The New Job and the Journey North

Glenorachy Storm Coming

When I last wrote I must admit we had some potential plans brewing. Since I didn’t know if anything was going to come of those plans I decided not to mention them. In December Zach and I worked a wedding with Mash Catering. Matt, the guy who owns the company, has lived one of those lives which most of us cannot imagine. He’s cooked on music tours for a list of famous artists as well as traveled the world cooking and working randomly wherever he could. Long story short Matt gave our names to Billie, the woman doing the catering for The Hobbit movie while it is in studio in Wellington, who then spoke to us and later flew down to Queenstown to feel us out in person. We had a beer with her and then met with her the following morning at which time we agreed to join her catering team for The Hobbit project. This meant a move to Wellington as soon as possible and committing to a serious number of hours per week in a fast-paced work environment.

I know what you’re thinking… “Didn’t she just mention a couple of blogs ago that they weren’t going to work long hours and days and were instead going to take it easy and enjoy living life?” Yes, it is true that we set out to work little and be outside more. Of course, we also said we’d do that until the money ran out. I’m not saying we couldn’t have survived in Queenstown, but we would’ve needed to take on full time work pretty quickly as our weekly earnings were consistently less than our outgo even though we were living a frugal life. We went on many hikes as well as walked the pathway to and from town regularly. We swam in Lake Hayes and laid in the warm grass. We learned the tricks to living on a very small budget. But, now it is time to earn money not least because some day we need to fly home and get settled somewhere there and we have depleted all of our savings.

Reading that again makes it sound like it is all about the money, which would be misleading. As huge Lord of the Rings fans the idea of working on The Hobbit had appeal from the start. We will pretty much entirely be working a cafeteria feeding 200 – 300 movie workers, but still we will be a part of it in some small way. It is likely we will also be spending 10 days or so further north on the north island in “Hobbiton” for location filming. We will meet people who do all kinds of interesting and creative work just by being where we are and, well, feeding them. In addition we will learn even more about the high-end catering business. The days will be something like 10-12 hours starting probably around 5 am, but the pay is excellent. Wellington is notorious for its café culture and we even know a couple of people there who can point us in the right direction for restaurants, bars, and culture of all sorts. So, not only will we be re-cooping, hopefully, some portion of our quickly spent savings we will also be again somewhere where good food, markets, and ethnic eateries are abundant.


A Rainforest Walk in The Catlins

Within a week and a half all of our various new Queenstown friends were notified and we were set to head up to Wellington. It was hard saying goodbye. As anyone can see from the pictures (quantity and quality) I was madly in love with the scenery around Queenstown. Hiking all the time, reading books for the first time in years, running along the lake, familiar faces appearing all over town, and a few already great friends made the departure even tougher. We are both really glad to have had the chance to spend a couple of months in such a beautiful place and will be soaking up the memories for a long time.

We set out first to the south coast to stay in a rainforest park called The Catlins. Rainforests require a lot of rain, obviously, so it was a rainy first night after a stressful couple of days packing and cleaning. The next day we headed to Milford Sound on the west coast. The scenery was breathtaking. We found a cozy campsite amongst enough trees that we could situate our tarp to keep the rain out and settled into the view of jetting, rainforest-covered mountains and the sound of a nearby stream. Charlie, the bird of our campsite, kept a close eye on things for us and chased away any unwanted other birds or people. Actually it was a “campground” with only one real campsite so we were lucky enough to watch tourist van after car after van pull in and pull out once they saw us there. I like to pretend it was Charlie that kept us so nice and isolated from the other tourists.


Zach on the Cruise on Milford Sound

On the first night we started to notice these tiny little flies nibbling at us. By the second night we were well aware of this evil little demon I’d read about in traveling guides to New Zealand – the sandfly. Charlie was a fantastic campsite guard, but even he did not have the power against these mini ferocious beasts. Attempting to stay dry and unbitten we often had to hide out in the tent all evening reading, playing games, and listening to book on CD. Luckily we’d downloaded The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, which provided us with over 8 hours of entertainment. (Side note: it was a fantastic book and the audio version is a great way to “read” it. It helped that their adventure in the jungle coincided with our adventure in the rainforest.) We snagged cheap tickets via an online deal for a cruise on Milford Sound, which will stand out in our minds forever. The scenery was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. Drastic glacier valley are scattered all over these intense mountains. The glaciers of ages past carved out what are now fiords into the Tasman Sea making the coastline drop straight down into the water. With over 250 inches of rain per year the forests are dense and tropical and the number of movie-worthy waterfalls are too many to count.


One of our Milford Sound hikes

After leaving Milford Sound we drove back down and around through the center of the island; the mountains make it impossible to drive directly. Seven hours of driving later brought us to our campground in the Haast River gorge about 60 kilometers from the west coast and just a little ways north, over a mountain range, from where we started that morning. This was our fourth night camping and all four had been very wet. The sandflies in the gorge were at their peak loving the wet, spongy ground and gobbling the passing tourists. We hadn’t showered since we’d left and evening after evening of being cooped up in our little tent trying to kill any invading flies and keep dry was getting very old. We both felt itchy and soggy so we agreed to spend a little extra cash and get a hostel for the following night.

We headed up the coast stopping at various sites and walks fighting sandflies every time we got out of the car. We also started to notice a bad sound coming from the right, front tire. Once we rolled into Franz Josef, a small tourist town with coastline and mountains as well as beautiful glaciers, the sound in from the tire was terrible. We got to our hostel and found small grooves in the rotor. Deja vu? On our way down in November we split a radiator hose and had to stop in the tiny coastal town of Kaikoura, on the east coast, where the one mechanic ended up being really nice, fixing our car without charging us an arm and a leg. We couldn’t possibly get lucky twice so the following day our stomachs churned with anxiety as we awaited our appointment with the one mechanic in Franz Josef. To ease our tensions we hiked up to an old mining cave and explored the tiny, wet tunnel until I, admittedly, got scared by a rumbling above and had to get out. It was incredibly cool, but the whole region is highly prone to earthquakes and a big one could come any time. I guess my imagination got the better of me.


