A Tale of Two Mishaps
Greetings from Hanna Berry Farm!
We’ve started off the new year working on this boysenberry farm, but that’s a story for another time.
Over the holidays, we celebrated Christmas at a community luncheon with a New Zealand grandma and counted down for New Years at a cottage stargazing from a hot tub.
For picture perfect #vanlife updates, you can follow Ivy on Instagram. This newsletter, we’ll instead share some of the herp-derp behind-the-scenes.
A Christmas Story
On the last newsletter we introduced our new baby Red Rover. Since then he’s mostly been a smooth and comfortable ride. … except for one most inopportune time.
As we drove to our next destination on a rainy Christmas day, we rolled down the window of our home-on-wheels as the rain let up, when suddenly the pane fell into the door frame and could not be rolled back up.
Of course all the mechanics are closed on this fateful day, so Owen tried to make do with the tools at our disposal to pull the window back out, the only one fitting into the window slit being a spatula. This was to no avail, and the $2 spatula was no longer usable after this.
We quickly headed back to our previous night’s Airbnb and asked the host for some help. She didn’t know of any off-duty mechanics we could consult, but she did have actual tools for pulling the window out, and some tape, so…
This held up well enough to last us through Christmas.
The next morning, we headed to the first mechanic we called that was open. It happened to be a shop based out of a 60 some year old guy’s van. He performed some hacky door surgery, moving part of the rubber from the bottom of the slider to the top, which not only got it working again, but better than it did before!
Seeing Nature
We came to New Zealand for the grandiose nature, where there’s twice as many sheep as there are people. We expected viewing beautiful landscapes in privacy.
The first place we went to was Hot Water Beach, where you can dig a private hot springs for yourself on the beach due to the geothermal vein running through the sand. It ended up being large crowds of people bathing in lukewarm puddles that took Herculean efforts to dig.
Okay, maybe that’s just the case with touristy beaches. Hikes should be different, right? Here’s our first epic hike, Tongariro Alpine Crossing, aka a conveyor belt line of people up a foggy mountain.
Without sight, guided only by a vague memory of what the brochure photo looked like, we hiked down towards the supposed lakes with high hopes for that IG. Luckily, the fog did start to clear! Our excitement quickly faded as Ivy deemed these lakes puddles.
Okay, maybe that’s just the case for well known hikes. Our next one, we went for a lesser known overnight backpacking trek. Since it was Ivy’s first time backpacking in over a decade, we chose one labeled easy on the government website - Sunrise Hut Track (for its sunrise views).
Turned out easy by New Zealand standards is not, in fact, easy. The hike was 700m altitude gain of non-stop, steep uphill switchbacks. It took us 4 hours, while the estimated time of the hike was 2.5 hours.
And although we successfully avoided the crowds, we were met once again by our foe the fog, resulting in no sunrise at Sunrise Hut. We were also met with a screaming toddler one bunk over who kept the whole hut up in the middle of the night with his tantrums. Yes, a way-too-fit father casually wheeled up his three year old son in a stroller on a hike we nearly gave up on.
Our luck's not been the best, but it hasn't been all bad. New Zealand is indeed gorgeous from the glimpses we did manage to catch.
To leave you on a more positive note, here's a photo of the place we've been going for sunset after a day on the farm. Life is good.
For the next week or so we will still be staying at Hanna Berry Farm. Adventures WWOOFing to come.
Hoping that wherever you are, you had a great start to 2019!
Onwards,
Ivy & Owen