Navigating New Zealand: Nov. 4-20, 2011

The plane from Santiago to Auckland departed the terminal around 11:30 pm on November 2. We few for 13 1/2 hours and landed at about 4:30 am November 4... silly international date line. At least I'll slowly gain that lost day back as I make my way west towards home. I chose not to sleep as part of a plan to beat the jet lag once in New Zealand. At the airport I found an internet kiosk and looked up some "cheap" hostels in Auckland. A couple hours later I stepped off a bus in downtown central Auckland. Even cities can be tranquil around 6 am and this one was clean!

I found the hostel I wanted, but they wouldn't let me check into my room until 1 pm, so I remained awake drinking coffee, reading my book, and looking for potential wwoofing farms online. After 42 hours without sleep and over two continental regions, I finally hit the sack. Fifteen hours later I rolled out of my bunk at 5:30 am... almost beat the jet lag. No mater, my mission for this day was to find a wwoofing farm to get to a.s.a.p. The first farm I had e-mailed was "Fruit Vans" and they had responded to me while I was in hibernation. Several others had contacted me because of my wwoofing hot list post.

I followed it up and continued with my culture shock day... mellow, although I almost got run over because they drive on the left hand side here and I'm used to checking left first when crossing streets. I best get used to it as at Fruit Vans I would be driving. By the end of the day I had my next two weeks planned out for me, and, after a walk through downtown, I had readjusted to Europeanesque landscapes. Then the fireworks began... apparently New Zealand is still considered a colony of England and November 5th is Guy Fawkes Day. Guy Fawkes Day is a celebration to commemorate the failure of the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 when Guy Fawkes was arrested while guarding explosives the plotters had placed beneath the House of Lords. So now people blow stuff up once a year to remember how something was NOT blown up... makes perfect sense!

In the morning I was up at the jet lag adjusted time of 7:30 am. Grabbed some food and tried to post a blog entry but the pictures wouldn't upload, so I bailed out of the hostel and headed for the train station a few blocks away to catch my ride out to Sunnyvale near the Auckland suburb of Henderson. Unfortunately for me, (I love trains), the tracks were having maintenance done over the weekend so buses were being substituted. Around 11 am I stepped off yet another bus and started the 1 km walk to the Fruit Vans farm.

Apparently I arrived on the right day! after some introductions to the first 5 or 6 people of the 25 I'd be living with for the next two weeks, we constructed a teepee sauna, lit the fire for our "hot tub", and prepped for spa night. People slowly trickled in as they returned from selling that day and the campfire grew until campfire shish kebobs showed up. After eating, the sauna rocks went into the fire while people had natural foodstuff facials.

Fruit Vans, the place I just landed in for two weeks, is an oasis of alternative living. Taryn and Marcelo, the owners, come from Australia and Brazil and they are following their permaculture dream. Fruit Vans is simply a step towards a self-sufficient eco-tourism/education community in Patagonia where much of what is tested out here in New Zealand will be applied. Working as middlemen selling fruit, Fruit Vans brings the New Zealand public the food commerce culture of South America to pay for land rental and to generate capital for the Patagonia venture. Wwoofers ensure a cosmopolitan climate as well as a self-sufficient labour force working as a close-knit commercial community resulting in comfortable "off-the-grid" living.

Leo, the Chilean permaculturist, care for the composts, soil generation, and he manages grounds projects. The land in this region of New Zealand is of high clay content, so soil building is a huge priority. There are four ways in which soil building is done here: hot composting, Bokashi composting, vermiculture, and soil reclamation from surrounding unused land. The high volume of food waste from up to 25 wwoofers at a time generates plenty of organic matter. Much of the food prepared here is simply made up of fruits and vegetables from stock that is unfit for sale. As summer gets into full swing, the many veggie beds will provide the majority of house/wwoofer food stuffs.

