Return to Auckland III

The driveway out of the farm we were working on
One of the peat lakes we were helping restore, up close the water is a horrible murky brown
Andrew and his wife Jenny with the cake she baked for us.(real irish heads on em eh?)

Turbo the hyperactive, super affectionate dog also features
The Waikato river, biggest in New Zealand. Flows through Hamilton
Soohyun, myself and the self christened Kyle*. Crazy Koreans.

Went out in Hamilton last night, was pretty good. Good music anyway, great pub band. Played everything from Bob Marley to Pearl Jam to the Proclaimers. Have returned to Auckland now and just spent the last hour or so sorting out the pictures on my camera. Tremendous fun. Off to a place called Tawharnui next week. It's a reserve on a secluded peninsula with nothing within about 20 km or so. Should be interesting, I'm one of the lucky few not going back to Hamilton. Although I wouldn't mind spending more time on that farm really, nice people "salt of the earth" as they say. Apparently the farmer had a lot of Irish in him too. It showed, there was something very very Irish about him and his wife. She even baked us a cake when we were leaving. The farmers name is Andrew Hayes by the way, I reckon he deserves a mention for the past five years he has been working to preserve the peat lakes located on his land. I'm informed this is very important, these lakes are some of very few remaining examples of this kind of habitat in New Zealand. And I figure he deserves a mention because for the past 5 years he's been all the restoration work on the area himself. As well as running a huge dairy farm. It's a massive amount of work, to give you an idea; in the past 5 days my volunteer group planted/ transplanted close 2000 plants. Before last week this guy did all this by himself, can you imagine how much time that would take? So kudos to Mr. Hayes for some serious dedication. Though I still haven't really a clue as to the point of most of what we did (save that it helps the lakes in some way).

Oh a word about the owners of the hostel we stayed in Hamilton. Kim and Edith. Edith is a little old lady who is 92, looks like she is made of leather and has a hunched back. She is also one of the most active 92 year I've ever seen. Although truth be told I haven't seen very many 92 year olds. Kim is her daughter of indiscernible age. Anywhere from 60 up really. Anyway there's a point here somewhere. Oh yes, they're both bona fide lunatics. I know what you're thinking, I call quite a few people lunatics and you would be right in the assumption that the title is not always suitably given i.e Andrew the farmer, is not really a lunatic. Just a bit of a character. On these two however you can trust my judgement. They should probably get help. Firstly they don't believe weather forecasts, they say that the internet lies about (I know, not very crazy) they have a priest who predicts the weather for them. Also today Edith asked one of the girls to put a piece of the cake in her mouth for her. Thats a bit mad allright but exactly not what you'd call bona fide lunacy you say. Well how about this. The daughter Kim is adamant that she participated in the French revolution and not just that but led one of the charges. In a previous life no less. She produced this little bit of info when she heard one of the girls was from France.

So judge for yerself.

* Real name Young Jun, he figured we wouldn't be able to remember that so he chose the English name Kyle after the main character in the tv show Kyle xy. (I have no knowledge of this show)