New Zealand.....Hideous!

Bethell's Beach

Just as I suspected, New Zealand is gross! Lousy with deserted beaches, pristine forest and rare exotic birds. For those of you who can't tell, I'm being just a tad facetious. The place is spectacular! I've been in Auckland now for a little over 2 weeks, and expected this part of my trip to be a little more urban. Well it is and it isn't. The city limits cover a very large area and then the region of Auckland is even bigger. There are some parts of it that feel like a major city and others that feel like isolated wilderness. Auckland is the city with the world largest pacific islander population, and along with a good mix of Europeans and Asians it makes for a very diverse group. I'm looking forward to going to the Avondale market this weekend which has an extensive amount of everything pacific islander! Despite having over a million people you are always just a short drive away from gorgeous forests, rivers and beaches. Hiking trails or tracks spread throughout the region, making it very easy to get out and explore. The beaches are amazingly clean and anything but crowded. I spent a couple of days a Bethell's beach also known as Te Henga. If it looks familiar it may be that you've seen it in Xena, Warrior Princess or Hercules, the Legendary Journeys! Its also where they filmed The Piano.

Gannet Colony at Muriwai

I've had two amazing birding experiences so far, the first being Tiritiri Matangi, a wildlife sanctuary island that is completely pest free and home to some of NZ's rarer species of birds such as the kokako, little brown kiwi, and little blue penguins. Its also home to tuataras which are an extremely unique order of reptiles. The second amazing birding experience was a trip up to the Muriwai beach gannet colony. Gannets are shore birds that nest in humongous colonies. These dramatic colonies at Muriwai beach are tightly situated upon steep cliffs which drop off to the crashing waves below. Having spent many a day watching David Attenborough study and document New Zealand's birds, finally being here in person is a bit surreal. It is surprising how tame the birds seem here, since they have evolved with no natural predators they historically have had nothing to fear. However, just as people do, they have managed to unintentionally bring in some hungry rodents and weasels. A couple of the major pests here are rats, Australian possums, and stoats. I recently read an article about how to humanely deal with these pests if you catch them on your property. Drowning is not acceptable; bashing them on the head with a hammer seems to quickly do the job! mleh...

Gannets, making out.

I'm now staying with my third hosts here in NZ and everyone has been very welcoming. There is a strong DIY spirit here which I find very admirable. I have already met several people who have designed and built their own houses, all of which have been beautiful. Totally unique and intricate, most have been made from reused materials! Everyone just seems to know how to swing a hammer down here.

 In a cave on a beach in New Zealand

A few quirky differences about NZ:

-Light switches are upside down.
-Every outlet has an on/off switch.
-Just about all toilets are dual flush.
-Bathing suits are called "togs".
-Muesli is the breakfast of choice.

I have so many pictures and not enough time to load them, they'll be here eventually...

Cheers!

From Oakland to Auckland

Where to start... A week in Sausalito and a marathon journey to New Zealand. Sausalito is a very posh vacation town directly across the Golden Gate bridge from San Francisco. After spending 2 months in the funky, hippie, grungy NW this was a dramatic change of atmosphere. Fancy cars, boutiques, and designer dog collars. Different.

Alcatraz

My fellow help-xer Chris, who oddly enough is from Leesburg, VA and I spent our work hours around the house working in the garden, painting, fixing leaky sinks, etc. On our day off Elizabeth, our host, dropped us off at the foot of the Golden Gate bridge and we took off! The walk across the bridge was beautiful, with views of the city skyline, Alcatraz, and Angel Island. It was a bit crowded though, with aggressive cyclists whizzing past every minute or so and tourists snapping pics everywhere along the way. Once we got across the bridge we hopped on a bus to check out Haight-Ashbury. Jerry Garcia plastered everywhere, tie-dye shirts for sale in every window, head shops, and a few very trendy stores sprinkled in between. The air was indeed thick with pachouli. A kid who was obviously indulging in the spirit of the district (drugs) asked me for the coffee I was drinking, "No", I said. He then asked for my Nalgene bottle, he was again denied. Persistent little fellow. We crossed over into Golden Gate Park where the substances were plentiful. We couldn't walk 50 feet without being offered "cush diesel nugs, beasters, or shrooms". It was quite the scene, several people completely strung out, a woman speaking in tongues, dogs running wild, hula hoops! We didn't need to hang around and quickly made our way through the park over to the de Young museum for a view from the observation tower there. After the park we meandered by bus and on foot down town to Union Square. To end out the day we found a great little dive bar/ music venue called the Hotel Utah where we drank a couple local Speakeasy IPAs, delicious!

