razor scooters and mullets are cool here

Hey All,

Lilly and I have so many gloriously not glorious things to inform you about.  We hitched our way back up towards Takaka to the Tasman store where we then walked along an estuary in Tasman and up a massive hill to our next WWOOF host (henceforth called “R”)’s property (in the sun mind you, we were very sweaty).  “R”’ property was a stunning house and garden up on massive 40m high cliffs overlooking the ocean.  The property was paradise, and the entire experience would have been fabulous had R not been such a whiny wet blanket.  For the next 4 days lil and I pulled one specific weed (it looks like a clover with heart-shaped leaves) out of her extensive garden.  R was an organic enthusiast so if she couldn’t grow it or meet the grower and have an intense discussion about their organic practices she didn’t eat it.  Since it wasn’t harvesting season for her vegetables, we starved.  She swore all organic vegetables in supermarkets came from China and since China was so polluted all the organic produce was poisoned (she love to talk about how her property had never been poisoned).  She also liked to talk about how hard everything was, being a single mother and all, and choosing this “alternative” lifestyle (apparently organic is now an isolating and alternative lifestyle), and how frustrating the holiday season was since farmers went on holiday so she couldn’t get her avocados, milk, or bread from 3 different couriers who brought it to her (up and hill and out of any main town… not very sustainable R).  So we spent our days weeding while she complained to us about her hard life and her 15 year old son who plays computer games all day (and not that I love computer games but if I were 15 and were stuck on that hill with nothing to do but garden since R wouldn’t drive him to see his friends I would play games too).  Since there was no food to harvest we were forced to eat oatmeal (not awful) every morning with some awful honey.  For lunch R would mix buckwheat flour with one egg and a lot of water and call it pancake batter.  She would then throw a ton of coconut oil on the pan and we would have to fry them and eat them with, of course, honey. If you don’t know, coconut oil is disgustingly bitter and buckwheat flour doesn’t actually taste like anything.  For dinner R would pull weeds out of the garden that apparently had nutritional benefits and we would eat them as a “salad.”  We were also required to finish all sorts of foods she couldn’t finish since her body was emaciated and rejecting food and she couldn’t figure out why (DUH she eats WEEDS).  These foods included pumpkin that was at least a week old and quark.  Quark, if you don’t know, is essentially really sour fatty cream cheesey cottage cheese vomit.  R makes it by putting full fat milk in a jar and the jar in boiling hot water.  You then let it sit in the closet for 3 days and then it sours and then Lilly and I have to eat it.  We would have left after the first day but we felt that she was so emotionally unstable she would have thrown herself off the cliff had she been told she was a whiny wet blanket who should just eat some damn potato chips (organic if she’d like).  Anyway, five days later, we left.  The day we left I got a parasite.  Thanks R.  A walk in clinic diagnosed it as Giardia and I am currently on anti-flagellates.  We headed to our next WWOOF host the day I was diagnosed with Giardia and in spite of her knowing I had giardia she made us wait around all day in Blenheim for her to come meet us and inform me that I was in fact a national health hazard and should be quarantined (she was very confused as to why the doctor had not told me that… idiot).  Anyway, we were rejected from her farm, she didn’t want to expose her kids to my parasite; apparently they must be stupid enough to eat my poop or something, since that’d be the only way for them to get the parasites… oh well.  After a night in Blenheim we hitched our way back up to Picton where we are currently staying at Juggler’s Rest hostel.  We spent the beautiful, sunny day kayaking on the Marlborough Sounds.  Tomorrow we head out to Kaikoura to couchsurf and swim with DOLPHINS (or I will, lilly is saving her dollars).

Welp, that’s all for now!

<3<3<3

Ella

Oh yes, one more important note on R’s house.  The only toilet at the house was a compost toilet around back, which wouldn’t have been so bad save the minimum of 20 spiders crawling in and around the toilet including one MASSIVE fatty spider up in the corner who twitched at you as you went.  Lil and I would secretly pee behind the compost toilet shed to avoid the spiders poisoning R’s lawn, much to her dismay had she known.