Middlemarch: Where the "middle" is short for "middle of nowhere"

So here I am in Middlemarch.  Never heard of it?  Not surprising.  Few have.

It’s in the Otago region on New Zealand’s South Island, which means this summer it’s one of the few dry places in the country.  As the rest of New Zealand is mucking about in incredibly wet conditions, Otago is living through a drought. 

The village is pretty remote – it’s a 45-minute drive to the nearest “real” grocery store and gas station in Mosgiel (itself a small town), and an hour to the city of Dunedin.



Mainstreet of bustling downtown Middlemarch facing north...




...and facing south.



It’s a place where people wander around town on horseback and pigs occasionally roam the streets.  Where rubber boots are “de rigueur,” and mullets are unironic.

It’s somewhere famers remove their mud- (and other matter-) encrusted boots at the door of shops and wander in their stocking feet (this act of decorum is greatly appreciated by those of us who clean the floors). Where the library is open an hour a week and to use the pool, you rent a key at the pub and let yourself in as you wish.

Middlemarch has a shabby, run-down feel to it, like a dust storm rolled through a few decades ago and nobody has quite managed, or bothered, to shake off all the residue.  Some of the locals even have a visible layer of dust on their person at the end of the day that gives them a sort of washed out, blurry look.

Most buildings could use a good paint job; quite a few of them obviously once housed businesses that are no more.  Many a yard is riddled with disused farming equipment and the only landscaping some lawns see is at the hands (or more precisely, mouths) of the sheep, cows or horses that live there. 

The aforementionned disused farming equipment and the poor horse who lives among it.  I give him carrots sometimes.

And, yes, there are a good many animals about. I have to watch my step while walking through town lest I trod on the sheep pellets, horse dung piles or dog poo that pepper the sidewalk in places.  It’s at once disgusting and charming.

As in small towns the world over, there is an incestuous air about the place. Not the literal “I’m my own grandpa” kind of incest, you understand (though you can never count it out) but more the “everyone’s linked to everyone else” kind.

It’s a little claustrophobic.

Since I’m here without a car, and bus service out of Middlemarch is both inconvenient and expensive, I’ve been feeling a little “landlocked,” if you will.  For a few glorious days I did have access to a “company car” but unfortunately, a coworker took it out on her first week and crashed it (this was especially gutting as the car itself was in the company’s possession for all of two weeks).

The town owes its existence mainly to the gold rush of the late 19^th century when a railway line was built to connect the gold fields to Dunedin.  As the rush slowed to a crawl a few decades later, trains became more and more disused. In the 1980s the line the Otago Central Branch Railway went the way of so many other lines around the world, and 150km of it was ripped up and converted into a cycling and walking track.

Near the end of the line.

The end of the line: Middlemarch station.

Nowadays, it is this track and the remaining bit of the railway line to Dunedin which is the bread and butter of Middlemarch. Every year thousands of tourists travel the Taieri Gorge railway between Dunedin and Middlemarch and cycle the Otago Central Rail Trail.

At the end of these unused tracks is the start (or end, if you do it from the other direction) of the Otago Central Rail Trail.  Pretty funky arch sculptures, eh?  And how about that cloud?  There are often cool cloud formations -- I think it has something to do with the Rock and Pillar range of mountains to the west.

I’m working for a combo café/info centre/bike rental business.  Basically, I’m a short-order cook and barista. It’s hardly mentally stimulating, to say the least.  To be honest, I have been questioning my decision to stay – why am I working for little more than minimum wage doing a menial job in a small town hundreds and thousands of km away from anyone I really care about?

My situation does have its strong points though. The cost of living is decidedly low.  I’m paying $100  of rent a week (for some inconvenient reason, rent is paid weekly, not monthly, in New Zealand), for a which includes all bills. 

My home in Middlemarch.  I'm sharing it for the moment with my coworker Adam, which is pretty cool.  He's a 25-year-old American dude who wishes he were Canadian (I told him he could be a South Canadian like my Californian friend Ben).  We also worked together at Treble Cone over the winter, and I hooked him up with this job.  It was nice having a friendly and familiar face when I first arrived. 

I often get food from the café – savoury pies, sandwiches and the like that are past their prime – and even when I get the urge to spend money, there’s really nowhere to do so;  Other than “my” shop, the only places of business are the post office/farm shop and a dairy down the road. Not much in the way of tempting shopping, in other words.

