Guy Fawkes Day

Only the English would celebrate a failed bombing attempt, but I am glad they do it. They sit on the beach and set off fire works. They also build huge bonfires and throw replicas of Guy Fawkes onto the fires. Pretty awesome.

Back to work

Life has returned to normal back at the Blueberry farm. We are still laying sprinklers and building irrigation for a farm. Our boss, Hanzs, is a very angry dutch man who tends to talk to himself a lot. He is also very bad at giving directions. For example, the other day he told us to seperate these pipes. Thinking it would be easy we walk over and try to pull them apart. In the mean time he leaves. After a frustrating hour he comes back and sees we have only pulled apart one pipe. He then instructs us to tie the pipes to a tree and floor the four wheeler in the opposite direction. He was amazed we hadn't thought of that yet.

Today we had 100 pickers at the farm, which was crazy. They are mostly islanders but there are still a lot of backpackers. We met some cute girls from Chile today and we are going to a waterfall with them tomorrow.

Thanks for the birthday wishes!

Week off

We got a week off before the harvest began so we did some traveling. We got to go to the hot water beaches and the caves. Then on our last day we hired a fishing charter and caught six snappers. So all in all it was great time off.

Gisbourne

We went to Gisbourne a few weeks ago to be the first people in the world to see the sun. However, you had to hike a mountain to see the sun rise so we were the first people to see the sun light. We still had a good time. We camped out on the beach and had a huge bonfire. Unfortunately we only had a night off.

Napier

We are currently in training to be jack of all trades. So far we have:

1. Pick Tomatoes in Taupo.

2. Worked in a crop change in Taupo.

3. Helped install a piped

plant warming system for a glass house in Taupo.

4. Cleared a strawberry field in Napier.

5. Installed the above ground components of a sprinkler system in Napier.

6. Mulched and buried onions to help fertilize a field.

I think tomorrow we are back to pounding pipes to install more sprinklers at Gourmet Blueberry. We have done so well they want us to start full time in November to be supervisors. However this would require us to sign a contract until March which we don't want to do because we will hopefully be in Australia where the minimum wage is 15 an hour. Americans are really behind the times on minimum wages. Check some of the new pictures from a hike we did last weekend. We have still yet to wake up early enough and drive to Gisbourne to be the first to see the sun (doesn't really excite me but Bobby and Davis really want to). However we have budgeted our excursions and these two will be in the month of October.

Largest raftable waterfall in the world-- http://www.raftabout.co.nz/white-water-rafting/kaituna-waterfall

Black water rafting--http://www.waitomo.com/cave-tubing.aspx

Map

My trip so far. I think we are going to head to Gisbourne this weekend to see the sunrise (supposed to be the first in the world to see it). Then Rotoura to go white water rafting because you get to go down a ten foot waterfall. Also I think we will go Zorbing there. All I know you get in a huge ball and roll down a hill. That's about all the plans we have for now.

Taupo (Aug. 28 - Sept. 20)

I was in Taupo for a few weeks working for a tomato factory (Gourmet Mokai). I never saw any tomatoes since I was working during a crop change in the glass houses. All we did was move heating pipes which took about fifty guys per pipe (They were a little heavy). We met some fun people who helped us get extra work (mowing, weeding, painting, etc). They also cooked a lot of dinners for us which was really appreciated.