A Horse is Horse of Course of Course

Brace yourself for this shock...we are back at the farm in Whakahoro.  Or should I say, we're back home.  That's what it feels like at least.  We were sad that we didn't have a chance, between goat slaughtering and sheep wrestling, to go on a horse expedition last time we were at the farm.  So we jumped on the chance early this time.

The trek was led by our friend Chad, the horse man on the farm.  A past guest once told him that he reminded her of Woody from A Toy Story; tall, gangly cowboy with big bright eyes.  A description that Chad even resigns as fairly accurate.  He is easily one of the funniest people I have met on this trip.   Despising tan lines, he already has the beginnings of a permanent white tank top early in the summer.  So he asked us if we mind if he "Hollywoods" it that day.  Hollywooding is just his fancy way to say "slutty, shirtless horseback riding".  Hell, if I had his body I would have played Brokeback Mountain right along with him.

So when people ask me if I am an experienced rider, I always say yes.  This I've come to realize might be a little misleading as most of my "experience" is derived from the summer horse camp my parents made me attend when I was ten and the handful of times I've helped various friends move their horses.  There are a couple of minor details to note here.  First, I was in fact suspended from horse camp for punching a boy in the face (Whoa, whoa, whoa before you judge, he started it by pulling the horse lead out of my hand so fast it gave me a wicked rope burn.  That shit hurts.  I'm lucky I was even able to close my hand into a fist to clock his smarmy ass).  Second, I'm pretty sure I've been high all the other times I've help friends move their horses.  That's how they usually persuade us to help them in the first place.  I generally take the attitude that the horses sure as hell know how to navigate the forest better than I do, I'm just along for the ride.  

Nevertheless, I still tell people that I'm experienced.  It's not quite lying, but I don't really think it paints an accurate picture of my true equestrian abilities.  Because of my slightly inflated stated experience, I usually get paired with the asshole horse who should generally be reserved for the experienced horse whisperer.  I am more of a horse hollerer.  Crockett, my trusty steed for the day, had only ever been ridden by two other people prior to me; his trainer and a farm owner with 30 plus years of experience.  Oh bother, where's my joint?  Luckily I fancy myself a good bullshitter and can even trick a horse into submission with some mustered confidence.  He only tried to take my head off once.  Crockett and I are both tall and it was a low, swinging bridge, which horses are notoriously awkward on.  A forgivable mistake, even if I was yelling "whoa!" and pulling on the reigns with all the strength of an olympic weight lifter.  Fortunately my cat like reflexes and lower lumbar flexibility saved me this time.  After a few choice words, Crockett and I had a fabulous rest of the day.

The bush is even more beautiful than last time we were up here now that summer is in full swing.  Halfway through the hot summer ride we parked (parked?) our horses at a waterfall and took kayaks through the glowworm caves.  Before returning to our horses, Kelly, Chad and I stripped down to our skivvies (to quite the shock of the german tourist) and took a quick plunge in the frigid waterfall pool.  The subsequent saddle chafe from the wet drawers was inconsequential compared to the experience.  It was more enchanting than Disneyland and it seems unbelievable that I used to spend my Mondays in a cubicle.  

Queenstown Skydiving

So that "maybe" on the last post turned into a "hells the fuck yeah"!  Kelly and I, I still can't believe this happened, threw ourselves out of a plane.  Ok, the tandem instructor threw us out of the plane kicking and screaming.  None the less, it happened.  Happened big time.  When faced with the options of a 9,000; 12,000 or 15,000 foot drop, we went for the full monty.  Jumping at 15,000 feet, high enough to be classified as a high altitude jump.  That's right, because we are bad ass (suckers).  You might be thinking, "Wow, Krista, you are so responsible to plan for this expense on your budget backpacking around the world tour".   No, this was not a planned expense, but we figured it was a once in a lifetime opportunity.  We're just going to pretend for a moment that skydiving only exists in Queenstown, New Zealand and not EVERY single city in the United States.  Once in a lifetime for sure.  I'd like to take this moment to thank MasterCard for their generous limits and no questions asked attitude (MasterCard, if you're reading this, please send your sponsorship royalties payable to Krista M. Gust for the free advertisement you just received, obviously this blog is read by millions).  

