Kiwi, Kiwi, Kiwi, Kiwi…

Kiwi, kiwi, kiwi, kiwi, kiwi, kiwi….I reckon that’s what I’ll be dreaming about for quite some time! Lol! I arrived in a little town called Cambridge (strange that! I’ve never been to the Cambridge in England! The irony!) on Sunday afternoon after a very long ride on the bus. All in all it took about 9hrs before my host- for the next few days - picked me up. I have to say that when I wasn’t sleeping, the views were fantastic! The countryside here is so diverse! First when you leave Wellington (city on the south of the North Island) you go through a few rolling green hills until you reach the west coast and see the Tasman sea with really big waves because of the high winds they get in this part of the country! Then you go along the sea for a long time until you go inland and you just see hills and forests for ages (oh, and don’t forget the thousands of sheep you see too!). After a couple of hours you get to the middle of the island and just before you get to the largest lake in the North Island, you enter a desert! Yep! That’s right, a desert! It’s quite cool really! I mean, it’s semi arid and very dusty and there are a couple of very high peaked mountains (almost 3000m!) with snow on them! The sight is amazing! Then you enter a whole lot of forests before seeing the lake, which looks more like a fresh-water sea! Lol! The lake is about 50kms across at the widest part! After the lake you just get several farms and rolling hills again! I just couldn’t stop admiring the countryside!

The hosts I’m staying with have a small organic kiwi orchard of their own and then on top of that they are contractors for other orchards. This is the time of year where you basically go out to the orchard and “fruit thin” or “gurdle”. Basically I did a whole lot of fruit thinning which was basically just picking out the bad fruit from the vines so the plant didn’t have to waste it’s energy on that fruit anymore. Gurdling is when you kind of remove a small bit of the bark from a shoot that has fruit on it…. apparently this stimulates the flow of carbohydrates to the fruit. Yesterday and the day before I help the guys buy driving the tractor! It was so much fun! So different than a car! I mean for one: the accelerator was a lever by the steering wheel! Lol!

One thing is for sure, I will never look at a kiwi the same way again! So much hard work! Lol!

Cambridge is a small town here but is famous for two things. One: the lake here is used for rowing training by internationally renowned teams from around the world! They are going to host the world championships here next year I think! And two of the best rowers in the world, live here. Two: They breed racing horses here and apparently several studs that have won the big races were born and raised here! Exciting! The weather here has been exceptional and I’ve had to be extra careful not to get burnt! It’s been above 30 degrees everyday except for today when it finally rained and was a nice 24 degrees!

Tomorrow I’m off to Auckland to meet up with Hannah (a friend of mine from university with whom I’ll be traveling around NZ with for the next 3 and a half months). Going with the bus again though thankfully the ride will only be 3 hours!

Thanks to everyone for your comments and emails! IT's great to hear from you all and I will try and answer you all....one by one...

Just a little something for thought:
The Maori people pronounce the “Wh” as an “f”. Therefore, for example, Whangarei (a place very north on the north island) is pronounced as “fung-ga-rye”. So that makes this other place called Whakapapa…..what??? You figure it out…. I couldn’t stop laughing! If I can get there I’m going there just because of the place having such a bizarre name!