Goodbye

This is probably my last blog post. R and L are back home in Estonia, Maarja is continuing her adventure in Wanaka and I moved to Nelson. We have all gone to our own separate adventures.  We had an awesome nine months travelling throughout New Zealand together. We have had ups and downs, but it has definitely been an adventure of a life time. I am so lucky that I have had the opportunity to travel with these girls. I am also very happy that I get to stay in this beautiful country for a little bit longer and hopefully more than just a little bit.

I want to thank all our supporters and people, who have been following/reading this blog. I think this is my goodbye, but never say never. New Zealand is full of surprises and maybe some day I will write about my adventures again. 2×2 in aotearoa was created for Est 4 adventures. If I do start blogging about my own adventures, I will probably create a new blog. Only time will tell…

Meanwhile, I hope you enjoy some of the photos taken during those 9 months. We have thousands of photos, so I have selected a few and made a video. Thank you girls for an awesome adventure and I wish you good luck in all your new endeavors. When I see you again 😉   ❤ ❤

hard work

I haven’t posted anything for awhile again, but here are some photos from our hard work 😀

I’m the Potato Queen because….

..I get to be on the top of the potatoes and play with the remote

while R does this and..

L is chilling

Packing Kohlrabi

Long time no see

We have settled in our huts near Ashburton while grading onions. I have never in my life seen so many onions that I see in a day. I haven’t felt like posting a blog because I have been enjoying hanging out with people and working a lot. Also, the wifi here has been very unreliable, but seems like it is fixed now and here comes a new post.

Our Hut ❤

Saloon with the huts

Kräun 🙂

Ashburton

Ashburton

Ashburton

Ashburton

Last weekend, I went to Christchurch to hang out with Jason and Liz. On Saturday, we drove to Akaroa, which is a beautiful small town in Banks Peninsula. The views there are stunning. We walked around and had some fish and chips for lunch. Since Liz was with us, we tried to find some activities for her too. I discovered that New Zealand is not very dog friendly. It was very hard to find accommodation where they allow dogs. It was almost as hard to find places where you can walk the dog. Unbelievable! I think NZ might have these strict rules because lots of dogs kill kiwis and other wild animals, but still it is sad when you cannot walk your own dog in the park. There was one cool park in Akaroa and one track (out of 10 tracks) that we could do. We decided to walk in the park. Besides visiting Akaroa, we also went to New Brighton Pier, rode on the ChCh tram and walked in the city. It was a lovely relaxing weekend and here are some of the photos.

Akaroa

Liz enjoying the park

Banks Peninsula

New Brighton Pier

Hagley Park ChCh

This Saturday, me and the girls went to Timaru. We have been there before, but only for shopping. This time we went shopping and did some sightseeing as well. There is a really beautiful bay called Caroline Bay and right by it there is a park with rose garden, sculptures and fountains.

Favorite Place to eat

Good veggies

Good veggies and fruits

We work out 😀

Treasure on the beach

Today, we drove to Mount Hutt and asked the German couple Lena and David to come with us. First, we stopped in Methven’s isite. One of the great systems in New Zealand is definitely the iSite system (information kiosks, centers etc). iSites are in almost every little town and settlement. Usually, there is also a souvenir store. We always get lots of brochures and information from the iSites. Any way, the lady there told us that we cannot get up to Mt. Hutt and told us to go to Lake Heron and Lake Clearwater. which we did. It has been nice knowing Lena and David. Too sad they are leaving soon. We had great time today on the road and it was amazingly peaceful at the Lake Heron.

Lake Maori

Autumn in NZ

Lena and David

Lake Clearwater

Wonderful Southern Lights

Finally, we saw the Southern lights. It wasn´t strong enough to see the colors, but you could clearly see the Southern Lights moving. We got almost everyone out to see them. Of course, R and L were out there taking heaps of photos and they got some great photos.

Also, this our new accommodation:

Easter roadtrip continued…

What a great view we had as soon as we opened our eyes right by the mountains.

During Easter in Estonia, we have egg fights. One person tries to hit the other person´s boiled egg and whose egg survives is the winner. We had some boiled eggs, so decided to keep up the good old Estonian tradition.

