Hello all! We are here to report that the Weebly blog website is complete and utter shit.... here is the link to our new blog, which will hopefully function a little better and allow us to post more often.

After our short stay in Wanganui, we drove to Kumeroa where we had set up a 2 week WWOOFing stay. We arrived on December 23rd and stayed for two weeks. Our host, Mitch, was there during Christmas, but left for vacation on the 26th and we stayed to house sit and puppy sit. Kumeroa is a dairy farm town where Mitchell's family owned almost all of the land. It's situated in a small valley and the population is just big enough to have a school and a hall nearby (the bare minimum for a New Zealand township). Although Mitch's family own the dairy farm and over 500 dairy cows, we were only responsible for his permaculture garden and his puppy, Bella.

There was a sweet old converted hippy bus on the property that had been left there years ago by Mitch's friend. It had two stories and had been owned by a family that had been driving it around NZ (which is hard to imagine because NZ has small windy roads). It had multiple bedrooms inside as well as a lounge space.

About a week into our stay, we decided to take a day trip to Napier to explore Hawke's Bay. It was New Year's Eve and we went to the beach, went wine tasting, walked around the town of Napier before returning to Kumeroa at night.

The Manawatu River ran through the property, and if the weather was good we didn't miss a chance to go for a swim with Bella!

Those rolling green hills have to stay green somehow, so this meant that most of our stay in Kumeroa was rainy rather than sunny.

When the rain was letting up and the sun was coming back, it made for some pretty spectacular views of vibrant rainbows!

Due to all the rain we experienced, we were stuck inside a lot and this meant we got to try out tasty, new recipes! There was lots of bread baking in between meal times.

We definitely reaped some of the benefits of being on a large dairy farm... to get our milk we simply went down to a huuuge vat on the property, opened the large faucet ever so slightly, and out spewed the milk. Because milk was never an issue, it allowed us to try a great feta cheese recipe that required 3 liters of milk to make. Mmm, the feta cheese turned out great and it tasted so fresh!

Mitch left us some jobs to do around the place while he was gone. We bird-proofed the tomatoes by putting lots of chicken wire around them, we created a wall for the beans to be able to climb, we did a fair amount of weeding, we transplanted some of the baby plants into the larger garden, and the one we are most proud of: we made the gate for the garden a swinging gate by attaching hinges to it and used a nail and chain to lock and unlock it!

There were quite a few sheep around the farm, but Mitch only had three sheep around his place. The smallest of the 3 was named Rosie, who Mitch hand raised from a tiny lamb. Tail still intact, she was one of a kind!  She somehow found a way to get out of the fenced paddock on the daily and she would come running through the garage or the garden in search of us. She was a cute sheep and soft to the touch.

Since Rosie was not fully grown yet, her and Bella grew up together. They were both very jealous of each other and would compete for our attention. Sometimes this sisterly competition got a little out of hand when Rosie and Bella would both run inside the small living room and chase each other around! Sigh, pets!

One of our favorite things to do around Kumeroa was ride bikes whenever we got the chance. We would take Bella with us to tire her out while we got nice views of the surroundings. The next few pictures are from a particularly pretty sunset ride!

We even saw our first live groundhog on this ride! Isn't he cute?

We enjoyed the simple country life so much that it was very easy to get used to! We could have stayed for a lot longer. **side note** Hayley read a book called 'Twelve by Twelve' while in Kumeroa about a tiny house in rural North Carolina off the grid. She highly recommends it! The book seemed to mimic our stay because it was very much about a growing shift in consciousness to sustain one's life instead of always striving for more.

We want to dedicate this post to Bella. During our two week stay in Kumeroa we got very attached to her! She is a 5-month old border collie with lots of love to give...who wouldn't fall in love with her? She went everywhere with us (except on our Napier day trip because she gets car sick) and would even sleep in the same room as us (and would jump on the bed in the morning of course). It doesn't quite do it justice to say that it was very very difficult to say goodbye to Bella and leave her behind :(

We stopped off the main highway on a bright sunny day at Kai Iwi beach. We dipped in the ocean, played at the playground on a flying fox (zipline), and layed out on our towels for a bit.

