Days 71 & 72: Working for Youthtown

I spent the last couple of days (Tuesday & Wednesday, March 30 & 31st) working for Youthtown at their aquatics center.  It's located on Orakei Basin, which is a saltwater pool where the water is held back by a sluice gate.  Every so often they open the gate, drain the water out with the tide, let the tide flush the basin a few times, and then close the gate again when the tide is high.  I wonder if any fish every get trapped in there?  Anyway, because it is saltwater and not circulating regularly, it often looks pretty murky.  Another thing it has going for it is that there's all kinds of oyster shells at the bottom and those are like razors and will slice your feet right open if you aren't wearing shoes and try to walk around.  (The pool is not very deep, maybe 6 feet at its deepest point in the middle.)  At any rate, Youthtown has the use of the Orakei Sea Scouts building (like Boy / Girl Scouts only with an emphasis on sailing!) and a container out back behind their building that has kayaks, sailboats, windsurfing boards, pfd's, wetsuits, etc., etc.  On Tuesday and Wedenesday we ran some aquatic activities for a decile 1 school.  Apparently in NZ, school are rated between decile 1 and decile 10, depending on the resources their communities have.  Decile 10 is a really rich school, like the kind of place that has its own swimming pool.  Decile 1 is at the very bottom of the heap.  But this school had a corporate sponsor (the name of the school had MainFreight in it - that's their sponsor) so they were better off than some, and the principal and the staff were dedicated to the idea that the students should have all the opportunities that kids from richer schools would get.  They had just done a unit on water safety, so this aquatics day was their chance to put some of those lessons into practice and to just have fun.  I helped to teach a raftbuilding activitiy in the morning on Tuesday, and then did it on my own in the afternoon, and then twice again on Wednesday.  It's pretty fun - you teach the kids a few knots (figure 8, clove hitch, square lashing, etc.) and then they lash bamboo poles together and add plastic barrels for floatation, and then float their raft around in the water.  It's a good time and the kids really got into it.  None of the rafts really lasted for very long once they got into the water (the problem is keeping the barrels on - they tend to pop off, but if you can do that then your raft will float like gangbusters!)  At any rate, I had fun and I hope the kids did too.

Days 67 - 70: Coromandel Pennisula

Friday, March 26: Had a meeting today with Brenton from Freelance Adventures.  He runs adventure programs for a couple of camps right near Hunua Falls, which I have previously visited.  He is going to send me his schedule and see if he can fit me in for some future sessions that they have going on.  Working with Brenton would be cool because he's stationary; once I learned his systems I would have a good knowledge of how things worked because only the groups would change; the activites stay the same.

After my meeting I headed east to the Coromandel Pennisula.  It is about an hour's drive from Auckland and sticks up like a thumb forming the Firth of Thames between it and Auckland.  In the town of Thames, on the pennisula's west side, I turned eastward again, heading for the Coromandel Forest Park.  I stopped at the DOC office and purchased a hut ticket, then parked my car at the end of the dirt road and headed into the bush.  I hiked my way up steps carved by the gumdiggers to the Pinnacles Hut, although it seems unfair to call it a "hut".  It's massive, with beds for 80 people, a kitchen, drop toilets, sinks and a shower (cold only).  There are also solar powered lights.  The hut is very well integrated into the surrounding area, so much so that it's hard to tell it's even there until you are right on top of it.  I especially liked the decks connecting everything together.  The trail up to the hut was a bit demanding, as the rocks were slippery and the steps carved into them were uneven and some had very high steps.  I dropped my stuff off at the hut and headed farther up more stairs (wooden this time), and rungs set in rocks, to the top of a rock formation called The Pinnacles.  The view was very nice but it was super windy so I didn't stay on the top for vey long.  Back at the hut I made myself some dinner and called it a night.

Saturday, March 27: Took a different trail back down to my car.  On my way down I got buzzed by the search and rescue helicopter, which kept flying overhead and even hovered at the treetop level right in front of me.  Then at the end of the trail I passed a search and rescue team, and as I was leaving the car park, the police and a ranger.  I hope they were just out training and someone wasn't actually injured and in need of rescue.  But you never know.

