When WWOOFing goes bad…

Here I am again, at the good ol' library. Seriously, what would backpackers do without libraries? Does it make me a bum if I have brushed my teeth in the library bathroom twice in the last week? Well, I guess that's what happens when you are kicked out of the house you're staying in without any warning!

It's true, we seem to be very skilled at choosing only the weirdest/darkest WWOOF hosts most of the time. All more material for when I write a book later about how to (and how not to) move to new zealand. ;) Sorry for the delay, because as I mentioned in my last post, soooooo many things have happened in the last month or so, but just when I think the internet couldn't get any more scarce, it does. So I'll have to backtrack a bit…

We spent a few nights WWOOFing with a family of Dutch expats in Rangiora, which is about 20 minutes away from Christchurch. The house and property were amazing. Designed and built to be ecologically-friendly by the husband, Jan; the house was insulated by straw and the property was huge, with huge pastures for 3 happy cows, 5 goats, and a handful of sheep. Chooks and ducks ran around as they pleased all day, and the inside of the house was full of natural light, high ceilings, and homemade charm. Sounds perfect, right? That's what I thought too.

I should backtrack a little more so you know that when we got in contact with this family, we let them know that I'm vegan, as we always do, just to make sure they still want to take us in, with my horribly difficult diet in mind. ;) The mother, Meryl, responded positively, saying she was trying to become vegan but was having trouble finding recipe-inspiration, and hoped I could help her. So you can imagine how excited I was about this place!

Reality: Meryl was insane. A waif with all kinds of wacko ideas about health and diet, obsessed with juicing as a way to "heal herself" (if I had to hear those two words one more time…), subjecting her family and herself to an incredibly restrictive diet during the kids' formative years. The kids are on a diet of milk, yogurt, meat… that's about it. She asked me right away to help her with dinner ideas. I had plenty; the only problem was that her diet consists SOLELY of vegetables, fruit, coconut oil, flax seed oil, and… nope, that's it. So pardon me for my lack of "creativity." She was visibly disappointed when I couldn't help her on her vegan journey with those foods as my only tools. Sorry, lady, I'm no magician. I give you about 6 months on that diet before you starve to death.

Meryl is one of those people who instantly makes you feel uncomfortable upon meeting her by divulging very personal/sad/awkward information about herself and her family, the kind of information a stranger has no idea how to respond to. Miscarriages, sibling issues she's had since childhood, every health issue she and her family have suffered from in life. And as the oldest girl of 3 in the house, she took a shining to me and took me on as her sidekick for 4 days. I spent my days helping her with her juices (7-10 times a day), cooking meals for hours on end (which included me getting to peel the chicken bits off a carcass, and being told to please cut the heart into little pieces), accompanying her to the farmers market, and being her confidant for about 9-10 hours a day. It could have been worse I suppose, the two younger WWOOFer girls had to do more cleaning than I did, set the table for every meal, pick berries for hours, and be the source of CONSTANT disapproval from Meryl. Actually, I would have preferred that to hanging out with her all day.

I could go on ALL DAY LONG with stories of how ridiculous of a time I had there, but I suppose I should include Brian (and the rest of the other 7 males in the house)'s side of the story, which went like this: wait for the women to wake you up, eat breakfast which has all been cooked/set out for you, walk away from the messy kitchen table to work for a couple of hours doing "manly" things like shoveling gravel, take a lemonade break, don't worry, the women will get it for you, work for a couple more hours, eat the lunch that's been made/set out for you, walk away from the dirty lunch table, play with guns, chop wood, ride scooters, set off homemade rockets, take a nap, whatever your heart desires, until dinner when a lovely homecooked meal will appear in front of you, devour it, and then relax with your feet up as the women clean up.

