Country Life Weekend

Last Friday I hopped a bus with Carie and Dale to the south for Country Life Weekend. the Country Life Weekend is an IFSA sponsored event where interested students go work and stay on a farm with hosts Keith and Kaye. The bus took us to Oamaru where we met an IFSA girl who is abroad at Otago named Ellen. The four of us caught a shuttle out to the farm.

That first night on the farm we arrived in the dark. We were fed a huge dinner and a desert which consisted of a piece of cake, a hunk of pavlova, and ice cream. The four of us watched the rugby and stayed up considerably later than our hosts just chit chatting and getting to know Ellen.

The next morning Dale and I got up around 7 because we figured "it's a farm, they probably start early". We were greeted with a tasty breakfast and the task of transporting some hay with Keith. We got in the car and drove about 8 minutes to someone else's farm, loaded up Keith's truck with bales of hay, drove back, unloaded, and repeated three times. Then we took a break and had a coffee with Kaye and the ladies who had woken up. We took them with us for another 4 trips which finished the job.



We then had a hearty lunch. I had some lasagna which was made with beef from the farm!

We spent the first part of the afternoon shlumping. The ladies took a nap, Dale read some Asimov, and I listened to some bluegrass and admired the property. Feeling like we hadn't done quite enough to deserve another huge dinner, we asked if there was anything else we could do. Kaye told us there wasn't anything on the farm but that we could go down to their friends' vineyard and help out there. I woke up the ladies and we walked over to the vineyard.

Beautiful panoramic by dale

We all accidentally brushed up against one of these nettles which were growing throughout the vines.
Puppy.
The majority of our work up there we termed as "consolidation of guards". Basically, those plastic guards around each vine were coming off and they needed to be stacked on eachother so that would take up far less space when stored.


That night we had an awesome dinner and watched the All Blacks beat the hell out of the Wallabies. We woke up at 4AM to check out the stars which were beautiful; There was a new moon that night.

The next day we woke up, ate, packed, and went on a sweet 4-wheeling adventure all before the shuttle arrived at 10:30.


4-wheelin time. Here's a shot of Keith taking us up the hill behind his place which is all his property.


The view from the top.




We headed down and took a picture with the Keith and Kaye before shuttling out.


The shuttle took us to a few places instead of directly to the bus. The first stop was the Elephant Rocks.


Then we went to a place where there's a huge whale fossil which was awesome. Also a part of Narnia was filmed there.

Last we headed down to the Moeraki Boulders.



Hatching from a boulder.


The Country Life Weekend was lots of fun. this may sound weird but I had a great time interfacing with older people... I just like it. There's something about farm life that I really enjoy. I loved getting to do some work at the vineyard and ask questions of the owners... I'd love to work some vines at some point in my life.

Beautiful Days

I've spent the last ten days enjoying Spring as it unfolds here.

I met a few friends down at the Botanic Gardens in Christchurch nearly a week ago to scope out the scene.

Daffodils.


Nora appreciating the Flora.


Stretching party in the pavilion.


Our adventure to the Botanic Gardens inspired an adventure there on Sunday that consisted of a picnic and duck feeding.

There are lots of beautiful flowering trees in Christchurch.


Our meeting place, "the stump":


Lying out in the sun picnicking. I did some juggling, ate a grapefruit I brought, pinched some hummus and pita from Rachel before going off to tour the greenhouses in the gardens.


After our picnic we had a go at feeding the ducks. We had to try a few different spots before we found ducks that were keen to have a munch.

The group then dispersed only to meet up again not three hours later at The Bard on Avon for a pub quiz. A pub quiz is an event in which the members of each table at a pub form a team and attempt to best the other tables in a trivia competition to win a prize of some sort. Typically, the prizes are certificates worth $50 or $100 NZ. Though our team did not win I had a very good time and have since attended a different pub quiz at Canterbury University's The Foundry. The only picture I have found from our quizzing at The Bard:


Another thing I did recently was brew up some mead with Dale, Jasmine, Rachel, and Matt. I made a recipe pretty similar to the last one I made during the summer which was delicious except I added a bit more vanilla and some almond extract. The brew appears to be doing very well. If it tastes decent before the end of September I will submit a sample of it to be tasted and ranked in the Brew Club's end of the year competition.


Yum...

Tomorrow I leave for the Country Life Weekend with Dale and Carie. The Country Life Weekend is a two night farm-stay put together and paid for by IFSA-Butler. The Country Life Weekend is for people who thought it sounded cooler than the Adventure Weekend or had something else to do the weekend of the Adventure Weekend. Dale and I are the latter while Carie is the former. It should be a great time. I'm told I may do some of the following: learn how to shear sheep, play with sheep dogs, work a tractor, eat delicious home cooking. Expect a good blog post about it in three days when I'm back.

Last day on the Car Rental / Strep

We had the van for one more day and we decided to head North to a winery and a brewery. First, however, we went to the New World grocery in Halswell where many of New Zealands Microbrewews are sold. I took advantage of having the car and decided to stock up on these microbrews I've been hearing about.


I haven't had a chance to even start making a dent in them as I've been sick, and I'm actually still finishing a round of antibiotics perscribed for my strep throat. Here's a picture of the beers as they're presently stored in my room. The cost of all of them was $86 NZ which is $59.50 US. Meaning the beers average 4 US per which doesn't seem too bad considering one that they're microbrews, and two that I purchased them as singles. I intend to do reviews of the beers, possibly on this blog if anyone is interested.. otherwise maybe on my website.


We then went to "Brew Moon Brewery and Cafe" for a tasty bit of brunch and a beer sampler.