For another thing, it’s really pretty (it’s in New Zealand, of course it’s freaking pretty). The landscape is riddled with really arresting rock formations that jut out of the earth.  The (simplistic) explanation I've been given for their existence is that the whole area used to be kilometres below the ocean, and the softer rock was eroded away.  What remains is the the denser rock on which grass and other plants can't grow.  There's also a cool inland salt lake (more of a pond,really) nearby, which obviously is a bit of the ocean that never disappeared.  Pretty cool.

One of the thousands of rocky bits that define the Middlemarch landscape.

The Sutton Salt Lake.  Evidently, it's got nothing on Lake Huron. On the day I went to the lake it was teaming with millions of small flies.  Luckily they were happy siphoning salt off the lake and surrounding eart and left me and my sweaty skin alone. Each step would send a swarm of them airborn and they'd quickly jostle for space on the already crowded ground.  It was kinda gross, but also kinda satisfying.





Me in some of said rocks near the lake.

Also, I’ve been interacting with animals more than I ever have before.  The paddock (what I would call a “field” back home) next to my place is home to two real horses and a sheep called Rammy who believes he’s a horse.  I regularly go feed them bits of carrot and handfuls of grass from the other side of the fence (it’s always greener, you see). I’ve also been privy to the delightful scene of be-mulleted men and women chasing a pig down main street, and used to be greeted daily by lambs on my way to work (until they disappeared two weeks ago, presumably they were someone’s Christmas dinner…sad).

I'm sorry you were eaten cute little lambs.  You'll live on in my blog though.

So, yeah.  Here I am in Middlemarch, and I’m meant to be here until early May. Afterwards, who knows…again.

Cool bridge.

Possibly the saddest park in the world.  It's literally a patch of grass, a few trees and two concrete pipe things that I presume kids are supposed to crawl through.  Don't worry, there's a better park by the rugby field and at the school.

An artsy shot of my neighbour's windvane (windvane? weathervane? whatevervane) at sunset.  That's the Rock and Pillar ranges in the distance, and it was about 10:00 at night.  The sun sets late in these parts this time of year.

Me at the old sheep yards.

Crouch. Touch. Pause. Engage! * (Rugby and other stuff in Invercargill)

Can you believe I've been here eleven and a half months?  Unbelievable.  What's even more unbelievable, is that during those eleven and a half months I had never seen a rugby match. 


How un-kiwi of me.


You see, rugby is to New Zealanders what hockey is to Canadians; it's basically a religion, and I am a bit of a convert. 


I've never understood why soccer is such a big deal in most of the world.  I think The Simpsons summed my feelings up rather well: "High kicking! Low Scoring!  And ties? You betcha!!" Not to mention the ridiculous fake dives some of the players take to try and get penalties awarded to the other team (tossers).


And North American football?  Gag me.


Now rugby, on the other hand...wow.  These guys are as hard as nails.  They head out there with nothing but a cup, a pair of (tight!) shorts and a (tight!) t-shirt to protect their gorgeous manliness (you really must check out their thighs.  And torsos. They're a sight to behold. Here, let me help. And again! and since I'm so generous, another! And if you're inclined towards the lads, I strongly suggest you google "hot men rugby" Yowsa!) Phew! Where was I?  Ah yes.  So these scantilly clad, well-shaped men get knocked around, pulled to the ground, tackled mercilessly, and jumped on.  If one of them gets hurt, more often than not, he'll wipe away the blood, pop his broken nose back into place, and head straight back out onto the field.  Hard. As. Nails.


I won't pretend I understand all the nitty gritty details of the game, but essentially the goal is to get the ball over the line at your end of the field and touch it to the ground (so you can't just carry it over, or fall over onto your back holding the ball, the ball has to make firm and direct contact with the earth) to score 5 points (they call that a "try").  To get it there, players can pass the ball to each other, but only to players behind them.  They can kick the ball forward, but I think there's some rule about when you can or can't kick it (offside rule, I presume). You can also get 3 points through penalty kicks and simply kicking the ball through the goal posts (that kind of look like the ones used in N.A. football).


So all that to say, I like rugby, and up until last week, I had yet to see a match.  When Dave suggested we head on down to Invercargill, NZ's Southernmost city, to catch a Ranfurlly Shield match between the Southland Stags and Taranaki, I very happily agreed.


