Episode 8: Wannabe Hillbillies – Welcome to Southpark

Location: Ohakune (Small Mountain Village home of The Giant Carrot)

Population: Several Hundred

Crime Rate: ‘It depends on who’s in or out of Jail’. (Someone actually said this) 

Quiet little Mountain Town!

We’ve upped sticks and headed off to higher pastures. Following a three weeks whistle stop tour of the south island and part of the north island (more details to follow) we headed back to Auckland for two days in Hotslots refugee Camp ;D before catching the train to Ohakune to begin out time working on Mt Ruapehu a.k.a Mt Doom From the Lord of The Rings Trilogy (Oooo lala). The train journey was another adventure in itself. The service here isn’t the world’s greatest with only three trains per week traveling Auckland and Wellington leaving on Friday, Saturday and Sunday ar 7 am in the morning. It was an early start. BOOOOO! But what was missing in frequency was made up in entertainment. The entire journey is narrated by the driver and there was a not to shabby food cart and the last carriage had a panoramic view glass backed lounge. You wouldn’t get that on the DART! Having reached the train we were told that due to a technical fault that the train would only be going half way and then we would have to get out in the pissing (cursing is the social norm here) rain and coach the rest of the way. The train was further delayed having hit and pulverized a unsuspecting or perhaps suicidal cow that had wandered onto the track. Minutes later after pulled the beastie out from under the locomotion carriage and an unrelated announcement was made that there was steak for everyone in the dining cart. HORRAY!  A jolly old time indeed .

The Giant Carrot

Truth be told the coaching actually worked to our advantage at it dropped us off right outside the lodge where we are now living in Ohakune as opposed to the train which would have dropped us off about 1 km away from there. Happy Days. The quiet mountain town (The Kiwi Answer to South Park) which is home of the Giant Carrot ( I haven't figured out the backround to this one yet.) is a mere two street wonderland but has plenty of things packed such as a cinema reminiscent of the picturehouse in Cinema Paridso (one of my favorite movies); a library which provided free internet access from where I am posting this very update (score!); a hard ware store; a onestopshop which serves as a postoffice/bank/newsagents/bookshop; a supermarket; several restaurants and pubs;  some ski rental shops ,a pharmacy, a hairdressers, a real-estate agents, a petrol station, a bottle shop  and a funny little opshop that someone build in a shed in their back garden. A hip happening place if ever I saw one however the whole place is shut down and disserted by 9 p.m every evening. :/ Nightlife happens about 1 km in a place called The Junction which is based at the foot of the mountain where the road up to the ski field begins which is serviced by a booze bus which goes every half hour to ferry people back and forth to the village for the bargain price of $4 per trip.

Mt Ruapehu / Mt Doom

Work on the mountain is slow as the snow coverage isn’t high enough yet to open the higher slopes so in a twist away from the norm, everyone here is praying for bad (cold and snowy weather). Fingers crossed :D 

Well that’s all for now Folks. More updates to follow told in flashback form about our adventures around the south island. :D

Tata for Now

Lee

Episode 7: I want to break free… ala Queen of Bohemian Rhapsody fame.

Well I finally some news to blog about after a slow slow slow period. We’ve moved out of our Auckland city center apartment and in with our good friend Hotslots Costin in the nearby suburb of Grey Lynn for a brief stay before heading off on a 3 week tour of the two islands at the end of the month. I’m getting really rather excited at the thought of getting out of Auckland for a while and as an added bonus Ill actually have something proper to blog about. No confirmed plans yet but it’s likely that we’ll head directly to Wellington (a.k.a Wellywood) which is the capitol of New Zealand and then onto the ferry and across to the South Island which is the more rugged and picturesque of the two islands and home to attractions such as Queenstown which is described by Lonely Planet as the ultimate tourist trap resort town, and also Milford Sounds which served as the location for Middle Earth in the filming of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. Unfortunately most of the other film locations such as the shire, Home of the Hobbits had to be deconstructed after the filming and the landscape returned to its natural state. Ahhh well. Maybe they might reconstruct it when the upcoming filming of ‘The Hobbit’ Begins. Only Smarties have the answer.

Before heading off we trekked up one tree hill (as suggested by one Pat Culliton ;D)  to see the monument placed there to commemorate settlement of New Zealand in or around the year 1000AD by Maori and later in the 1800's by Europeans. There use to be one big tree there on top of the hill but one day a crazy  Maori went up with a hatchet and chopped it down in protest against injustices done to the Maori by the European Settlers. The trees were seen as a representation of the European settlers being non indigenous to the hill and having been planted by the European landowner some 200 years earlier.

In an update of an earlier post of things that have different names here, The Common Flip Flop is called a Jangle here or Jangle and Hellman's the Worlds Best Mayonnaise is called Best Foods  Imagine that. Wonders never  cease to amaze. There ya have it Folks. Stay tuned for more exciting adventures around the south island. 

TaTa4Now Kiddies 

Lee