From the trail, I drove back out to Thames, and then northward and visited the Orchid & Butterfly House. It is a steamy greenhouse with lots of tropical flowers growing and many many butterflies fluttering around.  My favorite was a big blue one, but it moved too fast to get a good photo, and never seemed to land on anything.  The receptionist at the Butterfly House had a lengthy conversation with me about the John Muir Trail (since I was wearing my JMT t-shirt). Her family's name is Muir and she wondered who John Muir was and what his trail was about.  After visiting with the butterflies I spent a few minutes using the pay internet to send some quick emails.  I have sold my copy of "The Girl With The Dragon Tatoo" on TradeMe (NZ's equivalent to eBay) and needed to communicate with the purchaser to finalize details.  (I bought the book for $25 and sold it for $15.50.  Not too bad...) Then I headed north once again and tackled crazy, windy, scenic route 25 which runs along the coast and has some spectacular beach and cliff views.  It very much reminded me of the Oregon coast and I thought about KellyO and how she would love to see the views since I know she loves it out on the west coast, too.

I arrived in Coromandel Town with just enough time to buy some sweet dinner supplies at the Coromandel Smoking Company: garlic smoked mussels, camembert cheese and fancy crackers.  Yum!  I found a hostel to camp at for the night, got myself set up, and then dined on deliciousness.  I think Coromandel Smoking Co. ships their products around the world, if you're interested: http://www.corosmoke.co.nz/.  I turned in for the night and slept great. 

Sunday, March 28: The next morning I was up bright an early and I bumped into Matt, a kid I met on the Kiwi Ex bus tour of Auckland City about a month ago, in the hostel kitchen. He's from Canada and is in NZ until June or July. He had bought a car and had made four friends (a Slovenian girl, a Dutch guy, another Canadian dude and a girl from Sweden) to travel around the north island. They had stayed at the hostel the night before, too and I had just missed seeing him. They were also on their way to Hahei, Hot Water Beach and Cathedral Cove, like me, only they were taking the more direct route.  I departed from the hostel and sat on the dock in the Coromandel Town Harbor reading and thinking for a while.  Then I headed off to the Driving Creek Railroad, a narrow gauge railway that has been built into the side of a steep hill covered in native bush.  You ride the trail up its torturous track including several spirals, a double decker viaduct, a bunch of tunnels and reversing points, and a zig zag section.  The train was built by a potter named Barry Brickell, who put it there to use to transport clay down from the mountain for use in his work.  Eventually his banker forced him to turn the train into a tourist attraction because he couldn't pay back his loans.  And it is now really popular.  At the end of the train ride is the "Eye-full" tower - honestly I didn't get the joke until someone said it out loud: Eye-full = Eiffel! - a beautiful wooden tower with a walkway that curves round its outside and provides a great view of what you just came up in the train the sea beyond. My seatmate for the train ride was a British girl named Ruth, who told me she was working at a hospital in Palmerston North and was almost at the end of an 8-month stay in NZ.  I naively asked her if she was a nurse, because she looked so young, but no, she is a doctor.  Cool, and bad on me for stereotyping her.  We chatted on the train and come to find out she was headed to Hahei as well.  When we parted ways I told her I would maybe see her there!

