A brief run down of the first few days

Tane Mahuta, the god of the forest

Father of the Forest

Steve, the terribly creepy mannequin. Why does he have a name tag!?

Right I'm on a timer here so I have to be quick. And also pictures will be a long while yet cause I've lost my camera lead (which cost me 20 dollars).

Anyway. Upon leaving Auckland the other day we ventured into Northland via 'motorway' 12. Most of the roads here are akin to rally courses albeit really well paved rally courses. And when they're not like like they're terribly dull. Going through countless little towns which all look the same. For all the beautiful places they have here they sure do have an awful lot of ugly ones. Northland at the start for the most part was long flats of farming land with brief intermissions of tiny towns with names I can't remember and don't care to. They might as well have been the same place run past my window several times over. All the streets look the same, all follow the same kind of grid plan. Dargaville being the highlight of dullness on our way. For a while it seemed like Hamilton country. Our first stop on our way was the Kauri Musuem. A place that allegdedlt gives a fascinating insight into the history of the Kauri tree and will leave you amazed. It was the single most weird experience I've had here. The majority of the museum is taken up by creepy mannequins of ' pioneers' placed in different settings. Like their houses or barber shops etc. I was really at loss as to what exactly this had to do with Kauri trees. The first one was an old style kitchen with three life size dolls. A mother and two children, one an incredibly unsettling little child in a high chair and the other a bizarre girl boy hybrid with some unidetentifed white substance covering its hand. On a little plaque under the display was a message from Pete "your friednly musuem guide'. "Can you see the boy stealing the cream?" Both insightful and fascinating. Other highlights included a robotic cow that was 'milked right before your eyes!' i.e twitched like it was having some form of seizure. And a huge room paying homage to the sawmills that killed most of the kauri. Including an entire wall of chainsaws, some bigger than I am. Ironically this was the only part of the museum that had really very much to do with Kauris.*

Luckily an hour or two after this we eventually made it to the Kauri forest. The scale of the place is just awesome. It is impossible to capture in pictures, the most impressive being The Father of the forest( can't remember it's Maori name). The tree looks like a cliff face, again it is impossible to convey the feeling of awe being in the presence of it. And the whole forest is full of them, most at least as big as that one I described in an earlier post. After the forest again more dull landscapes rolled past and sleep threatened to take me a few times but I managed to stay awake till we got to Kaitia. At the southern most tip of 90 mile beach where we stayed for the night.

We headed out early the next day hoping to reach Cape Reinga before the arrival of the dreaded tour buses. Bout 3/4 of the way there we were stopped by roadworks and asked by a nice lady if we wouldn't mind coming back in about half hour. They were putting metal on the road. I don't know why either. We used this half hour to take a look at the Giant Te Paki sand dunes. I'll tell you now they certainly live up to their namesake. Huge hulking things they are, hundred feet or more and stretch for miles in every direction. Standing in the middle is like being in the middle of the Sahara or some such. Tremendous fun to throw yourself off as well, though likely to get sand every as a result(and yes I mean everywhere). After this brief soiree we made it Cape Reinga. Again an amazingly beutiful place, a walkway perched on high cliffs look down on where the Tasman sea( I think) and the Pacific Ocean crash together. Its really something to see, the size and power of the waves. We also had a splendidly sunny day so that helped.

Right I've only five minute left so I'd best wrap this up. We've made our way back down through Auckland( with a stop off last night in a horribe little caravan park) and across the southern end of the Cormondal ranges(rainforest), which were shrouded in cloud as we crossed so that was pretty cool. Tonight we've come to rest in a nice little seaside town called Tairua, at the foot of the ranges. And tomorrow we're off to Hot Water beach and Cathedral cove. Next update will probably be when we get to Wellington, so Sunday I reckon.

*Another great Kauri attraction was "Ancient Kauri Kingdom. FREE ADMISSION!" It was in actual fact a shop.

Also apologies bout spelling mistakes and such, this was very rushed.

Back in Auckland. Again

Right I've just returned to Auckland for the what I hope will be the last time in a long time.
Spent the last two days up north. Cape Reinga and The Kauri Forest were amazing.

Been keeping blog stuff in my journal and I've forgotten it so you're going to have to wait for a proper entry with pictures and such.

But for now just be happy that I'm happy.

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