on Hitchhiking

The hitchhiking here hasn't been so different from back home. We seem to get sympathy for obviously looking like travelers, rather than simply a local who hitches rides to the grocery store. So the big packs help:

Plus we look pretty respectable. We often get rides from people who don't normally pick up hitchhikers. We've had days on end without more than a 15 minute wait, but we've also waited 45 minutes and only seen a single car go by. It didn't stop.

Our luck hitchhiking has been steadily declining since the top of the North Island. We spent about 5hrs waiting for our rides to and from the trail in Abel Tasman that day. The area is known as a more sustainable-minded area when it comes to farming and attracts its share of hippies, but that didn't seem to help us out. NZ has its rednecks too, highlighted by a number of obscene gestures directed at Amy during her thumbing shifts.

And despite the poor luck, it's also where we've seen the most other hitchhikers, although we've only had to wait in line once so far.

The usual strategies apply. Low-speed, uncongested areas are better. Better for traffic to be coming uphill as it's easier to stop. Room to pull over. Long highways without lots of junction are good too, so it's obvious where you are headed. Short rides are usually ok, but you still have to be strategic.

On the North Island, we only had the one ride with foreigners (backpacker van), but lately, in this more touristy area, it's been the tourists picking us up. We don't really have a preference. Locals can be pretty colorful. We've ridden in the back of trucks:

We've ridden with Maori, nurses, teachers, engineers, politicians, farmers, loggers, young people, old people (82 ain't bad!), couples, people with kids people who really didn't have room for us, but who are we to turn down a ride, Americans who hiked the whole Pacific Crest Trail in a summer (2600 miles!), Czechs, Austrians, a Polish girl. We've gotten invites to stay the night, go swimming, come to a birthday party, etc. Still, the majority of our rides come from guys in their 30s and 40s, driving alone, who used to hitch when they were young. People are generally pretty chatty and more sociable than people back home, but maybe we just seem more exotic (Grizzly Bears and Winter!). Generally speaking, we seem invisible to old people and Asians. Only had one weird ride so far. The guy was probably pretty braindead to begin with, but he was super stoned. More weird than sketchy, but the ride did involve a pretty funny detour to see some older lady in a housecoat that seemed straight out of a movie.

People keep telling us to rent a car, but where's the fun in that? We're meeting the people, keeping costs down and making up for the fact that I've owned a car since I was 16. Besides, the only answers we'd get to our questions if we were driving ourselves would be coming from the Lonely Planet. People often mention the West Coast as a destination, an area where we'll defintiely spend a few weeks farming and tramping. But what are the usual destinations? The two roadside glaciers and the rocks that look like pancakes. So the local opinion is worth seeking out. Alas, a grain of salt still helps, as locals aren't always the experts.

It does get a bit old seeing people driving by with tons of room who don't even look in our direction. I tend to stare them down and I can often evoke blushing.

Slow roads are ok though. Gives us a chance to read....

Top of the South

Well we're finally on the South Island. Comparisons to BC are starting to accumulate.

The roads are still very windy. Without winter road conditions, incentive to make a straight road seems to diminish. Amy got car sick for her first time ever:



It's been a very dry spring down here. When we get long dry periods, Canada, the U.S., and Australia worry about wildfires. In New Zealand, they worry about crops and pastures. A lot of drinking water in rural areas comes from roof catchments. Yet despite this season's trend and the top of the South Island's reputation as being the sunniest in the country, it's finally started to rain.  Good, we're happy for them.
Fiordland, down south, gets a lot of rain, but nobody lives there. Eight meters per year in a good year. Vancouver gets 1 meter. The rest of the country averages 0.5-1.5m. Beyond that, it's tough to compare, since the rest of BC gets snow much of the year.

So we're learning a bit more about water conservation. Sure its good to know, but conserving cold water in Canada seems totally unnecessary, if you ask me. Hot water and electricity, sure. But cold water, we've got lots of it. At least enough to do the dishes properly. Everyone here seems to go light on the soap so they can just skip the rinse stage. To each his own.

Anyways, we've stayed with a few more Couchsurfers and seem to be in the habit of weeding for accomodation. The whole CS network in NZ can get a lot of pressure. There's tiny towns whose ratio of hosts to potential surfers is probably 100 to 1. In Whitehorse, we got 50 requests all summer and probably hosted 15. Our host in the town we surfed in has had 8 guests in a night. People seem to get hammered with requests, so it's been a case of having something to offer or simply planning ahead.