We drove to the little town of Wanganui to spend a night. Didn't expect to see much but were pleasantly surprised by the view from the Durie Hill Elevator and Memorial Tower. It was already a windy day, but being up at the top of the tower intensified it!

At the local i-site we inquired about seeing Putiki Church, containing intricate Maori carvings adorned with paua shell, a painted rib ceiling (as in Maori meeting houses), and two beautiful etched-glass windows.

After enjoying town for a little while, we drove into Whanganui National Park. It's a bit confusing, but the town's name has no h in it, but the river and the national park do. (In Maori Wh makes an F sound). We took a hike for a few hours and ended up at a stunning viewpoint of the valley with the river below.

Around lunchtime, we set up a sweet picnic next to our van. Since we have all the gear we need including a table, chairs, and an umbrella, picnicing can happen virtually anywhere.

Grilled cheese tastes a thousand times better outside!

After doing our epic tramp in Tongariro National Park, we headed to the town of New Plymouth to WWOOF for just a few days. We found many cool things to do there, including hike up another mountain, see a Festival of Lights, and camp ON THE BEACH!

Our host, Jo, was an artist with a love for tinsel around the holidays! Her home was eccentric with art on every centimeter of the walls. It was very cool seeing her creations as well as getting a feel for the Taranaki art community. She even helped set up a local gallery a few years back!

Pig, the dog, became our close buddy in a few short days. Who couldn't love that face?

New Plymouth had a cool hiking spot called Paritutu Rock, which we climbed. The rock is directly over the ocean and has steep, uneven terrain to get up it, but the views from the top are amazing!

Taranaki was having its bi-annual Festival of Lights while we were in town. We headed into Pukekura Park one night to check it out. This is the entry to the Fernery...tripppppy.

Our last night WWOOFing, our host, Jo, took us out to her favorite camping spot in Oakura.

Once we left Jo, we were on our own for a couple days. First stop was Pukeiti, a botanical garden with extensive grounds.

Egmont National Park is where we tramped around Mount Taranaki. This year round snow-capped mountain is visible from every angle around the Taranaki region.

This gem of a photo is a clear insight into what I'll be like as an 80 year old.

In the eastern part of the park, we went on a loop trail to Dawson Falls through a goblin forest! All the lichen hangs off the trees to produce a nice spooky atmosphere. It had a visible effect on us.

Although visiting Taranaki was a bit unexpected on our roadtrip, it ended up being a pretty fulfilling stop!

After leaving Raglan, we spent four days without WWOOFing. The day we left we went to Waitomo and went black water rafting through an underground river with thousands of glow worms in the ceiling. Next we headed south to Lake Taupo.

Lake Taupo is massive, even bigger than Tahoe. It's 238 square miles and crystal clear. Not only is it beautiful to look at, we had so much fun swimming around and sunbathing. This was the hottest weather we have had in NZ so far.

We swam out about 150 ft with GoPro in hand, to a landing. The water was so clear we could see right down to the bottom. It was fun jumping off the landing and getting back on.

Close to Lake Taupo is Tongariro National Park. We went to the local i-site and planned to do the Tongariro Alpine Crossing the next day. On December 15th, we woke up at 5 A.M. and drove into the national park by 5:50. We had arranged a shuttle to pick us up from the parking lot and take us to the trail head. From there we would be hiking 19.4 kilometers (about 12 miles) back to our car across the north-western corner of the park. We started the hike at 7 A.M. and it took us 6 and a half hours total!

About an hour and a half into the hike, the trail started to get steep and the landscape got semi-arid and volcanic. Once we reached the top of many many switchbacks, Mount Doom was in full view.

We felt like we were on Mars walking through this valley!

Onward past Mount Doom (real name before LOTR is Mt. Ngauruhoe), at the highest point of our hike was Red Crater at 6,200 ft.  As you can see from the picture, it gets its name from the incredible red soil that surrounds it. Right past Red Crater we began to descend past the Emerald Lakes towards Blue Lake.

