Our time spent in Eltham, Taranaki region

Our third Wwoof host was one Steve Waite, and when he was in his twenties, he held the title of New Zealands welter weight Kick Boxing Champion for a number of years. We stayed in a town called Eltham, which is famous for its Cheese. Steve happened to work at the local Fonterra cheese factory and was kind enough to take us on a tour one day. Steve was our first Kiwi born and raised host, which was a great experience. We learned some Kiwi sayings such as: Sweet as, Getting on the piss (drinking), your misses (girlfriend), Bro (used over man or dude), jandals (flip flops), ute (truck). Those are a few that we can remember. While in Eltham, we hiked a mountain, kayaked, cliff fished, bowled, ate a lot of cheese and took advantage of Steves home made sauna.

At the bottom of Dawson's falls on Mt Taranaki.

View of the mountain at 5:30 am, we were on our way to fish

trail glossary at Mt Taranaki, we did the Summit route

Just starting the 4 hour hike up the mountain

Emily and I with our host Steve about 3/4 of the way up the mountain. As you can see, we hit the snow line. We started off hiking in shorts and t shirts, but by this stage we had hats and long sleeves on.

Ever so close to the summit, which is just behind us in the picture. We would have needed some ice pics and crampons to continue up the snowy peak, so we decided to head back down. Come summer, the snow melts away, making the summit reachable. Mt Taranaki is said to be a few hundred years overdue for an eruption.

Making good use of my Canadian flag buff from radical edge, thanks again Reg and Sheila.

Emily holding up some beaver tails. We are kind of making it a tradition to cook them for our host. We always make way to many on purpose, got to feed our sweet tooth's haha.

Steve explaining the basics of how a fishing rod works

Fishing for snapper off a cliff face. Can not get much more New Zealand than this.

Emily perched on her sand bluff, holding the worlds largest fishing rod

While Emily was taking a nap, steve put a dead bait fish on her line. Emily was not impressed haha

Sitting by glacier pools that flow down from the Mountain. Lava formed the stream bed and the rock we are sitting on was once lava.

Native New Zealand reserve which is pest free. Possums wipe out trees and native birds, and therefore are NZ's number one pest. This reserve is completely fenced off and there are numerous bait and trap stations within to kill possums.

The gates surrounding the reserve

Plants we put in Steve's garden that attract the Monarch butterfly. Sure enough after one day of being planted the butterfly's started to arrive to lay their eggs on the leaves, which the larva will eventually eat.

John in front of a Maori wood carving, very similar to our totem pole

Emily at Dawson falls

Dawson falls

View of the mountain from our fishing cliff

Emily playing with Steve's dog Floyd

The other dog, Naked

Emily and I with our host Steve

Getting to know the locals

Emily in front of the native reserve

Visiting a Maori village that was actually used a few hundred years ago

On Mt Taranaki

We are currently staying in a town just outside of Wellington with a Dutch family. Titus and Nicole moved to NZ 11 years ago and decided to stay and raise their children here. Our Subaru is holding up, making it easy for us to travel around. Emily and I are starting to feel the distance as the holidays approach, but we are with good company and the weather is beautiful. We are heading to the south island here in about a week, which should be good. We will keep you guys posted. Hope everyone is doing good back home, we miss you all. Take care for now.

Kumeu Farm

Emily and I spent the last month in a town called Kumeu, on a little hobby farm with our British host Renny and Rebekah. The following pictures are of some of the many animals living on the farm, and also some of the projects we did while wwoofing there. It was a really enjoyable experience, and at times it felt like we were staying at a B&B because the food was delicious and the accommodation was excellent. The pool and hot tub were also a bonus.

Renny and Rebekah's homestead

The salt water pool that we took advantage of after a hot days work

Our view of Auckland from the living room window

The three alpacas, which are a huge hastle to move from paddock to paddock. They like to run away and spit and hum at you.

Maggie moo, the highland cow who just recently was de horned

Trish the donkey who would make all kinds of noise when she was put in another paddock away from her horse friends

Emily's favorite, Pepper the shetland pony

John with the littlelies as Rebekach calls them.

Emily with Jannie, Nipper and Coco the dog

Emily feeding the ducks, geese and guinea fowl ( which are the ugliest birds we have ever seen and they make such a brutal noise, all the time) Renny would rather eat them, but Rebekah likes them.

Coco, who we taught to shake a paw

Sophie Louise the cooney pig. They make her fast once a week because she is getting to be a bit chunky haha

John with one of 4 cats

The "Tough guys" as emily called them. They liked to poo everywhere, so you guessed it, one of our chores was power washing duck turd off the pavement

John's first time on a horse. (Jannie the horse)

 The next few pics are of the projects Emily and I completed while Wwoofing here. We typically started work at 9am and then had lunch/tea time around noon or 1 and then worked another 2 hours. Roughly 5-6 hrs a day. Not bad, as the work was pretty easy going. Well worth it for the food we were fed, Renny is a great cook, and the tea was amazing.

Emily varnishing up our pump shed we built.

First trench dug for the big garden project that would occupy most of our time.

Getting there, border semi built, starting to plant shrubs and lay down weed matting.

Planting done, rocks in place, well on our way now

Build a brick patio area for plants or pots etc... started planting shrubs on the down slope. this is as far as we got before we left, so were hoping to see the final garden when we return sometime. Emily and I did this all on our own, a little trial and error, but all in all it looks pretty good, and Rebekah was really happy with it.



Dante's Pizza, who is one of only a few hundred members worldwide of the famous Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana. His whole process must follow strict guidelines from this association in Italy. 



Rebekah on her way to Rocky Horror picture show night

Our first Kiwi sighting, was at the zoo of course, as the Kiwi only comes out at night.

Emily enjoying the camp fire we built at Bethells beach

Emily and I's new 1995 Subaru Legacy Grand Wagon in blue. Decided to buy a car, to make our travels a little easier. People here buy and sell cars on a regular basis, so we actually got this one at a car auction, where you sit there and the bring each car around and the bidding begins. We got this beauty for $1500 NZ, roughly $1300 Canadian.

The Auction floor, where you can check out the cars earlier in the day before the auction begins. We test drived quite a few, and were hoping to get a hyundai but we got out bid. We plan on selling the Subaru hopefully for a profit when we leave NZ

Ant Lynda and  Jesses key chain they gave us

Toad in the hole, typical British delight. Bacon wrapped sausages cooked in duck fat. yummy haha Renny cooked this one night wen Rebekah was out, as she is doing the weight watcher thing, and this meal would eat up her points ha

John taking a dip in the pool

Our first car, Old Blueradley

 

Emily and I are now down in Taranaki, Eltham to be exact. Mt. Taranaki is on our doorstep. Our host steve is going to take us up the mountain one of these days here. It was hard to leave our place in Kumeu, but we kind of have to force ourselves to move on if we want to see the rest of the Country before we head home. We hope all is well and that the weather is not getting to cold. It is a little weird here seeing Christmas advertisements when it is so hot out. The holidays are going to be interesting with the hot weather. Will not stop us from making all sorts of holiday cookies and keeping true to our Christmas traditions.

We will keep you all posted of our travels as we start to head more east and south on our way to the south Island and on to Christchurch for Christmas. Bye for now.