It was really great to see.  Unfortunately for the hometown crowd (and Dave) the Stags lost the match 12-15, and not a single try was scored all match. So not the most exciting game in terms of runs or action, but still fantastic.  There are some pictures on Dave's camera, but I don't have it with me, so you'll have to go without for now.  I'll try and post them in the coming days!




*For the uninitiated, those first four words of the title of this post are how a rugby scrum gets going. 


The players huddle together in an organized mass, facing the oposing team.  The ref tells them to "Crouch", they do so.  He tells them to "touch", which basically means the guys on the outer sides of the front line jab the oposing player in the arm (apparently, this is to prove that the players are in fact supporting their own body weight and not leaning on the others...not sure how it does though.)


Then there's the very brief "Pause" portion of the scrum which, again, serves to prove the players aren't leaning forward too much.  Finally, we get the all important "Engage!" where the players surge forward with a big, meaty, muscly, grunty crunch into the players in front of them.  Somehow, a ball gets thrown into the middle of this mess and comes out on one of the two sides, thus determining who has posession of it.


Wow.  Explaining that (and likely explaining it wrong) took about ten times as long as the actual process.

Snowed in and robbed

Today, the country ground to a halt. 

Schools were closed.  Roads made impassable. Even a local ski field stayed shut. 

The reason: Snow.  Now, for a Canadian, the paltry amount on the ground was laughably small.  In Wanaka, for instance, we had a dusting of barely two cm coating the grass.  Nonetheless, it crippled most of the country.

I would post a picture here, but I can't.  As you may have read on Facebook, my cameras are now no longer in my posession thanks to some petty thief (or thieves) that decided to pay my apartment a visit the other night.

It is partly my fault. After having locked myself out of the house once, and learning that many people around time leave their doors unlocked cause it's such a safe town, I had grown complacent about securing the door. Evidently, Friday evening was one of the unfortunate times I neglected to turn the key on my way out, and some douchenozzle(s) benefitted from my negligence.

Along with my cameras, the stellar human being(s) also took my external hard drive, my e-reader, i-pod, a DVD collection (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, season 5), some cash, (ironically) a bible, and, most devastatingly, my passport.

Ugh.

I'm hopeful that my travel insurance will cover at least some of the taken items, and there's not much I can do now after the fact. It was an expensive lesson that, despite living in a small, safe town where many people don't lock their doors, I should do so nonetheless.  So now, with only a short month to go I have to sort out my documents.  It's especially annoying since without a passport, I can't book any flights, and therefore can't really plan my life. 

Any suggestions would be appreciated.  Nay, invited.

Finally! Snow on the mountains!

A full two and a half weeks after Treble Cone was set to open, we're still shut.

While at first the problem was a complete lack of snow, over the past few days we've been dumped on and there's a healthy 70cm of base on the mountain, 40cm of which fell in the past 24 hours.  This means that the road up the mountain was impassable this a.m. and there's an extreme risk of avalanche up there. 

So closed we remain.  Hopefully though, tomorrow will be better and we’ll be able to get up there and get working and skiing.

You'd think that having had so much time off would have inspired me to write tons.  Sadly, a lack of motivation and a surplus of lethargy kicked in and I've been woefully unproductive of late.

Here are a few pictures of some of the things I’ve been up to.

Snow as seen from town.

Went for a walk to a river by a sheep station near town.

Last week TC organized a walk to the Rob Roy Glacier which is an hour's drive and two hour hike from Wanaka.  There were 57 of us on the walk I believe.  Here's a suspended bridge along the track.

The Rob Roy Glacier -- at the bottom you can see an avalanche.  It was pretty cool.

This awesome fella is a kea, NZ's mountain parrot.  These guys are not shy and are super smart and curious.  They've been known to steal people's boots and bags and anything they can get their talons or beaks on.  There are even some that have learned how to open and close doors by watching people do it, and have locked trampers inside huts and outhouses for kicks. Cheeky buggers. 

My coworkers Aurora, Kirsten, Rick and me near the end of the track.

Pretty!

Sadly, I don't have any photos of my disastrous mountain biking expedition (Not only was I ridiculously slow, but I fell in some mud not 10 metres from the end of the track), the awesome banana cake I made last week, or of Scruff, the dog I've been taking on walks almost daily.

Waiting for the snow

I never thought I’d be complaining about a warmer-than-average winter, but here I am, doing just that.

It’s now nearly three weeks into this New Zealand winter and there is zero snow on the ground.  This usually wouldn’t bother me, but my (very modest) livelihood depends on the white stuff for the next few months.