From there I headed off that morning and took The 309 road, a partly unsealed, windy and twisty hilly road that cuts east across the pennisula to the other side.  On the way I stopped at the Waiau Waterworks, a sort of zany, off the wall amusement park where everything operates by water, and Waiau Falls.  By the time I made it to Hot Water Beach it was too late to sit in a hot pool that day.  There are a couple of thermal springs that run under the sand on Hot Water Beach, and for two hours either side of low tide you can dig a hole and sit in your own private hot pool!  So I checked out Moko, a cool art gallery, where I splurged and bought myself a swirly ring that fits nicely on my thumb.  I have been wearing it ever since and I think it was a good purchase.  I was also looking for a present for my mom's birthday, but I didn't see anything that jumped out at me.  I checked into my hostel (Auntie Dawn's Place (+Joe)), and met my hosts, Auntie Dawn, and Joe, who are a delightful older couple with a few apartments under their house that they rent out and some caravans in their garden which serve as backpacker accomodation.  That's where I stayed.  It was actually fairly ideal.  I enjoyed it.  I had a whole caravan to myself, a bathroom and shower in the garage, and the beach only a 5 minute walk away.  I got settled and then headed up to the house to pay for my accomodation, and Joe invited me in to watch a rugby league game.  So I sat with Joe and we talked and he explained the finer points of rugby leage (which is not the same game as rugby).  In rugby league you run with the ball and try to break through tackles or you can pass the ball off behind you or laterally, but never forward.  If the other team tackles you five times (there is no stoppage of play for a tackle, the refs just yell "ONE! (or whatever number tackle it is) and then "OFF! OFF!" (to make them stop tackling) and the player with the ball puts it down for someone else on his team to grab and have a go) then it is a turnover and you either kickoff or the opponents get the ball where you last left off.  It is a fun game to watch and very fast paced.  I enjoyed it, and NZ won AND they beat Australia so there was rejoicing all around.  Joe also fed me a pear and some type of passion-fruit related something from trees on his property and a couple of glasses of his home brew, which wasn't bad at all and left me feeling quite happy on the whole.  After spending the afternoon inside, I was now ready to take advantage of the remaining natural light and I headed off to Cathedral Cove.

Apparently, Cathedral Cove is in the movie "Prince Caspian" - I guess at the beginning when the kids get sucked off the train station platform they open their eyes and they're coming out of a giant rock tunnel onto this beautiful beach, and that's Cathedral Cove.  It really is rather amazing.  But, I'm getting ahead of myself.  I pulled up at the beach, and who should pull up next to me but Matt, again, and his carful of international friends.  So I suddenly had hiking buddies for the beach!  We trekked down to see it (about a 20 minute walk) near sunset, and it certainly seemed a magical place, making it fitting to be used in a Narnia movie, I guess.  There is the enormous rock tunnel that you can walk through, and play chicken with the waves to run out the other side and not get wet, then there's the sharply shaped rocks that stick up through the pounding surf, and the freshwater, natural "shower" (waterfall) at the end of the beach that comes trickling down through the roots of the shrubs and plants above.  And toilets built into a little hut in the undergrowth with huge windows to take in the view.  A very cool place. 

Matt et. al. invited me to come with them to their hostel for dinner, and we barbequed backpacker style (potatoes, onions & hot dogs, although word to the wise, Kiwi hot dogs are disgusting, they are very mushy and have very little flavor.  Similarly their sausages don't taste like a whole lot, but I like them grilled because they get crispy, so that's okay. I think if you want a North American style hot dog you have to buy something else, don't get the thing labeled "hot dog" in the shop.)  I donated a bar of chocolate to the feast and helped with the dishes.  Ruth happened to be staying at the hostel as well, and as I chatted to her for a bit she told me that she hadn't had time to get into a hot pool either.  So we made a plan to go that night, at 11pm (low tide was at 12 or 1am) and I said I'd meet her at the beach.  Matt, because he is crazy, decided to come too.  So I went home and put my togs on.  By this time it had started to storm, and a strong wind was lashing a light rain around rather violently.  But down to the beach I went anyway, with the spade I'd borrowed from Auntie Dawn in tow.  I met Matt & Ruth and we headed down the beach into the dark and stormy night.  There were five other people already there when we arrived, but three of them left straight away because it really wasn't a very nice night.  So we took over their hot pool and sat in it for a while.  It was fun, but not ideal, because I don't really like sand or having sand all over me and that is pretty unavoidable when you go hot pooling in a pool made out of sand.  Bah.  Plus, I was at the end of the pool that must have been right over the hot spring because the water was so hot it would burn you if you kept your feet in for too long.  When the waves rolled in high they splashed into our little hot pool, collapsing the sides and flooding it with cold(er) water.  Add to this the raging wind and driving rain, and it was an interesting experience.  I walked home after I got too cold to sit out there any longer, and tried to extricate sand from various places on my body before I went to bed.

Monday, March 29: The next day I was up early enough to have a shower and hit the road by 9:45.  I drove back to Auckland and came home and cleaned my car out, then headed into the city for a meeting with my new boss Fiona, at Youthtown to scout out a location for activities during the Easter holidays next week.

And that was the end of my weekend adventure in the Coromandel Pennisula.

