19.06.2011 – 29.08.2011 BAY OF PLENTY

We arrived in Te Puke in the evening so booked ourselves into the Corral Hostel as we were starting the kiwifruit orchard work the next day.

"Kiwi 360"

The hostel is very basic and doesn't have much to offer, but for $20 each (dorm) it was fine. It is located next to the famous “Kiwi360” theme park – as Te Puke is called “the kiwifruit capital of the world”. Kiwi360's kiwifruit-shaped viewing tower was rated The Tackiest Tourist Attraction of BOP by the Lonely Planet guide-book and we can't argue with that, although their little shop is quite nice and we bought some kiwifruit jam and kiwifruit wine and loved both :)

A lonely gold kiwifruit

Working on a kiwifruit orchard was definitely an interesting experience.

We were staying in the orchard house with some other backpackers that we were working with and with some rats. We were quite a mixture: there was Hoon from South Korea, Felipe from Chile, Mike from Sweden, Bonnie from China, Nicolas from France, Rob and I representing England & Poland and the rats – probably local folks, which we managed to get rid of eventually, but it took a few weeks of fighting.

It was interesting to get to know all of those backpackers and we also met some other people (some lovely and some weird ones) working on the orchard.

Some strings were harder to pull out than others

The work itself was fun at the beginning and quite hard and more and more boring for the rest of our kiwifruit adventure. We were working all day, practically everyday, from before sunrise till after sunset, in the cold (note it was winter time in NZ), and the rain. We were pulling strings out of the canopy, cutting branches off, fixing sprinklers, backsealing, cleaning orchard tools, driving tractors, quad bikes, trucks, forklifts and doing lots of other little jobs. We had some good times working there and some ridiculously sunny & hot winter days, so it wasn't always just wet and cold ;)

Fantail :)

Friendly fantails

Fantails often provided a welcome distraction during work - they were singing and following us throughout the day.

The Sun has risen = we're late to work

Our new favourite word: "smoko" - morning break time :)

Sunset doesn't mean home time...

We took a couple of weekends off and travelled to Auckland hunting for a suitable vehicle to buy and one day we found a nice van looking for new owners and we decided that this was The One, so we called him “Tofik”, we drove him back to the Bay of Plenty and spent almost all of our free time (not that we had much of it) working on it.

To find out more about how Tofik was born see the next post.

Before purchasing our van it was hard to get anywhere in the area. The closest supermarket and shops in Te Puke were 8 km away, we were 2 km of the main road and then you could try your luck at hitchhiking if you didn't want to walk (there was only one bus a day). Having a car helped us to move around. Our little trips in the area included:

Mount Maunganui with a lovely beach, where we climbed “The Mount” (232m) to see the beautiful views. About half an hour walk up was totally worth it!
 

Te Puke Waterfalls – not too far from town, when we eventually found the right track – it was quite a steep walk down in the bush, took about 20-30 minutes and the waterfalls were very nice :)
 

        
      

Rotorua – famous for its hot springs and mud pools, although we didn't have time for those attractions. We went there for an interview for a job in a hostel and we only managed to squeeze in a quick lunch by the huge Lake Rotorua. The town looks really nice and we hope to visit it again one day.
 

Maketu Beach – just 10 minutes drive from the orchard house. We tried to walk there one day but got caught out by a really heavy shower and hail and got soaked in 5 seconds, so we didn't make it to the beach that time. The second attempt (with Tofik) was more succesful and we could enjoy a little walk on this lovely beach.

Although the orchard job was meant to last for 6 weeks, we stayed there for 10 weeks, still working but on more casual basis and also getting Tofik ready for being our home for when we would eventually start travelling. In the mean-time we were hunting for other jobs.

This time we were more lucky with our searching and we both found job opportunities in our field. Both jobs in the Wellington area, we both had our phone interviews first and Rob after a few days was offered a position (he makes quite an impression, I tell you!), while I was invited for a face-to-face interview following my phone interview with the potential employer.

It was fantastic news and meant packing again, saying goodbye to the orchard house and to Hoon (our only housemate at that time, as most of the backpackers had left after 6 weeks of work) and travelling further south – to “Windy Welly”.