Holla at Your Boy

I would like to give a shout out to the middle-aged drunken Kiwi men that I have met on this trip. You fucking rock!

I would like to applaud you for being so unlike many of your international counterparts. There are many reasons for this, the main one being that you aren’t creepy sleezeballs. You don’t hit on young girls and you don’t make crude remarks about women. You are friendly and respectful and you are really just out to have a good time and get wasted with whoever is around. I would like to thank you for the free beers/barbeque/cigarettes and everything else you provide with absolutely no strings attached. I would like to thank you for being hilarious and incoherent without being obnoxious. You have renewed my faith in older men and it has been a pleasure getting to know you. You can also drink me under a table and in the morning you are usually awake and ready to go while I feel like crawling under a cold wet rock and dying. That at least triples how awesome you are in my book. From West Auckland to “9T Mial” Beach you have made my experiences at hostels and campgrounds a thoroughly pleasurable one and for that I owe you.

I just hope uttering this aloud doesn’t jinx my incredible luck with your kind, I have a feeling that it won’t.

Harvest Time

We wake up at sunrise. The morning air is chilly. I down French-pressed coffee and smoke Dunhill cigarettes. We head to the bus. We walk up the gravel road to the vineyard. The air is cool. The sun peaks out over the hills. We get our clippers and tubs and sit down on the dewy grass. We reach for the bunches of grapes. We remove the sticky, rotten ones, sickly pink and glistening. The garnet juice pours down our hands. We pick out the hollowed ones that collapse and deflate between our fingers. We leave the raisins because they add color and sweetness to the wine. We brush the gnats out of our faces and we blow the spiders from the bunches. We inch down the rows filling tubs as we go. The air is hot and the sun hangs overhead. Sometimes the wind stops. We rinse our tacky hands. We lie in the shade devouring our sandwiches and fruit. We search behind every last leaf; we seek every grape from every vine, in every row, in every yard. We squint in the sun. We act calmly amidst the curious wasps and bees. We have one more row to go. We gather closely and fill the last tubs of the day and walk off into the sunset.

Our Lucky Day

We arrived in Waiheke frustrated and impatient because we couldn’t find affordable accommodations and we hadn’t yet heard from Stonyridge Vineyard about when/if work would start despite the many texts and emails we had sent. Once we were there we also learned that the buses were few and far between and the entire island is a mass of hills. (I have been walking up hills since the day we arrived and it has not gotten any easier).
So we figured fuck it, we will stay at the hostel and go to Stonyridge on Friday and if work hasn’t started we can at least talk to them face to face.
We apprehensively walked up to the vineyard that morning and were greeted by Summer the winemaker. She told us that today was a fun day for the ladies that worked in the café all summer but that we were more than welcome to join in. She said that we weren’t being paid, but that we could get some free wine and get bumped to the top of the picker’s list. why not? She took us to a yard of Chardonnay vines and all these giggling girls began picking the plump and gorgeous grapes deciding on what to name this completely female-produced wine. The grapes look like autumn. They are iridescent and hold a rainbow of colors inside; they hang off the vines like tiny little soap bubbles and the sun shines through them to reveal reds, purples, greens, pinks, yellows and oranges. We filled tubs with these bunches and hauled them to the truck (or ute in Kiwi speak).
Next we broke open some champagne and dumped the bins into the de-stemmer. It’s so cool to watch a machine chomp down on grapes and spit out the stems. The grapes fell into a large cask while we sat back and drank. Once the tubs had been emptied, Summer said to take off our shoes because we were going in! Two at a time we jumped into the giant wooden vat and stomped around the grapes. They are cold and slimy, kind of like curdled quicksand, or how I imagine that would feel like. We tightly grasped the sides of the cask as we vigorously bicycled through the knee-high crop until our legs felt like jelly. All smiles, we left the vineyard with some Fallen Angel wine and promises of gainful employment.

Thanks to Summer for being the most awesome winemaker ever, and thanks to Colleen for posting the slideshow of our amazing day.
P.S. They decided to name the wine “Forbidden Fruit” since it is unspoiled by the Adams of the world.