Days 63 & 64: Sea Kayaking and Sailing

I spent the past two days working with Youthtown (the coolest place around as their ads on tv proclaim.)  It was a "trial"/job interview I guess.  Youthtown does youth work in an effort to enhance kids socially, physically and creatively.  They are based in downtown Auckland and run afterschool programs and clubs.  I went out with the outdoor/adventure program side of things.  On Monday we were at a place north of Auckland called Goat Island.  It is a marine reserve so it's really popular for snorkeling.  Youthtown had hired a contractor to run snorkeling for the kids, and they were split into two groups, so the other group went kayaking with TK and me.  I enjoyed sea kayaking - it was lots of fun once I learned how to launch the kayak in the surf (you get in on the sand and shuffle your way into the water, then paddle straight through the surf.)  With our second group of kids the wind picked up so the surf was even higher.  Brian (my boss) and I worked together to shove kids into the surf and give them a push to keep them at right angles to it and not parallel, thus, swamped.  Everyone made it out okay.  We explored the leeward side of the island (Goat Island is actually an island slightly off-shore) and saw some cool caves in the cliffs.  Then we packed up and headed back into town.

Back at the office I met Fiona, who also works in the outdoor office.  She offered to hire me to plan some sessions for a teen group during Easter holidays.  I was delighted to have more work and arranged to meet with her to discuss this more on Thursday.

On Tuesday, I drove out to Orakei basin, a salt water, gate controlled "lake" near Auckland.  Today I helped to teach sailing to the same bunch of kids as the day before.  Youthtown uses the facilities of the Orakei Sea Scouts (like Boy Scouts only saltier) and they have a container full of water sports gear: windsurfers, sailboats, kayaks, etc.  The sailboats are similar to sunfish, only simpler to use and lighter, since they are made of plastic instead of fibreglass.  They are called Optimists.  Once again the wind picked up in the afternoon and some of the kids were freaking out.  Two boys turtled their boat and the mast got stuck in the mud at the bottom of the lake.  Kind of a pain but otherwise not too bad.  I got in one of the boats to help a girl out who was sailing by herself.  Her boat had a bunch of water in it and no bailer, and then my weight in the boat (it's really too small for me to sit in) made the back sit too low in the water so we got a bit swamped.  Luckily we didn't sink the boat (they're difficult to sink) and although the steering was basically non-existant we made it back to shore in one piece.  Pretty fun days and more work on offer for next week.  Sweet.

Day 59: Canyoning up the Pararaha

Today I volunteered to go with a group from Adventure Specialties Trust on a canyoning trip.  Canyoning is when you walk up a river, picking your way over rocks and negotiating the canyon walls and waterfalls that you encounter.  The group was a group of 13 students from Auckland Secondary School, plus their teacher Sharon and me and Ben from AdSpecs.  The students have been removed from their original schools to work on attitudes and behavior problems.  So they're baddies, but not all the bad.  Not juvenile justice system material by any means.

We picked the group up at their school and they introduced themselves to us.  Then we headed out to the river, getting there just after 11am.  The Pararaha is in a different part of the Waitakeres, where I've been working all this week in Huia.  We hiked down a steep track to get into the valley.  It was gorgeous!  After a brief rest stop we struck off into the river.  It was really challenging to keep the group from spreading out too much.

We worked our way upstream, either in the river or on rough tracks going around some difficult spots, until we clambered over a logjam in the river and found ourselves at a deep pool with a waterfall.  We had lunch there and jumped off the rocks into the pool.  The water was so cold! It took your breath away.  After lunch we pressed on, and the going got a bit rougher right after the waterfall.  There was a spot where the canyon walls came straight down into the river and you either had to swim or climb to the top of the canyon and walk around.  I swam through the area and got a little freaked out at how fast the cold acted on my system.  It was more difficult to swim with a backpack (I was trying to keep it out of the water, but couldn't) and with shoes on my feet.  Finally I made it though, but a bigger challenge was just ahead.  You could swim again, or try to boulder your way across the conglomerated rocks that made up the canyon walls.  They weren't very high but were a bit steep.  I slipped and ended up in the water anyway, and also scratched up my wrist and my forearms on the rock.  That spot was also very difficult to get out of the water.  Ben had to set up a rope to help pull kids out.  If it had been me in charge I would've been rather nervous about the kids being in the water that was that cold.  Not all of them were strong swimmers, either, but I think most of those had chosen to walk around.  At any rate, when I got out of the water it felt like my arms and legs didn't want to work properly, since they were so cold.  I also lost circulation in my feet, which took a while to return. Brrr!