I wonder who won 😀 of course I did…I beat 3 eggs and survived all 3 rounds 🙂

Since we have been sleeping in our van and there haven´t been any showers at the campgrounds, the most important thing was to take a shower right away. Fortunately, there are public showers in the Mt. Cook village. When we got there, we found out that the showers only take 2 NZD coins and we had only TWO coins (there was 3 of us and we all needed a shower)! So L and I shared a shower, which was kind of funny because 2 NZD gives you exactly 5 minutes of hot water. That meant that each one of us got exactly two and half minutes of hot heavenly wonderland. I take quick showers, but that was QUICK on a whole other level : ) After the shower, we dried our hair with the hand drier. Life cannot get better than that…

We had nice little breakfast at the Hermitage hotel with this view:

Those showers and some hot chocolate gave us some new energy for the upcoming day of walking. We decided to do the Hooker Valley and Kia Point walk and we didn´t have to be disappointed. The Hooker Valley walk has made Mt. Cook my favorite places on the South Island (on the North Island it is Tongariro Crossing – read here).  The walk is about 3 hours long and it ends with the Hooker glacier, lake and really close look to the Mt. Cook/Aoraki. It was a very beautiful day.

Kia Point walk took another hour. Luckily, I have two great photographers with me to capture the beauty of it all!

Mt. Cook Village

For the night, we drove to Lake Ohau campground to sleep another night in the van.

* * *

On Monday, the plan was to eventually end up in our new farm near Ashburton and stop at places that seemed interesting on the way. We spent most of our day driving.

First one was Clay Cliffs near Omarama.

Another sign that looked interesting to see was Benmore Dam. Autumn has finally arrived to New Zealand and the trees are yellow/green. They were especially beautiful by the dam.

We spent couple hours in Timaru: had lunch and shopped. As we left Timaru, all of a sudden we got pulled over by police. Everyone’s heart started pounding. The police checked our license plates. He got out of his car, came over to us and said: ‘I have to go somewhere else, you are all good.’ What a relief !!! : )

We arrived to the new farm near Ashburton around 5 pm. We have our own little house (hut) that fits exactly 3 beds and has space for backpacks. There is a nice common area with kitchen, pool table and tv. I am not gonna talk about the wifi situation, because it is non existent (almost).

Easter Roadtrip

Friday:

It was time to move on again. We spent a month in Sheffield. On Friday, we cleaned up our living quarters, packed our van and off we went to new adventures on the South Island of New Zealand. We didn’t really make a plan about where to stay or where to go. We knew that we will head towards Lake Tekapo and Mt. Cook, but other than that we didn’t have any plans. It is a freeing feeling. We decided to stop wherever we wanted to and follow the signs on the roads. First place we visited was Rakaia Gorge. There was a walkway, but we didn’t really know where to go, so just walked around and enjoyed the view on a very old bridge. It wasn’t my day: first I broke my camera (I can still take photos, but the display doesn´t work), then I lost my headband and when I took another one out from my backpack it was broken (thus, I had a bad hair day as well).

Another stop before Lake Tekapo was Sharplin Falls. It said in the beginning that the walkway to the falls is closed, but we tried to attempt the 45 min walk anyway. About 20 min in, there was another sign that said it was closed due to rock fall. Not only that, they had pulled the yellow danger tape all around the entrance. Did that stop us? Nope….we hesitated, but still went ahead with it. We got to walk another 15 minutes before another yellow danger tape. The path continued right by a cliff, so we stopped and walked back. We were little sad, because we could hear the waterfall, but safety before danger and getting knocked down by a huge rock wasn´t something that we wanted to do.

We arrived to Lake Tekapo around 4-5pm. I fell in love with this little town immediately. It was a small town and I would probably get bored quickly if I lived there, but it would be nice to retire there. What more can you ask if you have mountains, lakes and one of the most clearest and darkest night skies in the world. We looked around in the town, visited some stores, walked by the lake, ate dinner and visited the Good Shepard Church.

Lake McGregor campground was this time the place where we spent the night in our van J It was a long night in the van – warm, but very uncomfortable. I don´t think I will ever really be a true backpacker. Lol.

Saturday

In the morning, we walked around Lake Tekapo town again and took some last photos.

