The "Next Trail"

Clever title eh? Hahaha I just thought that I would post another update again, make up for some of the last ones that I forgot!
Today I am leaving Kerikeri (unfortunately) but I am moving on to bigger and better things! I am going to move onto the boat tonight! For those that don't know I have been given the opportunity to sail around the coast of New Zealand for two or three months on a beautiful hand-built 60ft yacht! I will hopefully post some pictures of the boat soon. She is named Rose Maree. I am not sure what my access to the internet is going to be like while I am on the boat but I will try and update you all as much as I can!
I just checked the stats from my blog and I am so excited to see how many people are reading it and where everyone is from!
I know I still owe you all some pictures but they will be here soon!
cheers!

Here I am again!

Hey everyone! I have taken a bit of vacation for myself and I have been staying at a hostel in Kerikeri farther north. I spent Christmas here with a great group of people from all over. We spent Christmas eve at the pub with the rest of the town which was quite fun! It is really cool here because people are truly not concerned at all with theirs or other people's appearance. Normally you would expect people to be at least a bit dressed up on Christmas Eve but there were people in normal street cloths and even some in gumboot and work cloths. Now you are probably thinking that it has something to do with it being a pub but it is like that everywhere! You can walk into the supermarket barefoot and shirtless and people don't really mind at all.
Christmas Day night we went to a beach and lit a bonfire. We had a barbecue with the fish that we just caught. I don't know what they call them here but at home I would call them a rockfish. Later Tony, our host, informed us that "Those are dog food" I think it was because they were so bony, but they tasted great to us!
Yesterday I took a tour from the town of Mangonui north up to the tip of Cape Reinga. It was very, very cool! Unfortunately it was a bit like the Oregon coast when we got to the top, with fog blowing up over the cliffs so we couldn't see a whole lot. I could just barely make out the outlines of the Three Kings Islands. On the way back the tour stopped at the "Ancient Kauri Kingdom" another corny tourist trap but it was pretty cool to be able to walk up a spiral staircase carved into the stump of a 45,000 year old tree! There were chunks of rounds that stood taller than me and they were only pieces!
Today I am just taking the day off maybe going to the Karikari Peninsula but tomorrow we are going to go on a fishing and diving trip in the Bay of Islands! Hopefully the weather gets a bit better tomorrow, today it is really windy and there was apparently an cyclone on the South Island somewhere. The forecast looks good though!
I am heading back south to Whangarei on the 30th (29th your time) to hop onto the boat! I got to go out and spend a few hours on the boat before I left and she is beautiful! I realized as I was climbing on board I realized that I forgot my camera! So I can hopefully get some pictures to you sometime! We are planning on leaving Whangarei on the 2nd of January and I am not sure where we are going from there. The last that I have heard was that we are going to the Hauraki Gulf and Great Barrier Island but that plan may have changed and we may be going North instead now.
Also thank you so much everyone for the Christmas wishes, as always it was great to hear from you and I hope that I remembered to send you something back!
I think that about sums up the last month. I can't believe how bad I've gotten at updating this! I will try and post pictures soon, my camera is in my room which is like a 2 minute walk away so I'll do it some other time :) Hopefully I can give you an update before I leave!
Cheers!

The Coromandel

Hiya all! I am trying to keep you updated, really! Life here is wonderful! The season change is really strange however, I was sitting in the sun on the coast having lunch and I looked at the bread and it said "best before: 07 Dec" and I thought to myself "boy that's a long time for bread to last!" Then I realized that it is only until tomorrow…

I figure I will update everyone to the plan for the rest of my trip. I am trying to sell my car as we speak and I am going to buy a bus ticket to see the rest of the islands. My reason being that I am leaving for 3 months the first week of January and am cruising around the North and possibly the South Island on a 60ft sailboat (tough life down here). Specifically our first stop is in the Hauraki Gulf and then on to the Marlborough Sounds. This means that I am on the boat until the end of March and possibly into April so I won't have that much time on the South Island and I have a host in Christchurch for a couple of weeks. I am going to do a bus circuit of the South Island and see what I can see! 

For now I am staying on a really beautiful property 40 minutes north of Thames. It is set up on the side of the valley and if you look east you see more hills and valleys and if you look west you look out onto the Firth of Thames. There is only one other house in sight (It's built out of cob, the owners are dubbed "The Straw People"). I'm not sure how long I am going to stay here but I think that it's only going to be another week or so. I know for sure that I am going to be back in Whangarei for Christmas and leave from there on the boat. I love hearing from everyone! Don't be shy! 