WWOOFing farms seem to be in high demand as well. We're hearing of places that are booked solid of the next month. Booked? Since when did gardening catch fire? As with CS, the lure is probably free accomodation, so again we're trying to plan a bit further ahead. The trouble is that without a laptop, we need to seek out almost every library we come across, just to get hold of the next farm/couch. The farms we've stayed at have either had dial-up (slow) or satelite (low capacity, hella expensive) internet. And if accomodation looks unlikely in our days agead, scoping the satelite view for possible hammockable sites on the side of the road is becoming routine. Someone develop an app for iPhones to locate the nearest stand of trees. Then maybe I'll get an iPhone

This trip, more so than any other trips either of us have done, is more spontaneous. That translates to uncertainty more often than it does adventure. Is it romantic not knowing where you'll sleep at night? Well hopefully it will be soon, but it's also a bit stressful. Of course I wouldn't have traded places with the Polish girl who picked us up that was trying to see the whole country in 2 weeks, driving 400km a day in a rented car.

We're trying to be flexible. Take farm work where we can and lower our standards a bit for CS hosts. We're definitely more sympathetic with last-minute requests now.

We got a last-minute invite to a farm that just barely saved us from gale-force winds and rain. 5 acre properties with non-commerical gardening/farming are referred to as Lifestyle Blocks here and I think that's where a large number of WWOOFing takes place. People that want to live the self-sufficiency dream, but for whatever reason, need to keep working to support themselves. With little free time, they really on people like us to do their weeding. Endearing! This last family (7 kids!) was doing a reasonable job, though the kids seemed to do absolutely no work whatsoever. Via asking a million questions, I'm really starting to get a picture of gardening. We haven't seen anything that's really impressed us yet (although the vegans did have some big harvests I'd imagine), but we have been learning, nursing our budget, and keeping showered, laundered, and interneted. It's funny that the one grey area so far in exchanging labor for room/board has been doing the dishes. It's never laid out in advance, so we usually end up offering. Should we cook and shirk dishes? Since they cooked, do we do everyone's dishes? What about breakfast dishes? That and whether snacking between meals is frowned upon or not.

After a day's work, we went to check out Pu Pu Springs (I'll let you guess at pronounciation). The clearest freshwater in the world:


It's clarity is beaten only by the seawater under the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica.

We made it up to the extreme northeast tip of the South Island. Tidal flats and the point where the Tasman Sea meets the Cook Strait. A long spit extends way out there, which you can barely make out in the distance:

You can see how this area would get its fair share of beached whales.

We made our first excursion to the west coast and found the wildest beach yet:

Then we did a dayhike in Abel Tasman National Park, the country's busiest, although we were there just before high season kicks off. I'm no beach connoisseur, but golden beaches are alright with me. More tiny pebbles than sand:

Seals too. We counted 17 in on spot and later on, when I jumped a cliff, a seal swam around the corner and huffed at me as I was getting out of the water.

The hike was on a very well graded, wide path, mostly to appeal to the vineyard and wine-tasting tourism that the area is known for..

-Dan

let's go surfin now everybody's learnin how

For those of you unfamiliar with CouchSurfing, the most basic explanation is that it's a website used by travelers to search for hosts in cities all over the world who let strangers sleep at their house for free. Potentially dangerous? Yes. But really cool? Also yes. Some people are obviously more into it than others, hosting anyone and everyone who comes through their town; while others (like us) are more selective and are more likely to host and surf with people they actually have things in common with. Still others put their status at "coffee or a drink" meaning they can show you around the area or meet up for a beer or an activity but for some reason or another can't actually have someone stay at their house.

Couchsurfing's motto is "participating in creating a better world, one couch at a time." While I don't entirely believe crashing on someone's couch or floor or spare room is creating a better world, I definitely do like the cultural exchange part better than the free crash pad part. A couple of their statistics (I'm using the term loosely here) are:

Friendships created: 2,778,415
Successful surf or host experiences: 2,701,762
Countries represented: 245
Cities represented: 80,001