The high altitude jump requires a waiver swearing upon the head of your first born child that you are by no means hung over.  Oddly enough you could have drank your weight in Malibu Rum before the 9,000 and 12,000 foot jumps without cause for denial.  So we crossed our fingers, the fail proof way to get out of a contract or death, and certified that we had not, in fact, drank Queenstown under the table the night before.  After a shockingly brief instructional section, we were handed a jump suit, complete with FUPA enhancer, and sent off to be awkwardly bound, S&M style, to our newly acquainted tandem instructor.  I would usually find the crotch-to-butt bondage situation uncomfortable with most new friends, but considering my life was now securely in their hands (groin?), I felt it was only appropriate to skip the formalities and get straight to the personal part of our relationship as soon as possible.  My new back buddy, Dimitri, was a short, stalky trunk of a man from Bulgaria.  His accent was as thick as his thighs and I'm not quite sure he understood when I asked him, in all seriousness, if anyone had ever peed on him before.  Somehow the dense Eastern European accent was comforting.  As if he had grown up in a highly regimented soviet camp where he grew up eating rocks for breakfast.  Trained and tough, just the kind of guy I want handling the complexities of jumping out of a moving vehicle.  Kelly's instructor on the other hand was a 7 foot tall perverted Russian who kept making her sit on his lap in order to "affix the harness better".  After he asked her if this was her first time jumping, he said, "me too".  

The actual flight up was gorgeous, overlooking the Remarkable Mountains (it seems like they're tooting their horn a little with a name like that, but they are actually pretty amazing).  I might have actually enjoyed the view too if I weren't totally preoccupied with keeping last nights vodkas in my digestive tract.  At this point you have absolutely no power over whether or not you are jumping.  I think they call it "jumping" to give you a false sense of control.  You are literally shoved across the floor of the plane and thrusted out the door.  As we tumbled out of the door my only thoughts were "sweet bajesus, what have I done"?  And then you fall and fall and fall.  And in my case you scream every expletive you've ever heard your mom say to your dad growing up and then some you make up.  I'm apparently very creative in this aspect when faced with life and death situation.  65 bowel shaking seconds of the noisiest, wind whipping free fall and Dimitri deploys the life saving shoot.  The next several minutes were the most peaceful moments of my life and I actually can appreciate the surrounding mountains and pristine turquoise waters of New Zealand.  Dimitri even gave me the reigns to the parachute so I could do all the 360 spins and turns to my stomachs content.  I don't know what made me so trust worthy, but apparently Kelly's perverted Russian did not relinquish control of the reins.  As we approached landing, it only then occurs to me that Dimitri's legs only hang down to my knees.  I'm I supposed to land this myself with the weight of the tree truck of a Bulgarian on my back as well?  Thank god I am instructed to lift my legs as high as possible and we slide on our asses to glorious stop.  Kelly got the courtesy of the more respectable, and ass saving, upright landing.  Chaffed buttocks be damned, the high of being alive wins.  The high, however, unfortunately does not cancel a hangover.  So many life lessons learned that day.  

The look of success

Wine and Fur Seal Pups, your average combination


We finally left the farm.  I know my dad personally thought I would never come out of the deep New Zealand bush, but alas we needed to explore the south island before we take off in less than a month for Bali.  Holy f word, where did the time go already?  

Donning our new rugged exterior (aka the lingering smell of sheep shit), we rolled out of the bush and down to Blenheim, the wine country of New Zealand.  Blenheim is purely known for their wine and if there is anything else to experience there we blatantly ignored it.  We spent the day on a biking wine tour, which sounds more official than what actually occurred; renting bikes, following the tourist wine map we were bequeathed and trying not to fall off our bikes as we ripped through one wine tasting after the other.  Now, it's been a hot while since I've been on a bike.  I spent this last year living in the hilliest part of Oakland and, being the fair weather biker that I am, have only ridden a handful of times in recent memory.  It's a good thing wine is an anesthetic, because my undercarriage (I think that's the nice way to say lady taint) was severely abused that day.  Owie owie owie.

