Friday, August 21, 2009

New Zealand Wine

It's a little off topic from the travel theme that I really should be keeping up with but, since I'm stuck making money for the moment, you'll have to settle for an interesting research tidbit/sideline.

From the NZ Herald on New Zealand Yeast:
"Terroir was mostly thought of in terms of the geography and climatic conditions in which a variety is grown," Dr Goddard said.

"But I'm suggesting that there's another component of terroir: the diversity of microbes that reside in a particular region."

And apparently NZ is swarming with as many unique yeasts as it is with unique everything elses.

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Update Time!

Damn I am bad at doing this with any regularity.

S should have some photos up soon from the last little while. as should I.

Since my last post the most significant thing we've done is go to an All Blacks vs Italy rugby match. which was awesome! even though the Italian food stalls had closed by the time we got to the pre-game street fair.

Besides that we've been trying to save money because we're back into the hardcore job hunt mode. The plan is to find work (ideally that pays us tons) here in chch taking advantage of weekends and other time off to get out and around the parts of the south island that we've not yet explored as much as we'd like to. Then Nov/Dec we'll head up to Wellington to do some house sitting and enjoy spring in the capital (possibly with more work). Jan will hopefully be travelling/camping/tramping/sitting on beaches, followed by more of the same but with some more housesitting up near Gisbourne and hopefully going bush for a week or 2 near Ruatahuna. That should take us through to march/april again when we'll need to start panicking about only having 4 months left on S' visa.

and really that's about it. Time to apply for some more jobs and then.... well I don't know. Maybe go out for dinner (or at least groceries) and then finish off the "How I Met Your Mother" that we got from our Czech friends back when we were apple picking.

Saturday, June 13, 2009

Bwahahahahaha

I just watched the All Blacks lose to France :( in HD.

and then played Rock Band 2 on the XBox 360!!!! Hells Yeah!

now I fear for my paychecks (once I figure out where they're going to come from) because I have visions of a big screen folding out of our car so that we can rock out while we're camping...

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Monday, May 4, 2009

She caught a fish!


A 42cm kingfish we think. But the min size is 75cm so he escaped the dinner plate.

EDIT: Turns out he was a kahawai, which doesn't have a minimum size and is apparently tasty eating. Oh well. It was his lucky day, and gave S a good fishing story of the "one that got away"!

Success!



Oyster catcher


And mussels and cockles :)

Thursday, April 30, 2009

Hopewell!


Well. We left the orchard in havelock north yesterday noonish and drove out of the perpetual sun of hawke's bay into the autumn rains of the rest of the country. Totally failing to take the weather with us. Stayed with fam overnight in wellington (good to see them) then up early for our 8:30 ferry, then the longest road in the world brought us back to hopewell. A bit of settling in this evening and a game of 'monopoly deal' and now bed so we can start work tomorrow morning. Being in warm buildings is really novel. :)

Saturday, April 25, 2009

Moving on...

Wow... that's even less posting than I thought I'd done this year. :)

Oops.

but with luck I should be able to post a little more frequently now. We'll see though.. because there were supposed to be 2 new ones for the past week or so... but they're not showing up.

Anyway, How about a quick rundown of the last few months, eh?

January was spend largely with my sister giving her a quick greatest hits tour of the country. Much awesomeness on a route that took us from Christchurch to Paihia and then back to Auckland.
February started with a jaunt down to Hawke's Bay area to see about finding some work. We did, picking at an organic apple orchard in Havelock North. But with 2 weeks to kill we went back up to Auckland to meet M&D for a couple of weeks travelling around with them. Then we settled into our orange poptop 70's caravan on the orchard where we have been living since the middle of february. Now it's nearly may and most of the apples are off and much of the money is gone, but we've got about 2 more days of work before we dash back to the south island Marlborough Sounds for a little R&R/cleaning and bed making before the winter sets in.

All very exciting and I'll even flesh it out some more with what details I can recall when I have a little more time. Really ;)

Friday, April 24, 2009

Final friday night


Woot! BBQ and lots of protein. Mmm...

Friday, April 17, 2009

Picking apples


Wow. Not so many posts or photos since we started picking. Ah well. We're doing well. Hawke's bay is nice in fall. Cold at night though. More soon. I hope :)