Treble Cone is supposed to open on Thursday, but that’s looking extremely unlikely at this point, which is very disappointing for a few reasons.  For one thing, it means I am going to be very broke very soon L. For another, after a few days of training, and having met my excellent colleagues, I’ve been looking forward to getting to work.

And of course, it will be fun to get out on the slopes – though after seeing the steepness of the mountain, my lack of experience and skills is rather worrying. Luckily, I get discounted lessons, and I intend to take advantage of that.

Other than training, I haven’t been very busy since I got back to Wanaka.  Before moving into my new home, (woot!) I spent a lot of time hanging out at a hostel watching movies, doing crossword puzzles and crocheting. I also did a bit of walking, trolled the op shops (second hand shops) for much-needed warm clothing, and watched a friend jump out of a plane (I was almost tempted to join him…almost).

I also went on an impromptu trip to Queenstown where I played Frisbee golf, ate a Furgburger, attempted to climb the very steep hill near town (gave up about a third of the way up), and earned a $25 drinks tab at a bar just for having a tattoo (woo hoo!).

Now I have two more days of training then hopefully I’ll start work.  Fingers crossed!

My new room.

My new lounge.

Beau lands after his skydive.

My drinks voucher.

I just threw a frisbee...you just can't see it.

Airline travel woes

Here is how the last 36 hours were supposed to go:

Sunday morning: wake up refreshed and spring out of bed.  Eat breakfast. Say tearful goodbyes to friends in Mount Manganui. Go toTauranga and attend mom and Roger's BBQ via Skype. 

Sunday afternoon: Take bus to Auckland and find way via shuttle to airport.

Sunday night: sleep in airport between 9:00 and 5:00 a.m.

Monday morning: take 7:00 a.m. flight to Queenstown, arrive by 9:00 then make my way to Wanaka via shuttle two hours later.

Monday afternoon.  Take nap,

Monday night: get organized for my first day of training (tomorrow)

Instead, this is what really happened

Sunday morning: Woke up groggy and sleep deprived after spending most of the night stressing about life in general. Eat breakfast. Say tearful goodbyes to friends in Mount Manganui. Go toTauranga and attend mom and Roger's BBQ via Skype.  (at least that part was good)

Sunday afternoon: Took bus to Manukau, spent two hours wandering around a mall with about 20 kg attached to my back, in desperation went to see a movie just to kill time.  On leaving the theatre, I discovered that I didn't know how to get to the shuttle pick up anymore (the mall halls were all blocked).  Luckily a nice couple saw me looking confused and offered to drive me -- all the way to the airport no less!  Nice!  At this point I thought my luck was running high.

Sunday night: slept in airport on and off between 1 and 4 a.m. Woke up groggy and ill tempered.

Monday morning:  checked into my flight at 5:30 a.m., went to gate, was told at 6:55 that said flight is cancelled.  Oh, and the next flight out is fully booked!  So I have to either wait until Tuesday to fly out (if the weather improves, of course) or take a flight to Christchurch and then be bused 8 hours to Queenstown.  I opted for the second option so I could make it to Wanaka in time for training at 9:00 tomorrow morning.  I was assured that I shoudl have no problems getting to Wanaka tonight cause the bus was going to go through Wanaka on its way to Queenstown.  "Great!"  I thought.
Flew to Christchurch. Found out that bus does not, in fact, go via Wanaka.  But at least there's a shuttle service.  "That;s fine!" I thought.

Monday afternoon: Took 8-hour bus ride to Queenstown with an annoying tour group from China who ate smelly sushi, talked super loud, chewed with their mouths open and farted most of the way.  Found out on arrival that -- Surprise! -- no buses are running tonight! So not only am I stuck in Queenstown, I am operating on approximately 6 hours of sleep over the past 48, and I am also going to be missing my first day of training after all. I nearly started to cry when I found out.

I am sooooo mad.  I wish I'd just decided this morning to wait until tomorrow's flight and I could have had a relaxing day in Auckland (I think they were goign to put me up in a hotel had I stayed).  Instead I'm so tired that I am having trouble focusing on anything, I'm ultra bitchy, and all for nothing -- My next training day isn't until Friday, so there's really no reason for me to be here yet.

Sorry for the whine.  I just needed to vent and the tought of actually talking to a human being right now is awful.