Then we went for the Peninsula walk. The walk right by the Lake Tekapo and very close to Lake McGregor. It took us about 2 hours since we took lots of photos and went a little off path. The weather was nice, but the wind from Antarctica was almost blowing us off the peninsula. We saw lots and lots of rabbits during the walk. They were flying out of their little rabbit holes like torpedoes with dust clouds behind them.

After the walk, we had lunch in the Mt. John Observatory café. It had a 360 degree view. We could see the Southern Alps with Mt. Cook and Lake Tekapo with the town. The food was delicious and much needed after the walk. Apparently, the sky at night is the clearest and best in this area (Lake Tekapo, Mt. Cook, Twizel etc). Hopefully, we get to see the Southern lights on South Island before the girls go back to Estonia.

On our way to Mt. Cook, there was this beautiful turquoise lake called Lake Pukaki. It was such a bright blue due to the fact that it was created from the glacier water and I am pretty sure the melting glaciers still run into that lake. Before going to Mt. Cook Village, we stopped at the Tasman glacier, which is the largest glacier in New Zealand. It took us about 30 minutes to get up the hill. We were a little disappointed because glacier was greyish-black and the lake was very murky as well. Not what we expected. The view was still spectacular and totally worth seeing.

Since we had taken a lot of photos, L and R had to charge their cameras and we looked for placed in Mt. Cook village. This village pretty much consists of all kinds of accommodations and cafes, couple houses as well (mostly accommodations though). We tried to be like real backpackers and went to some bar&grill to use their electricity. Of course, we bought something too, but one of the guys came and told us that we have to pay for it 😀 Eventually, he was like ohh its okay, you can use it because he realized we had bought something.

We spent the night at Whitehorse Hill campground in the van again. At first when we got to the campground, we realized none of us had cash with us. Lots of campgrounds in New Zealand work on honor system. They have a box where you need to put the money. If you don’t, then you have to hope that you won’t get caught. There weren’t that many other options were to stay and we started getting a little worried. Due to the holidays, places to take money out were closed and the next closest campground was 20 km away. All of a sudden L asked to check all our pockets and I realized that we have cash in our food sharing envelope (every week each one of us puts money in an envelope so we can cook food for us). We were saved!!! : )

Castle Hill

Couple weeks ago we explored our ‘neighborhood’ again. We went to the Cave Stream and Castle Hill Rocks, which are both about 30 minutes drive from our current home. Our plan was to go through the over 300 m cave, but when we got there it was way too cold and deep for us. The water was waist deep, but that didn’t stop people going there. We checked out the beginning and end of the cave. After our walk we had lunch and took a nap on a hill right by the cave stream. It was a beautiful day as well.

beginning

end

picnic/nap

Then we headed to the Castle Hill Rocks, which are these huge limestone formations.

Also, we are moving again this Friday!!! We have spent a month in Sheffield and it has been fun. We have had great co workers and potato grading has been easy. We are heading to Ashburton to do similar work, but with onions and carrots. Before that we are heading for a little road trip. It should be epic 🙂

A little walk on Sunday

It´s Sunday – pancake day 🙂 My mom used to make pancakes on Sundays often when we were little. There is just something about Sunday that says – p.a.n.c.a.k.e.s. When I say pancakes, I mean Estonian ülepanni pannkoogid ( also called crepes in some parts of the world). Thus, we made some pancakes and ate lots of them with blackcurrant jam. Soon we realized not a really good idea when going on a hike up to 1700 m almost right after eating them 😛 Oh well, at least we burned them all while conquering Foggy Peak (1741m).