Hotel Utah

A couple more work days and a nice day trip to Muir Woods to see the redwoods and my time in California was coming to a close. 6am Sunday morning my epic journey began. Chris was kind enough to get up early and drop me off at the amtrak station. My train brought me to Bakersfield, CA where I transferred to a bus that brought me to Union Station in LA. *Travel tip* Amtrak refers to their Union Station in Los Angeles as "LAX". This is not LAX airport! It is in fact about a 45 min drive from the airport, which I found out the night before heading down there. Luckily there is a shuttle that leaves every 30 mins for $7. So the shuttle brings me to LAX airport where I find out when checking in that New Zealand requires proof of an exit ticket from the country before they allow you to enter (no squatters). So I run over to the airport lounge, buy my fully refundable ticket to Sydney, print out the confirmation and bring it back to the check-in desk. Phew! After an intense few moments scrambling to make sure I can get on my plane, I actually breeze through security and get to my gate with way too much time to kill. The flight ends up getting delayed 3 hrs, which unfortunately cut the layover in Fiji down to just a scrabble from gate to gate. So my experience in Fiji was just a muggy rainy schlep from one side of the airport to the other, with plenty of waiting in line. Delightful! Back on another plane and in 4 hrs, as we break through the clouds, I see the literally breath taking view (I actually gasped) of New Zealand's northern islands and shoreline!  
This was the hard part. After seeing such a beautiful sight, you just want to jump off the plane and run into the ocean, but no. Its time for customs! Two more hours of waiting in line! Yay! So finally I get out of the airport and jump on yet another bus to get to Albany, which is on the far Northeast side of Auckland. Oh wait, one more bus transfer at the Ferry building in downtown Auckland. Ahhh finally, I get to my stop. As soon as I walk off the bus I hear my name yelled from across the parking lot. Its my host Liesbeth and her two adorable daughters, Isabelle and Sophie. I threw my bags in the boot, and almost jumped in the drivers seat. I'm still getting used to the opposite side of the road thing.
The house here is on about 5 acres with a couple other cottages that are occupied by renters. The views are great. The birds are beautiful! I cannot wait to get a NZ bird guide book and completely geek out. I'm about 2 days in and still a bit jet-lagged. Cheers!

here one day gone the next

life on the train

On the move again! After two months of mild winter weather, mother nature dumps 9" of snow on The Woolley Mammoth the morning I am leaving, and its still coming down, hard. Jeff's car is at the bottom of the hill, and I've got a train to catch at 9:15. Frantically I grab all my bags and march out the door, unsure if I'll be able to get out. With a little push and some quick shovel work we get the car out and rolling! And just in time to miss one of the biggest storms the NW has seen in several winters.

Portlandia!

I board the train (Amtrak Cascades this time) and within 5 hrs I'm in Portland. Surprise surprise its pouring in Portland! I put my new jacket to the test as I stand at the bus stop and watch my bags get soaked. I hop on the bus (mmm ihop on the bus) and decide to go way too far in the wrong direction, why not? Eventually I get to the right stop and am kindly picked up by my very first SERVAS host, Carol! Carol and her husband Arnie take me in at their beautiful warm home and feed me a delicious dinner.  Portland is an amazing city, the next day I met an old friend for lunch and took off on foot to get to know Portland. Everywhere I went I met super friendly people who seemed to be more sincere and engaging than I think any other city I've been in thus far. It was very refreshing. After two days of exploring and chatting with the locals it was already time to leave. 

