Are we in Yuma?....(a ramble from Michele)/Photo Album:6

Here Kenneth and I are in Nelson, at the north end of the south island. It's been a mere two weeks since we headed out from our original destination of Queenstown, and my, hasn't it been interesting.... Since our last entry, we took three days to travel up the west coast, including lovely short hikes at the Fox and Franz Josef Glaciers. Finally we made contact with a WWOOFing host, who agreed to have us beginning Monday, May1. April concluded with a magnificent day on Whararinki Beach, at the very tip of the south island, which is reached by an almost surreal hike through gorgeous green rolling fields dotted with sheepies. The beach is renowned for huge arches in the ocean and compelling caves amidst the dunes, but our favorite part of this day was watching some seal pups bodysurf and frolic in the waves! We began our first wwoofing adventure with willing hands and curious minds, and boy oh boy did we learn a lot. While we enjoyed the weeding and mucking out the sheep/goat shelter, we experienced our (native Canadian) host as overwhelmingly negative and discouraged in her own attempts at self-sufficiency... probably, we guess, because she left out the ingredient we've realized we want most of all: community. It seems her efforts to run to the farthest corner of the earth, to avoid the bloodshed when the "shit hits the fan," set her up for a greater degree of isolation than she'd intended. Or maybe she just didn't realize how much she'd have to do all alone. We're thankful for the experience, even though our (graceful) early exit left us feeling a bit discouraged ourselves, because it so strongly impressed on us how much we want to grow our own food out of a sense of abundance and gratitude, not fear and scarcity.
Having said all that, we haven't been able to line up a next wwoofing gig! Which leaves us feeling that we're just tourists in New Zealand.... Not a completely unenviable situation, it's true, but it's not what we came for. We're deep in discussions around how much longer we should stay in NZ, whether we can find more learning opportunities in Australia, and what kind of situation we'd like to look for/create for the life we envision. It's ironic to us that our travels have made us more aware of the resources and vision of home.... Maybe that was the point.