Post wine tasting, we hitched down to Christchurch where we were meeting up with our friends, Miranda and Arden.  On the way down the black sand lined beaches of the east coast, we stopped at an inconspicuous pull out off the freeway in Ohau Point.  You would easily miss it, except our host in Blenheim had tipped us off to this little treasure.  It is less than a ten minute hike into the forest, where you come upon a majestic waterfall and fresh water pool full of baby seals.  That's right, baby seals in a fresh water pool.  I have yet to learn the exact logistics of how a sea bound mammal makes this transition, but I think it's fair to say that's impressive.  The mother seals give birth and then leave the little guys to play and live in this fresh water pool until they are old enough to leave the protection on the forest.  They leave them for long periods of time while they gather food, apparently not concerned with the humans who come to ogle their newborns.  Fact; it is impossible to stop giggling when you see baby fur seals walking through the forest.  I don't know what alternate universe I ended up in.  

We finally made it to Christchurch thanks to our new friend Ricky, the semi driver who graciously picked up our half frozen, rain soaked selves.  The trip was amazing and hilarious.  He even took us all the way into town and pulled us up right to the front door of our hostel in his big rig.  Luckily Miranda and Arden happened to be standing outside when our chauffeur hand delivered us in the lime green semi.  I've never had such a stylish, impressive entrance.  Limos be damed.

Poor Christchurch is as decimated as you might imagine after all of those earthquakes.  I have never been thanked to be a tourist until we got there, but they are stoked to have much needed revenue coming into the region.  It is going to take a long time to rebuild, but the city still maintains it's cool, almost Portland-like vibe even among the rubble.  

Off to Queenstown, the adventure tourism capital of New Zealand (which really means it's expensive as hell).  Maybe we'll launch ourselves out of a plane.  Maybe...

Cultural Lessons

For all the reasons I mentioned in my previous post, we have been unable to leave Whakahoro aka my new favorite place in the world.  Luckily Kelly is charming and likable, so our new friends were suckers/kind enough to let us continue to stay with them.  This week has been a lot of the same ol' outdoorsy things that us outdoorsy girls do such as wrastling with sheep.  Shh shh little lambs, a little castration at the hands of inexperienced Americans never hurt anyone.

Now any of you reading this might, ok definitely, know that I am a complete nut for dogs.  I pine for dogs the way most women's biological clocks beg to breed.  The big difference being that dogs don't cry, talk back, need college tuition or require the birds and the bees talk.  Plus they are smushy and adorable even in their awkward teenage years.  So in addition to Whakahoro being the most amazing place ever, it is also serious Dog Palooza up in here.  Jaden, the farm manager for one of the farms, currently has 11 dogs to his name.  Eleven.  Initially that just sounds like borderline hoarding, but out here every one of them is actually necessary and each have their own jobs.  There are sheep dogs who's job it is to bark at the sheep to get them moving, sheep dogs for herding, pig dogs for tracking and corralling wild boars and let's not forget the puppies all so important job of being stupidly cute.  And all of these dogs are wicked smart, super obedient and know their left from their right, a distinction I still struggle with, ask any of my rugby teammates.  One dog can singled handedly (pawedly?) herd hundreds and hundreds of sheep from one field to another.  These dogs make all the dogs I have ever known back home seem like they might have a touch of down syndrome.  Sorry friends.  These dogs, however, are not the soft, sleep on the couch, get fed out of fancy dog feeders so they don't swallow their food too fast kind of dogs.  They are the sleep outside, work their asses off and sometimes get trampled by horses kind of dogs.  I was constantly warned that I was making the farm dogs soft by my over zealous affections.   I was also warned not to let them lick me in the face, farm dogs also have free range to whatever they find out in the paddocks.  I'm sure your imagination can fill in the blanks on the farm fresh entrees.  I'm not saying I'm going to give up snuggling on the couch with my favorite canines anytime soon, but I might expect Fido to at least take the garbage out every once and while when I get home.

