Coppermine Saddle
Kiateriteri Beach, its as nice as it looks
Ingrid had a race near Christchurch on Sat 15th March and Josh, Ingrid, Konstanze (housemate) and I were due to travel down on Thursday, however i had struck lucky and was offered a job the previous week and they wanted me to start on the Thursday. I decided to take the job and catch a flight down to Christchurch on Friday after work. if you book in advance you can normally get flights for about $60, but as it was only a few days before i flew i ended up paying $180!
View from the plane
The flight was only about 40 minutes so it was not long before i was at the campground we hat rented a hut in to stay. On the Saturday we headed towards Mount Hutt, where the Oceania MTB Championships Ingrid was competing in was being held. Ingrid and Josh dropped Konstanze and I off at the bottom of Mount Hutt and we were going to do a hike before heading to the race to meet Josh and Ingrid. We walked up Scott Saddle
Konstanze and I at Scotts Saddle, altitude 1140m
We continued up the road towards Mount Hutt Ski Field, but shortly had to turn back as Ingrid was finishing her race. We got to the race at about 3pm and Ingrid had finished so we went into Methven for a coffee before returning to the race village for Ingrid to step up on the podium for 5th place
Ingrid (far right (not politically)) on the podium
On the way back to the campground we stopped at Rakaia Gorge
Rakaika Gorge, the water was so blue i wanted to dive in.
we found this cool tree, a good place for a group photo. Josh was asleep in the van.
Not much else happened for the rest of the day, and we set of early on Sunday morning for the long drive home. We stopped of at Maruia Falls on the way
Maruia Falls - actually more impressive than this photo lets on
Monday 17th March was to be the start of my first full week of work since finishing work in Nottingham at the end of January, and i wasn't really looking forward to it. I was working in an apple packing warehouse, doing jobs where i was needed such as packing apples into cardboard boxes, stacking cardboard boxes full of apples on a pallet, making sure the packers had enough cardboard boxes to pack apples, making cardboard boxes to make sure the people who made sure the packers had enough boxes had enough boxes. Basically if it involved cardboard boxes and apples i did it.
Apples in cardboard boxes
Cardboard boxes yet to have apples packed inside
we packed all sorts of apples - braeburn, granny smith, pink lady, braeburn, pacific rose, mahana red, braeburn, even some pears (that was an exciting day). I can honestly say that the apples here (and in NZ generally) are the nicest i have ever had. We were allowed to take home a carrier bag of rejects for $2 which is why our fridge looks like this
To get to work I had to leave the house at about 6.50am and cycle 10km to Stoke to get a lift with Malcolm and Debora who insisted on getting to work at 7.45 and stand around for 15 minutes before stating work. I was grateful for the lift as it would have been a 70km round trip each day, so they saved me quite a bit of money on petrol and i cycled to their house most days. Malcolm is an incredibly tedious man, who insists on explaining everything in minute detail - especially his jokes. He started at least 3 conversations with some variation of 'i'm not racist but...' and then went off on a rant about the islanders coming over and taking their jobs. not sure if NZ has a political party like UKIP, but i reckon he would vote for them. Also on a few occasions he used the well known phrase 'its a catch 2 situation'. the first time he said it i presumed he said it wrong by mistake, but by the third time i was convinced this what he thought the saying. I managed to say it incorrectly to him twice, to see if would correct me but he didn't. His wife, however, was very nice.
The pay was OK, as the minimum wage here is quite high i was taking home about $500/week which works out at about 8 pounds/hour. The job was supposed to finish in the middle of June, but due to low crop yields and the owner coming across like he has no idea what is going on it finished last week (Fri 16th May)
Bonus Photos
View from Scotts Saddle - Ingrid was racing somewhere down there
Sunrise in Stoke
No comments:
Post a Comment