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Tauranga (toe-rong-a)
Well Apple Tree Cottage, it sounds so cosy and quaint. Very miss leading; it was the first dive we have stayed at. First we were met by a hillbilly bloke who showed us to our room which was invested by flies and had dirty sheets, great!!! And to top it all off it was the most expensive one yet ; but as the car wasn't gonna take us much further and we couldn't be arsed any more we handed our money over!!! As we both needed a drink and had no energy or inclination to cook in the 'Kitchen' (a shed). Ended up in a English pub where we had tea and a pint and practically fell asleep (which was nice cause we wouldnt be concious in the s*** hole of a hostel). On arriving back at the hostel we were greeted by the sight of a bunch of tramps huddled around a big bonfire in the backgarden, drinking beer. Yuck!! we avoided them like the plague and headed straight to bed.
When we woke the next morn we had a quick shower but we probably came out of there more dirty than we went in. It was that bad we decided we would leave straight away and ended up having breakfast out of cups in the car. We headed in to town in search of work and were directed to Bell Lodge. We were glad to be in a place where they would arrange work for you, cause by this point we were running out of money, the car was dying and we were feeling a bit fed up.
We got offered work for the next day but the only prob was the car was not able to move.Luckily we blagged a lift with some Finnish people who were heading the same way.
The Harpers Kiwi(fruit) orchard
The next morn we rose early at 6:45 to leave at 7:30. It was actually quite nice getting up early as the sun was shining so bright. We drove 15 mins out of the city to our workplace; a family run kiwi orchard. We were met by Julie, who was also very short. She told us that we might have bit of trouble in the orchard because of our height. Ross her husband had made some orchard shoes for her (stilts as he called them !!). Ross showed us to the orchards, which consisted of long lines of Kiwi vines, stretched like canopies, dangling small plum- sized fruits. Ross explained what we were looking for in a good fruit and what all the possibilities of crap ones were. It all seemed baffling to start with. Once we had been looking at them for a while we became delirous with all the excitement of work and started laughing. You have no idea how mindnumbing and rediculous this is writng this blog as we are tired and it is days later and we just cant be bother to remember. Any way we have been working for them for a week now and when we leave here in four days we will be staying with them and working for a few more days. They are the most lovely people to work for . We have tea breaks every 2 hours with the best cake and biscuits cooked by Julies mum. They are so chatty and have told us about thier travels and life. They have two kids; Sarah (18) and Andrew(16) who are around as its the start of thier summer hols. We love working there eventho we are in abit of pain after a hard day. Neck ache is the prob as you are always looking up especially for us migets!! After we finish work at 6 we are so tired we come home, have tea and go bed. We dont mind cause we are saving hard to have more fun and the hostel is full of effing germans. (hope they look at the screen).
We have found out that the car is now fried. The engine is completely b*****ed and we will have to scrap it as we cant afford to fix it (nothing changes) but we dont care as we have tea and cake, work with lovely people and get to spend all day in the sunny countryside with the birdson and hum of bees for company.
Till next time hard work and suntans here we come.
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