Wwoofing in Whangarei II.

Second host, second chance. Our stay at the beautiful Sandy Bay was quite different to our first host in Whangarei. 

Our new host had a welcoming smile on her face when she picked us up in Whangarei and took us to the Tutukaka coast (30 minutes by car) to have a first dinner with her family.

On the next day she took us to the Retreat in Sandy Bay, which became our home for the next two weeks. We stayed in a small cabin and shared our kitchen, work and experiences with two other Wwoofers from Germany. It is just incredible how many young Germans we meet along the way! No wonder they call some areas where a lot of campervans a staying over night “little Germany”. Anyway, the Retreat is a place for art, gardening, DIY, nature and exchange, we had a really great time there.

Of course we also had to work, but this time the work was much more varied. Pulling weeds, planting, caring for succulents, we even did some fencing. On other days we cleaned holiday homes with our host. It was hard work, but it was not as boring as with the last host, so we had quite a lot of fun. Dealing with the crazy black sheep was not so much fun, he always tried to ram you, when you entered the paddock. Towards the end of our stay, we developed a sneaking in technique, but it did not always work.

The host was much better organized for wwoofing and gave us some pamphlets at the beginning of our stay with informations about work hours and the Retreat. She showed us a lot of local things, like the hidden Whale Bay and the Louqat fruit you can find on the side of the road in Northland. Every weekend she took us to another market, first the farmer’s market in Kerikeri and the next week a new small market in Ngunguru. We were introduced quite well to the local Kiwi life. 

She also showed us the best beaches in the area, like Sandy Bay and Matapouri Beach. We saw the Whangarei falls and went on some walks. We even had two days off. On one of them we took part in a boat tour to the Poor Knight Islands and went snorkelling there. It was incredible to get so close to the seals and swimming into dark caves. The water was really clear, giving us a good view on all the fish.

But there was something about our host herself that was different. She had a good sense of people and was able to see inside us quite well. She had a very positive attitude and a good and supporting influence on us and which enabled us to consider some big personal decisions. Dear host, thank you for being there for us! Without you, we maybe would not have realized, how we want to change.

The two weeks were over quickly and we had to leave, but we were very excited about the next part of our journey: the far North.

Some Pictures:

Wwoofing in Whangarei I.

The last month we have been wwoofing in Whangarei and it kept me really busy. Sadly, not every host was as good as expected.

Hey world, it is me and I am finally back! I was at a places with probably the worst phone reception ever and no internet at all. Joking … but it is really bad (so bad I can not upload any picture at all). So much has happened in the last month that I will split it in two post. Here is the first one, about Maeve’s and my first Wwoofing experience:

You my ask yourself: Wwoofing? Is that something for dogs? Why are they doing it so long?

WWOOF stands for Willing Workers On Organic Farms and is a platform for farms, households and volunteers around the globe. The volunteers, mostly backpackers, can stay at a host and are given accommodation and food in exchange for a few hours of work a day. At most host you are expected to work between four and six hours. It is great opportunity for travellers to get to know the local life and to make a cultural exchange between the host and the volunteer. Personally, it is also important for me to give something back to the country we are take from while travelling, creating something and leave a small piece to remember behind. Sadly, not all volunteers want to experience and exchange, the are more interested in the cheap accommodation, because hostels are quite expensive. On the other hand, some hosts are only looking for cheap workers. It is sad to see how some people exploit the Wwoofing site.

Our very first Wwoofing-Host was a woman living in Auckland and Whangarei. We stayed two weeks with her, which is often the time a volunteer stays with a host.

The first week we stayed in Auckland with her and helped organizing and cleaning over hundert moroccan carpets. Definetly enough for two lives! Some of them were quite antique and others had moths in them. We also cleaned occasionally and cooked dinner most of the times.

We were staying in a nice, old caravan in Ponsonby (the best part of Auckland) and later had our own part of the farmhouse in Whangarei.

Sadly, even if our host was a nice person, she did not really made us feel welcome in her chaotic home. She never really talked a lot to us and send us often politely away after dinner. Even if the work was very boring  (specially later on the farm) we were still very motivated to get it all done, because it was our first host ever, but for her it was the least that somebody could do with a smile on his face. She often made us wait for a long time and usually got out of bed at lunchtime, which made it quite complicated to use to free time. Another thing is, we did not wanted to wwoof in Auckland and were waiting every day to leave for Whangarei and for seven days our host told us: we will go definitely tomorrow.

