WINES & SPECIAL TIMES

Where to begin when the last few days have been so unique? Not to say that this whole trip would not have been unique or special but this time we really felt we got to be part of something really precious.

We arrived to the Karaka Point Vineyard in the Saturday evening 14th of June. We were immediately greeted by our lovely hosts Anne and Alex, who had prepared a cozy accommodation and wonderful dinner for us accompanied by their very own wines. Even though we had seen only a glimpse of their lovely property in the fleeting light of the evening we were immediately sure that in this place we would feel ourselves right at home. 

We started our last WWOOFing duties on the next morning and once again could not be but in awe for the surroundings we HAD to work in.

Our work was once again mostly raking, weeding and tidying the premises but in those surroundings time literally flies. Like in every place we had been in, it was totally different from the rest and as such so precious. We had to keep reminding ourselves not to fall in love with the place and the people as we would stay here less than a week. We failed miserably. However we felt somewhat comforted by the fact that we would not leave our hosts in trouble as two other WWOOFers joined us on Tuesday to help Anne with the pruning of the vines. We did not have that many days to get to know our French collegues but they seemed eager and experienced enough to be helpful when the pruning would start. In the mean time we got to contribute to the vineyard’s yearly cycle by labeling by hand total of 408 bottles of wine. We sort of hope the first box of 12 bottles would never end up in display as we were still quite unsure about all the pointers of the art of labeling. However after we got the hang of it we were quite happy to the results and to the even quality of our work.

But as always the time flew by so quickly and on Friday we were, for the last time, forced to leave our wonderful hosts and change our location from Karaka Point to the central Auckland. In Auckland we will spend our last few days enjoying the sun and the city life before we’ll have to leave this awesome country behind.

With love Miia & Lotta

INTERVIEWS AND EARTHQUAKES

As we arrived in Rotorua the weather forecast did not look that appealing for the next few dews. However we decided that we wouldn’t let the almost constant rain to dampen our spirits after all as the Finns say we are not made of sugar! We headed to a meeting at our next co-operating company the Canopy Tour’s where we met their lovely marketing manager Nicki who told us any particulars we might need to know for the upcoming interviews and on the next morning we were back there perky and ready to snatch answers from the first unsuspecting tourist that would walk in. And quite few of them did walk in and participated to the tour defying the weather.

We were happy to notice that the crew in the Canopy Tours reflected quite well the over all mood of the locals in Rotorua; very laid back and friendly. As we had quite a lot of time between our interviews we scanned the central city area rather precisely. We did some great finds for people back home (<3), inhaled tons of sulfur saturated air, ventured to a park full of thermal pools and learned which cafés had free wi-fi’s.

 

We also experienced something that neither of us had experienced before (or Lotta had but she was too small to remember anything of it); a simple small earthquake or actually a few. Not the kind of which rip the ground in half spilling out lava and destroys few cities while at it but the kind of small shook of a house which felt really strange to two Finnish gals who were sitting on a hostel room eating peanuts and watching Moomins. Miia considered panicking, Lotta continued stuffing peanuts to her face; “If I’m going to die I want to die with my stomach full”-kind of attitude. Both reached for the same conclusion after few, hardly noticeable, quakes followed the biggest one which reached almost the level three in the Richter scale; when it would be time to panic someone else would panic first and let us know! After pondering all scenarios involving volcanoes, buildings collapsing on top of each other and the road just splitting in half under our feet we decided to go bed and continue our travels the next day. 

Of course the weather cleared up when were leaving but as the bus to Papakura was leaving in the afternoon we decided to spend the morning strolling on the shore’s of lake Taupo taking in the last we could of this sympathetic city.

With Love Miia & Lotta

SUBURBIAN OASIS

The nine-hour bus journey to the city of Hamilton started out on the morning of the 4th of June. Miia who, as mentioned above, very easily has the tendency of getting motion sickness while travelling by bus was certainly not happy about the prospect of a scenic bus drive of nine hours. However she took it like a man and doped herself full of motion sickness medication before the bus left Wellington. As we drove through the scenic cities like Matamata and Taupo the only thing Miia seemed to feel was a slight drowsiness, which was a relief for the accompanying party. We arrived to the city of Hamilton in the evening and were glad to notice that once again we had succeeded in finding us a lovely host for our time in the city. We were welcomed to the lovely suburb home of Christina, Nina and Lulu with a hearty homemade dinner, soft beds and a hot shower. And after 9 hours in a bus -boy that felt awesome!