I was feeling quite ill (feverish) and didn't partake of any of the beers but I'm told they were good and I acquired the two most recommended by Dale to add to my stash of Microbrews to enjoy throughout the rest of the semester.


A shot of Dale and I at the Waipara Springs Winery (I was feeling very ill).

We left the winery before finishing our sampling because we wanted to make sure we had Rachel back in time to meet her father who was coming in to visit from Australia. He offered to take us all out to Dinner at "The Bog" for a pub quiz which I was quite excited for.

Unfortunately when I got home I took my temperature and found that I had a fever of 102.7 and a pretty sore throat. I didn't go out that night, and went right to bed. I spent one day trying to decide whether I perhaps had the flu, but then realised the obvious signs of strep throat and went to the doctor where I was given antibiotics without them even taking a culture.

It took me just two or three days to feel better, but I'm still working on finishing my antibiotics. Just one more day.

One more thing, I've decided to get my tonsils out when I get home. It is simply unacceptable for me to get throat infections as often as I do.

Break Adventures: day 6

The next morning greeted us with this lovely sunrise which we shared with our great bunk mates:


Dale and I set out just after 8AM to cross the saddle and find our friends.


Obligatory "riding the saddle" pose:


Here's that picture from the first "Break Adventures" post. This was the part where I grabbed the keys from PT and we took a timer shot with Dale's camera.


Woolshed Creek Hut where Matt, Nora, PT, and Rachel had stayed.


At the end of the tramp before we hopped in the van to go I said something about how horrible my hair must look (none of us had showered for a week), and Dale said that his had to be worse. I took these two pictures so that you can decide for yourself.


We then drove back to Christchurch for some much needed showers and a good warm meal provided by our mate Carie. This being the last day of my diet, Carie's dinner was my first non-paleo meal and it was amazing.

Break Adventures: day 5

We woke up early and packed so as to avoid getting nabbed for a camping fee or worse. We found we were right to do so as a ranger came through and checked what we were up to... We told him we were just getting ready to do a couple of day hikes and he accepted it.

Our first adventure was out to "Kea Point". It was listed as a 30 minute walk over to a spot looking out toward a glacier.

The weather was incredible. It was hailing and sleeting all morning so hard that I had to tighten down my hood to keep any from hitting my face in order to tramp without great discomfort. I became the dedicated camera man for this day because my camera is waterproof.

Friends at Kea Point:

Kea Point wasn't particularly exciting, but it was a good warm-up for the first bit of the Hooker Valley Trail. The wind picked up at times blowing packcovers off of packs and actually threatening to blow us over without some amount of bracing against it.

We came to this bridge about 30 minutes into the Hooker Valley Trail.


Crossing this bridge in the intense hail and sleet is probably one of the most epic things we did on the trip. I took a pretty poor video of us crossing it (though I quite wanted my hand to stabilise while crossing). Please excuse my profanity in this video.. I wasn't thinking about who would be seeing it at the time:



A picture of us carrying on after the bridge:


A shot of the second bridge.. Half of our party crossed it only to wave to us not to cross. They came back when the wind died down for a moment. They felt that this bridge crossing was far more dangerous and that we oughtn't cross it.
The approach to the bridge was actually stepping around on this rock face with the help of a railing:


We walked back to the shelter we had stayed in overnight and re-packed our bags so that everything would fit in the car. We went to the visitors center at Mt. Cook which was beautiful and asked about where we might go to have a decent day of tramping. We ended up calling the DOC for the Mt. Somers area and found out that they were having beautiful weather (when the weather is bad in the mountains Mt. Somers, like Christchurch, typically has good weather). We drove north to Mt. Somers and planned how we would tackle the tramp which was a straight shot with a hut about 1/3 of the way up from either end.

We decided to have the ladies drop us off at the end that looked to be a bit steeper (they were looking for an easier first day), and we sent them over to the other side to park the car. Our party (Dale and I) would stay at Pinnacles Hut on the East side of the tramp, and their Party (Matt, Nora, PT, Rachel) would stay at Woolshed Creek Hut on the West side of the tramp. Day two we would meet up near the mountain saddle between the two huts and exchange the keys for the van. Dale and I would then get down, and bring the van over to pick them up where they had dropped us off.

A shot of Dale and our gear just before starting the tramp to Pinnacles Hut. Notice the weather. Mt. Somers would be the only place on our tramping adventure that would provide decent weather.


The tramp was quite steep at places:


A shot of the sun on the creek at one of a few river crossings (stone hopping, not foot soaking).


The trail went underneath a waterfall. Excellent.


When we finally got up above most of the trees, Pinnacles Hut was in sight, and behind us we looked out towards Christchurch and the Port Hills far in the distance.


Dale and I were surprised to have company at the Hut as we hadn't had any the entire trip. The nature of our company was especially surprising. There was a party of five mothers in their 40s and 50s who were up there "training" for a sort of short triathalon and several rogaines (orienteering competitions) that they do. Three of the five women were teachers, and three of them were Brownie scout leaders with daughters. It was really fun to chat with them as I don't get to spend much time with older folks at university. These were some crazy mothers though.. They brought jaegermeister up with them and i took part on three rounds of shots with them. I wondered about whether the mothers I know back in the U.S. still took shots of hard alcohol sometimes or went tramping with their buddies at all...

Oh the best thing about these ladies was by far that they had gone out and harvested wood to keep the hut nice and toasty well into the night. We were able to fall asleep on top of our sleeping bags it was so warm!


And a night shot taken by Dale... pretty cool.