Keep warm!

I'm still alive!

Hey everyone! Sorry that it has been so long since I have written, but life has just gotten kind of crazy. Fun though! I have been living about 20 minutes outside of the city Whangarei (fang a rye). It is really funny what difference the distance makes. If you drove 20 minutes from the center of Portland you would still be in the city, even if you drove 20 minutes from the edge of Portland you would still be relatively populated but my house is up a gravel road that is outside of any speed limits or city jurisdiction. It's really cool at night though! The stars are so bright! I have to walk across a couple of fields to get to my little cottage and I haven't had to use my torch (flashlight :) ) any of the nights. Even when the moon is half full you can still see a shadow, it's nuts!
I am leaving this host and moving out the Coromandel Peninsula on the 29th for a couple of weeks. I will try and keep you a little more updated about it then! Also for everyone that hasn't heard I have been offered the opportunity to crew on a 60ft hand-built sailboat around the country for ~3 months and of course I didn't have to think about that one for very long! That is starting sometime in January. I am starting to really settle in here and have started to get it through my head that no matter what I do there is no way that I can see everything in the time that I have so I am enjoying every moment and letting things happen as they do. It's a much less stressful and much more fun way to travel!
I don't have a whole lot of time right now but I'll put together some good stories and post them up when I get some more interweb time.
Love hearing from you all! Happy Thanksgiving! (early) eat some stuffing for me!
Cheers!

Into the Sea

Yesterday, Alex took us on another sightseeing adventure out to a beach town called Raglan. It was a nice little low key seaside town. We had some killer french fries and spring rolls for lunch when we got there. Then went for a walk on the beach, which is really dark sand, in some places almost black! Then we all got back in the car and drove out the point to a place where a lot of professional surfers go. I didn't catch the name but I remember it started with an "M" :) We timed our visit perfectly! There was no surf whatsoever! (There is a big high sitting right of the coast for all you weather junkies out there) So we decided to go for a swim. The water was like the Oregon coast! It was freezing! It was nice to get the blood flowing and now I can say that I have swum in the Tasman Sea!
Now my task at hand is fixing up the car so I can get on to my next big adventure! This morning I got the new steering rack in and almost done, just a few more bolts to tighten up. Then it is off for a couple new tires and an alignment and I am good to go!
Feel free to send me emails or comment on these posts, I love hearing from all of you! I haven't quite gotten my mail situation figured out yet but once I do I'll let you know!
I think that's it for now, I'll put the Raglan pictures up soon!
Cheers!

Weekend Update!

It's funny to think that I am writing this on Halloween! It doesn't seem to be anything near what Halloween is in the States. People on the news are talking like it is an option for people to take part in. Also it is weird that it is all of 19 degrees outside, I'm used to 19 Fahrenheit!
As for the rest of the weekend we spent the time hanging around the house and doing some more chores. We built a little awning outside for Alex to turn into a patio sometime in the future. Today we spent the day painting and doing little maintenance things around the house.
Yesterday Alex went to a friend of his named Carol and took us along. He goes to trim the nails on her goats and chat about life. We got to join in and as an extra bonus we got to wander around the Alpaca paddock and pick up their poo so they could use it as fertilizer.
Ryan, Po Yee and I went for a walk on Saturday along the river that runs through town and it runs a long ways and is really, really well kept! I was so surprised for a public park! It isn't just a bunch of concrete and gravel either it was a wide swath of grass and trees along the bank of the river.
This week looks pretty normal to me. Tomorrow I think Alex and I are going to run off and and get some car parts so that I can get the Bluebird running soon hopefully. On Tuesday it is Ryan's birthday so Alex is taking us all to Ragalan, which is apparently the surfing hotspot in New Zealand. I'll give you a report on that when we get back!
Ryan and Po Yee are leaving on the 4th so after that it's just me pestering Alex all the time. I think that I am going to move up north sometime around the 8th or so. I do know that I am going to end up on the Hanna Berry Farm in Hastings between the 15th and 17th of November. I am planning on staying there for a couple of months, I am super psyched for it because it sounds like the bulk of the work is supervising the visiting pickers and running a roadside stand or a farmers market booth!
Still having a great time, trying to figure out a better way to share pictures with everyone so hang tight!

So much for working!