Come morning we found ourselves in the middle of a small oasis. The property didn’t look much at first but when we descended to the backyard we found a small chicken run with Henny the hen and few fruit trees surrounded by the walls of bamboo. In these peaceful surroundings we helped the lady of the house as much as we could until an exciding news came down the wire inviting us to continue our research in Rotorua. This only meant that we would have to leave our newly found host and her lovely small property much sooner than anticipated. However we were really happy that despite of all the set backs with our research we were finally blessed with some of good luck. We took as much as we could out of the few days in Hamilton although we didn’t visited the New Zealand’s biggest mall; an easy decision if you would’ve seen the balance on our bank accounts ;)

So once again, only after a week in the Christina’s garden oasis, we packed our bags on hopped on a bus, which took us to Rotorua; the city everybody had told us to visit but a place we had almost decided to skip. Well at least we would get to see some natural geo-thermal activity and perhaps a glimpse of the famous stratovolcano Mt. Ruapehu!

With Love Miia & Lotta

FEW DAYS IN THE CAPITOL

Our Sunday morning started relatively early at 5.00AM as we jumped on an SUV driven by our generous German/Polish intern friend who swept us away to Christchurch International Airport. We had a quick chance to fix our caffeine levels just before our morning flight delivered us to the capitol of this wonderful country. As we arrived in Wellington just before 8.00AM the only thing in our mind was of course breakfast.

After requiring some sustenance we decided to ditch our bags to our hostel where we would stay for these few days and go about the city, which was only waking up for a new day. We decided that our simple plan for this small city-get-away would be to relax, to shop and to get to know the city so famous from its secondhand stores and variety of cafés. As we wondered around the quiet city streets it was invigorating to notice that both of us actually enjoyed Wellington so much more than Auckland, especially after the few weeks in "the country".

As Wellington woke-up for the new day and we with her, we noticed that this “big city” really had a homey “small city” feel to it. Cafés lurked practically everywhere, not that it would bother us in any way, and also outlets and secondhand shops were numerous. From few of them our fearless wonderers did some great finds although most of them were either too big or to fragile to stuff in the backpacks to be brought home. However during these roamings we also stumbled upon a lovely Sunday market held at the waterfront near our hostel which made us think home and the lovely markets on Laukontori.

Walking at the sunny waterfront gave us an idea. Lotta had been aching for seafood and Miia had never tried eating crab so come to evening we took our course towards the Crab Shack located in the Wellington waterfront. The meal, which consisted of total 1kg of crab meat, 0,5l of white wine, two small loaves of bread and two marvelous pieces of brain-meltingly delicious mud cake with ice cream, was a huge success and did not leave us hungry.

During the next few days we decided that this was definitely a city worth checking out so we hiked up yet another hill to Mt Victoria’s lookout to see the sunrise, visited the Te Papa- museum to get different perspective to the nature, history and culture of New Zealand and even went to the movies to satisfy our lust for much more contemporary art forms. We loved every second of this cozy city and were a bit sad to leave it behind so quickly. But new WWOOFing challenges awaited us up in Hamilton and the first of them was to endure a nine hour bus drive up there. No biggy for the travel-sized extreme hobbit Lotta but how will the long-limbed and lean though easily motion sick Miia survive the trip? Stay tuned…

With Love Miia & Lotta

MURPHY'S LAW

After living with the Murphy’s for few days we were happy to notice that this time our WWOOFing work would not consist solely on “girly” stuff. We were actually allowed and required to do some very small scale cow herding, heavy lifting and wood splitting.

One of Miia’s proudest moments was when we finished a new henhouse for the few chickens of the family. The other heart-warming though slightly exciting thing for our adorable “city Miia” was to actually go and collect eggs for our lunch from the current hen house.

http://youtu.be/Hz7ps8Nrr6M

However, after these few exciting escapades Miia and myself got used to this comfy “country” life. Especially to the lovely, creamy milk in your afternoon coffee, in your morning muesli, in our host's self-made yoghurt or just in a glass with our lunch. The animals of the family followed our work on the paddocks and the garden relentlessly and Lotta could not but help to take few pictures of the creatures that by just spending their casual, animal lives made our days so much lovelier. Even the jobs done around the premises felt homey and after cleaning already clean toilets in Queenstown, all the work we did felt a bit more meaningful.

 

We did get a glimpse of Christchurch while we still had the car during our first week at the Murphy’s and the experience was both revealing and slightly depressing. As few of our friends probably noted from our social media posts (Facebook, Instagram and what not) neither of us had fully understood the gravity of the earthquake of 2011 which destroyed 2/3 of the city. We decided to take part to this 50minute tour around the red zone by Hasselfree tours to educate ourselves. The tour opened our eyes to the sheer magnitude of the consequences and made us realize that even though the quake claimed only 185 lives it will affect to the city’s population, infrastructure and economics for decades to come.

After the windy day in town we were happy drive home to our cozy little hut. We had noticed that the nights were getting colder and sure enough after few mornings of warm sunshine there was a slight frost on the lawn. As weird as it might sound it actually made us feel more at home.