Of course the website and its creators push the fact that you'll make life-long friends all over the world and share ethnic meals and learn traditional dances or whatever else, but it's also likely that only about a quarter of these numbers are active users. From our experiences less and less people care about that kind of thing, for better or for worse. On the one hand, we just stayed with a woman who gets bombarded with requests, but emails everyone back with her cell phone number and lets pretty much anyone stay, even though she works during the day and has 2 or 3 of her kids living at home. But on the other hand, and we especially noticed this while hosting in Whitehorse, is that often people who are coming through will mass email every host in town (most of the time without ever reading a profile) and once they've found a place to stay they neglect to mention this to the other people they've emailed. This also makes them less acountable and a couple of times we sat around on our days off waiting on a surfer who never even showed up. We had a couple of friends in Whitehorse who were hosting in their rented place, owned by a roomate who was also a host. He'd let anyone stay without bothering to even be at home most of the time and they were often stuck entertaining his guests. When we're hosting or surfing we try and find people who seem cool and who we would mesh well with, but I do have to admit that sometimes when you're traveling, a place to shower and cook a real meal and sleep in a real bed can be tempting enough to make us stay with someone who might not be a life-long friend.

I hadn't hosted or surfed much before moving to the Yukon, but we both decided we wanted to host while we were up there, and the people we stayed with on the way up were pretty amazing and reinforced the thought even more. Plus we figured that hosting a fair bit in Canada would make it easier to find hosts in New Zealand since we'd know what we liked and didn't like about the people who stayed with us. Overall up there our experiences were pretty good! We've stayed friends with a few people who came through our place over the summer and got along well with pretty much everyone else. Our worst experiences (but they still weren't terrible) were just with people who were fairly quiet (a.k.a super boring) and who we didn't have a heck of a lot in common with.

The biggest difference I've noticed between the surfing in Whitehorse and what we've done here so far is that our hosts are super keen to get out and DO something. We had countless guests up north who would sleep in all morning, check their email for hours (what is up with everyone traveling with laptops?!), then wander into town to look around the museum. Thankfully we were off to a good start when one of our first hosts near Auckland took us to explore some caves and a pretty sweet beach and very patiently answered Dan's million questions. Since we don't have a car this kind of thing is even more appreciated. Plus they were just super nice, laid back people. A few travelers who have picked us up hitchhiking have mentioned (or we've guessed) that they don't really know what Kiwis are like. I guess we're really lucky in that regard; we get to chat with people who have lived here their whole lives; people who moved here from Europe or North America or wherever; people who live on farms or in the cities and people with all sorts of jobs who can answer all sorts of questions and recommend all sorts of things to do and see. We've gone to beaches and made dinners and worked in gardens and slept in the tiny loft of an anarchist radical social centre and checked out waterfalls. That's the biggest bonus of hitching rather than renting a backpacker van and sleeping on the side of the road somewhere. So far we've stayed with a couple renovating their home who let us stay anyway, a couple of fellow Canadians, a family on a fifth generation, 2000 acre farm (where I somewhat successfully lead her horse onto a trailer), a couple of super accommodating families, some young Christian guys and the caretakers of the social centre. Not to mention the impromptu, unofficial couchsurfing we did before our volcano hike with the couple who picked us up hitchhiking not too far from town, dropped us off at their place, gave us the keys, showed us the computer and the shower, and left for the night. And the couple we are currently staying with (another hitchhiking saviour) who took us to their small farm, fed us, played some table tennis, gave us some small jobs and told us we can stay as long as we want. Not bad for only being 1/4 of the way through our trip.

We (well, I) did unfortunately have one pretty bad experience with an older host in Nelson. This woman was in her late 50s and often older hosts are better since they've got a well stocked kitchen and usually you get your own room. Dan got along with her fairly well, but she must have taken an immediate disliking to me. Constantly berating everything I was doing (even though we bought and made dinner which she initally refused to eat because the presentation was lacking, cleaned up, and spent all morning weeding her garden) until the point where I preferred stayed in the spare room packing rather than be around her (and she even freaked out about that). Luckily that's over and I won't have to deal with her again. One of the touchy parts of couchsurfing is leaving a reference. If someone was great, I try and leave them a really positive one right away, especially if they are traveling, so I can recommend them to other potential hosts. If someone was so-so I probably won't even bother. But with this woman, even though she was an awful host and kind of a crazy person in general, it's probably better to just forget about it than risk having an ongoing back and forth argument publicly via the Internet. I suppose we were bound to have a negative experience at some point, and I'm sure this one will be pretty funny to look back on. Especially the part where she accused me of stealing 3 rolls of toilet paper. Now we know to ask things like how households conserve water (not usually an issue in Canada) or electricity or to try and see if they like having a long chat after dinner or if they prefer some down time. In the long run this experience will probably make us better and more considerate guests.

