New Zealand!

Its almost 3 weeks now since we left home. It feels like so much longer for some reason. We are currently in Napier, a beautiful beach city at the bottom of the north island. We are making our way to Nelson where there should be plenty of work to keep out wallets full. Its amazing how much money a trip costs - more than a person ever anticipates. For example - even staying at hostels can be expensive. Tonite its costing us $100 for a single room just because there is a huge art deco festival going on and every hotel/hostel in the area is booked. Last monday when we stayed here, it was just $45!!! crazy eh?!

This past week has been interesting. We landed ourselves a job in an apple orchard on Tuesday, so off we went to do some pickin! Well...lets just say its the worst job ive ever had. Its hard and doesnt pay much of anything. Its the first pick of the season so the apples arent very good. We pick the apples into a bucket that is strapped onto the front of our bodies...which gets increasingly heavier as it gets full....and makes it hard to maneuver in and around the trees, plus we have to go up and down the ladder with this darn thing attached. OY! As my mom would say - its one of those "character builders"....and Darwin just laughs at me since ive never had to "rough" it before, lol. Our accomodations consist of a little camper trailer thingy for the 2 of us...and then a communal kitchen/bathroom in an other trailor thing...which is disgusting a dirty and i dont want to touch anything- I even wear my sandals in the shower! But, we are only there a week - enough to make a bit of money and save on the accomodation and food costs that we'd normally had.
The upside is that we get to eat as many apples as we want 🙂 yippee!
Our first day picking, darwin ate 10 apples and was so sick that night and next morning - poor guy, too much fiber!

Here we have arrived in Nelson, which is on the north tip of the South Island.

Shortly after arriving, we met the nicest woman one evening at a restaurant bar, who offer

ed for us to stay at her place unti we could find an appartment. We jumped on the offer, not exactly sure what kind of accomodation this would be... Hazel's house offered all kinds of wonderful things including an amazing kitchen, fruit trees, a hot tub, ocean views, and our own private en suite bathroom. We were so greatful!

Fresh persimmons on the trees outside our bedroom... Mmmm! One day Hazel and I picked these buckets of plums, nashis, and lemons - and then made really yummy juice!