But like all good things our time under the Murphy’s law came to end as we headed towards the capitol where we would stay for few days before travelling up to Hamilton and our next “home”.


With Love Miia & Lotta 

DETOUR

Everybody who has ever driven anywhere they haven’t driven before knows the certain sensation of insecureness that may overwhelm the driver. To avoid this unpleasant emotion we decided that Miia, who simply cannot trust any driver except herself would do the driving while Lotta who knows how to read a local road map (at least most of the time) would do directing of the driver. Just in case, while we were still in the Franz Josef’s, Miia decided to check the route from the internet and write the directions to our next host in Rangiora to a city we had no map of. And so came the rainy Sunday morning when we started our trusty sidekick and headed towards Rangiora through the misty mountains. 

The weather did not this time favor our trip but it was with a relief we noted that the closer we got to Christchurch the better the weather seem to get. However, our fearless adventurers had miscalculated the amount of diminishing daylight and found themselves in Rangiora just before dusk. As I already mentioned we did not have any map of the city but my astute trust to our fearless driver’s direction I was sure we would get to our next accommodation before dark. And we probably would have without a slight detour we took as my fearless driver started questioning her own mind, sense of direction, google maps and her own HANDWRITTEN directions. The result was somewhat…interesting…

http://youtu.be/d5E8M-Or1Q8

Nevertheless this early evening excitement ended up well as we found the correct  route to Loburn simply by following  Miia’s written instructions. As we arrived to our next host, the Murphy’s, we were welcomed by whole party of people. Our becoming neighbors had decided to come and help Dan, our host, whose wife had left him and their two children for a week to go cooking course in Vietnam to prepare an astounding Sunday barbeque. Even though the house was teeming with children under the age of 13 (very untypical environment for us both) the evening felt very welcoming and for us travellers nice and homey.

  

We learned that Dan and Anne are both owners and at the managing level in the company called Hiking NewZealand, they have two wonderful children Liam and Eva and a German intern also called Eva living with them for few months. They have chicken, five horses, two cows and a dog called Fern. This lovely family welcomed us with open arms to live in a small hut at the edge of their premises, equipped with small fireplace and to help them to prepare their home for the winter to come. 

  

With Love Miia & Lotta

ROADTRIP SPECIAL

Coming soon...maybe...

GOODBYE WITH A VIEW

After three weeks in lovely Queenstown it came time to say goodbye to this marvelous town; bittersweet moment, but we were eager to get our trusted sidekick on the road and test our roadtripping-skills during a six-hour-drive up the scenic west coast of NZ. In order to make our last day count, we geared up and headed towards Bob’s Peak. Rising 1,748 m (that is 5,735 ft for you metrically challenged folk) above sea level and 450 meters above Queenstown and lake Wakatipu, it was –literally, the best place to get one last glimpse of the majestic town. 

The view on top was even more breathtaking that either of us could have imagined, and well worth the 1-hour hike along Tiki Trail (which by the way ended up being a harsh reminder of the lack of our aerobic stamina. Check out the video below for proof:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqQ16TMWFXk&feature=youtu.be

Extreme Hobbit

With Love Miia & Lotta 

FEW DAYS IN THE SUN

As we left behind the accommodation at Slope Hill we headed to our next destination and host at the Punatapu Lodge. Miia lost her heart to the place just driving up the lane and I have to admit than I also got a few goosebumps. 

   
The place is lovely and reminds us of an old Tuscan villa. Even though the place is closing up for the winter it’s not hard to imagine yourself having a cup of tea at the courtyard in lovely summer breeze. 

We ARE imagining it. We imagine it every morning as we slump to the summer kitchen where there is no kind heating at all. But what the place lacks in the heating it takes back in the warmth and hospitality of the owner and the beautiful autumn colors surrounding the beautiful property. 

Once again our supervisor is small and furry and cute. She’s called Polly and she guards us against cars, birds and especially leaves we are meant to rake. 

And rake we do or now did. So much that one day Miia came up with a catchy tune: “Rake rake rake, Rake rake rake, Rake those leaves up…”.

Unfortunately our short time in the sunny and cozy Punatapu Lodge came to and end rather quickly. Come to Thursday we packed our trusty sidekick Nisse, said goodbye to our wonderful host Sue (and Polly) and Queenstown and started our adventure towards Franz-Josef’s Glacier. 

With Love Miia & Lotta 

STILL SWINGING

Because our mother’s day would not have been possible without certain people we wanted to create this post to salute all of them and to show you, our dear readers that a person can truly beat their fears in this case it was Miia and her fear of hights. From this achievement we both want to thank of course our mums (<3) but also the crew at Shotover Canyon Swing; Cam-our fearless driver, leader and instructor, Doug- the jump dude, who did amazing job of making us relax, laugh and with Cam fall, the French dude whose name we have forgotten but who loved our hugs and of course lovely Bridget who helped us booking this awesome jump and donated all the footage seen in these swinging posts. You were AWESOME! 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zw3aRDE9upU 

With Love Miia & Lotta

SOMETHING CRAZY AND HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY!

