An invitation to celebrate Labour Weekend, Oct. 26th, a Public Holiday in New Zealand/Aotearoa in Waipu, on the North East coast of Upper North Island, was the perfect start to my adventure in the Far North of this amazing country....
Whilst wwoofing at http://www.earthtalk.co.nz/, Awhitu is a good experience of rural NZ life, the community lacks any public transport infrastructure & so getting out & about is completely dependant on owning or having access to a car. Negotiating lifts & opportunistically tagging along on others journeys becomes an art form! Wonderfully, my experience has been that there's usually a very kind & hospitable kiwi always ready to help out... in most situations...!
Mysteriously & miraculously... everything went to plan... On Thursday, Oct. 23rd, I tagged along on Charmaine's Business Meeting journey & arrived at Big Blue House, an Auckland B&B, http://www.thebigbluehouse.co.nz/ - I'd 'wwoofed' here for a week earlier in the year... Very early the next morning, I hitched a lift with Kate from BBH...we stopped en-route for a gorgeous Breakfast in a fashionable Ponsonby Rd Cafe, before Kate dropped me at Wendy's home, in Auckland Centre... later that morning, Wendy kindly dropped me off at Smale Farm Station, beyond North Shore, across the Auckland Harbour Bridge... en-route to her work place.... where a short time later...miraculously...Helen picked me up & we drove to her home in Waipu via lunch & shopping in Warkworth... see what I mean about travelling being 'an art form'? Friday night dinner with Helen & Sue's family & friends was the perfect end to an exhausting but amazing series of encounters with kiwi kindness par excellence!
Ohhhhh No! I have lost the photos I was going to upload to this post... here's hoping they re-appear as bizarrely as they have disappeared....
