Holidays at the Stewart Farm

We had a quiet holiday, giving ourselves showers and clean laundry as presents. For Boxing Day we had gorgeous weather so we played in the swimming hole and enjoyed the warmth of the sun for the afternoon. We are quickly becoming accustom to mid-morning tea with apricot and yoghurt biscuits. Lunches consist of vege sandwiches with beets (Autumn only) and cottage cheese (William only). Tonight we look forward to another intense game of Scrabble. In our days here on the Coromandel we are enjoying the simpler pleasures; the views, our hosts, and the entertaining chicken. Come the New Year we will be off exploring the rest of the penninsula and headed south, making our way to Tongariro NP for a 4 day hike: the Northern Circuit around Mt. Doom (Ngauruhoe).

Stewart Farm

We are at Ian Stewart and Louise Deane's farm on the Coromandel Penn. doing some hay bale housing. We're building the walls of the house with the cob. The cob we get to mix with our feet! Stomping clay, sand, and staw in big troughs with our feet and then mucking it onto the side of the building where there are spaces between the stawbales and the roof. Stomping the mixture with our toes proves to be an excellent exfoliator for our feet, and it feels pretty cool between our toes. We are also helping shape bails to fill corners, and hang lights for the holiday season. The people are great, the area is great, the work is fun, the swimming hole is divine, and the food is wonderful. We toured a farm in Kerikeri that was a commercial thing and we didn't really want that. We wanted a small family thing where we were welcomed in and got see another way of living. We hit the jackpot here. They've already built a garage of staw and are living in that while the house is completed. The lifestyle is pretty rustic, collecting rainwater off the roof, dirt floors and straw everywhere. The house is pretty sweet, 3 hexagons connected, with great views. We are quite happy and will be here past the coming holiday and onto almost the new year. Then we reckon we are headed south a bit to the southern tip of the north island. Cheers.

Giant Dunes

Now we are in the Bay of Islands, after a sunny visit to Cape Reinga, Topotupotu Bay, Spirits Bay and 90-Mile Beach. Our plans of tramping around the tip fell through. Good thing too, the wind would have carried us both out to sea. We had a good time though, even though the roads are a bit rough. We finally arranged a WWOOF, thanks to McDonalds and Hackers Internet Cafe. We'll be arriving there, Thames on the Coromandel, the 16th. The farm is building a strawbail house and setting up permaculture on their land. We'll see how we like it there and might stay up to a couple weeks. The sun has been brutal and our feet are feeling the most of it, they are pretty red, especially after our sandboarding. Flying down scortching hot sands on a boogie board, hopefully soon we'll be able to post some pictures soon, we have yet to figure out the card readers in this country. We're both well and having a ball! Until later!

Northland

We are magically flying north toward the 90-Mile Beach Area for our first hike. We are trying to set up our first WWOOF along the way and it is proving to be more difficult than either of us thought. It seems we didn't beat as many WWOOFers here as we thought. A lot of places either already have a WWOOFer or don't need any hands at the moment. Hopefully by the end of the day today we will have one set up...otherwise we will hike to Cape Reinga and head south for our first WWOOF instead. The weather, scenery, birds, vegetation, and beaches have been undescribable. My personal favorite has been red-headed, green-bodied, blue-winged, and yellow-chested parrot-thing!! Pretty sweet! Another favorite was the insane road up Mangamora pass. Okay, our McDonald's internet access is running low (only access open, we swear!). This keyboard smells like fries. Cheers.

Arrival

So far we've been up for over 42 hours straight. Okay, I guess we got to try to sleep on the plane, but we all know what that is like ("Do you smell that?" "My neck hurts." "My feet are swollen like elephants.") Everything went smoothly, and upon arrival our first order of business was going outside into the beautiful weather and brushing our teeth and spitting in the rubbish can. We caught a free tour of Auckland today that has kept us busy as we try to make it to 8 or 9pm without keeling over. Our bodies feel numb. Couldn't think straight today so thought better of test-driving a new car. We couldn't figure out why the automatic doors to the 3 different banks we went to that open at 9:30 wouldn't open at 9:15. Hmmmm. Only when a bank employee pointed out that 9:15 came before 9:30 and therefore they were not open did the pieces fall into place.

Almost

The idea started about two years ago. The tickets were purchased June 13. We leave Monday.

Starters

This is a sampling of the scenery we had at North Cascades NP and on our drive back to New England.