The farm land was very beautiful and wild, with a good view on the Whangarei Heads, but not in walking distance of anything. The farmhouse was located at the top of the hill and it was always very windy up there. One thing we had to get used to is the missing central heat in houses in New Zealand. If you are lucky, the got a fire place or a portable heater, sometimes they just do not. We had to share a small heater with the others, which meant it was usually very cold in our room. Additionally the flush on the toilet was not working and we showered with cold water. It has to be worth it, we thought, if we could work with the sheep and maybe those cute lambs. Unfortunately we did not work with the sheep at all, cause they were just on the farmland all day. Instead we had fun tasks like raking leaves all day, putting them in piles. For some reason our host did not wanted us to collect the piles right afterwards, so they were often gone the next day, because of the heavy wind and we had to rake there again. Slowly we began to realize, we are doing shitty jobs for really shitty payment.

At the last few days we met another Wwoofer, a nice guy from Bavaria, who came to the farm to stay when we are gone. We had to show him how to do all the things on the farm and once again we felt like cheap workers that could easily be replaced. By telling him what we have been doing for two weeks, we finally realized how bad our host was. She used us and always made empty promises. In the end we were happy to leave, even if our host begged us to stay longer.

Last but not least, an advice if you want to wwoof yourself: our host was doing wwoofing since a few years now and had no reviews on her profile. This should always make you suspicious and wonder, why never anybody wrote something, because maybe the volunteers did not know how to put their not as good as expected experience into nice words for the internet.

We have learned our lesson and luckily our next host was quite different.

To be continued.

 

Auckland without Auckland

The ugliest part of New Zealand or a wonderful, modern city? A lot of people have differing opinions on Auckland. Maeve and I took a close look on the biggest city of New Zealand.

Auckland was our first contact with New Zealand and our home for nearly two weeks, enough time to explore the city and have an own opinion about it.

“Auckland is a city with two faces.” -Maeve

Maeve said and it is absolutely true: you have the fast-living urban jungle on one side and the peaceful real jungle on the other. Tourists who just run up and down the Queen Street sometimes say Auckland is a grey city, without interesting sights to see, but they miss so much!

Auckland, the city of parks

In my opinion one of the best things about Auckland are the parks and the fact that there is always one close to you. Whether you are in the smallest park of Auckland in Ponsonby or in the biggest, the Auckland Domain, they are absolutely loveable. Some even have small forests or bush, streams or lakes. We spend some days just going from one park to the next. One another day we explored Mount Eden (which is kind of a park too) and it is totally worth taking the walk to the top! The view is probably even better than from the sky tower (so you can save that money).

The city of sails

Auckland is a paradise for sailing and the harbour is worth taking a walk around. It calls itself city of sails, not only since the city has been choosen as host for the American Cup. One in four people in Auckland owns a boat, the city itself has two coasts, which are not more that 16km away from each other on one point. There is even an official Coast to Coast Walk.

Auckland without Auckland

If you have had your tourist day in Auckland (which was probably just running up and down the Queen Street, visiting the sky tower and the old ferry building) and if you already had your first negative encounter with Auckland (e.g. bedbugs in the hostel, problems with the ATM, getting kind of lost; all of it happend to us), you are ready for the great Auckland without Auckland. You start to discover the beautiful side, maybe take a walk through Ponsonby first. We were lucky to live in this area for a few days with our host. It has a lot of sweet, small cafes and shops and great houses. Maybe you find the hidden beach, you just spend some time in the glass houses in the Auckland Domain or explore the Victoria Park Market, which has quite some mediterran vibes. Whatever you do to find your Auckland without Auckland, you will probably realise that the city is not that grey and not that ugly, you just have to look around the corner.

Our first two weeks in New Zealand a over now and we left Auckland behind us. We are on the way to Whangarei and to meet some woolly friends.

Waiheke

A few days between vineyards, jungle and the Hauraki Gulf 

Matiatia welcomed Maeve and me with warm sunshine and a lot of wind. The harbour at the east side of Waiheke Island is for 1 million passengers per year their first contact with the Island, because the Fullers ferry terminal is there.

Like a lot of other people we took the bus to the hostel and got on the ride our first impression of the Island of Wine. It is a very hilly landscape with a mixture of Pacific plants and some that seemed mediterran. Form the top of the hills you could either see the sea or a vineyard, the conditions for the grapes are said to be perfect there. A positiv surprise were the friendly and relaxed bus drivers on the Island. They like to chat with you and even stay calm and have a good laugh when someone throws an egg at the bus (really happened!).

Our hostel was located in Onetangi, a village on the east side. We saw one restaurant in Onetangi, it does not has shops or supermarkets, but you can take a great (and long) walk or the bus to the next village which has a supermarket and other stores. We took the walk and it was in our opinion the better decision, since we saw many interesting thing along the way.

Back at the Onetangi beach you can spend quite some time collecting all the different seashells. The beach is not very crowded, you will meet just some people walking their dog or the Waiheke High School doing Kayak classes in the water.

