Off We Go...

Hi, Friends and Family!!

Our Saturday morning began with a bang. Actually, it was more like a series of bangs… on our front door. You see, we’d set out a few garage sale signs the day before – nothing huge or flashy, but apparently New Zealanders are Garage Sale Fiends, because at 5 minutes to 8am (our signs said the sale was from 8am – 2pm) an impatient neighbor was banging on our door, asking where the stuff was. Here, I’ll do a transcription of the conversation, abbreviating the Angry Sale Seeker as follows:

KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK
I rise from my warm spot on our sofa bed and answer the door in my pajamas.
ME: Yes?
ASS: Did you advertise a garage sale?
ME: Yeah…
ASS: (pointing to his watch) Well it’s 8 am.
[NOTE: It was not yet 8 o’clock.]
ME: We slept in.
ASS: Must have been quite a night then.
ME: Not really.
[NOTE: We had been in that show and I wasn’t feeling well.]
ASS: (pointing to the stuff we’d piled in the hallway) Is that what you’re bringing out?
ME: Yeah…
ASS: Can we come in and look at it?
ME: I guess.

This is the point when a whole line of people who had gathered on our lawn traipsed through our front door to inspect our measly pile of sale items. One guy was doing his darnedest to be Ozzy Osbourne and he asked if we were selling any “nice gold or silver.” He came back later with his daughter and bought our white board. The aforementioned ASS asked how much I wanted for my guitars, which I told him rather vehemently were definitely not for sale. It was early.

The rest of Saturday was a mixture of people picking up the things they bought from us on Trademe, and us attempting to pack while monitoring the steady flow of yard salers throughout the course of the morning.

Friday was interesting, too, of course. We’d done our first show the night before, so we were starting to turn our attention to our glaring lack of preparation for the journey ahead. I was packing and Skype-ing with my mom while Brandon went out to get our WOF (Warrant O’ Fitness – a necessary annual or six-monthly smog-check-like test for NZ cars). My poor mother got to see a rather stressful scene when B came home and revealed that not only did our car not pass, it would cost $350 to fix the problem (suspension bushings), and we couldn’t get it done until Monday (the day AFTER we were intending to leave Auckland). How stressful – no wonder I’ve developed an ulcer. Literally.

But there was nothing else to do but wait. We talked to our landlords, who were very nice about letting us stay an extra night, and then went to our show.

Thus my impatience with the early-morning garage salers.

After the garage sale was finished B and I did a little packing, made some lasagna, and went to the closing night of our Burlesque show. Some members of the cast were really nostalgic about closing night, but B and I were too distracted to really get into it. The audience was just on fire though – laughing and clapping for everything. Actually, we just got a text message from the director saying that they’re going to do another run of the show in three weeks because the theater wants them back, but we can’t be there. If this were the states and we were staying here forever then we’d just change our plans, but B and I have no way to go back to Auckland even if we wanted to. Our ship is out at sea, and the current is strong.

Sunday morning I taught my last yoga class and then B and I were intending to go to a free concert in One Tree Hill from 1-3pm and a free swing dancing class from 3-5pm, but we’d learned from the Burlesque director the night before that our strike (theater term for taking-stuff-out-of-the-theater) for our show as at 2pm, and would take about 2 hours. In the end we missed both the concert and the dancing, but we did our part for the show, at least.

That night we packed and emailed people and researched stuff about the places we were going. In the end it was a good thing that we couldn’t leave on Sunday because it would have been impossible – moving out is always such a hassle.

The next morning B went to get our WOF while I continued to organize. However, when he came home and said that the mechanic had changed his price to $2,000 we decided to just leave without the WOF and see what happened. The mechanic later called us again and changed his price to $875, but it was too late. We’d made our decision. Besides, we were having enough trouble fitting everything we own, which isn’t a whole lot, into the unnecessarily minimal storage space of our Toyota Mark II.

We didn’t get out of Auckland until about 3pm, but it wasn’t a terribly long drive to our first stop: Lake Taupo. We’d done most of that drive before on our way to Rotorua, and it’s just lovely country down there - very hilly and green. We had read about a free camping spot called Reids Farm, which cozies up next to the Waikato River just a few kilometers north of Lake Taupo, and that’s where we camped. We got there at twilight and quickly set up our tent, made some heat-and-eat Indian food, and went to bed in our sleeping bag/foam pad bed. Luckily, this time, it didn’t rain.

The next morning we woke up and realized just how beautiful a spot we had landed in. On our way back to the main road we took a detour to Huka Falls, which is a long, turbulent stretch of current that ends in a beautiful water fall. There were loads of tourists there videoing the spot and taking pictures – and we’d camped (for free) just a few meters down the road!

The drive to New Plymouth in the Taranaki Region took us right along Lake Taupo itself, which was just spectacular. B and I will have to upload our pictures later. It’s immense and pristine. The water here is really something special – like there’s not a spec of pollution in this whole crazy country. Once we were past the lake we decided to take a “short cut” that I saw on the map. It promised to save us about 80 km of driving distance, and we couldn’t understand why my Google Maps driving directions hadn’t mentioned it.

It turns out, of course, that the vast majority of our “short cut” road, which was about 60km long, was not only gravel, some of it was what they call “grading,” which is worse than gravel, which B and I didn’t even know was possible. Grading is basically the first step in making a road – just after they cut down some trees and just before they decided exactly where the road should be. It was awful, especially because we’re dealing with a car with iffy suspension.

But we made it, as we always do, and we got to our WWOOF host before dinner. These people who are hosting us this week are very nice, but the whole WWOOF concept seems more and more like indentured servitude to Brandon and me. We think the main thing is that we never like expecting much from people, and always prefer to give more than we take. However, in these situations the WWOOF hosts will sort of take as much as we offer and give as little as they can. That’s not the case here, necessarily, but B and I are starting to have warm visions of a place of our own again and jobs that pay money rather than living essentials, and this is only day two of our WWOOFing adventure. Yesterday we actually made peach crepes for our hosts because the woman had some peaches that were going bad and we hadn’t arrived in time to do any real work that would have earned us our bed and dinner. Today our farm work included tomato-picking, garden weeding, and potato digging. We also carried some lard and slop out to the “chooks” (NZ slang for chickens). And we do the dishes.

But then the afternoon was just ours, and it was amazing. We drove to the City Centre of New Plymouth and walked along the coastal boardwalk, which follows a rocky beach along the Tasman Sea. We also bought some vitamins, found a health food store with an AMAZING range of carob products (Mom, they had carob coconut cookies – it was heaven), and went to the library/museum, which was lovely.

Then home again for dinner in our crazy dusty room with a family of daddy long leg spiders living in each corner. Brandon and I wanted an adventure and by golly we got one, but as the weather gets chilly that’s all the more reason to snuggle, and when we’re together we’re as happy as clams.

We love you all and will keep the updates coming!

Kisses and Hugs from your Intrepid Travelers,
Brandon and Jenny