we've put more than a few kilometres on the subaru lately. After we left Raglan on the 29th of December we drove down to Taupo to meet Ewok and Bec for new years. It was a pretty good time, we swam i the Waikato river where geo-thermal streams run in, making for a natural hot tub right beside a nice cool river. One of the pictures shows how nice of a view we had from Ewoks place for new years eve.

After a few days in Taupo the four of us headed east down to Napier and Hastings, a pretty classic old town that was levelled by an earthquake in the early 1930's. We stayed a few days on Bec's parents farm, it was amazingly similar to avondale on pender isl. Then we took off to blackhead beach further down the coast near a town called Waipawa, Bec's parents had a sweet lil holiday home there .

After just a day there we drove clear across the north island, through palmerston north, to hawera at the southern end of Taranaki bight, the larger round peninsula on the west coast famous for good surf and rugged coastline. We cut up to Oakura and stayed at the wave haven for a few nights. New plymouth the main city is just a few km north and up the coast a lil further is Urenui. We have some friends who live in a lil cabin there so we pitched our tent on their lil plot overlooking the sea and Mt. Taranki (an active volcano, looks a lot like Mt Fuji)

We all had to ride a Quad up to their cabin in the woods, and we spent sometime on the beach surf casting for fish, we managed to catch a stingray and a few lil rock climbs. I scored a few good waves at Ahu Ahu and Oakura Beach, surfing the beach for a time in shoulder high lines with no one else out, God is good.

We got itchy feet and took off, drove across the island again to Mt Manganui, we were here before and came back to see a concert in waihi beach. Tomorrow after the concert we are going to skirt across the island one more time back to Raglan to ditch the car, from there its just a quick trip to Auckland and a short flight back to Brisbane.

So there it is, you can see most of the roads we travelled while we were here, Driving here is pretty easy with such great scenery and company. Canadians think nothing of piling into the car and ripping 400km to a destination in one shot, Kiwis on the other hand would not likely drive that far more than once a year, if that, a curious breed they are.

To see some pics of christmas in Raglan check out Allisons facebook page.

Its Christmas eve and we have just endured a night in our tent of howling winds and driving rain. We feel proud to have stuck out the night in the lil green tent that cost $40.
It seems like we are finally on the mend, although Andy's lungs got worse and we finally went tot he doctor where they prescribed him antibiotics in fear of the infection progressing any worse.
We're feeling a little homesick these days with Christmas and all, there's a good community of people here, with 21 of us kicking in to make a big Dinner. It's fully booked here at the moment and we're definitely looking forward to getting on the road out of Raglan. Raglan has been a great time, we just need to see a little more NZ before we take off.

So to any and everyone reading, we love you guys, miss you all and hope you're spending some time with your family for the holidays. Merry Christmas and God bless you

SORRY

We are so sorry it has been so so long since our last post. I couldn't bring myself to post again without being able to put pictures up. I have located the only camera card reader in raglan and it happens to be in the reception office so I'm actually at work right now... shhh! News wise there isn't tons to tell. Andrew got such a bad stomach bug for a few days. I woke up at 3am to find him outside sleeping on his surf board bag because he wasn't able to make the 30 meters to bathroom and back anymore. I managed to nurse him back to health and he's been back out surfing tons so I know he's feeling better. I'm working reception some evenings and Andy is till the on site builder. We both work 2 hours in the morning to pay off our rent and then whatever extra there is to do around the place.

I guess we are official staff here now since we got moved into the "staff" housing (pictures below). Summer is here and it's getting busy so we couldn't be living in a room that potentially could be making money every night.

We continue to work at a bed and breakfast for some extra cash. Andy has created an amazing garden and I usually help out inside, making beds, doing dishes and scrubbing the toilets. The man that owns the place lives in the states 6 months of the year and just got back to NZ to turn the house into a B and B. He had it rented out in winter to quite the Raglan character. An older lady and I were shifting some beds around and found some evidence that quite alot of fun had been had over the winter!

This first picture is for my mom, we had a disagreement about eggs and if they needed to be in the fridge, apparently kiwis think they do not!

This was part of our wwoofing crew, the only one left here now besides us is GO, top left, he got a job washing dishes at the pub.

We celebrated American thanksgiving quite well with our friends Dan, Jen, Dani and nelson.

Staff housing... enough said?

This is what makes up for the staff housing.. the view on the 5 minute walk to the beach!

Hey guys!
Lots has changed since the last blog post! The owners of the solscape have decided to quit the WWOOF'ing, so now we just work for 2 hours a day to pay our rent.. it's wonderful! The owners have also asked Andy and I if we will stay on until the end of Dec and work for them! Andy has been making beds, bedside tables and using his building skills around the solscape, and, I clean toilets! There will be some paid cleaning work for me when it gets busy! I also have started working up the hill at a B&B doing yard work and cleaning! So it looks like we will be spending our Christmas in Raglan, and thats just fine with me! We still have non of our own pictures but i've stolen some to show you where we are living! In the pictures with the train cars we live in the third one on the left. The other is the inside of the train car and the view from where we live.
love you all

Daily Diary

Dear Diary,
Today was our third day being W.W.O.O.F.ers (willing workers on organic farms). Recently we have shoveled Chicken Shit (otherwise known as poo), Swept Cement dust, and de-caged the "free range chickens". We were both a little confused to see that the chickens had been fed compost that had chicken breast and eggs in it. Andy continues to build furniture out of Remu, an extinct hardwood species, worth it's weight in Gold, He is paid the equivalent of a staggering $7/hour Kiwi. As you can see we are learning tons about organic farming. Despite our dire work situation and lack of funding to extend our quiver, our WOOF mates are great company. We now have a cook/union delegate, prior to this we had been working two hours a day each for our food, one day we were given a loaf of bread, 4 eggs, a block of cheese and a few tomatoes, there were ten of us.
So we have survived thus far on Waikato Dark Lager, And Tui India Pale Ale, this along with Tim Tams, and some good Laughs. We can't wait to put some pictures on our blog of Allison up to her elbows in chicken s*#t and our new friends. We miss everyone at home but are enjoying every strange, but interesting day we have here.

So we've landed in Raglan, surprise eh? We've been here since Wed. night and the surf has been great until today! The place we are staying, the solscape, does something called WOOF'ing (working on organic farms). We have arranged 2 weeks of working 4 hours a day each and that takes care of our food and our room.
That gives us a few weeks to feel out if there will be work for Andrew here. The solscape is pretty rad, the rooms are old train cars and there is a pretty good crew of people staying there right now.
Today we managed to get the site car stuck in a ditch/pond and true to the raglan way of life we just left it there to go check the surf and will deal with it later.
Everything , including the computers, in Raglan are a little behind the times so no pictures for you guys today. We promise a shot of Andy in his first barrel next time we post. Probley won't have much news for the next couple weeks but we'll keep you posted anyway, love you all.

Then there were three

We've spent the last two days in Tauranga, and mt Maunganui. Surf has been pretty good, and on a plus we got to visit Michelle Takeama at A YWAM base. Now we have a matress for our car, the 92 Subaru Legacy Wagon, its in great condition, we found that vans were so dam expensive and quite unsafe. After taking a few bad sleeps in the car sans matress we spent a few hours in the hot salt-water pools, SWEEEEEET.

We're gonna head up the Cormmandel today to Whangamata and hot water beach, the pics we have are from the Mount.

P.S. we showered, and no longer smell like dirty hippie backpackers, just slightly dirty hippie backpackers