Along with the dogs, you've probably noticed several cultural differences mentioned since we've started this trip.  Preparing for our departure yesterday, Kelly and I wanted to make all of our new friends dinner, a mediocre gesture of gratitude compared to the kindness and hospitality we were shown over the last couple of weeks.  The nearest town to Whakahoro is a seriously curvy, motion sickness inducing, hour plus drive away.  We braved the drive to the store for the ingredients necessary to make lasagna for a small army.  We like to think we made quite a few friends (and us Americans get nervous about not having enough food to completely gorge even the most metabolism gifted 18 year old farm hands).  As we start cracking into the SIX Costco sized cans of tomato sauce, our friend Anna asked, "Why the hell did you get so much tomato sauce?"  Duh, we're making lasagna for the apocalypse.  "No, but why so much tomato sauce?"  Ok, now I know we're on a different continent, but it's still an english speaking country, what am I missing here?  Cultural lesson #563; tomato sauce in New Zealand is actually ketchup!  Those American sized cans were for refilling ketchup dispensers.  We had already braved the gravel roller coaster of hell to the store and back and now all we had was enough ketchup to supply Fenway Park.  Our hosts thought the cultural debacle was hilarious.  I, however, didn't think there was a swear word appropriate enough.  Luckily we were able to commandeer enough real tomato sauce from our friends to make it work in the end.  But my question still is, what the hell are you supposed to call "tomato sauce" then?

November 5, Guy Fawke's Day

Goat on a picnic table, that shit is just funny

Whakahoro (Yes, it's pronounced phonetically!) 

At the beginning of this trip Kelly and I decided we wanted to become more "outdoorsy".  As "sporty" girls, we realized it is drastically different, though often confused, to be athletic and willing to get dirty than it is to be real outdoorsmen (insert manly grunt here).  What that really means is up to anyone's interpretation.  This week we got away from the city life to follow our little pipe dream.

Mike and Anna, in addition to their parents we stayed with in Rotorua, also has family in Whakahoro.  The combined family has 8,000+ acres of gorgeous countryside where they sustainably, and quite beautifully, farm sheep, beef and honey.  In addition, they run one of the largest endangered bird and indigenous tree conservation projects in New Zealand.  You can almost hear my little hippie heart chanting to mother nature right now.  Dan, who leads these conservation efforts at Blue Duck Farm, took us city girls, I mean sporty girls on with open arms.  Within an hour of arriving we were asked if we wanted to go possum hunting.  Oh boy did we.  In addition to our new possum hunting passion, here's a list of other things we've done in the last few days that would have previously been on my "I never imagined I do this in my life" list:

1.  Sheep Docking - tagging, castrating and removing the tails from the lambs. 
2. Picking up dead boars on a four wheeler - from the tourist boar hunt, obvi.
3. Goat Hunting - both Kelly and I shot and killed our first animals, it was way more exhilarating than I would have ever imagined.
3a. Kissing the dismembered goat balls of my first kill in Kiwi tradition
3b. Finding out that kissing balls is in fact NOT a Kiwi tradition, but it is Kiwi tradition to trick gullible Americans.  At least Kelly did it too.

Before you all go thinking that we are now blood thirsty hunters, I want to clarify that all of these animals are introduced pests to New Zealand that cause major environmental strife and, in the case of the boars, kill the livestock.  In addition to the non-native predators, possum ravage the cute little kiwi bird who is in danger of extinction and many other rapidly disappearing native flora and fauna.  Also, as I previously laid claim to my hippie status, I am a meat eater and find that most of us are too far removed from our food source.  If I am willing to eat the dead animals, I should be able to take part in the ending of their lives.  Plus, the lodge made a delicious curry for the tourists out of goats.  Goat curry, nom nom nom.  Ok, ok, it was also really fucking fun to shoot some shit. Outdoorsy card earned?

In addition to our killing spree, we've also been spending a lot of time gardening, taking scenic boat rides down the Whanganui River and lazing about in the gorgeous New Zealand country side.  The people here are just as amazing (with the exception of that son of a bitch who convinced us to kiss the goat balls), so much so that we decided to stay another week.  It just gets harder and harder.