From the beach (and the bus stop) you have to take the stairs, 190 steps (with your backpack or suitcase), to the Waiheke Backpackers Hostel. It is a cosy, small and friendly accommodation with view at the sea, but it is a bit expensive for a hostel.

On our last full day in Waiheke, we wanted to see the coast in the south, so we went to the Rocky Bay. If you start at the beach in Onetangi (which is on the north side), it’s just 6.5 km to the south coast. One the way we saw even more vineyards and tropical marsh land, with a swamp where salt- and freshwater met. Form the swamp to the coast lays the beautiful Whakanewha Regional Park. Don’t let the maps fool you! Sometimes there are four path or more next to each other when the map one shows one. The woods in the park and at Rocky bay are full of palm trees and ferns. I really enjoyed walking on the cathedral track (this one leads you directly to the coast), even on the exhausting parts, because of the to me unknown plants there.

Rocky bay was full of gravel, which was a huge difference to the sandy beaches in the north, and it had plenty of oyster everywhere. We were able to walk to a lot of the bay, because the tide was low. Rocky bay is also on of the protected homes to endangered bird and plants, we were lucky to see many birds there.

As much as Waiheke seemed to be a paradise, it also had it’s darker sides: parts of the Island and the coast are not available for the public anymore, because people privatised areas of the land. The most famous example may be the Cactus Bay, which is for the public only accessible by swimming or kayak. Cactus Bay is said to be the most beautiful bay of Waiheke, sadly we could not visit it ourselves. A local told us, this is a change that is happening on more and more parts of the Island.

Still, with all the beauty, the good weather and the laid back people it is no surprise Waiheke Island in the Haraki Gulf is one of the Kiwi’s favourite holiday destinations.

A long awaited arrival

Or an arrival that took three days

On Monday we took the train to Cologne. After the heartwhelming goodbye from our families, which included a big banner, small New Zealand flags and some tears, we finally stared our journey. Quite some people in our train wagon had noticed the goodbye scene and some of them had a chat with us. The train ride took several hours, but I was just too excited to sleep.

The train arrived late in Cologne and it was pure luck the next train was still there, we ran from one train to another and were in Cologne not more than twenty seconds.

A very modern ICE brought us to the airport in Frankfurt and with some help we found the stop for shuttles to the Hotel. It was time for a rest, we spend the night at the smart stay hotel, which was simple, but nice and clean.

At 12.30 the next day we were finally in the plane to Singapore. It lifted off at 13.00. The crew at Singapore Airlines provided great service and the 12 hours on the plane were flying . . . Luckily I had a seat at the window, I saw a lot of cliffs and mountains in the middle eastern desert from brids-eye-perspective, the sunset above the clouds and a very big thunderstorm near New Delhi at night. The only thing bugging me the hole flight was I could not really sleep.

Singapore made a very good first impression on us. It was warm and we saw a lot of palms even in the airport. The coast was full of ships and the architecture at the airport great. Sadly we had to go to catch the flight, but I am happy we are visiting Singapore on our way home again.

The last part was the flight from Singapore to Auckland with Air New Zealand. Again it was a very long flight without sleep for me, but after quite some turbulence above the Tasman Sea we finally arrived in New Zealand. We were really happy when we left the biosecurity at the airport behind us and were on our way to the base backpackers hostel.

Expectations

Goals I want to achive and things I want to experience while being in New Zealand

Some months ago I got my long-awaited Working Holiday Visa and in just a few days my time for departure has come. While I am still busy organizing the last small things, my mind is already around half the globe and I am thinking: What could I gain from this adventure?

Obviously I want to discover New Zealand for myself and I want to meet people living in NZ, learn something about how they are living. Maybe I will meet other travelers from different countries and while doing this I hopefully can improve my own English skills.

Further I would like to take this chance to expand my inside in the agriculture field and to support the thought of studying agricultural sciences. In this case a fruit-picking job is not just a job, but important experience for me.

In addition to all of this I will looking for three things which we should always try find, whether we are at home or at the other end of the world:
Having a great time. Maybe the journey is not perfect all the time, but hopefully the balance between the good things and the bad things happening is there.
Discovering my own limits and going above them. It is time for me to step outside the comfort zone and start challenging myself, because challenge is surely waiting at the other side of the golbe.
Changing my perspective. It says: The world changes when we change our perspective.

Harboøre, Denmark

My last european trip before the big adventure.

Here are some photos I took at the West Coast in beautiful Denmark. As you can see we were quite lucky with the weather and when I was not busy taken pictures of the wonderful North Sea, I spend some nice quality time with my family.
More photos at my Instagram.