Also, an interesting fact we learned from the guy we are currently staying with: if sheep are left too long before they're sheared (I'm guessing this is especially bad around this time of year in this area because of all the moisture), maggots thrive in their anuses and the sheep can die horrible drawn out deaths by being essentially eaten alive from the inside. Suck on THAT you crazy Gentle World vegans!

-Amy

A Brief History

Permanent human settlement in what is now New Zealand is thought to have started in the 13^th century. It came from the Pacific Islands, but beyond that, not a lot is known for certain. The land had possibly been discovered upwards of 500 years earlier, but no record of that remains. Those that came and stayed are now referred to as Maori. I tend to anglicize it to “MOW-ree”, because not rolling the ‘r’ when you pronounce it properly and say “MO-ree” apparently refers to some cannibal tribe and can be quite insulting. Fair enough.

The Maori brought plants and animals and quickly went to work on the land. In fact, by the time white man settled, only 45% of the original forest remained, which I’d find hard to believe if I hadn’t read it myself in the national museum. The Maori initially settled all over, but when the first contact with whites occurred, 95% of the islanders lived on the North Island.

Abel Tasman, a Dutchman, officially discovered the country back in 1642, but failed to do much else except name it. Captain Cook arrived in 1769, officially claiming it for Great Brittania.

New Zealand isn’t quite as old, colonially speaking, as Australia, AND as they’re quick to mention, doesn’t have the prison-colony history either. 

The history of conflict with the natives is of course complicated, but much can be left to the imagination. Suffice to say, when Cook arrived, there were about 200,000 Maori, and by 1896, less than 50,000 remained. Currently, NZ’s native situation seems to fall at the better end of the spectrum, with Australia’s outright hostility taking up the rear and Canada’s falling somewhere in the middle. There seems to have been a great deal of remediation and retribution having taken place. Today, there is a definite Maori pride and any Maori blood in the family is proudly mentioned. That isn’t to say that the Maori don’t fall short when it comes to all sorts of socio-economic statistics, but there’s a certain respect between races that doesn’t seem to always exist in other places. One of our rides while hitchhiking pointed out that “you don’t have to have a drop of Maori blood in you to identify as Maori.” To which I ought to have proudly and immediately identified as African-American based on the fact that I listen to black-power hip-hop. Catch my drift?

I haven't heard others mention it, but it's my belief that one factor leading towards NZ's better native situation is that they all speak the same language, so a dying language isn't adding to all the troubles. Most placenames are Maori: Whangarei, Takaka, Kerikeri, Whariwharangi, Pakawau, Wharariki ('wh's is treated as an "f"), etc. Lots of signs are bilingual as well. So the language thing seems to help, but those are the only dots I've been able to connect so far.

New Zealand was the last country in the world to be “discovered” and the first to have a democracy. Although lacking the benevolent intentions you’d expect, NZ was nevertheless the first country to allow women to vote (in 1893).

This was also the first country to have a welfare state.  So all this seems to be the basis for the belief of kiwis that their country has a wonderfully egalitarian tradition. While the standard of living WAS comparably high early on (though far from ideal), that all started to fall apart in the 70s and 80s as the country’s markets went from the most regulated to one of the least. Things seem to have gotten worse since and part of the reason seems to date back to Britain joining the European Union and having to pledge to buy more EU goods, thus leaving New Zealand’s produce for industry market system out in the cold.

It was around this time that the government started gutting the unions, which was actually a left-leaning government. I haven't quite figured out the political spectrum here. Overall, the left-right thing is pretty obsolete anyways, but it's interesting to note the difference.

So that's NZ history according to Dan. I read somewhere that the biggest private land deal in history was some guy bought the whole South Island for a few hundred pounds. It was quickly nullified, but what a score!

One last bit: while shying away from complete prohibition, from 1918-1967, NZ pubs were forced to close at 6pm. The effects of that are still being unravelled.

Dan

PESTS!

First, If you're working on your kiwi accent, pronounce it "pist", not pest. "Bat" becomes "bet", bet becomes "bit", and I think "bit" might become "but", but don't quote me on that.

Second, if you want to get an automated email whenever there's a new post, send one of us a message and we'll add your email to the list. Haven't found an easier way of doing it yet.