We stopped for lunch at Blue Lake and by that point in the hike, the mass of people that had started in the morning was much more dispersed. After lunch we hiked on and the scenery began to seem less dry and volcanic and turned to brush and greenery.  

The last 5 kilometers of the hike was through a native bush forest. Just as we thought we were done, with 2 Ks to go, we encountered a wide, fast-moving stream that we had to cross.

Boom...done! We were so proud of ourselves we had to high five! Needless to say we were SO SORE the next day since this was the longest hike either of us had ever done.

Hello everyone!
It's been a while since we last posted. Lack of internet prevented us but here we are trying to make it happen! We'll have a bit to catch up on. We left off on the Coromandel peninsula and after that we went to the surf town of Raglan located on the west coast near Hamilton.

Our host in Raglan, Christine, is part of a tramping club that meets once a week around the area and we went with her to Ruapuke Beach where about 12 of us tramped down from the paddock above to the rugged beach below.

We stayed at a 1 acre property on the estuary in a cabin next to our hosts' studio. She had a kayak, so we took it out on a sunny day.

Our host had us pulling some weeds, clearing a larger pathway to the waterway, trimming some rosebushes, and practicing Spanish! Her yard was so beautiful, lots of citrus and other vibrant plant life.

On our way out of Raglan we stopped by Bridal Veil Falls. This waterfall has a 50 meter drop and it's pretty stunning.

While in Raglan, we also met up with a friend that we met on Great Barrier the day we went to the hot springs. We celebrated Dominico's birthday with him, and we went to a reggae Sunday session at a bar in town.
We have lots more photos that we'd like to show you from Tongariro National Park and Lake Taupo, all in good time!
- L & H

The day we left Kaikohe we headed up to the very tip of the North Island. Our GoPro camera has a suction cup mount that attaches to the car windshield for some good pictures along the route. 

Thirteen kilometers south of Cape Reinga, we stopped at massive sand dunes to try our skills at sand surfing. Boy was it windy that day, which made it more of a struggle...but at least it was sunny and we couldn't pass up the chance to have some fun at the biggest sand dunes we have ever seen. 

The GoPro's fisheye lens makes this dune seem pretty big, but this was only the kiddie hill, we also went up the top of a massive sand hill and shot down the side of that one too. The big one was too extreme to take the camera though, so no pictures :(

After the sand surfing adventure, we camped at the northern most camp site in New Zealand just 3km south of Cape Reinga. In the morning we shot back down the peninsula and explored some of the bays to the east. It was a long day of driving though because we also made it back down to the Auckland area.  In the morning we met up with Gael and Bill, mutual friends of Janet Geissmann; they fed us lunch and took us to see Piha beach and a surrounding waterfall as well as the Waitakere Ranges lookout. 

That afternoon we headed east again towards the Coromandel Peninsula. The beaches at the Coromandel are suppose to be some of the most stunning beaches in NZ, but the weather did not cooperate for us unfortunately.  We did meet a nice group of friends and traveled around Coromandel with them, which made the weather more tolerable. We met Cecile and Quentin from France, Allison from Chicago, and Lauren from Australia! We all caravanned to Cathedral Cove and Hot Water Beach. 

After our hike to Cathedral cove, we went to Hot Water Beach. Hot Water Beach was the best place to be in the rain because the water was the temperature of a very hot bath. 

That night we stayed at a Top Ten Holiday Park by Hot Water Beach. Holiday parks have a few more amenities than regular camp sites. There was a kitchen, TV room, dorms, and camp sites. There was even a giant "jumping pillow" for the kids, but with all the rain we needed to get our wiggles out somehow. We got silly...

We decided to leave Coromandel the next morning because there wasn't much we could do with the downpour. We're in Raglan now: a bohemian surf community and we've started our next WWOOFing adventure. Pictures to come at the end of our stay here. 
Love,
H & L

After our first night of sleeping in the van by the cows in Kaikohe, we went to Mike and Vanessa's farm to begin our next wwoofing experience.  We got to their place at about 3 pm, got to know each other, made delicious meals, and called it a night. When we woke up the next morning we took in the beautiful scenery around us and got to work.

