Work shmerk

1:54 PM 0 Comments

Queenstown from the top of the gondola.

I apologize for us not updating for a few weeks. I had a feeling that once we found better things to do we would start slackin' on here a little bit. It's been a crazy couple of weeks with work, people, and small adventures, or "missions," as they call them here. Dan has gotten a full time electrician job for a company called Aotea, and I've ended up working for a vineyard called Northburn Station. It's cool and all, but sometimes involves 16-17 hour days like last weekend, and that's not so much fun.

I think I last left you with an update of some of the cool new people that have become our friends here. Last weekend Flair's dad (our flatmate) threw his 60th birthday party at a nearby lake called Lake Hawea. I can imagine the image in your head, lots of old people sitting around picnic tables by the lake, grilling hotdogs and burgers, eating Grandma's potato salad and aunt Janice's jello mold... all falling asleep sitting up. Nope. Flair's dad Chud is kind of epic. He rented out an entire campground, brought in his own circus tents, hired DJ's from Australia, and threw himself a 4 day music festival. The tents had mutiple levels of stadium style couch seating, a massive dance floor, and a kitchen tent just beside the main tent. You could fit 500 people in the main tent. I've been to real music festivals that were less impressive than the main tent of Chud's 60th birthday party. He rented compost toilets for the weekend, and had a massive cabin tent with individual beds for about 20 people to sleep. We were only lucky enough to make it out to one of the milder nights, Friday, because we were working a wedding for the vineyard I work for the next day and didn't end up getting off until really late. I heard that the real party happened on Sunday, when they all moved the party to the beach and danced until the sun went down. Kiwis definitely have the whole having fun thing down to a science.

Aw, as I am writing this Mac (who has officially moved in and become our flatmate, woo!) just brought me over 'brekkie' and tea. He hurt his back jumping from a bridge into a river a few weeks ago and has been in a lot of pain. He's usually full of energy and extremely happy, but he's a little bit like a bird with a broken wing lately. We've had a few brekkie and tea chats this week. I'm hoping I'm helping bring him out of his funk just a little bit. He's the only one willing to give me me driving lessons with a manual transmission on the other side of the road, and I greatly appreciate his patience and for never yelling at me when I stall his car. We drove out to this really cool peninsula on the lake the other day, where he keeps his trailor full of his life parked, to pick up his liquor making supplies. We spent the afternoon after that 'putting down a brew', and he said he just stilled the liquor last night. We're well on our way to making our own booze, yay!

So this past week on our little hippie compound has been interesting. Mac was dating this lovely girl named Jessie all summer. They met at a music festival called Luminate and then just decided to spend the rest of the summer traveling around New Zealand together. Mac wanted to end the adventure in Wanaka, so that's how he ended up back here. Jessie and I have become quite close over the past two weeks, and unfortunately she had to fly back to Auckland on Saturday. It would be the case that I finally make a really solid friendship and she has to go away. We spent a few days thrifting for fabric and clothing to upcycle, because she's really been encouraging me to use my sewing and clothing design skills here because no one else is really doing it. It's been awesome having someone to light the creative fire in me again, and I'm going to miss her a lot until she makes her way back here. Friday night the crew invited over probably 50 people for a pizza party/Jessie's going away party, but I was exhausted and dead to the world so I didn't participate. There were 7 campervans in our driveway when I woke up Saturday morning. I guess Mac and Jessie had to say their goodbye's too that night and a long, emotional summer came to an end for them. Jessie is supposed to call and give me the scoop on how that left off, so we will see. Summer lovin' can be a real bitch sometimes.

Summer came to an end for all of us yesterday, with the first day of fall in the southern hemisphere bringing with it colder temperatures and tons of rain. I woke up today with a swollen throat and lymph nodes because my body can't handle extreme temperature changes very well. I'm sure temperatures will remain warm until the end of March, but then winter kicks in, and we're hoping by that time to be heading north to where it is warmer. The weather here is more unpredictable then Colorado, Ohio, or the rest of the random US weather combined. It snowed the first few days we were here, then was blazing hot the last few weeks. It's been nice having a little bit of summer, even if it may be short lived.