Farther down, there was another swim shortly before we got out of the river and back onto the track.  I opted against it after my last experience in the water, and instead climbed up and around on a steep, rough track.  I ended up falling and bashing my shin and my upper thigh on rocks and roots.  It was quite painful and I was ready to say that the river had officially kicked my butt.  But I kept on pressing on and everyone made it out of the canyon.  It was a good day, albeit rather painful, and I got to see a beautiful part of New Zealand, which I really enjoyed, and get some good experience with canyoning, which was also great.

Days 53 - 55: Camping at Uretiti

This weekend (March 12 - 14) I went camping with Alana, who I met at the church camp I was at a few weeks ago.  We drove north to stay at a DOC campground at a place called Uretiti.  Unfortunately, by the time we got there on Friday night, the gate was already closed, so we continued farther down the road and stayed at another campground quite close by in a place called Ruakaka.  We just set up the tent and then took a walk along the beach before we went to bed, but since Uretiti has been beach access, in the morning we left there and moved to the other site.  Then that day we went and visited an oil refinery.  They had a cool visitors center with a scale model of the entire refinery, including every pipe!  There was a video that explained how the oil is refined (it was pretty chemistry heavy - Bek, you would've loved it) and another that talked about how engineers find oil and get it out of the ground.  Both of us agreed that our favorite device at the refinery was the Hydrocracker.  It breaks hydrocarbon molecules down into smaller pieces.  That's about all I know about that.  If you're thinking that is seems weird that an oil refinery would have a visitors center, well, so was I.  I think most oil refineries would have gates up miles away to keep people out, but this one welcomed you.  I guess it has to do with how low New Zealand is on the terror threat list.  Anyway, it was pretty interested and I enjoyed our visit there.  I felt as though it was not just the oil that was refined, but our very lives (with credit to Average for that joke the first time around!)  I had the Port Stanvac song stuck in my head for days!

After we left the oil refinery, we headed north to a town called Whangerei.  It's pronouned Fhangere, because in Maori 'wh' makes an 'fh' sound.  We visited the fernery and botanic gardens there (photo is of Alana and a plant she liked), wandered through the park, and sat in a pub to have a coffee (well, Alana had one) and watched the cricket game.  I am getting a better understanding of cricket - it's actually not as complicated as I once thought, but I don't yet understand all of the abbreviations and statistics, or how the rules for the different types of matches you might have work entirely.  My instructor for that is Pete McMillan. While we were watching cricket in the pub, we saw an update on a local game that was being played in Whangerei, so we set out to find it.  The game was being played at a fairly small oval, with nothing in the way of stands to speak of, so we sat on the steps of a model house that was on the oval and watched for a while.  I sent Pete a text message to educate us on the finer points.  It was fun to watch the game live, but I wished we'd been up a bit higher so we could see better.  The whole thing was very relaxed and it was evident that it was a small, local team playing.

Once we left Whangerei, we headed home and fixed some noodle surprise for dinner on my camp stove.  Then we sat on the beach for a little while before turning in for the night.  During the night there was some excitement, as we were woken up by someone yelling about someone breaking into cars.  Unfortunately that night was the first time Alana hadn't locked her car, and I ended up getting $5 taken out of my wallet.  We spoke to the woman at the campground's reception the next morning and she said this thief has come before; he comes off the beach and breaks into cars but only takes money and puts everything back where he found it.  In that respect I'm lucky because he could've taken my bank cards, my camera or my driver's license, but he only took the five bucks.  I was annoyed to lose the money but in retrospect I'm pretty fortunate.  We wondered why the woman at reception hadn't mentioned this when we checked in. This photo is me with a giant sculptured moth - that's for Mothra!

