Christmas in what feels like July

It's a warm and sunny Christmas Day here in New Zealand, one of the longest days of the year.

   My last wwoof hosts were at the Mamaki Community, which is a small collectively owned piece of land with six houses/familys in Matapouri. Klaus and Vanessa (originally from Germany and the UK), my hosts, are the newest residents, moving from South America with their two children. Klaus shot a possum one night and fried it up for us for dinner.

   Matapouri is on a lovely beach, where I got to go on an ocean kayaking voyage, and did a little paddle surfing and snorkeling. Two of Mamaki's young female residents took us out to a rope swing in the woods, which we four wwoofers promptly proceeded dangerous undertakings on along with a vine looking likely to snap at any moment. I took one brave tarzan swing on the vine straight into a tree, injuring my foot in the process. Hopefully it will be healed before I start trying to hike up volcanoes. In the photo we are trying out our new homemade camping stoves made of aluminum cans.

   I spent a night in Whangarei between wwoofings and checked out a waterfall and a funky clock museum. I also went on a holiday shopping spree for myself and bought a camping pot, new boots (on clearance), imitation Crocs (half off), used sandals at the hospice shop, a sleeping bag, nylon shorts (half off), a wool sweatshirt (on clearance) and a spork. It's going to be interesting when I sell my car and try to cram all this stuff into my backpack.

   I'm now back in the Mangawhai area, on a 400+ acre farm. They've got cattle, sheep, chickens, fruit trees and veggie gardens. The parents are visiting their son in South Africa, so the other three brothers are running the place right now. Although they own a sustainable land development company with permaculture principles, the bros are beer swillin surfers not afraid to spray a little Roundup or eat at Burger King, where I got food poisoning. Even with my achey foot and sore gut, they had me out lawn mowing, weeding and pruning to earn my keep. I'm spending Christmas Eve and Day at the oldest brother's house, looking after his chickens while he's away at his girlfriend's place.

   I've got the next two weeks off (along with most everyone else in NZ apparently) before I do any more wwoofing. I'm finally going to start heading further south, and hopefully will check out some geothermal mud pools and volcanoes along the way.

My newest photos are a little over half way down this page, after the two gosling pics and starting with some horses in one and several of goats.