Back to Our Home Away from Home

Nelson Lakes National Park
Vineyard working.
Sunrise over the ocean. That's right, sunrise. And more shocking...Gareth took this picture.
Kaiteriteri Beach
The view from Mount Arthur.
The lost boys live in this camp shelter in Kahurangi National Park (spelling?)...

The greenhouse hostel we stayed in and inspiration for my future home?
Farewell Spit. Clearly, we didn't see much.
A full arch, double rainbow. Also at 'home'.
The moon at sunset at 'home'.
Fox River Cave in Paparoa National Park.
Beach on the West Coast. This picture didn't turn out, but the sand was really sticky and it shone like glitter.

Hello Blog-followers,

We're back to our home away from home, the town of Motueka. Blenheim and the vineyards were alright, but we had our hearts set on apple-picking here. Groceries are cheaper, people are happier and it is close to our favorite campground which we call 'home'. It is a small beachside reserve with clean toliets, cold showers, picnic tables, an oceanview and a jolly Scottish attendent on a bicycle. All for $6 per person, per night. However, last night was probably our last staying there for a while because we found work today! Yeah! If all goes as planned, we start apple-picking close to town tomorrow morning. The job comes with accomodation (in a building!) and hopefully about 2 months of good hard labour.

As for what we've been doing with our selves of late, we've been busy on the vineyards. By the end of our 7 days of work we had put up nets to protect the grapes from birds, plucked leaves to allow the 'wind to travel through the grapes', removed perfectly delicious looking bunches of grapes to allow the others to grow better, pruned stray vines and tediously removed all unripe fruit from already netted vines. Basically, we could run a vineyard by now...well, maybe not.

Some other adventures we got up to included visiting Nelson Lakes National Park although the weather wasn't great so we admired Lake Rotoiti and read our books in our clean and dry car (we cleaned it thoroughly for the first time on Friday...eww). Yesterday we thought we blew the starter on the car, but discovered that it was only the battery. Strangely, we didn't leave anything on and the car had started fine just 30 minutes earlier, so we think we need a new battery. We're looking into it.

One other strange incident that I feel compeled to write about is the mystery of my running shoes. I had been wearing them to work because the work was easy and they are more comfortable than my boots. The fields were very wet and my shoes were already a bit stinky so over the week they developed a morally offensive odour-so bad in fact that I was thinking about disposing of the shoes. Because we live in our car, I was hesitant to leave them in it when we went to dinner and a movie on Thursday night. Instead, I placed them underneath the vehicle assuming that their dampness and stench would keep any shoe robbers away. When we returned from the movie. The shoes had mysteriously disappeared. I still can't believe that someone took them. I'm not even mad, really. If someone needed shoes so badly, they can have them.

So, that is our update.

~Sara