That morning we made eggs for breakfast and then spent a little while at the beach, swimming, but the weather wasn't great and rain showers kept coming through.  We next headed to Waipu, a little town a bit farther north.  We grabbed some lunch from a bakery and then continued south on smaller roads, with a stop for a while to lounge around at the Waipu beach.  The beach was really beautiful, with volcanic rocks making striking shapes as they poked up through the water far out on the horizon.  The weather got better and we both ended up going in for another swim.  After that we jumped back in the car and headed back to Auckland.  On the way home we passed a farm with pink sheep!  They must dye or spray paint them or something.

Day 52: Kiwi fruit and NZ Natives

Today I made a trip to the Auckland Botanic Garden.  It's pretty astounding how long it's taken me to go there, considering that it's about a 5 minutes drive from where I'm staying!  I was rather impressed - they have a large area with lots of different plants and trees in different gardens.  There is a Native Forest section, and since I'm trying to learn more about NZ natives, I headed there first.  The other day I got some identification books out of the library.  I figured it would be cool to learn more about native plants and trees and it would also be helpful to me if I'm going to need to lead bushwalks with the school group next week.  Here are some of the plants I found at the Botanic Garden and some things that I have learned about them.

 This tree is called Rimu.  It is a rainforest tree, although that surprises me because it has needles.  I thougth rainforests were all about leaves, but I guess not.  The needles on this tree hang down in long, pendulous branches (the guidebook's words, not mine.)  They actually remind me of a weeping willow, only there are needles instead of leaves.  As the tree matures, the leaves get smaller and don't hang down so much.  Rimu provided timber, back in the day, and was useful because it could be found practically throughout the whole country.  It also used to be called red pine.

This is Manuka, which is a type of tea tree.  There is another type as well, called Kanuka and the two types are difficult to tell apart.  Apparently a good way to remember them is Kind Kanuka (the leaves are soft to touch) and Mean Manuka (the leaves are a bit prickly.)  Kanuka also grows much larger than Manuka will, and bears smaller flowers that grow in bunches, while the flowers on a Manuka tree will grow singly.  It is from these trees that tea tree oil is derived.  Tea tree wood is the best firewood found in New Zealand, and Manuka leaves can be used to make tea, which the early settlers did use it for, and that's why it's now known as a tea tree.  The flowers also make excellent honey.

This plant is called Kawakawa.  (The photo here is courtesy of Wikipedia.)  Kawakawa is a very interesting plant for all of its uses.  Maori used it extensively for medicinal purposes, and it actually does contain some compounds that make it helpful.  You can make a tea from the leaves that will help if you have a cold, and if you chew on the leaves it makes your mouth numb, which is helpful if you have a toothache.  The leaves can also be put on a wound to help it heal.  Kawakawa is also easy to identify because its leaves are heart shaped and often full of holes chewed there by insects.  It gets its name from the Maori word kawa which means bitter, and it does have a bitter taste (I tried it.)

Some more native trees that I have learned are the Cabbage Tree, the Nikau Palm and Lancewood.  Cabbage Trees are palms that have almost a ball of palm leaves forming a sphere at the top of a long, straight trunk.  Nikau Palms are the most southerly occuring palms.  With the kids on the bushwalk we have them collect the branches that have fallen off the Nikau Palms and then they can sit on them and slide down a hill!  Lancewood as a young tree looks nothing like it does when it gets bigger; as a juvenile it has long, skinny leaves that hang down from a central point (see photo at left), then as it grows the leaves change shape a stick up more than down (see photo at right).  Apparently the moas of old (that's a now extinct flightless big bird, by the way) couldn't eat the leaves when they were hanging down, and couldn't reach them once the tree grew taller and the leaf shape changed.  Ingenious way to avoid being eaten!  Lancewoods when young are also flexible enough that you can tie the trunk of a small one in a knot, and it will continue to grow with the knot still in it.  You can come back later and harvest it and have a nifty walking stick with a great handle!

I do not know what kinds of flowers these are, or even if they are native to New Zealand, but I thought they were very lovely so I took their photos anyway.