Year of the Red Panda?

Red pandas bring good fortune, or at least that’s what the folks at Sky Tower’s Casino wants you to believe.

Getting By With A Little Help From Our Friends

Once back in Auckland, Paula volunteered her sister Leonie’s house to us. However, Leonie and her 6 roommates were suffering from the stomach flu, so Amberly graciously offered up her apartment until the vomitfest stopped. Cold beer, spicy chili, The Office, laughter and lively conversation between good friends, it felt a lot like being home. Although she hates being thanked, I must show my gratitude to the most lovely and gorgeous host in Auckland!
Next we were off to Leonie’s. She lives off K’ Road which is chock full of everything you need, bars, second hand shops, cafes, clubs and prostitutes, oh my! She lives in what may be the most incredible college house that I have ever seen. It’s down a fairly obscure road with nothing but industrial buildings and a large motorcycle shop. You take the road down a block farther and nestled between Auckland’s Old Folks Ass. and an unnamed warehouse resides the unassuming flat. It’s so far from civilized life that the “Maori Queen” brings her customers down the way regularly. As you may suspect, it’s trashed as only a college house can be and super homey in all its grunginess. The huge backyard is filled with empty beer cans, overgrown grass and ratty sun chairs, it’s also completely sheltered by buildings and high tin fences. Thus making it the perfect party house. I feel I should also take this opportunity to thank Leonie for giving us free reign over her room for the three days we were there (including when we drunkenly arrived at 3am on St. Patrick’s Day).

Love & The Dead

As a kid I was completely and totally obsessed with the movie Beetle Juice. I would pop it in the old Beta Max machine and watch it over and over again. Barring the adult humor I didn't understand (like the suicidal beauty queen or the suit being strung along the endless miles of bureaucratic paperwork that has overwhelmed the ever-increasing world of the deceased) I was enthralled with the characters and each of their quests for fulfillment. I remember being taken by the love between Alec Baldwin’s and Geena Davis’ characters Adam and Barbara, especially in one of the scenes nearest the end. Otho uses the handbook for the dead to resurrect the ghosts into the world of the living. They are thrust into their old wedding garments and within seconds of their crossing the void between the world of the dead and that of the living they have aged beyond recognition. I can still picture the tenderness with which Barbara helps reattach Adam’s unhinged jawbone and gingerly caresses hisface. Or the most poignant of shots, when they take in their last gazes of each other and tightly grasp each others withered, vine-like hands as they slowly crumble into dust. That to me, as a child, and even now, is the perfect symbol of love. I am a bit strange.

Rugged Northland- Part 2

The next morning was rainy and we were a little pissed because we were driving to Cape Reinga the northernmost part of New Zealand, the end of the world, the point of departure for the spirits leaving the land of the living and the point at which the Tasman sea and the Pacific ocean collide. We packed up the car, stopped in a store for some yummy breakfast? pies and headed up to the edge of country. Its incredible, there is a lone tree at the departure point for the spirits and no one can explain how it survives there, precariously clinging to the jagged rocks, the ocean constantly pounding its base, breathing in the toxic and salty air. If you are standing face to face with the lighthouse and you look out to the left you can see where the Tasman and Pacific crash into one another; huge waves are conjured out of nowhere and the seas spiral around each other in such amazing patterns. Its really spectacular, and I've heard that on sunny days you can see the mixing of the blue pacific with the green of the Tasman.
From there we headed back down south. Stopped at the irrationally serene oceanside town of Opononi, and visited Jamie's old chicken friend perched at the overlook point. We drove down the windy forest road to the 2000 year old kauri tree, Tane Mahuta, stopped to see some impressively carved 45000 year old kauri trees including the store's very own bored out tree staircase, we saw basalt rock boulders, which Paula and Ryan tell me are the same rocks found in the Blackrock Desert, in some German guy's backyard, some of which he had defaced with gaudy yellow spray paint to make them look more anthropomorphic (the spiny dragon taking a bath in the river was a bit far-fetched). We made it home in time for a thoroughly yummy and partially homegrown meal cooked up by the most amazing tour guides in NZ, Ryan and Paula.