Thames & Pinnacles

The first Wwoofing week is over and the second one follows directly!

We are now on the beautiful Coromandel Peninsula, 1.5 hours southeast of Auckland. We had already organized this Wwoofing place like the one in Auckland from Germany, because we didn't know if we would find a van in the first 2 weeks. We have already found one now and therefore don't have to 'save' accommodation costs anymore, but we thought it would still be worth the experience to Wwoof again. And it was!

Our hosts were Peter and Veronica, an older couple in their mid-60s, who own a huge property not far from the national park forest in the Kaurianga Valley (see map above!). These are the two:

^ Living room and kitchen - again a lot of healthy food, which we will surely miss in the van!

^ Our 'room' was basically a small apartment attached to the house.

^ The house from the outside. Hannes will still mow this lawn ;)

Peter and Veronica liked to talk a lot - especially Veronica had several stories on every topic. At first, it was difficult for us to understand the somewhat difficult accent and talkativeness. But after a week, we grew fond of Peter and Veronica and are glad to have been here. We have learned and seen a lot:

Starting with the usual monotonous gardening work (removing weeds from the vegetable patch, etc.), on the second day we got the nice task from Peter to plant trees. He is in the process of transforming part of the property, which used to be mostly a pasture for cows, into its original forest form with native trees:

In the picture above, you can see that Peter has already planted a few saplings recently. And we were able to be part of this life-giving process, which felt very good!

Peter and Hannes picking small trees that are big enough to be transplanted from the pots to nature.

Off to their new home...

Digging a hole, adding natural fertilizer, burying the tree and hoping for the best.

Hannes next to a newly planted tree :)

One day, these little ones will hopefully grow as big as the rest of the forest. By the way, Veronica and Peter planted part of it themselves about 30 years ago.

In addition to this educational experience (including many stories and book recommendations about the nature of New Zealand), our stay here also gave us the opportunity for our very first trekking trip of our trip!

++++++ FIRST TREKKING TRIP ++++++

Right up the road is a national park and within it the popular hiking trail to the Pinnacles. This is a mountain formation with the best view of the Coromandel Peninsula, which can be experienced after a fairly exhausting, three-hour climb with an incredible number of steps. Here is our way up, up, up:

First, overcoming obstacles with the van :)

Then 3 hours of hiking to the Pinnacles Hut. Let's go.

That was at the beginning when Anette still doesn't have a tomato face. Photos from further up are intentionally taken faceless xD

Reaching this view was already exhausting, but we're not there yet...

After 3 exhausting hours (so punctual!) the hut is finally in sight, where about 80 people can spend a night, including us:

Here we can leave our backpacks and climb another 40 minutes to the top of the Pinnacles rock formations... the sun is setting soon, so hurry up!

It's very windy up here:

At the top! Incredibly windy and quite cold. Thick jackets are a must.

Nice first trip, we think :)

We are already on the move again and leaving Wwoofing behind for now. It's rewarding and helps with speaking English, but it's also quite exhausting. We are now busy making the van cozy and enjoying some of the first leisure days in New Zealand!

We will be in touch soon and as always, look forward to hearing from you.

See you soon!!