Almost forgot

There is the Nils I'm travelling with, possibly the strangest of them all.
But I'm not finished with him for a while yet so he'll get a mention at a later date.

This is the end. Or possibly the beginning.

So it's my last night here in Auckland.

It's been an interesting 7 weeks I must say. Not at all what I expected and all the better for it.

We're leaving at 7 in the morning, heading north. Our destinations being 90 mile beach and Cape Reinga. Further than that no plans have been made. I don't know where we'll be staying. In fact I don't even know where I'll be at this time tomorrow night. And that my followers is a pretty cool feeling. I've enjoyed my stay with the volunteers but it's been pretty on the rails. Gonna be nice to go off them for a while. As was my original intent in coming here. Wandering. Albeit the original plan was to wander alone and I now have a German in tow. Or I suppose more accurately I'm in tow seeing as he's the driver... Cape Reinga is where the Maori believe spirits depart this world and enter the underworld, its the one of the Northern most tips of the country. Also pretty much deserted. I like the sound of it.



Now seeing as I'm finished with CVNZ I think it's about time I told ye people what I REALLY think of ye. Bastards;





Heh, not really.( Well aside from the one, who is genuinely a bastard. You know who you are). So I'll try to give a mention to everyone here.





Suppose I'll start off with the first two. Paulina and Katharina. Aka Kadi and Pauli. Been hanging around since my first days here. For the first while I pretty sure they were on a exchange program from some insane asylum in Germany(Kadi anyhow, never have I met a lady who give such an evil evil stare). But after not too long it became apparent that they were allright and I suppose at this point I'm pretty good friends with them. And Pauli was along for my first sitting through both of the series of the Conchords, surely a bonding experience? Two nicer ladies you'll never meet. Planning on meeting up with them at some point on the South Island. So I'll say no more bout them for now.





Then there's Nils(the other one, not the one I'm travelling with). Affectionately known as Penguin Nils. Good man, great laugh when he's on the beer despite the fact he speaks this crazy english-german hybrid language only he understands when pissed. Also wins the award for best laugh. One minute completely dead pan, then it seems to erupt out of his head in short bursts.





Then we've got Helen. the Scowse of the group. But shhh. She's trying to lose the accent(and succeeding mostly). Helen is my drinking buddy, don't know how I survived without her. There's plans afoot for me to come to Liverpool to visit her where I am promised a mountain of drink beacaue it's so cheap over there, I even intend to brave talking to her artsy friends. She was also the 'neutral' person of the group. Never took any sides eh?


After that then theres Eva and Lisa. Who were actually sent on exchange from an asylum. They're okay though Eva was a terribly violent person. She was shipped off today to a high security facility in the South Island. Braided my hair as parting gift(seriously, there's pictures, somewhere) Lisa is awesome when she's angry, "ITS 10.30. WE NEED TO HAVE OUR FUCKING MORNING TEA". I can't remember if she actually said fucking but it sounds much better that way. Aside from the temper she's cool, prone to collapsing though.


Then there's Tomas. Well Tomas is unique. He drinks about a gallon of tea a day. Get's up at 6 o'clock every morning and has an encyclopedic knowledge of geology. I've only ever met one person who had as much energy as this guy. and he used to crash around 12 everyday. Nice guy though, always do his best to help you out and always good for a chat. Whether you like it or not :P. Tomas plans to move in to the cupboard in the volunteer house and never leave.

So thats pretty much all of ye. There's others I've mentioned in earlier posts, new ones I don't know well to mention and I'm sure some I've just forgotten. So apologies.
Oh one more. A shout out to Bruce as well. Bruce is the other team leader. Only had him for 2 weeks so didn't get to know him quite as well as Wayne but he's cool nonetheless. He read The Men Who Stare At Goats even after I'd recommended it. Also has a pretty sharp sense of humour. So thanks to Bruce. Enjoyed the two weeks with ya, which is pretty impressive given that one of them was Hamilton.

And a quick hello to Fionna, Sandra and Steve. The office people involved in CVNZ. It's okay I don't hold a vendetta against you for sending me to Hamilton. I've forgiven you.
So yeah basically thanks to everyone for giving me a memorable few weeks both volunteers and Cvnz staff.

So yeah my conservation days are done andI go onward into the unkown. *

(Apologies if I've bored any of my usual readers with this piece about all these people who you don't know at all. These things need to be done though.)

