Taradale

My car Tina is still doing well, especially after having 3 tires replaced.  This was necessary after one dark, raining night while I was driving home and I got lost, because as I was turning around to go back to where I somewhat knew where I was, I got a flat.  Foreign country; dark; raining; lost; flat tire - what else could go wrong?  Well I’ll tell you – my cell phone ran out of batteries.  So I ventured across the street where I had seen a car pull in to a driveway a minute or so after I pulled my car off the road, and explained my situation to the lovely old couple, who let me borrow their phone.  Luckily I sprang for the roadside service with AA (affiliate of AAA in the states, not Alcoholics Anonymous), so I could just call and have someone come out to where I was and fix my flat.  On the phone with them I explained that I had a flat, the lady asked if I had a spare and I said yes, asked if I had tools and I said no.  She said someone would be there within the hour so I was invited inside the old people’s house while I waited.  I asked them if they knew the best way to get back to Maraekakaho since I was lost, and they contemplated this for a while, eventually pulled out a huge map, and we figured out a good route (guess I was more lost than I thought).  They also let me keep the map, which was very handy and which I have used many times since.  People are so friendly here.  So anyway, finally the AA guy comes in his huge tow truck, and I explain the flat and show him my spare tire he says, “ok so do you have a tire iron and a jack?” and starts rummaging around in the back of my car where the spare tire was.  I said no, that’s why I called you, they asked me that on the phone too so I already told you I don’t have tools.  …Don’t you have that kind of thing?  He started to get defensive, said he didn’t have any tools, and proceeded to criticize me for purchasing a car that didn’t come with a jack!  I told him again that the lady on the phone specifically asked me if I had tools and I had clearly told her that I don’t, all the while trying to figure out how and why a roadside assistance service person would not have any of the basic tools necessary for roadside assistance (I started thinking maybe he was from the other AA?)!

So back to the old people to see if they had a car jack, which luckily they did.  Then just one more thing, my wheels had a special plate on them that required an allen tool (which of course the roadside assistance dude did not have) which the old people also luckily had in their garage.  So after the ordeal my tire was finally replaced and I made it home.  And luckily my amazing parents were still in town visiting and since it was raining had no plans for the next morning so they replaced my tire (and two others which were apparently the wrong size) while I was at work J

Corner 50

Three months to the day after my last day at PwC I started working at Corner 50 winery.  Due to the uncharacteristically cold and wet summer, I started 2 weeks later than originally contracted, and even then there wasn’t much to do.  It was pouring rain on my first day, and so I was issued a giant, heavy, yellow rain coat, giant, heavy, yellow rain pants, and gum boots to wear.  The work as a cellar hand involves giant wrenches and huge hoses being hooked up to 25-, 30-, 50-, 100-, and even 200-thousand liter tanks (they are enormous!), and my Spanish roommate Marta likened us to Mario Bros with our silly-looking yellow rain suits and giant wrenches, which made me laugh.  It wasn’t long until we were working weekends and got slotted into shifts, some working 7am to 7pm and the rest working 7pm to 7am.  The work is very physically demanding, but it is sorta fun and learning more about the winemaking process is definitely interesting.  Long days at the winery make me tired in a very different way than long days staring at a computer screen…

After unsuccessfully searching for affordable housing in town, I am living out in the country with some friends of the lab worker’s, which is great.  It is so gorgeous out here (partly because it has rained all summer so everything is still green), and still so uninhabited – I pass mayyyyybe one car on my 15 minute drive to work each day, and about 10 houses, 7 of which are in the center of the little town of Maraekakaho, which has a school and a bar and nothing else.  Literally there is no grocery store, no gas station, no restaurants, nothing.  I have to drive 40 minutes to get to the nearest town.  The winery is in between here and town, but slightly closer to home.  This is great because it forces me to plan my eating well, as every meal is from home and grocery store trips are infrequent at best.  They are not always home-cooked, because a lot of the time it is just a sandwich or cereal or something, but I do not eat out except on the rare occasions of a day off and co-workers hanging out in town.  Very different from working in downtown SF, where most people just go outside, walk 10 feet, and buy a sandwich, or walk a little further to be in range of Italian, Mexican, Thai, Chinese, Burgers, Salads, etc for sale.  A few pictures from and of the house:

I like inoculating wine because the yeast smell reminds me of mom's home cooked pizza crust.

I will try to take some pictures from the winery soon because there are great views from the catwalks on top of the huge tanks.  Check this post again for that later!