Feeling nostalgic about Blenheim and Koanui though I'm still here

There are so many wonderful things about travelling – visiting beautiful places, having new and exciting experiences, learning about other cultures, discovering foods you didn’t know existed (what the heck is a feijoa?) – but one of the best things has got to be the great people you meet. The worst part of travelling though, is that inevitably, you end up having to say goodbye to these people.

When I first arrived in Blenheim six (SIX!) weeks ago, and walked into Koanui Backpackers, I was underwhelmed.  Though kept very clean, its amenities are somewhat lackluster – the kitchen is a bit cramped and rather lacking in cooking implements, the toilets in the main building don’t have sinks in them, so you have to walk all the way back to your room to wash your hands, the couches are frayed and stained. Nothing major, but it’s hardly the Shangri-La. 

I was also afraid that I’d get annoyed with living with so many people – the thought of sharing a small space with the same folks for so long was frankly terrifying.  I seriously considered renting a room in a house or a flat after my first week.

Imagine my surprise when about four weeks ago I realized that I was having the time of my life here.  It honestly snuck up on me; One day after work rather than feeling like I was returning to a hostel full of random strangers that I vaguely knew, I was coming home to my Koanui “family” (as cheesy as that sounds).

I don’t think I’m alone in that sentiment either. I’ve heard others here say how they feel like this place has become home, that they wish it were the middle of March again and that we all had weeks together ahead of us. There’s even one Canadian dude who was meant to leave twice, but couldn’t bring himself to.

Alas, it’s the end of the grape harvest and everyone is starting to move on.  Everyone but me, that is. 

My contract at Makana goes until the 30^th, so I’m going to be sticking around here until at least the 1^st of May.  I’m glad for the work, but it’s going to be so difficult watching everyone I’ve gotten to know and like leave over the coming days. Yesterday the exodus began, and as (bad) luck would have it, it was the three first people I met here who took off – two for the North Island, and one for Canada (third time’s a charm, eh Mike?). It was emotional. I won’t lie; I cried a little when each of them left.

It’s embarrassing how nostalgic I’ve been since yesterday.  I find it incredibly sad that the new crop of people who will be arriving shortly for the pruning season won’t know why there’s a rubber snake in the TV lounge, or why there’s all this neon orange paint dotting various surfaces around the joint, or who this “Kim” of the “Kim Style Says” scribble on the fridge is. I’ll miss the ribbing between team Canada and everyone else (especially the Irish and the Southern Canadian). I’ll miss our yoga sessions which started as a trio but ballooned into a group of seven last week.  I’ll miss the BBQs, the games of Ring of Fire, and the easy conversations we had.

I’m dreading having to make daily decisions – it’s been so nice to not have to decide where to go, where to stay, or what to do every day – and having my conversations with others reduced to the standard “backpacker small talk” (where are you from? How long are you here? Where have to been? Etc.).  Ugh.

Oh well. It’s all part of the traveller’s life, and I just have to keep telling myself that there are many more wonderful experiences ahead of me, and wonderful people out there to meet.  Right?



Andrea, Aline, Inki and I on our way back from Nelson.




Playing with light in Pollard Park.  Kim, Nathan, me, Laura, Mike, Marten, Leah, Inki




The Monkeys -- Kim, Mike and Leah.




Room six: Andrea, Robbie, Aline and me.



James, Iss, Leah, Andrea and me.



Leah and Mike make smores in the lounge as Julian, Sinead and Joe look on.



Team Canada (Me, Leah and Mike) take on the Southern Canadian (American) Ben on the Snout Track in Picton.



USA, Ireland and Canada Unite -- Ben, Joe and Mike.





The "Neon Party" at the Loft -- Ben, me and Iss




Me, Hiroshi, Ben, James, Joe, Iss and Andrea

 Miss you guys already :(

Living and working in Blenheim, of all places

The rather sleepy and unremarkable town of Blenheim sits on the north-eastern corner of the South Island.  It’s close to the sea, but not close enough that you can see it.  It’s close to some big hills or small mountains (not sure where one distinction ends and the other begins), but not close enough that they dominate the landscape.  The town has decent amenities – a good-sized, if shabby, library, a selection of stores and restaurants of both the chain and independent varieties, a pool, a theatre, and a field in which to play and watch rugby – but little in the ways of charm. 

Sadly, so far this is the nicest spot I've found in town.