Check out this massive aloe plant:

Kiwi birds may or may not be native to New Zealand. Kiwis as a nationality certainly aren't native, and kiwifruit aren't native either. In fact, most of what's in New Zealand wasn't in New Zealand 1000 years ago. It was the Maori who first started introducing new species. Kumara, for example, is still a very popular sweet-potato-esque food that was brought onto the land very early on. I'm not sure if any species introduced way back then have become weeds/pests, but they did hunt the moa, a bird bigger than an ostrich, to extinction. By the time white people arrived, the Maori had already cleared (slash and burn, baby) 45% of the forests. Captain Cook can be blamed for the wild pigs, but the Brits and their contemporaries took it a step further, bringing with them, intentionally or inadvertently: red deer, argentine ants, hedgehogs, goats, ferrets, possums (overrepresented in roadkill), horses (they excaped!), rats, wasps, and weasels, among others. The only mammals before the Maori were bats, seals, dolphins, and whales. Without predators, birds like kiwis didn't need wings.

As for native flora, this included many ferns, palms, the massive Kauri trees, relatives of cedar, and a whole bunch of weird stuff I'd never heard of. Gorse is NZ's version of Broom, but pricklier. Lots of blackberry too. Conifers like Douglas fir and pine were brought in, but only to log (they mature at least twice, or even three times as fast as BC's trees, on average). So the country is in an awkward position. Famed for its beauty, yet nothing is as it was, or very little anyways. Remaining uninvaded stands of forest are protected (and very noticeably different than the average bit of bush). Farmland abounds. The north island had presented us with so many pastures that potential hammock sites were few and far between (but Google Maps, satellite view certainly helps).

Does BC have invasive species? Aside from broom and a few garden weeds, none spring to mind and I can't think of a single animal that wasn't always there. Deforestation in BC is of course a huge threat and biodiversity levels will probably never recover, but at least it could potentially regain balance in the long run. The Department of Conservation really has its work cut out for it, managing (i.e. trapping, poisoning) pests, let alone taking care of all its outdoor recreation responsibilities.

-Dan

Across the Strait

We had our third couchsurfing experience with a couple from Vancouver who was just at the tail end of the work visa's. They gave us a lift up to the trailhead for Mount Taranaki, then after we got back, took us down to the beach:

The following day and hours away we stayed with a couple on a 5th generation farm (circa 1860s). Around 2000 acres, and home to 5000 sheep (plus a bunch of cattle). Pretty rad place, and with a distant view of one of the country's other big volcanos. They seemed to be quite well off, but the 3 boys weren't interested in running the farm in the future, so there was a bit of apprehension about the future. A side project for the wife was to photography and document long standing farms that were finally being sold (and inevitably divided). She would basically make a picture book for each family who was selling their farm, making a cool $3,000-8,000 off of each project.

We've been struggling to track down the WWOOFing farms that aren't full up at the moment. Likewise, our preferred CouchSurfing hosts seem to be busy as well, so it's really come down to last minute luck in finding a place. We managed to get in a night at the Radical Social Centre in Wellington. It's run by Anarchists and seemed like a cool, if rundown place, but I didn't get a chance to visit with anyone, so further impressions will have to wait until our return trip to Auckland. We tried going to the national museum, which is free, but got burned out pretty quick. Wellington easily trumps Auckland, save for the constant wind, but again, we'll explore it more on the way back up.

The ferry across the Cook Strait to the south island took about 3 hours, and if you've been on the new BC Ferries boats, it wasn't anything too impressive, and despite the rain, there were a few nice views. Still, for a scenic ferry, you'd think they'd have a few more windows...

-Dan

Mount Taranaki

Take a look at Mount Taranaki on maps.google.co.nz

Our first tramping experience! We did a 2 day circuit which took us part way up a volcano in the fog, then across a swamp and up some adjacent hills for more fog:

Eventually we were granted a better view of the cone:

and a view back down to the coast. The landscape ranged from Cape Scott bleached cedar and salt-sprayed bush:

to lush native bush. The hut sleeps at least 16 people but we were the only ones there until 2 others showed up after dark, complete with tiki torch and an iPod dock to play Bedouin Soundclash on repeat. There were plenty of stairs and boardwalk along the whole track, but I guess that beats the mud. Kiwis are said to be a tough bunch when it comes to mud and we've heard rumors of "thigh-deep". To be continued...

A 6 month hut pass cost us each about $75 CDN and there's no fee to enter national parks. Compare that to $130 for an annual entrance and backcountry camping pass in Canada's National Parks. That's twice as much and you still have to sleep in a tent!