So, yeah, it was a little sexist around there. The male WWOOFers had a great time; who could blame them? Ah, the burden of womanhood…. some of my favorite moments were a dinnertime chat between all 12 of us about what is manly and what's not (well, I guess there IS a place for women as cops, I mean, if a woman gets raped, she needs a female cop to comfort her), and how incredibly funny and bizarre it is that someone who wanted to WWOOF with them considered themselves "genderless" and WHAT ON EARTH DOES IT MEAN??! IT'S SO FUNNY AND WEIRD!?!?!?!? HOW WOULD I TREAT THIS PERSON!??! DO THEY DO MANLY STUFF OR GIRLY THINGS??!?!

I'm not kidding- this stuff all really happened. GOOD RIDDANCE to you, Meryl, may your poor sons have a chance at a normal life away from you one day… hopefully before it's too late. Well, at least I got a lovely room for my "hubby" and me(oh yeah, Brian and I are married, Meryl decided, and heaven forbid she ever found out it wasn't true!), and some wonderful food (even if I had to cook it myself for 4 hours) out of the deal. Thanks for the… hospitality?

Meryl and Jan's straw bale house

on their property

the boys playing soccer after dinner (girls not shown in kitchen working)

more of their farm

on our day off, we went into Christchurch to check out some of the devastation...

really sad :(

but there was a GORGEOUS botanical garden in Christchurch

Well, perhaps I was too harsh in my judgement of Meryl. It wasn't until I met Sande, our latest WWOOF host that I realized how good I had it there. After Hokitika, Brian and I went to Punakaiki and stayed in the most amazing lodge hidden away in the rainforest. It was like Doe Bay on Orcas Island… New Zealand style. A charming kitchen, with a comfortable sitting area and record player, treehouse-style dwellings… we were in heaven. When we left there we had a plan to drive to a backpackers a little north of Westport, but when we got there the place seemed creepy and it just wasn't the right vibe (haha, maybe I should have gone against my instincts on that one). We drove a few minutes south through the tiny, sleepy town of Granity, and saw the cutest little bungalow right on the beach, called Granity Sands Backpackers. We wandered in and couldn't find anyone there, but the property was amazing! Antique glass bottles filled with wildflowers lined all the windows, a fireplace, big kitchen with black and white checkered floors, a back patio overlooking the hammocked beach… Finally a little woman who just SCREAMED crazy in her appearance showed up, apologized that she hadn't heard us, and showed us around the place. We agreed to stay there right away and everything seemed great, even though in the back of my mind I was thinking we had a psycho in our midst. There were two WWOOFers there, and they slept out in the "boatshed," an adorable little space converted to a cabin. We got along with the WWOOFers, Celia and Adrian, right away, and decided we should ask Sande if we could WWOOF there (money is tight, folks!). She seemed to really like us, crazy as she was, and she said she'd be more than happy to take us on as WWOOFers.

We spent two nights there as paying customers, and then when we woke up on our 3rd day we started the work-day with Celia and Adrian. Easy, nice tasks, like painting a fence, gardening, baking bread, organizing linen closets, etc. It took me a couple of days to notice a pattern… during the day Sande would pop in and out of the rooms where we were working, making awkward conversation, insisting that we put music on in the common rooms, and then disappearing to her room again. After a bit I noticed a boozy scent wafting off her whenever she came in the room, and started to pick up on the fact that despite the fact that the house was stocked with food and we WWOOFers were always eating, she never had a bite to eat. She sent Celia and Adrian to the store for groceries and instructed them to buy lots of boxes of wine.

After our first day of WWOOFing, we were hanging out in the boat shed, getting ready to watch a movie, when Sande came STORMING in and screamed at us about how the kitchen was a mess. Dumbfounded, we sat there silently (the kitchen was, in fact, very clean), until she clarified that we had left dishes in the drying rack. "We're just letting them dry and would put them away first thing in the morning," we said, to which she replied, "THAT IS NOT HOW IT WORKS! THIS IS NOT A HOTEL! THE KITCHEN NEEDS TO BE CLEAN AT NIGHT SO THAT IN THE MORNING PEOPLE ARE NOT CONFRONTED BY A TON OF DISHES IN THEIR WAY!" We were scared, and she left, and Celia and Adrian said they'd go put them away. Before they had a chance to do so, Sande came back and yelled at us again, for the same thing. It was really frightening, seeing that faraway look in her eye, probably totally blacked-out drunk, sounding totally coherent but unfounded in her anger.