A view on the east coast

Also, by this point, we were tortured by our sandfly bites. Mosquitoes have never loved me all that much nor do their bites affect me particularly badly. I never had the chicken pox. Nothing in my life could prepare me for the itch caused by these tiny creatures. The brush of my jeans, rub of my sandals, or even a breeze sent me into agony. I was up half the night because, as a squirmy sleeper, I upset the bites constantly and the itch would wake me up. I don’t even remember creating in my sleep what are now healing scabs from scratching on either side of a bite on my leg. The itching never ceased. Zach, poor guy, has at least four times the bites I have. I think he was initially more patient and probably tastes better. His feet are covered. It was nice to be in the hostel to finally be dry, wash clothes, and at least not incur any additional bites.

As luck would have it the mechanic was another fantastic guy who just happened to have an old Mitsubishi in his yard from which he stole the front brakes and gave them to us. Again it cost us a mere $150 ($115 US), which is less than anyone would’ve done it for in the states. Kiwis are just good people.

After our two nights in Franz Josef we were a little on edge. We were really happy about the mechanic and felt lucky for it all working out. Our stuff was clean and dry and we had enjoyed lounging around our funky hostel for an easy couple of days, but the stress from the car problem, the days of being soaked camping, and the ever-present itch of the sandfly bites had all taken their tolls on our nervous systems. We started driving north with no particular notion as to where we were going to camp for the night. We had one night left and wanted to get at least half way to Picton where we were to take the ferry to Wellington. There were lots of sites to see up the coast, but looking at the rainforest was much less appealing by this point. We wanted to be dry and we definitely did not want any more sandfly bites. Also, we’d hoped the week would be a relaxing, outdoorsy summer break before diving into four months of intense work and, though it had been beautiful, it was not the slightest bit relaxing.

Early in the day we hit the town of Greymouth, the site of the recent mine disaster where all the miners were forever lost in a series of explosions. We parked and looked at the options of roads to take from there. Our DOC (department of conservation) camping booklet gave us plenty of options, but the ones inland, en route to Picton, specifically warned of sandflies being a massive nuisance in the summer months. Mind you not one of the previous sites we’d been to mentioned them so this told us that it could be even worse. There were almost no coastal options. We were grumpy and bickering over the most trivial subjects. While looking at the map we both glanced longingly at Kaikoura. Kaikoura was the coastal town we’d unintentionally spent the night in on our trip down during the previous car disaster. We’d only been to one little café along the main road and spent the night in a holiday park cabin, but we loved it. The short drive from Picton there had been incredibly beautiful even though, at the time, we had to pull over every 15 klms to check the fashion tape temporary fix on the radiator hose. After looking the options over and over we agreed that it would be worth the extra kilometers to drive back across the island and re-visit the little beach town leaving the rainy, sandfly-swarmed east coast far behind us.

The decision was the best one of the trip. Little did we know we hadn’t even seen the main strip of Kaikoura on our first visit. With no interest in camping again we booked a cheap hostel and spent the night and the following day (today) soaking up all the place had to offer. We re-visited the little café, the Hilsop Café, which again had the most amazing appetizers and cocktails we’ve had on the south island. We roamed the beach-side streets and today spent much of the day playing around in tide-pools and taking endless pictures of the seals, birds, and crystal blue ocean with the peaks of the Kaikoura Mountains just behind (some still with patches of snow). I am adamant about sunscreen and covering up (New Zealand has the highest skin cancer rates in the world due to the ozone hole), but today I did get a bit of a sunburn. We got caught up in the beauty and peacefulness of the day. We even had lunch at a roadside crayfish stand. Then, driving up the coast today was nothing less than stunning.


Happy in Kaikoura

With our bites starting to fade and our skin a bit too sun kissed we are now in our holiday park cabin in Picton. Tomorrow, Thursday, we take the 8 am ferry to Wellington where we already have several afternoon appointments to look at apartments. We are eager to find a place as work starts on Friday and from then on out our free time will be severely limited. It is hard to imagine what life will look like in just a week, but fingers crossed it will all go well. We now have barely a cent to our names and are looking forward to that first paycheck and the ones to follow that may allow us for a bit more to spend.

The job is supposed to be from now until the beginning of June. The first of the crew start work on Monday and two weeks later the actors arrive. We are thinking that we may try to work until the end of June or beginning of July to save all the money we can before heading home. We still have no idea where we will settle once we return depending entirely on job and housing prospects. Since we have a wedding week to attend to in early August we figure it would be easiest to settle in after that so if you all have any ideas feel free to pass them along.

Sorry for the longest blog ever. I hope to write again in a bit about life feeding the people of The Hobbit. I hope you are all well. If I don’t send something soon happy Valentines Day to you all. It is my absolute favorite day of the year. Remember to tell your loved ones how much they mean to you and, if you are up for it, try making someone’s Valentines Day special. I try to find the saddest, most Valentines Day- hating person around and send them flowers or make them a present. It isn’t just for couples it is a day for everyone to give and receive love. This year is extra special because my sister, Sasha, is turning 40. I wish more than anything I could be there to show her feel she is the most important person in world to me, but instead I’ll be trying to send those vibes from half a world away. Lots of love to all of you.

Jessie and Zach