The work schedule at Fruit Vans generally runs as such: 1 day working on the farm or around the house, 3 days selling fruit, and then 3 days off. My first day was a farm day. I helped Leo turn some hot compost, build some soil with reclaimed dirt, horse manure, and hot compost, and then I got to dig a hole for the last stage of the Bokashi composting process. Bokashi composting uses an anaerobic inoculation to produce the compost. Once a starter culture is made, it can be used to extend the culture indefinitely, like yogurt culture. Since the popular introduction of effective microorganisms (EM), bokashi is commonly made with only molasses, water, EM, and wheat bran. In home composting applications, kitchen waste is placed into a container (often known as a bokashi bin or bokashi bucket) that can be sealed with an air-tight lid. These scraps are then inoculated with a bokashi EM mix. This usually takes the form of a carrier, such as rice hulls, wheat bran, or sawdust, that has been inoculated with composting micro-organisms. The EM are natural lactic acid bacteria, yeast, and phototrophic bacteria that act as a microbe community within the kitchen scraps, fermenting and accelerating breakdown of the organic matter. The user would place alternating layers of food scraps and Bokashi mix until the container is full. Liquid "compost tea" is drained once or twice a week and can be diluted 1:100 and added to plants as fertilizer, or poured directly down drains to help clean them^. Once the container is full, it is left to ferment for one to two weeks in the container, and then buried under 6-8 inches of soil, in ground or in a non-reactive container. After another two weeks buried under soil, the food scraps should be broken down into rich humus.

Day 2 had me out training for fruit selling with Martin the Frenchman at one of the slowest spots Fruits Vans sells at. No matter, I brought a book, some sudoku, playing cards, and an MP3 player. Day 3 had me selling fruit on my own, and day 4 had me training a new wwoofer, Manon, a Belgian girl wwoofing with her boyfriend. Day 5 was my first day off and I was looking forward to exploring some New Zealand nature. Elfion, a Welsh wwoofer, and Jana, a German wwoofer, were renting a van from the farm to take a scenic drive through Waitekere Ranges Regional Park, so I joined them. We got a beautiful view of Auckland and the surrounding area before disappearing into the lush forests on our way to Piha beach. Before exploring the beach we stopped for a picnic at the head of the Kitekite waterfall trail and then checked out the falls... freezing!!

Piha beach is a sight to behold with its dramatic stone outcroppings, water-eroded bays, and emerald green ocean. We climbed one of the stone outcrops to get a panoramic view and have a snack. Piha beach is credited as the spot where New Zealand surf culture began. In 1958 two American lifeguards visiting Piha, Rick Stoner and Bing Copeland, brought their fibreglass surfboards to ride there. Lightweight longboards of this type had never before been seen in this country, and they were enthusiastically taken up by local surf lifesavers.

After a stroll we piled back into the van and headed a little ways south to Karekare beach. This beach extends for several kilometres with beautiful cliffs overlooking scrub covered dunes and vast plains of beach where the endless Pacific stretches to the Indian Ocean, then to the Atlantic, and finally to South America where it meets itself again. We hiked until the sun set, then, mapless, found our way through the dark winding roads of the Waitekare Ranges back to Henderson and haven of Fruit Vans.

I spent the next couple of days relaxing on the farm and getting to know the other wwoofers better and taking care of some errands and getting ready for my next run of four days working. By this time the owners had figured out I was more useful to them on the farm, sp my fruit selling days were over and my fix-it-up days began. Handymanning on the Fruit Vans farm is much like handymanning at Oak and Orca... get done what needs doing with what's available.

Day 1 was constructing stairs out of pallets, driving the forklift around, and preparing a pumpkin patch for planting. Day 2 had me giving the greenhouse a facelift and puttering around the house... that evening I ran a "workshop" on how to fix different types of drips in 3 kinds of taps or faucets. Day 3 was Leo's day off, so I was nominated to be "Leo for a day". My crew and I managed to transplant tomatoes, lettuce, pumpkins, and basil. we prepared a few beds for planting on the next day, and climbed on to the roof of the house to clean the gutters in preparation for installing a rainwater reclamation system. That night was Salsa dance night, so a bunch of us piled into a couple of fruit vans and headed into town. Unfortunately, we had forgotten that in New Zealand foreigners need passports to get into adult venues, so we ended up at a patio lounge exchanging stories. Day 4 we finished the greenhouse and planted a bunch of veggies before preparing yet more beds for further planting over the next few days.