There is not much to say about this peak. It is basically in our backyard (20 km from us, but we can kinda see it from Sheffield).  Some of the views to the peak from Sheffield:

There were no signs on the road that said Foggy Peak. There wasn´t even a marked parking lot. Our new boss told us about it and we just went for it. When we got to the parking lot, there were some cars parked already. There wasn´t a track up there, so we just walked to the top. Well, we walked to the top to discover that we weren´t actually on the top and that there was another top behind the top 🙂 This has happened a lot to us and we were still naively believing that the top that we saw in the parking lot was the Foggy Peak 😀 It says on the government site that it should take about 2 hrs to get up there. It took us 3 hrs because we met four nice people from Czech Republic, who had spent the night in a tent up on the Foggy Peak (they saw the fog, sunset and sunrise as well). Also, we had lunch on our way up. All together, we spent 6 hrs on the peak taking photos, writing our names on rocks, staring at the amazing scenery, laughing, jumping, and discussing our future plans. R really wanted to get a photo of her on a mountain with clouds below her. As we were heading down, we saw a tiny cloud coming towards the peak and almost making R dreams come true. We run up a little and waited….waited…waited some more and decided that today wasn´t the day she gets to take that photo 😦 Till the next time. This was our 6th peak/hill/mountain conquered. So proud of us!

Fake top…there is 3 more tops behind it 🙂

4 Czech friends

Castle Hill Peak

Lunch

Photo session

Of course there has to be a jumping photo

Glider that was flying super slow

Producing potatoes for Fiji

We are getting lots of great experiences in New Zealand on working holiday. We all grew up in the country side and wanted to work in different farms ever since we stepped into kiwiland. So far we have planted kumaras in Dargaville, done various vineyard tasks in Hawke´s Bay, and now we are grading / sorting potatoes in Sheffield. All of the potatoes are exported to Fiji. How cool is that!!! Last year they shipped 400 tons of potatoes to Fiji. We are going to see lots of potatoes for the next month 😀 The farm that we work for has been in this family for 140 years and they have heaps of land as well.

Almost every Estonian person, who grew up in the country, has at least once in their life had to plant-pick-sort potatoes. We kinda knew what we were getting into, but not really…however, so far I like the work. It is definitely better than vineyard work and it might be even better than kumara planting. Nothing beats the living situation though. It is awesome. We get to walk to work every day and our quarters are very luxurious compared to the shed and backpackers 🙂

This is the machine we work on

Mini Bagger

First, the person on the forklift lifts the potatoes to this blue container

Then the potatoes roll on the conveyor belt. Small potatoes fall through the holes and the others are sorted by one of us.

Two of us are the baggers. This is very important job and we are always told to go faster. Every day we break new records (we have worked there 3 days 🙂 ) As baggers we have to make sure that the scale is all top notch and everything is running smoothly. Also, we add some special powder into every bag.

We pass the bag to the sewer and labeller

Finally, another person piles all those 20 kg bags onto a pallet about 2.5 m high. Someone else, then uses the forklift to put the pallets into a container and off it goes to feeding people in Fiji.

One of the perks of being a bagger is that you get to wear these thingies 😛

In conclusion, all is well and life is good (even though I am sick, so send me lots of love and positive thoughts). One day I will write a post about NZ work culture. It is definitely something to write about!

Christchurch aka ChCh

We’ve been in Sheffield since last Wednesday, work stars on Tuesday and to kill some time, we spent two days in Christchurch, which is about 45 minutes drive from here and the largest city in South Island. It was raining most of the day on Friday, so we didn’t get to walk in the city. Instead, we spent some time in the mall, drove to New Brighton Pier and took a ride on the gondola to see the 360 degree view. In the evening we did some grocery shopping for the whole week.

We decided to drive back on Saturday because the weather was supposed to be better. Unfortunately, it rained again, but we manage to spend most of the day there. In the morning, we went to Willowbank Wildlife Park. It was little bit similar to the Kaikoura Farm Park, but Willowbank had more animals, and you couldn’t go through the fences to touch animals. The best part of it was seeing real kiwi birds. They are very hard to see in the wild, so it was something to see for sure. After another animal therapy, we headed to Christchurch center. Our goal was to see the container mall, which we did, and the damages the earthquake caused in 2011. There was a lot of building going on, roads blocked off and most empty house blocks were fenced off, so didn’t see much ruins. The city has been busy building up everything again. The girls went to the cathedral as well, which was badly damaged. I love ChCh logo – Re:Start and admire people’s willingness to rebuild while knowing it could happen again. Human beings are after all very fascinating. Other than that ChCh seems like a really big city and there is definitely more to explore. I personally want to walk in Hagley Park next time we go to ChCh. After all it is our nearest grocery store 🙂

I found a friend

Kiwi

Container mall

ChCh Cathedral