After all the mold from the previous work week, we decided to treat ourselves to something fun. Sunday Tony was able to check another goal off the list by going diving with his new boss, Martin. I dropped Tony off at Robin Hood bay which is surrounded by mountains and bright blue water. He boarded an inflatable boat with the other three and I took off for a much needed hike. I drove back to the top of the pass we had driven over and debated on which hike to take, as I had no book or guides. I finally chose the “White Beach” hike which starts at the top of the pass and goes down to a campground and beach. The funny thing about New Zealand hiking signs is they are not measured by distance, such as 8 miles or 16 kilometers, but instead by time. White beach should take someone 45 minutes each way and that sounded just find by me. I stopped by a lookout and wound my way through a loop to a nice warm beach where people were swimming in the bay with a view of a snow covered mountain behind them, typical New Zealand. The hikes here are quite a bit different since you are walking through jungle forest with no vista views, which makes the trail pretty straightforward and uneventful, especially since there are no bears, deer, snakes, or really anything to jump out and scare you. I drove back to pick up Tony and it was perfect timing as they were just getting out of the water. Tony was able to find a few Paua, Martin found even more, and caught several fish. Martin was nice enough to invite us for dinner and show us how to cook Paua, which is like a small version of Abalone. He made them into patties and fried them, fried some fish bites, cooked potatoes and I brought the salad. It was a great dinner with some new friends and of course new food, our next mission is to attempt to make mexican food for them on what ingredients we can find.
This week at work was a smorgasbord of tasks. Monday I “two budded” 7 month old plants, which involves bending over and trimming back grape vine stalks to have only “two buds” to grow next years vines. Basically you walk by a a few plants, find a small one, bend over to trim it, move to the next one, and repeat 1000 times. Tuesday and Wednesday we went through vineyards and pushed on posts to see if they were cracked and removed them if they were. Overall this was a pretty easy task and just involved walking around all day. Thursday we “stripped vines” which is not an easy task. Someone goes through with a chainsaw and cuts the vines away from the main stalk and you go through and rip the remaining vines off of the wires as fast a humanly possible. I was not very good at this and ended up having to move wires on posts all day which is tiring on my girly arms. I ended up with scratches on my arms, bruises on my legs, and a good scratch on my cheek from those unruly grapevines. Tony spent the week at his new job digging holes for new plants and cutting carpet squares to help prevent muddy build up on the vineyard. Today it has been raining and our work was cancelled, neither one of us are complaining about this.
We went to a local pub with some friends last night and to say goodbye to 2 of them who will be traveling back to Germany soon. I am still adjusting to menus here with most main courses being $20 a plate, really $18 for a hamburger and fries? I just got a small basket of fried stuff for $11 since that was the only non red meat option and Tony decided to be a carnivore and got an open steak sandwich.
All in all it was a good week and it is nice to have a bit of money coming in. We still can’t do anything crazy like drive for an hour because that would cost $50 in gas, so we are taking it easy this weekend and trying to save our money without eating too much. The downside to the week was that Tony’s camera finally bit the dust, which means he is in the process of finding a new waterproof camera online. He took is sturdy waterproof camera diving with him and it didn’t make it through the event, at least he has a trusty photographer as backup.