On the farm there's always an animal in sight. They have cows, chickens, ducks, four cats and a dog. 

Mike and Vanessa were selling three of their cattle, so they took us to the cattle auction in town. That was definitely a first time experience for both of us. There were pens with cattle everywhere and a ledge all around for interested buyers to be able to walk above the cattle and get a better look. The auction was inside a small auditorium with the two sides open so they could keep the cattle moving along. It's just like you would stereotypically expect an auction to be like; the announcer yelled off prices enthusiastically until someone bid the highest. It was all a very weird experience, but luckily Mike and Vanessa made good money. 

Sometimes we worked in the garden doing lots of weeding, other times we did various other jobs. We mowed the lawn, painted the chicken coop, took down a huge ivy plant, and we even helped with an indoor paint job by sanding down the plaster from the ceiling. One day we had to uproot chicken wire that had been buried under tough weeds. By the end of it we had to use the quad to get some of it out of the ground because it was getting way too difficult to uproot. Although we don't have photos of some of those jobs because we were working too hard, we did get some photos of us on the quad. 

Learning how to drive the quad (or even just riding on it) was sooo much fun! lots of things we did while wwoofing in Kaikohe were incredibly fun. The only problem was that because it was an isolated farm, there were sandflies everywhere. We got bit bad and it was hard to cope, especially with the continuous warning we kept getting about how the sandflies in the south island would be so much bigger and there would be more of them. Luckily Vanessa took us to her friend's house to make a natural bug repellent with essential oils and other natural products. We also felted some soap bars with dyed wool, which was cool because we needed some soap soon too. It was a great last day in Kaikohe. 

Today we're going to drive to the far northern tip of NZ and spend the night there before heading down to the Coromandel peninsula. :)

-L & H

We spent a night in our van in Kaikohe before we started WWOOFing the next day. Getting a feel for the town was nice, grabbed some free internet at the local library, and ate some McDonald's fries...whoops. This town is quite rural with a big Maori population. So rural in fact, we slept with the cows. Can you see their eyes? They came right up to the fence where our van was parked.

There was a memorial site for a Maori chief at the top of a hill that looked promising. What a great view we found there!

There was a point of interest on the map for something called the Ngawha Springs. We decided to check it out. For 5 bucks, it was one hot hot hot experience. There were 8 natural pools, and the hottest one got up to 45 degrees Celsius!

Now we are WWOOFing with Mike and Vanessa on a farm just south of Kaikohe. So far we have fed young calves, pulled out a chicken wire fence from underneath overgrown weeds, and learned how to drive the quad so we're adjusting to farm life nicely.

After finally leaving Auckland (big cities are a drag sometimes) we headed north in our campervan that we bought off an Italian dude. It's got all the stuff we need to cook basic meals and sleep comfortably. The first stop was a campground just north of Waipu on the eastern coast. 

The beach next to the campground was so wide with white sandy dunes and super clear water. We even saw people riding horses up and down it. 

We made some pasta on our first night. The campgrounds are different here. There were no designated spaces, you could pick your favorite spot in the campground and park wherever. 

Just out of Waipu, we drove down an unsealed road for about 7km to see some glow worm caves. Even though the photos in the cave turned out not so great, this was what it looked like right outside of them. It reminds us of Lord of the Rings.

After our night of camping, we kept driving north and arrived in Whangarei. We got a map at the local i-site that showed us a track to hike to a giant kauri tree and the Whangarei Falls.

We spent the night in Oakura a sleepy beach town with nothing in it but a gas station and a market. The beach was stunning though.

The last day before we started a new WWOOFing experience we drove to the Bay of Islands. Paihia was a quaint harbor town catered to tourists. We saw a huge waka (Maori warrior ship made of kauri) there which was cool. Other than that, we lounged on the beach and swam for the remainder of the day.

**Special alert** In a previous post we reported kitty from Great Barrier Island (the deaf little thing) missing. We have received email notification of her happy return to Ship's Bay. A neighbor found her with one front paw stuck in her collar. She's skinny after two weeks, but she'll make it! Yay!