With my departure day coming close Taryn invited me to stay on with Fruit Vans as long as I might have wanted... she even offered me a five month position to help develop a bio-diesel program on the property (many of the Fruit Vans vans run on diesel)... maybe in a couple years I'll take them up on it. In the interim she was quite excited about the possibility of getting some permaculture student exchanges happening, who knows what is possible!?

Tomorrow I get a lift in the morning with one of the Fruit Vans which sells at a spot on the south end of Auckland. From there I plan to hitch-hike my way south towards Wellington using the awesome signs I made yesterday. I also bought a tent so I can camp along the way in some of the volcanic regions covering the middle of the north island... should be an awesome adventure!

Chile Oct. 23-Nov. 2, 2011

After our farewells the Uyuni Salt Flats group split up with Sebastian, Shogo, and myself headed for San Pedro de Atacama in Chile and the rest returning to Uyuni. Descending into the Atacama was completely breathtaking with a camera simply unable to capture the majestic vastness of the desert plain stretched out below us. Once in the town we marched through Chilean customs and immigration... of all the South American countries I had entered thus far, Chile definitely had the most paperwork to fill out and they even searched our bags.

San Pedro de Atacama rests at about 2,407 metres above sea level and is situated slightly west of the Andes with a marvelous view of the Licancabur volcano, which I had driven around early that morning on the Bolivian side. Daytime temperatures are between 25-30 degrees Celsius with night time temperatures dropping to 0 degrees or lower. San Pedro, as its name suggests, is also on the edge of the Atacama desert (with an area of 105,000 square kms), which, according to NASA, National Geographic, and many other publications, is the driest desert in the world. On average it receives 1 mm of rainfall each year with some weather stations which have NEVER received any rain. Evidence suggests that the Atacama may not have had any significant rainfall from 1570 to 1971. The part of the desert south of Antofagasta has been compared to the climate on the planet Mars and has been used to test instruments to be used in Mars missions.

With that out of the way our high Andean clothing began to take its toll on us in the afternoon desert heat. We had planned to meet Diana and some of her Uyuni group in San Pedro, but we all seemed to miss one another, so the boys and I headed for the Plaza de Armas to wait a while longer and chill out with some drinks and food. We were all shocked with how much more expensive Chile was than Bolivia, but the streets were clean, the dogs wore collars, and street signs greeted us at every corner... delightful!

A quick stop at tourist info got us a town map and a list of all 96 hostels/hotels in the small town...we later learned that San Pedro is THE tourist spot in Chile. We trekked and sweated around t own in search of cheap accommodations till we found a price that couldn't be beat only to discover that part of the town's water supply was out of order... looks like we were going to "live dirty" in the desert for a day or two. This at least motivated us to get our plans together in a hurry. Shogo took off on an afternoon tour while Sebastian and I bided our time a bit to scout out some cheap deals.

A couple hours later and we had our next two days planned and paid for: an early morning trip up to the Tatio geysers, an afternoon adventure to the Valley of the Moon, and an early bus the following morning to Antofagasta. The rest of our day involved a lot of lounging around in the late day desert heat and meeting people at our hostel. One fun meeting occurred when I met a fellow Canadian... only one of us spoke mostly French and the other mostly English, so we had an interesting time communicating in our equally poor Spanish and filling in the gaps with smatterings of French and English, quite entertaining!!

We got about 3 hours sleep that night because we needed to be ready for our geyser tour pickup at 4 am... this proved more difficult than usual as we had woken up at 5 am the previous day to view the Bolivian geysers... but we did it! The drive up to 4,200 metres where the geysers of El Taito were located was a cold one punctuated with bumpy roads and brief snatches of sleep. El Tatio roughly translates to "the grandfather". With over 80 active geysers, El Tatio is the largest geyser field in the southern hemisphere and the third largest field in the world, after Yellowstone, USA, and Dolina Giezerov (partially destroyed in June 2007).

We arrived at the geyser site as morning twilight turned the cold black sky myriad shades of violet and purple, giving the steam filled crater the appearance of being a recently bombed out war front. As the sun crept over the horizon the scene gradually transformed, shifting through the rainbow colours of the spectrum until the sun's disc cleared the surrounding dark ridges. A couple of hours wandering amongst shafts of steam and we drove to the other end of the crater to partake in some thermal baths. By the time we got out of the water the sun was climbing high and the pillowy plumes of steam were reduced to nearly nothing... mere wisps in the now bright landscape.

With one of rear tires slowly going softer the minibus snaked its way into lower altitudes to make a snack stop at the Pueblo de Machuca, a village with less than 40 regular residents. We also got to check out several wandering herds of wild Vicunas. Once back in San Pedro, Sebastian and I had 2 or 3 hours to eat and prepare for our afternoon tour of the Vall de la Luna. The valley has various stone and sand formations which have been carved by wind and water. It has an impressive range of color and texture, looking somewhat similar to the surface of the moon. There are also dry lakes where the composition of salt makes a white covering layer of the area. It presents diverse saline outcrops which appear like man-made sculptures. There are also a great variety of caverns. Valle de la Luna is a part of the Reserva Nacional los Flamencos and was declared a Nature Sanctuary in 1982 for its great natural beauty and strange lunar landscape, from which its name is derived. The valley is also considered one of the driest places on earth, as some areas have not received a single drop of rain in hundreds of years. A prototype for a Mars rover was tested there by scientists because of the valley's dry and forbidding terrains.

The Valley of the Moon journey began with a stop at an amazing viewpoint of the Valle de la Muerte (Valley of Death) before checking out another lookout overlooking the Vall de la Luna. We next descended into the Valley of the Moon national park reserve where we were dropped off at the entrance to the valley's canyon. In the canyon we were able to observe some bizarre crystalline formations created by short, sudden, desert downpours which rapidly eroded the fragile rock walls of the ravine which are composed largely of various types of salts. After a hike through the canyon we got a ride to the rock formation of the "Three Sisters" before heading to our sunset location on the Great Dune with a view.

 

Back in San Pedro we were exhausted and in need of some serious sleep if we were to make our 7 am bus to Antofagasta. So we slept. In the morning we did the 5 hour bus ride to the capital of the region, Antofagasta. We had hoped to make an excursion to the Mano del Desierto south of the city, but cheap transport to the middle of the desert was near impossible to find at a reasonable price. That and Antofagasta really had nothing to offer us... it only had 2 hostels! So we hung out at the bus station and did some internet research to see where we should run out the rest of our stay in Chile before both of us got on planes for New Zealand. The beach town of La Serena seemed like a nice spot with many affordable hostels, so off we went on the 10 hour bus to La Serena.

Our time in La Serena was.... serene. We didn't do much but chill out at the German run hostel and chat with other travelers about their past and future adventures. Chile being as pricey as it is had us cooking our own meals and taking advantage of the free services offered at the hostel like HOT showers, laundry facilities, and free internet. A couple days later we hopped another night bus for Santiago. Sebastian had a plane to catch the day we arrived, while I had a couple days to burn... so I found a sweet, cheap hostel with a pool and a jacuzzi where I could hang out till my flight to New Zealand.

While in Santiago I barely left the hostel... the city is BIG, clean, but, yet ANOTHER South American city. That and on the first day I met a few Chilean locals who lived at the hostel 2 weeks out of each month. We exchanged stories, enjoyed the pool, played some cards, and had a great Halloween together. Once they left to go back to their jobs (in San Pedro) I could just hardly wait to get on a plane and begin my next set of adventures in New Zealand. I had burned through a good deal of money in the last couple of months and was ready to do some wwoofing in order to save a few dollars before heading into Southeast Asia. Off to the airport!