PLEASE VOTE ON MY POLL TO THE RIGHT!

Two examples of how I am a changed woman and one important plea for advice:

1. I was a vegetarian when I came here. Well, a vegetarian-ish. I hardly ever ate meat and probably hadn’t eaten red meat in 6 years. Now, not only do I load up my plate with Mr. Rankin sausages (even though I used to feed that pig!) and venison that Carolyn’s family killed, but I crave meat when I don’t have it. We laugh at the leg of venison wrapped up in the freezer labeled, “Bambi,“ because it was accidentally a casualty before its time. Maggie and I want steak all the time. What?

2. The other day Thomas was telling us about how you can get $100 a kilo for possom fur because possoms are problems here and their fur mixes well with merino wool. He sets traps and collects their fur, and when we were asking him about how it works, he invited us to join in on the action. The traps are leg traps and when asked how he kills them he said he used to beat them to death, but that “got a bit dodgy,” so now he shoots them. The next night Mags and I were walking down our driveway at night when our headlamps illuminated a possom on a tree right in front of us. These possoms are cute, y’all. These aren’t the Rodents of Unusual Size o’possums of home. These are more like rodent-ish koala bears. Months ago I would have seen one and ooo-ed and ahh-ed about how cute it was and maybe tried to touch it. Now, my immediate response was, “how do I kill it?” I looked at that possum and saw the money I could make if I could just figure out a way to end its life with my bare hands. Before I’d even spoken aloud Maggie spoke up about how we should catch it. Who are we?

1 plea for advice: Maggie and I need money. We are in the process of getting jobs, and we just picked grapes, so we’ll be fine. It isn’t exactly life or death, but it needs to be had. Yesterday I found an ad on the NZ version of Craig’s List asking for 2 women with long hair who would be willing to shave their heads and take part in a photo shoot. Something about how women can still be beautiful without hair. The pay? $1000 cash. One thousand dollars. So, if you were in our shoes, would you do it?

Surprise! We are in Queenstown now. Way more has happened since last i wrote than should have happened. So we were picking grapes and living at Carolyn's. Grape picking remained a great job, but it finished on Friday. On Thursday morning we arrived at work and were waiting around for David, our boss who I mentioned was super nice, to come tell us where to pick. After a while the owner of the place came out and told us that on Wednesday afternoon David was killed in an accident while pulling the nets off the grapes we were to pick the next day. It was a total freak accident involving this machinery that we'd seen him use everyday. This happened on the one day that he did not work on the same vineyard as us, and it was a really shocking loss. The whole vineyard is a small family operation, so David was one of five employees. It was very sad. We drove home and spent the day working in Carolyn's garden and trying to understand how to feel as appreciative as we could. We were both very grateful to be with Carolyn's family, since this is the first time we've really sought comfort since our year began. The next day we went back and finished picking the grapes on that vineyard, so at least that family can be done with that land for a while.

The same day that we found out about David, we were thinking about what on earth our next move would be. Whether to stay on at Carolyn's, or go ahead and check out Queenstown for jobs, figure out winter, etc. That morning we got a text from, Fiona, a friend I made on Milford Track who manages a hostel in Queenstown. She said they were looking for a couple of cleaners in exchange for accomodation starting Monday, so as grape picking ended, we packed our bags and headed down South. It is the perfect opportunity to live in Queenstown for free while we make our plan. The fates seem to be in our favor. We started cleaning today and it is great. We just work 3 hours a day as part of their biannual spring clean. The hostel is right on the lake and a two minute walk from town. Just lovely.

We had a great final weekend at Carolyn's house. The weekend before we'd moved from our cottage down to their house to make room for a couple of wwoofers who were coming (since we were wwoofers with jobs, which makes us useless wwoofers.) We've slowly crept into this family's life to the point that now we just live in their house. Even after the wwoofers left, we stayed in their house because we didn't want to leave. As Carolyn says, we've "wormed our way in." On Saturday we got to go to Thomas' first rugby game of the season. It was so much fun and unbelievably rough. Maggie and I kept screaming and covering our eyes. At one point Thomas was on the bottom of a tackle and the three of us were covering our faces and yelling, "watch his head! don't hurt him! watch his eyes!" Not cool. He ended up breaking his nose. We didn't know until the end of the game because he hid it so that he could keep playing. What? I know. His consolation prize (even though he was more excited than upset) was the best dinner ever and movies and rice pudding. It was a cozy weekend. We miss them, but this hostel "job" was too timely an opportunity to pass up.

Who knows where we'll be next week.

Love,
Robin

Ok, the rest of my pictures are up. In large part, they are up to date, at least for the moment.