After I was done wandering in the Botanic Garden, I found myself a nice spot near a lake and read my book for a while.  Then it was time to head over to the kiwi fruit packing place for my interview.  It was fairly simple, I just had to fill out a form and answer a couple of questions, things like, "do you have reliable transportation?" and, "do you have a contact number where we can reach you consistently," and, "can you stand for long periods of time on concrete?"  I have training with them next Friday.  I'm not sure when the actual work will start, but I would guess it would be the week after next sometime.  I'm not sure yet how this will work out with Youthtown; I may have to pass on that work for now in favor of something more consistent.   

Day 51: Work & Resolution

Thanks guys for your prayers about the ticket thing.  I have gotten it resolved just today, with help from the travel agency back home that booked my tickets to begin with.  It ended up costing me a bit of money as I had to change my ticket to a higher class in order to find a seat, but I now hold a ticket from Auckland to LA on January 18, 2011.  So that's sorted.

In other news, the last two days I have been working for Adventure Specialties Trust, helping them with a school group in a beautiful area west of Auckland called the Waitakere Ranges.  Specifically, we were in the Karamatura Vally, which is near a cute little town right on the beach called Huia.  If you're interested, Waitakere is pronounced Why-TAHK-er-ee and Huia is HOO-ee-ah.  Now you're up to speed. Huia is really beautiful - you drive down a very twisty road for about 25 minute to get there, and once you do arrive you come up over the crest of a hill and you can see the ocean bay spread out before you and steep mountains rising right up from the ocean.  Although it's really pretty, it's hard to get a good photo, but I did the best I could.

It takes me about an hour to drive from my house in Manakau up the Northwestern motorway to Waitakere.  The last 15km or so of my trip is over exceedingly windy and hilly, narrow roads.  There are good views to be had in a couple of spots, and once you come over the last hill and head down into the town of Huia, you can look to the left and spot a beautiful scene: a cove of the Tasman Sea with a beach at the end, and rounded towering hills poking up across the way.  Very nice.  I will try and get a photo of it soon.

Our school program consists of four stations, through which groups of about 15 kids rotate with their parent volunteers and teachers.  The kids do team building games, abseiling (this is a British term for rappelling), a bush walk and an orienteering course.  On day one I led the orienteering.  The kids get a simple map and have to follow it and the clues provided to find words hidden at each point.  Once they've found all of the words, they unscramble them to make a sentence.  At one of the locations they must travel across a stream on a Tyrolean Traverse to read the clue tied to a tree on the other side.  So I would explain how to read a map (in brief) and then send them off and head over to the Traverse to hook kids up to it and send them over.  In the end, with all the words collected, the sentence read: Courage is not the absence of fear but having a go in spite of it.  Apparently it was one of their school's mottos once upon a time or something.

On day 2 I worked at the abseiling site, setting up an anchor in the morning and then instructing the kids and parent helpers in getting harnesses on and how to abseil.  Then I hooked kids up and belayed them down as a safety while they abseiled themselves.  The two days were good fun, a bit chaotic (as working with groups tends to be) and rather tiring, but I enjoyed them, and I was making a bit of cash, which was great.  It is fun to learn new skills, too.  Plus it's great to be outside and enjoying the lovely surroundings.  The program continues until Thursday this week, but I'm not working again until next week, when I will do Monday thru. Thursday.  In the photos you can see the abseiling site and some shots of kids sliding down a big hill sitting on Niakau Palm fronds on the bush walk.
Back to today, I drove into Auckland and had a meeting with Brian from Youthtown, which is another adventure/youth organization.  It's similar to the Boys & Girls club, I'd say, in that they're about developing potential and good things in the next generation.  They do a lot of outdoorsy things and watery things, like kayaking, sailing, waterskiing, tubing (although they call it sea biscuiting - I had to ask about that one), skiing, snowboarding, bush skills, etc.  I am hoping to possibly get a few days of work with them, too, and Brian and I set up a two day trial where I will join a group and help out with snorkeling and sailing and other watersports.  Sounds like great fun even if the trial doesn't work out!  Brian also explained something to me that I experienced already with camp a few weeks ago: apparently there is this attitude in New Zealand when it comes to adventure/outdoor/experiential stuff that says, "She'll be alright," (only it's said with a Kiwi accent.)  Anyway, this is a sort of casual, you'll be fine, go for it, attitude that can sometimes clash with my American sensibilities of safety and risk management and all of that.  I guess there is an attitude here of kids being really hands on and involved without so much worry about the dangers.  Which doesn't mean they are unsafe, I suppose, although it can seem it at times.  It's just different to how I am used to approaching things.

