From Indecision to Perdition

On tuesday the 3rd I remained indecisive whether or not to hop on our flight northward to Auckland, I remember lying awake in the middle of the night trying to decide whether or not to stay in Wellington or wake up and fly back up to NZ's largest metro area- Auckland. After heavy thought I decided Auckland would work and I would board the 1 hour flight...which totally man handles the 12.5 hour bus ride we took down from Auckland to Wellington when we first arrived....it was great to see a great portion of the North Island via bus...but one was sure enough for me. We thought the airport wasn't too far off so we packed up all our gear,hiking packs,tent,hiking shoes and started walking about 10 o'clock for our 11:30 flight. After 50 minutes of walking and the airport not in sight yet we decided to start running, which was about as demanding as anything can be considering we were strapped with about 40 pounds of gear....it got to be about 11:05 and we were running full throttle, very desperate and I had bad thoughts looming in my head about not making the flight (which wouldn't be horrible for me, because I was so indecisive..but Feigum really wanted to.) Out of nowhere, when hope seemed distant...a random lady in a black car swung out and swerved right in front of us. I saw Feigum loading his bags in and it turned out she saw us running with all our gear and assumed it was important. We hopped in, she flew around all traffic, driving like a maniac towards the airport. We thanked her about 15 times while completely dosing her leather seats with sweat. I remember arriving the airport about 11:10....and so we sprinted inside. After sitting in like for maybe 3 minutes, we realize we used Qantas Airlines and not Air NZ, so we ran to Qantas que and it turned out the plan was running 30 minutes late. How lucky can a guy get? A ride to the port and a flight running late allowed us to make the flight. I felt really bad for who was near me on the plane, I haven't persperated that much in quite awhile. After a few small bus rides we made it back to City Centre Auckland, to the hostel we first stayed in when we flew to NZ. Comforting familiarity, we spent 2 nights there planning and talking to WWOOFers, hanging out at the best library in NZ, with free net and a great selection. On Thursday June 5 we arranged to bus 30 minutes north of Auckland in uncharted areas for us. We came in contact with the Harvey family who have a family farm with raw milk, 2 daughters -10 and 7 , cows,horses,sheep,1 goat, dogs,cats...we stay in a guest bedroom in the main house with 2 beds. The arrangement is 4 hours of farmwor each day in exchange for meals and bed. We've now put in 4 days of work here. From painting, steering and herding sheep and cows, bailing out the cow pen filled with poo and hay, picking up horse dung in the horse pen, and milking cows, which was actually really refreshing. Actually hand milked a cup of my own and it was quite delicious. I'm starting to miss home quite a bit, while at the same time still enjoying our work here, we walked up 2 massive hills with the little girls Denvah and Khendra to overlook the west coast. They also showed us their secret hiding spot way up the hills and into the woods. Our last few nights in Wellington went well, I was just walking around Wellington one night with my headphones on and I bumped into 2 folks I met down in Queenstown- Jabbah and Phil, traveling buddies from Switzerland. They were living out of their campervan, so we invited them up to McLean's apartment to hang for 2 nights continuous. That was the closure to our Wellington extravaganza, we lived in McLean's flat without Ben for 2 nights because he traveled northward to travel with his sister for awhile.

We've been here nearly 2 months, surely the longest I've been away from home. Still having great, new experiences, but starting to miss certain comforts of home and its people. People back in the states should feel grateful for summer, it is now getting to be winter here...temperatures usually in the 50s which isn't horrible, but after a full North Dakota winter I a ready for some sun and lake.

kia ora,
kc