Currently, Maggie and I are back at Carolyn's. I know this might strike you as ridiculous. Like what are we thinking because aren't we here to see a whole country and isn't this family tired of us yet? But we've seen a lot and will see more and this family is the best family, giving us no impetus to leave, unless they come out and express their dissatisfaction with our many happy returns. This time things are different because we are here more as renters than wwoofers, staying at their house and going to work on the vineyard every day! The vineyard we work for is called Greenhough (http://www.greenhough.co.nz/our-wines) and the two vineyards we work in are in beautiful places where you can see mountain and ocean all at once. This differs from apple-picking in a number of significant ways.
1) Our boss is so nice.
2) We are paid hourly, so not only is it pressure-free, but we even get breaks! Rules.
3) Though tough on the back and clipper hand, there are no ladders and you aren't carrying any weight, which makes the whole thing far more bearable.
4) We get to return home to a lovely home at Carolyn's. Though I "loved" the caravan, this is better.
5) We mostly work with older people who we think are just friends of the owner, so comparatively we seem like we are in stellar shape, which gives us a nice ego boost and makes us work on without complaint, so as not to spoil a perfectly good facade.

Yesterday Maggie and I were purring about the cush life of grape picking versus apple, and I thought Maggie summed it up well:
"Trying to make apple-picking sound good is like trying to sell this workout to people: do the stairmaster for 8 hours, as fast as you can, with 50 pounds weights strapped on your front. But don't worry, it isn't straight steps...between every few steps we'll pick up the stairmaster and move it a few feet."

Now, things are wonderful all around.

i finally posted a couple more picture albums! milford track and mom's visit. others will come soon...ish!

grape picking rules. apple picking drools.

love,
robin

I must have seen at least a thousand waterfalls in the past week. I didn't think that something as magical as a waterfall could ever become routine, but I had to keep walking and stop taking pictures, so eventually I basically ignored them. I can't believe it, but if I didn't let them go then I'd still be there, staring and starving. So a few days ago I finished hiking the Milford Track. It was one of the most beautiful experiences of my life. Maggie did not end up going on the hike, so it was just me, which made it four days of thought and consideration.

The hike is very regulated because of its high demand, so only 40 people are allowed to start each day and you have to stay in the huts provided. This means that you get to know the people in your group, but since everyone takes the day at their own pace, I usually felt like I was the only person in the world on the hike. Of my group of 40, 4 of them were a family from Charlotte! It was crazy. I didn't meet them until the last day, only to learn that they live 10 minutes from my home in Charlotte. Tiny world. It was just the most amazing scenery. It looked like the floating mountains of waterfalls in Avatar. There were even helicopters sometimes. The hike takes you through Fiordland and you have to get to and from the trail by boat. Fiordland gets more annual rainfall than anywhere in the world except a spot in Hawaii, so fresh water is in abundance. I constantly walked along brooks, streams, lakes, rivers and waterfalls of all sorts. Part of the walk takes you through a valley surrounded by steep fjords running with waterfalls streaming from the snow on top. At one point I stopped on a bridge above a waterfall and counted how many waterfalls I could see in my surround view of the weeping mountains. I could see 43! Just from one spot!

One day I realized that by 5:00 the only thing I'd said aloud was, "hold it for ten seconds" in reference to the button on the gas stove. I'd also said "hello" twice, but both were to birds, so I don't think that counts. It was nice not to complain about my feet hurting or say things like, "this is pretty" about views that embodied magnificence. Twice I was caught laughing aloud when I stumbled upon another hiker, and another time I was caught practicing my Irish accent aloud. That one made me seem a little crazy.

After the hike I happily reunited with Maggie, who broke the news that we have mice in our car. She'd spent the last night in terror trying to catch the mice. Though this makes us seem extremely unclean, we were told that this "happens all the time" at this time of year because they seek out warmth. That must be it.

We spent a couple of nights around Queenstown investigating job possibilities. Then a night at Mt. Cook, the tallest mountain in NZ, where it looks like the glacier is crawling down the mountain. We went into a fancy hotel and drank tea and pretended to belong there instead of our tent in the rain. On the drive away we passed a hitchhiker that looked an awful lot like our friend Eddie, who we'd left apple picking on the North Island. We turned around and sure enough, there was Eddie under all those bags, so we drove him for a while screaming about the feats of great timing. Then we spent a night along a beach in Kaikoura where the full moon reflected perfectly on the water and the next morning greeted us with a huge pod of the most active dolphins I've ever seen. We sat on the beach to eat dinner and watched the ocean for a moment and then I raised my arms and said, "Whales, commence!" Immediately we noticed the dolphins leaping out of the air. Really close second. Perfect New Zealand. The dolphins hung around for hours, continually leaping and backflipping out of the water. It looked like a Sea World show.

Now Maggie and I are happily settled in Wellington visiting Eva and Caroline for a week of absolute chill time. It's exactly what we want. They have a kitchen and electricity and hot water! Maybe I'll even put up some pictures.