Yesterday, Alex opted for a travel day and took the three of us down to a living Maori village just outside of Rotorua. The full name of the village is Tewhakarewarewatangaoteopetauaawahiao (Dare you to pronounce it! I can) but the locals just call it Waka. The village is home to 20 some families and has been open to tourists for 50 some years. There is a bridge that you have to cross to get into the village and before our tour started we were standing on the bridge talking. Alex told me a story about when he was younger he used to come down to the bridge and throw coins off and the local Maori kids would dive in after them, this sounded like some hokey tourist thing, that was putting down the locals. Later on the tour guide mentioned the “Penny Jumpers” and then sure enough at the end there were kids asking for coins and jumping off after them. It was pretty impressive that they could find the coin in the murky river. The village sits right on a fault line which causes a very active geothermal area and hot springs. The village does all of it’s cooking in wooden boxes over vents near the pools in the middle of town. There is a cafe that sells some of the local food for the low, low price of $30 a plate! We were talking to one of the local carvers and he told us to ask for the Hangi Pie which turned out to be a little bit of everything that they steamed; chicken, pork, carrots, potatoes, and onions, wrapped up like a Hot Pocket on steroids! They were so tasty!  After the lunch we went to a Culture Show and saw some of the locals play traditional songs and do dances. It was very cool to watch but I found it funny when they brought out an acoustic guitar and started to sing in Maori to a tune that sounded like a normal American folk song. The language is very cool because except for a few times the words are always consonant, vowel, consonant, vowel, etc. After all of their performances they invited anyone that wanted to come up and try to learn how to Haka. Ryan and I both went up and tried it out with limited success but when it is done right it is scary! After being all touristed out, Alex told us about a spot that only a few locals knew about where instead of hot springs it was a hot river! It was about 25km outside of Rotorua. Sure enough after a gravel road and a short hike we got to a small waterfall and a swimming hole spent about an hour floating around and eating lunch. Then it was about a 2 hour drive home to a french toast dinner made by yours truly! 

Some reason it won't let me upload pictures so I'll post them when I can!

 

I'm Here!

Portland on my way out

I made it! Turns out that this weekend was Labour Day and so everything was closed up and couldn't get on the internet. Life here is awesome! I am staying in a small town outside of Hamilton called Ngarawahia (not as hard to pronounce as you think!). My host Alex also has another couple from Hong Kong staying with him and so we have been teaming up on projects and getting lots done! Yesterday we fixed his roof and today we have been working on a fence to keep the sheep out and the garden in!
I would love to hear from everyone! and hope the weather isn't too bad yet! it's partly cloudy and 17 here, makes for a great time! I don't have a whole lot else to say but I'm sure I will soon!

7 months?

Hey everyone! Last night! Wow, I'm putting the final touches on everything, racking my brain about what I should take. I haven't put anything in my pack yet but everything is laid out on the floor ready to go. It seems like a lot but I hope it fits!

Here it all is! You think it's gonna all fit in that pack?

So my flight leaves Portland at 7pm tomorrow and I get into Auckland at 1pm on Saturday Pacific time. Local time will be 9 on Sunday the 24th. It is a 13 hour flight from LAX to Auckland direct. My first host, Alex, who has given me more help than I could ever ask for, has agreed to meet me at the airport and beyond that I have no idea what is going on next!

I am planning on staying with Alex for 2-3 weeks to get settled in and help out with his gardening project (Sounds really cool and I will fill you in when I get details). After that I am moving north for about a month and then back South after that. I am hoping to get equal time on both islands and take in as much scenery as I can!

Thank you so much everyone for all the good wishes! Much appreciated! I will try to keep you as filled in as I can, this blog will be the main source but send me an email and I will reply when I have time! (scottvanbergen@gmail.com) Also people have been asking about sending snail mail, I'll let you know when I know how I am doing this, there are a couple options... I will try and send everyone a postcard or two though!

The next post will probably not be until I am safe and sound in NZ so until then, thank you for all the support and will be thinking of you!

4 days?!?!

Hey everyone! So with my flight coming up fast I thought it was about time to start a blog to document it all! I will try and post here as often as I can to keep you up to date (and Mom calmer ;) ) about what I'm doing. I haven't figured out how to make a map on this but this has one that you can check out and see where I've been. I think that's all for now, gotta start pulling all the loose ends together and pack my bag! Let me know if you have any suggestions of places I should go!