Pidrik´s Reise durch Mittelerde

Hey guys!!!

It has been a while since we´ve written you the last time. Meanwhile, we actually experienced a lot. Just after my last blog post, we made our way to christchurch, some of you may have seen the pictures on facebook. It might be the most interesting city we´ve been so far. Huge parts of Christchurch has been destoyed by 2 earthquakes in 2010 and 2011. Although this has been some years now, the town is still very demolished. You see place where cinemas and skyscrapers have been, some of them partly, some completely destroyed. A small sign in the concrete reminds the visitor that once the city´s shopping mall was here - now dozens of stores just sell their stuff in containers. A very impressive day in a town that used to be a metropole and still struggles with the quakes´ impacts.

In order to find some work in the central otago district, we headed further south. Our route went from christchurch to lake pukaki to alexandra. On our way we saw some awesome places and campgrounds. Very special was the lake pukaki, with shiny blue water and snow covered mountains in the background. A stunning panorama on a beautiful hot summer day, but unfortuately I buried the car in the gravel beach of that amazing place! Now I know: Loose gravel beach + frontwheel drive = you get stuck :P it needed 3 very friendly kiwis, a 4 wheel drive jeep and 2 german tourists to pull us out of this aweful situation.

We arrived in alexandra (¨alex¨) on sunday 11th. It is a small city in central otago that is very influenced by horticulture industry, especially stonefruits like cherries, apricots and so on. This area is the dryest during summer season in NZ. On monday morning we went to the local office that coordinates seasonal work and got a job immediately! On the very next day, we started as cherry pickers. And guys, I didn´t know it but...I fucking love cherries!!! Altough the work is tough (starts at 6, 8 hours a day, 7 days a week) I love it so much eating kilos and kilos of cherries every day :D we are payed by bucket, so the more buckets you make every day, the more money you earn. The first week we were quite slow, but fortuately on our orchard we receive at least the minimum wage, (16 dollars, 10 euros). The second week we did much better and earned round about 900 dollars for the week which is really good money. I love it being in the heat in the cherry trees and eat and pick. On cherry for the bucket, one for me :D sometimes they are soo sweet and juicy - simply delicous. We stay at a campground in alex which is supposed to be a ¨normal¨ tourist park, but you barely see kiwis here. Almost the hole campsite works as cherry pickers too and they are coming from all over the world. When you enter (or attempt to enter^^) the kitchen between 6 and 8 p.m you will be overwhelmed by chinese people. In general you hear almost no english here in the dining area, but korean, chinese, french, a lot of spanish, czech, finnish and of course german. We´ve made really good friends here, this place is much much fun. Some days ago we hired mountain bikes and rode them on some close bike trails near the river. Simply great! With us: juel (mexico), phillippe (france), tatsu (japan), dorothea (sweden). We also hang around with some british guys, one canadian, czech and some germans also. Almost every day we make barbeques here, hail to the NZ´s beef steaks! :D we did amazing burger sessions (angus beef burger patties on the bbq), corn, steaks, lampsteaks and a lot of other tasty stuff here. We really like it here. Unfortualty, our work already ends on wednesday (28th of january). Terrible, i don´t know where I´m supposed to get 1 kilo of fresh free cherries every day then! In the meantime we try to find some new work for the aftermath. We´ve got an onion picking job coming up in mid febuary (no, I won´t eat the onions instead of the cherries :P), but until then we haven´t found anything yet.

Lovely greetz to everyone at home, I heard you guys have some snow there. Hard to imagine, here we´ve had over 30 degrees the last days, hottest place in hole NZ!

Peace out,

Yours, Hen