-Dan

Pretend-to-care-ians and Fish-n-Chip-ocrites

Let's be fair to the retirement home for hippies: they had 450 acres, a fresh stream with swimming holes, and were off-the-grid. But Paradise... it wasn't. We should be a bit lenient since they were just returning from Hawaii, their winter home, and were still gaining momentum for the season, but there were just too many issues. The gardens were great, but we spent half a day buffing a guy's 5th wheel trailer so he could sell it to make his income (since they didn't work much off the property). Mostly it was the personalities that irked us, though. Everyone seemed to have personal development issues (passive-abrasive is my personal fave). Of the 6 residents that were around, we only liked the kiwi (the rest were American). The fact that we've been vegan and obviously came because we're sympathetic to the cause didn't seem to register. In fact, little did we know being vegetarian is actually not ethical at all! And we thought that eating no meat, drinking no milk, reducing our other dairy consumption, and only eating the most expensive eggs was striking a fair balance. Silly us! Their facts and figures rivaled Goebbels' in their lunacy and since we could barely get a word in, we hit the road. You'd think 20-, 30-, and 40-year vegans would have chilled out a bit along the way and ditched the anger, but alas... For interest's sake though, I'll mention that they did have a whole bunch of gardens, they were on solar and used a special wood stove to heat their water. They each paid $75-150 per week to be there and had to work on the land 30hrs a week.

We wrapped up our time in the Northland region by going to see the extreme northern tip of mainland New Zealand

and seeing the biggest Kauri tree, which rivals our biggest trees for girth. 14m in circumference.

We also hitched with a couple in a van that decided to drive down part of a 90km-long beach. Went really well until we got stuck. Getting us unstuck was my first official experience driving a right-handed vehicle. We breezed through Auckland again and down the coast to Raglan (and we just barely beat the Canadian Geese down from the Yukon),

home to a world-renowned left-hand surf break. The most liveable town we've seen so far, but also the most backpacker-friendly, for better and worse. We had a couchsurfer lined up for the night only to arrive in town amid a major communications crisis. Short-lived though it was, there was not debit, credit card, internet, land line, or mobile phones for half a day. Picture that for a minute. Not sure about the extent, but it happened hours away near Auckland, so it could've been a decent chunk of the country. Since we couldn't get hold of our host to get his address, we had to stay at our first hostel of the trip.I'm trying to be a bit more open to trying meat/seafood from people who have caught and cooked it themselves, so I tried some red snapper. It was chewy and didn't taste very good. Is meat an acquired taste? We surfed the next morning, Amy for her first time. Despite the wetsuit, I was actually really cold in the water, despite it being much warmer than I've surfed back home. We ended up staying with the couchsurfer the next day and it turned out one of them worked at Panorama in Invermere for a summer!

I finished a book I've been working on for 2 months. Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhentsyn. Even the abridged version is pretty hefty. He spent 8 years in forced labor camps in Russia during the golden age of communism. The book details the rise and incredibly long run of what were essentially death camps. They say 30-60 million people died in them. Utterly shocking for some of the reason people got arrested, such as unfavorably comparing a bourgy poet to a proletariat poet (10 years!). The interrogation, forced confessions, torture, working outside in Siberian winters without proper clothing, starving to death over a 25 year period. Unbelievable. Puts Orwell to shame. Not the most cheerful book, naturally, but very well written, considering the author never once had the whole book in front of him, for fear of what might happen to him. The 6 original volumes won him a nobel prize in literature and exile. Well worth checking out, even just to skim.

Today we had our weirdest ride and our most fortuitous. The former was very stoned and very strange, but in the end harmless, whereas the latter we almost turned down because they already had 4 people in the car. But we squeezed in and after explaining that we were hoping to hear back from Couchsurfers, they offered us their place when they weren't even around! Internet, shower, kitchen, and no supervision. In fact, I even pushed my luck and texted him when the internet went down, and within ten minutes he showed up (he was staying at the girlfriend's house) and even brought an extra foamie in case we needed it. And this isn't the first time NZ hospitality has lived up to its reputation. We've been given beer, invited inside, been driven way out of the driver's way, given maps, etc. In all my traveling, this has by far been the nicest people I've come across, in my opinion. And yet they all keep warning us of the bad apples and to watch our bags...

