Quite spontaneously we found a HelpX host in Twizel, this time on a camp ground. We didn’t get a lot of information in advance, just that we were accommodated in a campervan and that we had to start working on Monday (because our boss was away for the weekend) and all this even though we arrived on Saturday evening so we had the whole Sunday off. We got five different lifts until we reached Twizel (all of them were amazing) and an older lady led us to our quite luxurious camper (she was there only to help out for the day and was quite confused). We had a television, a fully equipped kitchen and even a bicycle. Not too bad, we thought! As the next day was our free day we directly made our way to explore Mount Cook, with 3724m the highest mountain of Australasia (Australia, New Zealand and some of the pacific island, it has NOTHING in common with Asia). But Mount Cook is not only a mountain, it’s THE mountain, yes exactly, THE mountain Smaug (the dragon of “The Hobbit”) stole from the dwarfs. After such a short amount of time we directly saw our first movie location of “The Lord of the Rings / The Hobbit” 😉 After an older French tourist couple picked us up and drove us to Mount Cook Visitor centre we decided to do two walks: The Hooker Valley and the Sealy Tarns Track, both 3-4 hours which filled out the day quite well. The first one is an easy track which goes through the Hooker Valley, over three swing bridges along the Hooker River until it ends at the Hooker Glacier Terminal Lake which even contained some huge pieces of ice. So much for the topic with the climatic change. By the time it started to rain and storm even though there was sun in Twizel for the whole day. After that we overcome the Sealy Tarn Track which can be described by using three words only: steps, steps and steps. We didn’t count the steps but they took us up for 600m which provided us a phenomenal view over the valley, the glaciers and even parts of Lake Tekapo. Unfortunately the summit of Mount Cook was covered with clouds. Mount Cook is, however, the mountain many tourists never see because it’s always covered by clouds.
Back at the camp ground at around 7pm and two lifts someone was knocking on our door: it was our boss and the owner of the camp ground Peter. He told us that we were living in the wrong caravan which is owned by a private person. The older lady accommodated us in the wrong one and the key she gave us was not supposed to fit for it… That’s why we had to move to another, smaller and less comfortable caravan the next day.
At the same evening we also got to know our HelpX colleagues Zsuzsi and Adam from Hungary and we directly got along very well. They are in New Zealand for 6 months on a Working Holiday Visa and by the time they already were in Twizel for roughly 2 weeks. They often do HelpX for 2-3 weeks in order to have more time at the different places (and to be independent of the weather). Pretty smart if one has enough time!
The next morning was our first day of work and as it was a Monday there were a lot of check-outs meaning a lot of work to do. Tobi became the job to clean the bathrooms and toilets in the cottages of the camp ground. To be fair we have to say that this was a very easy job as most of the guests stay for a maximum of 2-3 nights and that’s why most of them stayed quite clean. Kerstin’s job was, however, to clean the kitchens and living rooms. A job which was quite relaxed as well, UNLESS there were Chinese people staying. We start to develop a proper aversion to Chinese or better to say to Chinese tourists. The guests of the cabins were asked to clean their dishes after the visit, but at Chinese cabins the dishes were wet or even dirty in the cupboard. Sometimes quite disgusting and it also took much longer to clean and dry it. However, after 2 ½ hours we were done and Peter explained us his rules for HelpXing. We had to work 15 hours per week together to pay for the caravan and if we worked more we would get the money in cash. As we wanted to stay for 5 days only and we already stayed two nights without working we were a bit defaulted but we had quite a big day and Peter seemed to be very fair anyway so it wouldn’t become a problem at all. We spent the afternoon with shopping (as we now knew that we had to supply our own food) and visited the Twizel Lake (Lake Ruataniwha) together with Zsuzsi and Adam.
The following days we visited the other lakes, Lake Tekapo with the biggest oscilloscope of New Zealand and Lake Pukaki with its surreal turquoise colour. We climbed Mt. John next to Lake Tekapo which gives a great 360° view. At Lake Pukaki we walked around the Kettlehole at the summit of a former volcano and used a pathway through probably private properties which was worth the risk. We got a beautiful 270° view of the Lake and Mt Cook, which finally was out of clouds. We again hitchhiked for these visits and one of our lifts offered us an accommodation in Wellington! Someone told us that we had to go swimming in one of the lakes what we did for sure. To make it short, FREEZING COLD, maybe 16°C. Jane (the wife of Peter) declared us as completely crazy. She said the lake would be even too cold for fish which explains the fact that there are usually no boats driving on it. Anyway, Lake Pukaki is the movie location for the village at the lake of “The Hobbit” which was reason enough for us take a swim there 🙂
Unfortunately Twizel remained in sad memories. While we took pictures of the lakes we discovered a dust spot on the lens of our camera. That wasn’t a problem until we used the zoom but if we did we spotted up to four dust points on every picture. That’s maybe one of the worst things that can happen during a travel to get problems with the camera. As Twizel is not the biggest city in universe there was no camera shop there and we had to wait until we reached the next bigger city.
Thursday was the day of our departure and we hitchhiked to our next stop which was in Oamaru. After a very sad good bye with Adam and Zsuzsi, Peter gave as a lift to the highway. We are definitely going to meet “our Hungarians” again, first of all they were going to go to Auckland the next Monday where we will be in a couple of weeks as well. On the other hand they fly to Canada/USA in summer to visit Zsuszis family and participate a volunteering camp in New Hampshire we may apply for as well if the time fits and even if that won’t work out we will be in Boston during that time so not too far away!
So we were standing at the road again waiting for a lift to Oamaru, a part of the story which became, let‘s say slightly exciting. But more will be written in the next post.