Abel Tasman

Nelson is a big town by South Island standards, but still only has about 4 main streets.  Our goal upon arrival was to find the best 3-5 days in the last 10 before I had to go back up to the North Island to do the coastal track.  The first step to this was to check the weather.  Checking the weather in NZ is a difficult task that frequently involves much guesswork.  The forecast usually changes every few hours, with drastic changes about every 6.  They are pretty much only accurate when they are telling you what the weather is at that moment outside, and even then they can be wrong sometimes.  But anyway, when checked the weather before we got there on Friday we thought it was meant to clear up about Tuesday so we would have the weekend to plan things out.  But surprise surprise the forecast changed so that the nice days would be Saturday through Tuesday.  “Well, I guess we should leave tomorrow then, and be done before the rain sets in.”  So we went to the information site to plan our track.  The coastal track is tricky to plan due to tidal crossings, which can only be achieved within certain hours of low tide, unless you want to walk an extra few kms to get around the beach.  But a) we didn’t want to add extra walking, and b) who would want to miss backpacking on the beach?  We carefully planned our trip and went ahead and booked campsites for each night, spreading out the walking fairly evenly over the 4 days.  It wasn’t until after that was booked that we gave any serious thought to how we would get back to our car after walking away from it for 4 days straight.  We learned that there was a bus that went back down a few times a day, or water taxis that went periodically, were very scenic, and shaved about an hour off the return time, so that seemed like the best option.  The only issue was that the water taxis only stopped a certain ways up the trail, and not that close to the end of it.  But we eye-balled it and thought we could make it to the end and back to the water taxi site by 3pm on our last day… we figured we would just sort out the details later.  A few pics from walking:

The first day we estimated we walked about 17 kms.  This is only an estimate for two reasons.  One, the maps we used had distances between certain points, but not to and from each point or even each campsite, and some of the campsites we stayed at were between the measurement points.  Two, the signs along the trail indicating distances between points are inconsistent.  For example, one might say you’ve been 4 kms and have 12 to go (total of 16 kms btn points), and the next will tell you you’ve been 6 kms and have 11 to go (total of 17kms… where did the extra km come from?!)  Either way, it was a lot of walking, especially the second day (I think about 20 kms), and after that my toes were pretty blistered and required much mole skin, held on by duct tape of course:

But we kept on, had a shorter 3^rd day due to a tidal crossing at noon that was right by our campsite, and then shortened the last day to save my toes and Tres’ heels, and to get to our water taxi on time.  The water taxi turned out to be a great decision because we had a very nice driver who acted as a tour guide and told us interesting things about each of the stops and some places in between.  We also saw a little blue penguin swimming around right next to the boat on our way in!  Also it started raining on our way back so seems like we did alright on timing our tramp.  After 4 days on trail we looked about the same as when we set off, but luckily photos do not exhibit smells…

And on our way back to town we came across this and couldn't resist:

West Coast

We finally dragged ourselves away from the beloved Wanaka just as the rain and clouds started to set in.  It was a trade off because it would have been nice to travel up the West Coast in fine weather to get the good views, but we didn’t want to spend all of the nice days in the car.  Plus we heard the sand flies were bad.  We still managed to see the glaciers (pronounced glassy-ers) even in the foggy weather:

And travel through small towns where gas literally costs:

We decided not to fill up here and instead take our chances at making it to the next town with the needle just about below the empty line.  Luckily we made it and celebrated by sharing a ham and cheese sandwich and a hard-boiled egg for lunch.

We stayed in a hostel in Hokitika as the wind was incredibly powerful and it was pouring down rain – not the best tent weather.  Hokitika was highly recommended ahead of Greymouth just a bit farther north because there was much more to do there.  After walking around the entire town of Hokitika in about 12 minutes (including entering the more interesting shops), we couldn’t even imagine how little there would have been to do in Greymouth.  We did go up and see the glow worms at night - it started pouring on our walk up to their cove which took longer than we expected and we got soaked - but it was cool to see.  We were in this tiny town the weekend before the Wild Foods Festival, which apparently attracts so many people that all accommodation is booked out months in advance.  People come from all over to try the craziest foods you can think of.  Usually this brings to mind ants and other bugs, maybe some delicacies like beef tongue or heart, and maybe even scorpions or something slightly scary, but we found out that the popular dare the year before was horse semen...  We weren’t too sad to miss out on the festivities.  Plus we were excited to get up to Nelson and do some backpacking!