No damage ... Bye!

My second Wwoofing place was in the middle of nowhere. Tiniroto has only 40 inhabitants, the neighbors can no longer be seen and the school consists of 15 students. There are no shops, cafes or gas stations. If we had known that beforehand, we probably wouldn't have gone there to work. It all started with a misunderstanding. We wanted money, she wanted free labor. We misunderstood the ad, and instead of a minimum wage, we got accommodation and food.

It was agreed that we would be at Michelle's at five o'clock. She owns a house with a pub and a bunch of animals - everything she needs help with. We were there on time, but no one else was. Upon inquiry, she told us that she would be late. She would be there around midnight, and we should just go to the garden and play with the puppies. The family has six 5 ½ week old puppies - the result of a ride where the female dog found a playmate.

Half past seven quickly turned into nine, and Hannah and I were already in the car, trying to come up with a nice message to explain that we were leaving because four hours of waiting is quite long even by New Zealand standards. But before we could leave, she finally came, said a quick hello and disappeared. Her friend, who was visiting during the first few days, then showed us around, had dinner with us, and made us wash a lot of dishes at ten o'clock.

The next morning, Michelle briefly showed us how the lawnmower works (also an invention of Satan) and then she was gone, leaving us alone all day. Mowing the lawn doesn't sound too bad at first. But on the one hand, this lawnmower had to be started with a cord that never worked on the first try, and on the other hand, Michelle has a lot of land and there are constantly ups and downs. After four hours of mowing the lawn, we asked if we could cook something or if she had cold drinks (she definitely had - after all, there's a pub). The answer was that we could have toast, water, or tea. Tea?! At nearly 30 degrees Celsius??

That day, we both had headaches. I eventually had a migraine and ended up throwing up late at night, and we both knew that we didn't want to stay for the agreed two weeks. Our room was just a small chamber with two air mattresses and a fly graveyard.

Well, the next few days didn't get much better. Michelle was usually gone before we woke up, then she would leave us a note with tasks and eventually come back without even saying hello, only speaking to us if we happened to run into each other. She also had the feeling that we were working very hard when we cleaned / vacuumed and washed dishes in the pub and kitchen in the morning. There was usually nothing else to do. In itself not bad, but there was also nothing else to do in the village, so the two weeks quickly became boring.

On our days off, we stocked up on snacks because Michelle and her family somehow didn't eat. So in two weeks, we didn't even have a proper meal, and obviously there was nothing in the house that we could cook or were allowed to cook. The whole point of a Wwoofing place is that the backpacker helps the family and in return gets accommodation, meals, and cultural exchange. With Michelle, there was only food.

When we left after two weeks last Monday, there was no bye or thank you, not even a note. When we woke up, the whole family was gone, and we found the dog in the pub. After leaving a message, we left as well. There was no more toast in the house, so we drove hungry to the nearest Countdown (60km away in Gisborne) and bought everything we could.

A suggestion from us: Buying chocolate in this weather is really not smart. Before we even opened the packaging, it melted. But if you hang it in a bag in front of the air conditioner, it actually becomes hard and edible again!

We only knew that we had to be in New Plymouth on Thursday, but we didn't want to drive for seven hours straight. So we drove back to Napier, which we both really liked. We also did some laundry there because we both had hardly any clothes left. It was so warm that we hung the clothes outside, which was a good idea until it started raining while we were in town... The clothes then moved to various clotheslines in the car to dry again. Necessity is the mother of invention.

Napier also brought me a passport cover at last. Especially my visa and international driver's license were looking very worn out and probably wouldn't have lasted much longer without it. On the way to the city, some idiot crashed into us from the front. We were at a red light, I had my foot on the brake, and suddenly, there was a crash. The car in front of me was suddenly much closer than before. We both pulled over in the next parking lot, he got out, looked at his car, and just said to me, "No damage!" and walked away. I was relieved at first because I still didn't have car insurance and my bank account was already crying, so I drove into the underground car park, which was our destination. There, Hannah noticed that the idiot had bent our entire license plate with his trailer hitch. The corner was bent about 90 degrees backwards. We could bend it back, but the stupid guy could have at least said something - especially since he was an employee of the local workshop!

The last evening was pretty long. Thanks to me, Hannah started watching Stranger Things on Netflix, and we stayed up late to finish the series. Very tired, we headed to New Plymouth the next day. We were on the road for almost 6 hours. But this time, we will be living and working in a hostel for the next few weeks, and we have also chosen a place where we can do things.

And because we had nothing to do in Tiniroto except take a bunch of photos: