Strip the willow

bed count: 63

Back at The Bug in Nelson after spending a lovely few days in Golden Bay.

We were Wwoofing with Peter and Kris in Onekaka. Doing some gardening and willow sorting but mainly weeding Pete's willow patch which he harvests to make baskets, sun umbrellas and witches broomsticks mainly (which can be seen on the Willow Works website).

They have a lovely house and were great Wwoof hosts so it was as pleasurable a few days as you can have when you're spending your mornings weeding willow patches ;)

We did leanr quite a bit about growing and working with willow though. Including how you get different colours, and also how the 'dope spotting plane' often mistakes the new growth of willow for something a little less legal at this time of year. Got to watch some basket weaving too, which was pretty cool.

The weather has been pretty good to us over the last few days and we managed a few trips to the beautiful beaches in Golden Bay, even managing a swim in the sea two days in a row. We headed up to Farewell spit and had a great walk to a massive beach on the north side of the spit - not kidding it was about 1/2 a mile from the back of the beach to the sea. Alec also managed to get some fishing in, but the closest he got to a catch was a near-miss with a cormorant.

The Wwoof was also is a handy spot for the Mussel Inn, a well known music venue and the closest thing we've found to a good pub since we left the UK. Hmm - we miss UK pubs... We tasted a few of the Mussel's home brews - just to help Pete out you understand (he uses the waste grain as fertiliser for the garden) and sampled some NZ jazz. Mind you, the pints didn't seem to help us locate the comet which is supposed to be clearly visible in the NZ night sky just now.

Pete and Kris are heading off on travels of their own later on in the year and appear to only be accepting Wwoofers with inside knowledge on the countries they're heading to. (They deny this, but we know your game!!). Which meant we spent a few days of our Wwoof with Nigel, from Ireland, who we discovered had been living in Glasgow for the last 3 years and left the UK about the same time as us. We seem to keep bumping into 'locals' from back home. Like the woman serving us in the shop last week who turned out to be from Bearsden.

Nigel has given us lots of info about the South Island and fired up our enthuiasm for a visit to Stewart Island. Apparently he had a wild kiwi pecking at his boot at one point during his stay. We also ran through day to day UK stuff that we take for granted with Kris and Pete - what an MOT is and what to look for in a good pub. (A recurring theme of the Wwoof, you can see).

So, we bid farewell to Onekaka yesterday, though we may yet be on the same flight back into the UK with Pete, Kris and Nigel. Stranger things have happened.

Stayed the night in Motueka last night and managed to catch up with our friends Matt and Trace again. Really good to see them and we ate junk and drank beer and exchanged travel stories til late. Looks like we might be heading up that way again next week to do a kayak in Able Tasman Park with them.

In the mean time, we have a couple of days work exchange at The Bug. Which means free internet access. Which means there may well be some new photos up soon. Watch this space.