All in all, the town would be nothing to write home about (though, here I am doing just that) if it weren’t for the delicious wine that the fertile land around these parts produces.  The vineyards here stretch on for kilometres in all directions. Not only do these vineyards provide some picturesque landscapes, they also provide mucho temporary employment for the cash-strapped traveler.

Most of the hundreds of backpackers that are loitering around Blenheim this time of year are here for the harvest.  They’re either picking the grapes, loading said grapes onto tractors, or processing them at factories.  They work every day of the week, unless it’s raining, and even then they’re up before the sun waiting to get picked up by the contractor who will later decide whether they’re working or not that day. The shifts are long and tedious, generally running for 12 hours at a time.  I even know one unfortunate soul who logged in a 26-hour shift the other day(s).  How inhumane is that?

I was fortunate enough to stumble upon some less strenuous, and more interesting, work at the Makana Boutique Chocolate Factory.  I get two days off a week, and my shifts are 8.5 hours long, which means I’m making less money than I would on the vineyards, but I’m OK with that. I’d much rather have time off to enjoy life than money sitting in the bank. 

And I am enjoying myself.  At work I spend my time rolling truffles, hand-packing the fancy little boxes of chocolates they sell at $30 a pop, dipping shortbread into chocolate, and, of course, ensuring quality control by tasting everything in sight. 

And Oh. My. Goodness. Is it ever good.

We’ve got truffles of the vanilla, orange, cherry, lemon, pinot noir, champagne, Irish cream, and boysenberry varieties, to name a few.  We’ve got butter toffee coated with chocolate and sprinkled with macadamias or cranberries.  We have macadamia brittle, orange brittle, shortbread, biscotti, chocolate-dipped ginger and citrus peel, and, one of these days, I think we’re going to be making caramel corn (be still my heart).

That’s not to say that there aren’t some tasks that are less than fun – when you spend eight hours straight rolling truffles, it does do your head in a bit.  But I have a great group of co-workers who make the days go by quickly and enjoyably.  There are only four full-time employees in the kitchen, plus me and another backpacker, and two women who take turns manning the shop out front. 

One of the quirks about my job is that the kitchen is surrounded by glass that looks into the shop, so when customers come in (often by the busload as part of wine tours), they stand at the windows and watch us at work.  It’s unsettlingly like being in a zoo.  For the most part I ignore people, though when I do accidently make eye contact it’s a matter of smiling politely and trying to look like I know what I’m doing. Unfortunately, I don’t have any pictures of myself at work, but dozens of people touring NZ sure do.

Here are a few pictures I found on Flickr that show my place of work or some of the things we produce

 http://www.flickr.com/photos/yannconz/4372302378/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/followourfootsteps/4259718359/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/yannconz/4372302904/in/photostream/

I’ve been here in Blenheim three weeks and counting. Other than my visit home over Christmas, this is the most stable I’ve been since September.  It’s rather nice.

I drive by this pretty, dead tree every day on my way back from work.  I like it.

Napier, where the buildings are retro chic and the flowers are the size of your head.



See?  I wasn't joking.

 As the title suggests, I'm in Napier. It's yet another beautiful New Zealand town.  But what makes Napier different is that for once it isn't the landscape that makes the city beautiful;  It's the architecture.

After an earthquake and ensuing fires destroyed much of the city in 1931, many of the buildings were rebuilt in the 1930s art deco style and remain that way (hopefully Christchurch will rise from the ashes in similar style).

It's pretty cool to see.



The SoundShell.



A park along the waterfront.




A hostel in downtown Napier.



This is how far from home I am.

Another (moderately) cool fact about Napier -- it's the largest wool centre  in the Southern Hemisphere.

I'm heading off tomorrow and will likely camp somewhere along the road towards Wellington.  I'm heading there so I can take the ferry to the South Island on the 8th.  I'm beginning a job picking grapes in Blenheim on the 10th.  I'll be making peanuts, and it'll be hard, physical work, I'm sure.  But at least I'll be making some money for the first time in six months.

Camping again...

So, I camped again.  This time at another D.O.C. site that was next to two lakes and surrounded by a sheep farm, and obviously the sheep wandered into the camping area from time to time, cause the ground was riddled with "lamb mines."

Lamb mines.  Ew.  Sorry.

So, you'll understand why, once again, I slept in Gandalf the White rather than setting up my tent on the ground.

Sheep poo aside, it was a magnificent spot, and I took far too many photos.  Have a look at a few.

Gandalf the White.

While driving to the campsite, I Inadvertently herded some sheep.