Graffiti Bunker! (look for more photos in flickr account)

On the way to the train station I get an automated call from Amtrak telling me that my train has been delayed indefinitely... After talking to a service agent I find out that the massive amounts of snow up North in Seattle had caused them to close the tracks and that they were turning the northbound train around to come back down to Portland and that would be taking me down to California. Fair enough, so I get another afternoon to explore Portland, no skin off my back! Eventually the train shows up, 7 hours late. I was probably the only person in the train station who wasn't really fazed by this, everybody else as you can imagine was pretty pissed. It actually made for a much more scenic ride, which I was stoked about. Just as the sun was coming up Friday morning we were crossing in to Northern California with stunning views of Mt Shasta and the beautiful countryside. After a long 17 hrs I arrive in Emeryville, CA, transfer to the bus, get to the Ferry building in San Fran and jump right on the ferry to Sausalito. Of course, its pouring again. My new help-x host Elizabeth comes and picks me up from the ferry and brings me back to her warm beautiful house and feeds me a delicious dinner (see a pattern here?). 

So here I am in beautiful Sausalito overlooking the bay, eating well, and sleeping like a fat drooling baby. Content, to say the least. One week until NZ!

Front Porch (insert rainbow joke)

Au Revoir Mammoth!

After an amazing 2 months its time to keep cruisin'. The Woolley Mammoth has been an incredible place to live, a graceful blend of people, personalities, ideas, music, and art! 

As I pack my bags for the next leg of my journey I weed out unnecessary items and place them in a cardboard box. By the time I'm done fitting everything I own into three bags (a small suitcase, a backpack, and a daypack) I have a full box of these "unnecessaries". This box and my old, much larger suitcase are going to live here at the Mammoth. Like so many previous residents of the Mammoth, I am following suit: leave something behind with the intention of coming back for it. Maybe its because its so hard to say goodbye to this place, or maybe its because everybody who comes through here is on some similar journey and needs to lighten their load, or maybe its because this place is so damn big that things just accumulate here. Who knows, but my intention is to come back for it, there is way too much to do here that I didn't have the ability to do without a vehicle. So maybe, after trekking around for a while, I can come back and re-open this chapter and my box full of "unnecessaries".  

Packed and ready to go!

"unnecessaries" 

Oh the places you'll go!

Or hope to anyway, I'm sure you guys have seen this app on Facebook, but I thought I'd plot out just a few of the places I'd like to go. Stuff in red = lived, blue = been, green = WANT. This could take a while......

Should Auld Acquaintance be Forgot?

I should hope not! Happy New Years to everyone back home, I miss you all dearly! (except for Nick Soles, he be forgot, jk buddy I miss your musk)

Ok, so I've been slackin a bit on keeping this blog up to date, but I'm gonna use the lame excuse of the holidays getting in the way. I've also in the mean time been weighing out several options for my trip down the coast to LA, and here's what I've come up with: Since I can't see everything I want to see, I cut the trip down to just two stops between here and LA. First being Portland and Hood River, OR, technically its two stops but they are pretty close to each other, and second being Sausalito, CA. I'll be visiting friends in Oregon and in Sausalito I've set up another help exchange for just over a week. I'll be a short ferry ride away from San Francisco, staying in a house that has a view of the bay and the bridge!



I'd be lying if I said I wasn't getting antsy about leaving. Its been a nice retreat up here at the Mammoth but I'm getting a little bit of cabin fever not having a vehicle. I bum rides as often as I can when my roommates are going into town, and some of them have been cool enough to bring me out to some excellent hiking spots. On NYE we went out and soaked out bones in a hot spring near Mt. Baker. We also did a short day hike around Baker Lake and saw some mountain goats from a distance! I would post the picture but they just look like white specs on the side of a mountain. After the romp around Mt. Baker we came back to a house full of good people, good food, good tunes, and horrible, horrible dancing (all the more fun ;). The party was a huge success and in the morning we hosted a delicious brunch for all out guests who stayed the night.  

There is so much to see out here but unfortunately most of it requires a vehicle to get to. The Cascades are incredible! Huge! I'd love to be out there climbing and exploring them but I need the independence of having my own ride. So I'm thinking it would be great to come back in the summer time when the weather is warm and the days are longer. Maybe I'll buy a car then and tour the area the proper way. A car would also give me the freedom to explore more of the West coast. We'll see.

Fog

View from my balcony

Oyster Dome trail

Pablo in the mist