours of unpaid work a day) and backpackers alike to stay in camping spots or converted cabooses (cabeese?) we really got poured on. We were all happy to have sprung the extra 8 bucks each for the caboose instead of camping. I think my little trusty tent- you know, the one I mentioned earlier that 8 years ago cost us around $50, has one almost broken tent pole and no stakes- probably wouldn't have survived. For those of our friends and family who know the story of the Jalama camping trip, there was talk of this being a worse storm.

Unfortunately, even though we had a dry place to sleep, we still had to deal with getting from our dry caboose to the car which was a far enough distance to completely soak all of us. After much squealing, and Megan stepping in a puddle (again. I think this is the fourth time of the trip) we had successfully brought in enough water to keep the car fogged up and real swampy for the 3 hour drive we had in front of us. Awesome.

We arrived at our destination, Taranaki (The 'naki) with the sun shining, which allowed us to see the beautiful view of Mount Taranaki which goes from about sea level to 8200 feet. As a reference point, Shasta is 10,000 feet above its surrounding terrain. Thank you Wikipedia. We all agree that if this town were on the South Island there would be a good chance that we would strongly consider living here. It's next to great surf, tons of climbing and hiking, the town is pretty cool and bike-able (key because we're only going to have one car between the five of us). We all like the downtown area a lot and it's nice that there aren't many tourists that come into these parts.

It's interesting to me to see the difference between the timeline we were originally planning and how things have panned out here. I'm fairly certain that in my mind we were going to travel around for a week and a half or so after I got here then move on to WWOOFing and then settle in a town on the South Island before our parents/families came to visit. I've been here 3 weeks and we're still on the North Island with a plan of 2 more months on the road. I think the only thing we can count on is that our plans WILL change.

People would laugh if they saw how crammed into our little Commodore we are. We can pack everything tightly enough to be able to see out of the back of the car, but to do that we need to take up 2/3 of the backseat. This leaves one lonely person crammed in the back and three people sitting in the bench seat up front. We travel around with a bag of provisions, mostly fruits, veggies, oatmeal, cheese, eggs, peanut butter, bread, honey, and supplies for baking cookies and cake. It's a good thing that all of us are pretty good about eating the SAME foods over and over again. My standards for refridgerating food have dissappeared completely along with the presence of frozen food items.

Our bird watching is still in full swing, with us shouting out bird names as we drive by them in the country. Megan and I thought we saw a kiwi bird in the middle of the road one night. Danielle and Lauren swore they saw four legs, Megs and I were convinced the front legs were actually a beak. After Megan got out of the car to investigate she came back saying that the mystery creature behaved and looked like a hedgehog, but still could have been a kiwi. We probably would have dropped the subject had not our bird book later told us that kiwis "snuffle along at night like a hedgehog." That little bit of information (or glimmmer of hope, as we saw it) was enough to send Megan and I back down the road with the intentions of finding that bird. I suppose we eventually had to admit that it probably wasn't a kiwi, especially after another guy staying at our hostel said he had a hedgehog come into his room that same night. But secretly we both think that it just might have been a kiwi after all. Maybe.

So from here on out, our rough schedule is: more time in Taranaki, then off to Wellington, the capital, then cross down to the South Island to spend time in Nelson (a potential future home) and Hang Dog camp (a climbing spot). After that we're off to Christchurch for a guest appearance by our dear friend from SLO, Julian Zielonka, who has been working a dream job Bali, and then on December 3rd we're joined by our fifth girl, the lovely Melanie. Y'all can look forward to her future posts.