-Dan

The Miseducation of Moonbeam Forestsong

So a major part of our trip is learning as much as we can from our WWOOFing hosts (and probably some couchsurfers and hopefully a few people who pick us up on the road) about such things as: sustainability/self-sufficiency, organic gardening practices, farming in general, greener energy, and perhaps a few good veg/vegan recipes here and there. And how much have I learned from the farms thus far? Zilch. Nada. Not a whole heck of a lot.

Let's start with the first farm. Like we wrote before, the family lives on 2 acres as part of a long standing eco village. Not to mention the hosts started a small New Zealand based NGO about 3 years ago. Even though it seemed from their profile that the farm was their main focus, I was fairly excited to work again with a smaller organization, especially since it seemed like I'd learn quite a bit working directly with the people who started it. Turned out that not only was  farming and gardening FAR from their main focus (I have no idea if any of the food we ate was actually grown there) but they also had no idea what to do when it came to fundraising. The only introduction I was given to their organization, OceansWatch, was a small brochure and right away I got the impression that there was a fair bit of disorganization and one hell of a lot of stress. Their website is a little more straightforward, but their projects span the entire seemingly-unrelated-spectrum of education programs to marine conservation to "humanitarian work." And they work all over coastal nations of Oceania, which is an incredibly large area for an NGO that is run on a largely volunteer basis. Which is not to say they aren't running some very cool projects; I just wish I'd gotten a better introduction to their work. Since Chris, the NZ director, is away for 6 months of the year, the bulk of the fundraising work falls on his wife, who openly admitted she had no idea what she was doing. I can't say I really did either, since I'm used to fundraising for huge well-known organizations. However I had some experience grant writing, so my "work" on the farm was to basically cruise the Internet and find fundraising opportunities and grants they could apply for. Um. Yawn. Not exactly what I had in mind but I figured I'd at least get to work right with them and learn how they got the organization going, where previous funding has come from, major projects they are working on, etc. etc. Disappointed again, I instead got to sit in a room alone for two days and Google environmental grant databases. Or maybe it was suppsed to be education grant databases? I don't even know. On the last day I gave them some basic tips for effective grant writing and we talked a fair bit about resources for small non-profits and some cost effective methods for fundraising. Off to a fairly boring and unstimulating start...

When I found out the name of our next farm, Gentle World, which is advertised as a vegan education center on 400 something acres, I immediately pictured a quaint farm house surrounded by huge gardens with lots of birds and flowers and sunshine. Which it pretty much was, only Birds and Butterflies and Flowers and Meadows and Deer were some of the middle aged hippies who reside in caravans scattered all over the property. Not previously mentioned are Magic and Golden and their son Soul, the dog Kisses, Angel, Sky, Love and Light, and a few others who hadn't yet arrived from the group's second property in Hawaii. By the sounds of their profile, we were expecting to learn tons about veganism: why go vegan, vegan recipes, large scale organic gardening, how to stay healthy on a vegan diet, those kinds of things. Instead, we ended up doing most of the cooking, most of the cleaning, and learned a bunch of totally crazy shit, including, but not limited to, the following "facts:"

-vitamin B12 is a "myth." Nobody, especially vegans, have any need for it
-becoming vegan will cure my allergy to cats
-if you're vegan, you never get sick. Ever. No more colds, flu, food poisoning, you name it, you won't get it. (by the way, Flowers sounded pretty under the weather the day we left)
-cutting out milk products from your kids' diets will ensure they never have their tonsils removed and they'll never suffer from anything like laryngitis or cancer later on in life
-being vegetarian but still consuming dairy products makes you a worse person morally and ethically than a meat eater
-wool products are terrible because once a sheep is shorn it can never grow back again and it is a painful and crippling practise
-the meat/dairy industry is black and white. All meat is full of hormones and all chickens are kept in tiny cages. Small scale organic farms, or even ethical beekeeping, are not possible.

Now my other beef (so to speak) with these people is their total disregard for human welfare. Yes, commercial farming practices are horrific, but they all had made in China towels and Starbucks coffee mugs. I suppose cramming hundreds of mammals into a small space and making them work in awful conditions is ok if we're talking about people. I really wanted to get a conversation going about ethical practices outside of the farm industry but I have a pretty strong feeling it would just fall on deaf ears. After all this romanticizing about having meaningful relationships with animals and treasuring their friendship rather than their skin or flesh, I'm no closer to becoming a full-fledged vegan than I was before.
 Goodbye, Gentle World.
-Amy