Tomorrow I meet with the kiwifruit packing plant people (the kppp) and see what they might have for me in terms of work.  I am hoping I can get something part time regularly with them and thus be able to fit in times to work with Youthtown and Adspecs as they come up.

Day 47: Worldview

I have noticed, since arriving in New Zealand, that it's really hard for me to figure out where exactly I am in the world, and how the other continents and countries line up with this one.  It's because for my entire life, I've been used to imagining myself in the United States.  Europe is to the east, Asia is to the west.  Now that I've moved around the world, my entire viewpoint is thrown off!  I find that I struggle to place continents from this new perspective.  For example: I know that Australia is to the west, "over the ditch" as they say, meaning the Tasman Sea.  But it took me a while to work out that if you head east, the first land you run into is South America, Chili to be exact.  So when that earthquake happened a few days ago there, New Zealand had tsunami warnings and I couldn't figure out why for a while.  Anyway, I guess it's just about adjusting my worldview!

Day 45: Discouragement

Dear Everyone who is reading this blog,

Today I ran into a slight problem.  I would appreciate your prayers on this if you are of the praying inclination.  If not, maybe you are a travel agent and can solve all my woes!

What happened was this: I took myself over to the Air New Zealand office to arrange a date for my flight home.  I have already purchased this ticket, but, I guess because it was too long in advance, since I bought it in Feb. 2009, they couldn't actually book a date for it.  So I was told that I need to contact Air NZ in February.  Well, perhaps to my folly, I waited until early March to do this.  I want to book my ticket home for next January - both because the ticket is only valid for use until Jan. 17, 2011, and also so that I can use as much as possible of the one year visa that I possess to stay in NZ.  At the office I was told that there aren't any seats available for my fare class (which is the lowest possible fare class, I'm sure.)  The woman told me that she would put me on a waiting list for a seat, but she couldn't tell me what my chances are of actually getting a seat.  She also said I could pay a fare upgrade and move to a different class.  I don't especially want to do this; I have already paid for my ticket!  I am a bit concerned that I won't be able to get a flight that works with my other plans, or that it is going to cost me a lot of money to do that.  Additionally I'm frustrated that I didn't know that I had to act so fast to get a seat.  I have contacted the travel agent in the states who set me up with the ticket to see if they can help.  And I will check back with Air NZ because I think they can tell me the answers to those questions but they just have to find out what those answers are.

Thanks for listening!  I'm sure this situation will all work out somehow in the end.  I just hope it isn't too painful a process!

Day 44: Hanau Ranges Regional Park

**Editor's note: look back at the February posts to find a few new ones about my time in Australia.  They should be labelled Day 30 and Day 31**

I got a library card yesterday!  Now I can check out books and use computers at the local public lib!  Hooray!  I requested The Life of Pi right away.  I have been waiting to read that book for far too long.  Any good book suggestions, let me know.

Oh yes, also, my new car, Nugget, has a tape player.  Alex has lent me a couple of tapes and I have a tape adaptor for my iPod, but it might be fun to have some mix tapes from people if they have time and are so inclined.  So, if you can still find a cassette tape in today's modern day and age, and also the sound recording equipment to record onto it, I would definitely listen to it in my car as I go crusing to and fro, merrily.
After a trip to the library this morning, I drove out to Hanau, about 30 minutes from Manakau, today, to visit the Hanau Ranges.  This is one of many parks in the Auckland area.  I saw Hanau Falls, and went for a tramp in the bush.  It felt like being in a rainforest, lots of tropical seeming plants and a lot of running water as I hiked over a stream and out to a resevoir and dam.  It was very beautiful and I was excited to have found it all on my own.  My car did well, too - Nugget doesn't really like going up hills too well.  He only has a 1 L engine, so I can't really  blame him, and the drive to the park was very windy with a lot of uphills.

Here is a picture of Hanua Falls.  If you look closely you can see a person who has just jumped from a spot about halfway up the falls.  Crazy!

Me and Miniwati with the falls.

Example of the bush I was walking through. 

A ginormous fern!