It's been a little while...

Quite a while actually, but for the last couple of weeks internet access has been quite scarce.

After enjoying the first week at the retreat center in Taupo we decided to stick around for a few more days and do some work on their library and ended up staying two weeks.

During the time there we hung out with three Germans, a Japanese farmer, and an American -originally from Iowa- now living in New Zealand. It was a fairly relaxing two weeks. I enjoyed the kitchen work more than cleaning rooms and I did a fair bit of reading also. All of the wwoofers took a trip to the hot water river. There was a slight drizzle which was perfect weather for sitting in hot pools and under waterfalls.

Two weeks ago Saturday we were offered a ride to Coromandel and decided we might as well go there. Coromandel is the name of the town and the peninsula it's located on. It's a small town populated by fisherman, artists, and vacationers. We stayed at Backpackers there for a few nights until we were able to secure a wwoof hosts. It seems that other wwoofers plan things ahead of time much more than we do as some places are already booked till next year. That's not really our style. And the stay at the Backpackers allowed us to work on our fish cooking skills and meet some new people. And I got my first chance to play some rugby. I some some fliers about a pickup softball game so I went and hit the ball around with some guys from Coromandel. After that we played a short game of 'touch', the rugby equivalent of touch football. It took me a little while to get used to it, partly because they didn't explain how the rules were different than normal rugby, but before long I was starting to get a feel for it, despite my pretty ugly throwing abilities.

Our hosts in Coromandel were an artist(painter) named Cindy and her sons Finn(2 and a half) and Cohen(13). Cindy was getting paintings ready for the arts festival this past weekend so our main duty was keeping Finn occupied, which involved reading him stories, playing with trucks, or jumping on the trampoline. Finn has quite a vocabulary for his age and kept us laughing the whole time.


The past couple of days have been great for finding rides. Cindy dropped us off at the crossroads outside of Coromandel and before we even got our bags settled on the ground a young couple from California stopped to give us a ride to Whitianga on the other side of the peninsula. In the backpackers there we met an English and went with them to Cathedral Cove and the Hot Water Beach. At the Hot Water beach you dig in the sand to create your own little pool which fills with hot water from the hot springs in the sand. The hot spots are very hot and so we had to do some creative engineering to guide a stream of cold water and regulate the temperature. We stayed in Whitianga two nights, running into a group of Germans we met at Coromandel(probably not the last time this type of thing is going to happen).

From Whitianga we headed south down the coast, continueing our good luck by getting rides in only 10 and later 20 minutes. Last night was the first of two nights in Tauranga which is the biggest city along the Bay of Plenty. The area is primarily kiwi and avocado farming(both of which we're eating a lot of), with a little bit of citrus and asparagus too. This morning I hiked to the top of Mount Maunganui(Ashley opted to just walk around) which is only 200 some metres tall, but is right at the tip of a small peninsula, so it had a great view of the city and the coast line.

Tomorrow we're heading off to Rotorua, which is an hour and a half south.

Kia Ora (a Maori greeting which literally means 'be well')

Brian