The next day I felt super weird and uncomfortable. She went on as if nothing had happened, was nice to us all, but was hidden away in her room for most of the day. In the late afternoon, at the high-point of her drunk, she came out and reveled about the beauty of the foggy view out of her kitchen window, and smiled as she returned to her hiding place. We had a lazy day; it was rainy so after work we read, watched movies, and Brian baked some delicious bread. We all gathered in the kitchen around 5 and started playing cards, and listening to music (since Sande was ALWAYS telling us to play music at all times). Since we were snacking on Brian's bread all afternoon, no one was hungry for dinner until 9:30pm or so, when we started cooking pasta. Just before 10, Sande stormed in and flew into a rage. What the hell were we doing, this isn't a frat house, what the hell, this kitchen is a mess (it wasn't), how could you think you could cook at this hour (even though she had never told us anything about what time we couldn't cook, and we weren't being loud at all), what is this plastic doing in the garbage can when it's supposed to be in the recycle… etc etc etc. It was TERRIFYING. No one knew what to do, so we just started frantically cleaning and trying to get out of the kitchen as fast as we could. A minute later she came back and started yelling again and had the most frightening look in her glossy eyes. After her rant she said "tomorrow you all leave. Pack your bags and turn over your bed-sheets and clear out of the boat house." We grabbed our pasta and sauce and practically tripped over each other trying to get out of that kitchen. Oh, and I forgot to mention, there was another WWOOFer, who had only been in NZ a little over a week, and this was his first WWOOFing experience, and only his second day there. What a welcome into the world of WWOOFing…

That night was somber, and we were all scared she might come back out and yell again, and agreed to leave in the morning at the same time, safety-in-numbers style. Luckily as we cleaned up in the kitchen and grabbed our things the next day, she only appeared for a second to thank us for taking the sheets off the bed, then disappeared, probably to cry into her pillow about how her abandonment issues had come back to bite her again. Because I know Sande REALLY liked us all, and we were a great group, we assume she, in her drunken/sad state decided to find a way to get rid of us before we could leave her, like everyone else in her life has.

Alcoholism is a terrible, terrible, ugly disease. It broke my heart the way everything happened there. Sande will never get help, because she has no one in her life. Everyone has left her because of her ugliness when she drinks, and it is so tragic to see someone destroying their body in that way. It was also such a sad end to our time there, because we had a great friend group, a lovely place to stay, and an all-around good time, all which was soured by the untimely end to our stay there.

I just have to say, it made me so thankful that in my life I have never had to endure the ugliness of alcoholism amongst any of my loved ones, and my heart breaks for anyone who has dealt with that in their life. :(((((

Sorry to end this post on such a sad note- but I promise everything else been EXCELLENT around here. Many more blog posts to come describing the beauty, adventure, and fun we've been experiencing lately! Now, PLEASE send positive vibes our way when it comes to choosing our next WWOOF spot… with our track record we really need all the help we can get. ;)

LOVE FROM MOTUEKA!

view from the drive to Punakaiki

Wild West Coast

from Te Nikau lodge, our little NZ Doe Bay

one of the many dramatic views from the secret Motukiekie beach on the west coast... hidden gem and one of the most beautiful places I've seen in NZ yet

!!!

Pancake Rocks at Punakaiki

...and in the blow hole

the flowers appear sunny in this place... looks can be deceiving (Granity Sands)

the location of our kick-out

more sunny Granity Sands Backpackers pics

our safe haven... literally. The WWOOFer hideout

the beauty of this place is really heartbreaking

Charming Creek Walkway... was indeed very charming!

especially with this little Bear dog as your companion :)

new friend on the beach

this is how I want to remember this place.