I can't find my damn notes I took on everything I wanted to write about anywhere, so I'm just going to wing the rest of this. I have one small rant I need to go on that has been driving me nuts lately. So I have been more fascinated than ever about the American food system and how fucked up it really is. It's not that I haven't been into it before, but living in a country that doesn't allow GMO fruits and vegetables has been really eye opening. The only way you'll find GMO's in NZ is in food that has been imported from other countries. I've complained a lot about the taste of food here, but that's mostly just because they don't understand seasoning and how to make things taste really good. I wasn't complaining about freshness or quality. Any meal we've made at home or with our flatmates out of the fresh ingredients we've gotten from the store has been really good. It's really scary to know that the only way we will know how bad things really are for us in the states is if we go digging for that information because they lie to us our whole lives with advertising, and refuse to label GMO's. I've just been thinking lately that maybe I don't want to go back after traveling and buy a house and raise a family in the States. I don't want my kids to grow up thinking that it is all OK. Several of the travelers I've met here that aren't Americans said America was one of the scariest countries they've ever visited. It's hard hearing that from people who have spent a lot of time in third world countries. I'll just say Dan and I have been reevaluating our future plans and seriously considering living permanently overseas in the future.

Anyways, I'll get off my organic/non-GMO soapbox and move onto happier things. Poor Dan has had to listen to it a lot lately.
*wipes brow*

On Sunday we took a little mission to Queenstown, which is the original place we were planning on moving. Queenstown is like Wanaka's big brother, but a hell of a lot more touristy. Touristy can be fun though, it's not like we're real locals anyway...we've only been here a month. We drove over the Crown Range Pass, which was absolutely beautiful. It's about 45 minutes away. When we got there, we picked up a couple of gondola passes and rode to the very top. The pictures below were all taken on my cell phone right at the top of the gondola, and the lake you see is called Lake Wakatipu. From the top of the gondola alone you have the option of luging down the mountain (which we did), paragliding, mountain biking, bungee jumping, or just enjoying a nice meal at the restaurant at the top. It reminded me a lot of the main gondola in Aspen and the Sundeck at the top of Ajax, but with even more to do. Queenstown is considered the adventure capital of the world, and I think over the next few weeks we're going to try to get up there once a week to do some crazy shit. Wanaka is definitely a better place to live on a day to day basis, but I'm glad we have Queenstown to go get rowdy in when the mood strikes. We discovered a sort of Groupon of NZ activities called BookMe, so we're able to find some awesome deals on end of the season adventures.

I wrote this blog a week ago, and am just posting it today, so I'll add to it the fact we just took an epic little mission this weekend to the southern coast to go chase some storm swells with our Aussie surfer flatmate, Hugh. We will post pictures of that trip and talk about it in next week's blog.

I will be bartending the New Zealand Open PGA tournament in Queenstown from tomorrow until Sunday, so hopefully I'll have some cool stories to tell from that. We have been spending a lot of our time the last couple days getting together some sort of game plan for the year that we are here. We are thinking of sticking around Wanaka for the winter as our home base while we explore the rest of the Southern Island, then heading north in the spring time. We should have our campervan in another week or two, then the real fun will begin! I'm personally falling more and more in love with New Zealand every single day. Seeing a completely empty beach perched right up against jagged mountain peaks and rolling green hills this past weekend was probably one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. It was exactly what I had imagined New Zealand to be. In America, that same strip of land would be littered with beach houses and people. It's awesome knowing we can just drive a couple of hours and have a huge stretch of the ocean to ourselves. Many adventures await in the next few weeks...and we're planning a seriously epic adventure for my birthday in May that may or may not involve great white sharks. Hang in there for the good stuff to get going!