*I am aware that this is a 'tad' too dramatic but it's often you get to say such a thing.

A quick note

Firstly go back to my previous post 'coming to an end' which now features an image of David 'pretending he's inside a washing machine'

Also kindly check this link out. myspace.com/autonsland. It's his band. The music's actually pretty good. Who'd have thought it?

Food Poisoning is not fun

So I woke up last night in a cold sweat with a heavy churning feeling in my stomach. 6 hours later I'm still in the toilet. I've had no sleep and it's time to go to work. Luckily my sorry state discouraged our leader from bringin us out.
But a perfect end to a perfect week in Hamilton I think. Other events during the week included my lighter being stolen. By some tatoo'd sonuvabitch. He left a little green plastic one in its place though. He also ate a whole pile of our crisps and cookies. AND kept me awake one night with his snoring.

A midnight rant (ii) *READ PREVIOUS POST FIRST*

(Right no idea what happened there, why blogspot saw fit to split this in two is beyond me. Moving swiftly on...)

In fact I'd go as far as to say that they're much better craic then a lot of Irish people I've met. And we're famed for being "mad" and 'havin the craic'. You people rising to defend the Irish, hauld on a second. I'm not slating our people, a lot of us are pretty good but you know as well as I that we've more than our fair share of dullards and arseholes. Our volunteer program most of the time had about 50-60% German people. Each one with a great sense of humour and all a great laugh(bar one) there's not one of em who wouldn't be able to bring a smile to my face I reckon.







So yeah that's my brief rant in defense of the Germans over so moving on to the next topic...







I have been planting constantly for the past 3 days. My sanity is at stake. 3 days planting(with one more to go) beside some sodding river in the middle of nowhere. I'm not talking good middle of nowhere either. This is Irish midlands style middle of nowhere. Nothing to see. Anywhere. Planting in the same place all day. Four days. In the past 3 we've put down close to 3000 plants between 7 of us. I get THIS for my last week at CVNZ. I actually cannot put into to words how annoyed this makes me feel. During the day I find it hard to supress the urge to embed my spade in our kind mannered (but terribly annoying) Kiwi farmer fella who has been supervising us. One of his legs is lame and the opposing arm is also lame. He sounds like Butters from south park but with a Kiwi accent. He has expalined to me on about 6 different occasions how I should be planting. Every time it seems we have all the plants planted he hops along out of nowhere with like a hundred more. How does he even carry them!? How can he possibly get over fences with a hundred plants, a lame leg and hand!? All this in the constant drizzle (or searing heat yesterday. The weather here is insane). Even the river itself is incredibly dull, it goes at the speed of one of those electric bike type things for the elderly and is murky brown. It feels like I've been here years. And I've to get up in the morning to back there again. I've to get up early to go back to that. I paid money, to get up early, to do this.


As I said my sanity is at stake. If you see a news article about the untimely death of a New Zealander at the hands of an Irish tourist expect the worst.



*By the way, I'll need more of you. 20 people is not really enough for a decent cult or my rather ambitious world domination plans.



** And I've met quite a few. Aside from the volunteers Germans also appear to have taken over New Zealand. I haven't been anywhere where there hasn't been at least a few Germans. Its a bit ridiculous, I mean to the point where the German I'm travelling with hopes he won't meet any

A midnight rant (borne of sheer boredom)

Right I'm in Hamilton and shock horror I am bored.


All the rest have gone to bed, went to bed bout 2 hours ago. Is it just me or is that terribly dull of them? And to make matters worse this is the norm, every week night. Lucky if any of em stay up til 11. Anyway that is why I am here, shitein on bout basically nothing to you my loyal followers.*





So what shall I rant about. . .





Germans. A topic I've broached before you may recall. Firstly I would like to say, the image of the stereotypical German is entirely incorrect. I know. It's hard to take in. How can decades of stand up comedians be wrong? Well truth is I don't know. The general way a German is portrayed is how. Boring, anal, lacking in any sense of humour, big into thier rules and systems.


The truth. All the germans I've met thus far** have been excellent fun.( Bar one, and you know who you are. You ass. Just in case you ever have the pleasure of reading my nice little blog).

