Paihia and Cape Reinga

After one month of wwoofing and one month in the same area, we were really excited to start using our bus pass.

We left Whangarei in a Stray-bus. It was the first time we used the bus pass “Everywhere” and were positiv surprised by the friendly driver who even drove us to the campground in Waitangi.

The following days were filled with exploration in Paihia. The first day we took one of the beautiful bush walks to Opua, but we calculated the distance wrong and ended up doing a 27km (!) trip instead of 17km. We saw a lot of the bays and beaches the Bay of Islands has to offer, but at some point our legs were just too tired to enjoy them for long. At the end of the day we just fell fast asleep in our tent.

We did a bus tour to Cape Reinga, the most nothern point of New Zealand and a spiritual place important to the Maori. They believe it is the point where your soul enters the journey to the afterlife when they die. Also it is the place where two oceans, the Tasman sea and the pacific ocean meet. On our way to get there we drove over the 90 Mile Beach, which is exactly 55 miles long, and had a chance to try sandboarding, which was real fun!

Russel, which lays right across from Paihia, is called the hellhole of the Pacific, because of the city’s past where traders and pirates walked, drank and lived there. It takes just a few mintues by ferry to get there, but we were quite a bit disappointed by the small tourist village in front of us, when we stepped from the ferry into Russel. The village seems to have fallen asleep and it is actually quite boring, if you got lured there by it’s exciting past. The only things reminding you of the past are the small museum and the bullet holes in the walls of the church. Russel might have been the real life Tortuga we know from the Pirates of the Caribbean, but now it is just a few shops, restaurants and a nice view. Nevertheless, I have to admit that it had amazing ice cream, we tried triple chocolate, maple-walnut, salted caramel and white-chocolate-raspberry . It was one of the best so far!

A nice, not too long, walk is from Waitangi to the Haruru falls. On 10km you see a wide range from local bush to mangrove forest. We spend quite some time having lunch at the falls and enjoying the view.

It was amazing, how easy we got in touch with other campers and travellers back at the campground, especially with the german family we met. They even invited us for a great BBQ evening. Most travellers we talked to were very polite, friendly and open, making it a joy to talk to them and exchanging experiences.

We had our own little Halloween party at the beach, surrounded by seagulls (scary animals 😉 ), with fish and chips and more ice cream, at the end of our stay. It was a nice way to spend our last evening in Paihia and the Bay of Islands.

The next morning we made our way to Auckland for a short stop by bus. We left Auckland early the morning after. Now we are on a peninsula famous for being the Kiwi’s favourite holiday destination. 

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.