You know the feeling you get when you invent a perfect idea for a present? Good! We don’t, not when it concerns a gift for a mom on mother’s day and especially when you are half-a-world away. Surprisingly we invented something better; an experience our moms would never get anywhere else. They say picture is worth a thousand words, so therefore a video is worth a thousand pictures... So here’s to our dear moms; THANK YOU for raising us to be brave (and sometimes downright crazy) and letting us try out our own wings <3

Video: Mother's Day Special 
 

With Love Miia & Lotta

PROGRESS

 

After a long radio silence post of today concerns mostly the progress we have made in these past few weeks we have stayed in Queenstown. Don’t get me wrong we still wake up every morning opening the thick curtains in our room just to gaze the incredible scenery like two drugged lamas gazing a bale and yes we still amaze the sunrises, the sheep, driving on the left side of the road, the smell of the air and the endless amount of leaves falling from the trees.

However, we still have made some progress in some areas of our life. Firstly, even though everything is still awesome we miss people back home; our family, friends and even dogs and cats. This has caused Lotta, a total anti-smart-phone-person to remove certain apps from her phone just to be able to acquire WhatsApp and eat a whole hamburger size of her head. Miia, on the other hand, a total anti-swim-person, jumped to a freezing cold river, floated through few small rapids’ and actually enjoyed it. So yes, this place truly makes people do crazy things :P

Secondly, we have almost finished the first part of our data collecting process related to our thesis. And so far it hasn’t felt like work at all. Ok so we’ve had to wake up at six o’clock almost every morning, drive to town, search a parking lot from a busy city center and after waiting for few hours drive out from the city to get about 50 seconds of interviews. But then again what could be more perfect place to do it? The people of the first company, Queenstown Rafting, have been so obliging and helpful not to mention their great sense of humor. And like the icing on the cake they offered us a rafting trip for free! So on Saturday we jumped to a raft filled with teenage boys and an awesome maori guide and cruise down the Shotover River. And it was definitely a river worth of experiencing <3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvLkY_qLF_Y

The third measurement of our progress is both positive and negative at the same time. The time in our current accommodation at the lovely milieu of Slope Hill is coming to an end on Saturday. However it’s also exiting as we are going to transfer ourselves to the other side of the city, into a whole new family for a one more week before leaving this dreamy city. There are just some things you have to do before you are ready (if you’re ever going to be ready) to leave Queenstown… 

With Love Miia & Lotta

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

As we laid down our battle plans for a trip to our certain friends and relatives the reactions were more or less skeptical. The promised accommodation is going to be some barn that the host’s ancestors build in the late seventeen-hundreds or has probably some mold issues and has one-layered-glass used in windows which come to winter ends up freezing the whole house. On top of that if someone comes to your house to work and live for few weeks what kind of work do you ask them to do? Labor of course! All the shitty stuff you were supposed to do yourself last year, month or decade but were too tired, too busy or too drunk to do it yourself. That is what we were prepared to do and what we are doing, right? Well not exactly…

This is our…well we are not sure what to call this but for three weeks it’s our home. It’s huge in size plus we have ourselves our own bedroom, bathroom, toilet and living room in distinct ”wing” of the building. It’s really hard to describe what everything looks like so we decided to summarize it as modern, peaceful and elegant and post a video that summarizes everything up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7GY_sROP5w 

This is our supervisor Carla. She’s bit of a bitch. Literally. She’s a one-year-old jack russels and wire fox terrier who loves everybody, likes scratches and gets off by chasing bunnies.

And this is our office. And backyard. And front yard. All spiced up with bright autumn colors <3

And what about the work…? It’s not THAT bad come to think of it. Some people do it on their spare time, are actually aching for it, especially in the springtime in Finland and some does not understand how someone could ever care about something like that. And this is what we do… 

  

Ok so we are living with somebody else’s house. In this case in a gorgeous house of lovely British lady, her cute puppy and muscular, though minor, demigod of a son. And we have to work to earn our keep. Yeah if you call picking weeds, mulching and picking berries in a sunny garden surrounded by famous mountain ranges a work. So as we reviewed our situation with a glass of local Pinot Noir we decided that our life in Queenstown was not THAT bad. Even though we still lack a working Wi-Fi, next accommodation site near Christchurch, an actual company who hasn’t closed for the winter season and the actual text for the Bachelor’s Thesis we are feeling pretty awesome.

With Love Miia & Lotta