#continued above#

Coming to an end

David reminiscing bout his favourite childhood game, pretending he was inside a washing machine

Well haven't written in quite a while and for that I am sorry. So I've two weeks to fill you in on... Well one of those weeks was in Hamilton which as I said before is not thee most awe inspiring places to visit. Though we did take part in a Maori blessing ceremony. We were planting Kauri trees. The Kauri is New Zealand's largest tree, monstrous would be the only word to describe the bigger ones. Biggest I've seen had a 36 ft circumference have a picture that I'll upload at some point. Though the picture really doesn't do it justice. It's almost hard to believe it's real. Impossibly big and this one was 'only' about 800 years old I was told. The oldest tree they had was over 3000 and something crazy like 40/50 meters around. Anyway there's a disease here that's killing the Kauri. In fact it is believed that it will wipe them all out before too long. So planting them is a big deal. We planted about ten and the chief of the local Maori tribe came to bless them. Wasn't quite what I expected, he arrived in a big white car and was wearing a sports jacket and jeans. He wandered about the site chanting in Maori and waving his walking stick. After he told us some of the history of his tribe and a couple of little stories about Maori gods. He also blessed our group in Maori. Pretty cool to able to say you've been blessed by a Maori chief. Nothin much else report from Hamiton that week, oh one of the local guys we were working with brought us up to his place for beers and a BBQ which was nice. So greetings to Don if he ever happens to be reading this. Any man who gives you a free beer is allright in my books.

The past few weeks have also seen the loss of quite a few good people from CVNZ. Team Germany has disbanded, team Germany was comprised of the 4 four Germans I started here with. The 'elite' as we say. Alas it is no more though Karin and Anja are gone. Karin back to Germany and Anja is currently making her way to Wellington. Must say I was somewhat sad to see them go. On top of that Wayne left this week too, off to work on Yogi Bear the movie. it's unbelievable he's actually going to be playing Yogi. Well no not really, I made that up, he working in the 'greens' department on the film. Doing stuff with trees and such. I've no doubt he'll keep up the conservation fight as well. Probably be on set with his spade in tow just in case he happens upon some weeds like those pesky pine trees. Was a pleasure to be on his team for his last week. We were at Huia in the Waitakiere ranges. Stunning place, rainforest and mountians the usual drill but I hadn't experienced it on this scale before now. And he lives there so he brought us to all the best spots. Some amazing beaches and views. And for the whole week we only did about two days work. One was dismantling fire pits, though calling that work is somewhat misleading seeing as all it involved was throwing rocks away. The other day we had a 6 kilometre hike through the rain forest putting up some signs. Was pissing rain and had to cross a river so we were soaked through and slipping and sliding all over the place, immense fun. Though some of the girls wouldn't really agree with that surmise I'd say, bit of an aversion to mud I believe. Another evening we went to Waynes local fishing club, really cool little place with seriously cheap drink and some interesting characters. We left with a cd of native bird noises in tow and orders to find some French ornithologist.

Also lost two good people this week. Sophie who was one of the most pleasant people I've had the pleasure of meeting thus far on my travels( So where are you from?:p) rarely seen without a smile. And David who I'm reasonably sure was clinically insane ' When I was a nipper I used to pull my jumper over my head *to the point where just his face is sticking out* and pretend I was inside a washing machine'. Great sense of humour five minutes rarely went by without him giving us something to laugh at. Also had a worrying interest in Jack The Ripper which is best not mentioned. I'll start to get worried if a bunch of dead prostitutes turn up now that he has left the country.

I'm currently in my last week with CVNZ. And I must say...
WHY!? Why have you sent me to Hamilton for my last week? What atrocious crime could I possibly have committed in a previous life to deserve such a fate? Seriously did I inadvertently cause the death of someone close to ye or what? * sigh * Brief little rant over.
Aside from that I also must say that I'll miss CVNZ, or more the people rather. Its been a fun few weeks for the most part at least.
And next week I'm heading north, myself and Nils* are renting a car. Heading north first then making our way down to the south island. It should be pretty cool. Not much else to report. Will leave it at that for now.

*Nils is the German I mentioned before. The one who likes Irish rebel songs. As it turns out he not only likes them but has a wide knowledge of them which puts my own(rather measly) knowledge to shame. It is quite a spectacle to hear a german guy putting on an irish accent while singing the likes of Come out ye Black and Tans.