Blenheimer wine

Hannah and I finally got a job that pays. Before we signed up with a temp agency, we looked for a typical backpacker job and went to the vineyards in Blenheim. In Dunedin, we got the confirmation that we could work in the fields and were told to contact them when we arrived in Blenheim. We did that on Monday evening, and the response was that we would start on Wednesday instead of Tuesday and they asked if I had a mobile number. So, on Tuesday, we spent our time at McDonald's with Wi-Fi, because Blenheim is absolutely dead. In the afternoon around 4 pm, just as we were about to cook, I received an SMS saying that we should be in a nearby hostel at 5 pm with copies of our documents, otherwise we couldn't start. Hungry and annoyed by the work attitude in New Zealand, we went to make copies of everything (which was surprisingly cheap) and then went to the hostel. In total, there were 18-20 backpackers who would start working there. Our supervisors spoke really bad English, so we didn't understand everything. What we knew was that we would start the next day at 7:30 am and we would meet our team leader at KFC. We would be paid $17 something per hour and the money would be transferred every two weeks. Our contract lasted until 21.04. and then the meeting was already over.

So the first day of work started at KFC and then we headed out 30 minutes from the city to a vineyard. There, we harvested grapes. After that, we cut off all the rotten grapes and then we were done with the field.

On day two, we continued cutting off the moldy grapes. That was also the day we decided to buy gardening gloves - these grapes are sticky as hell. I was surprised that I managed to get my clothes clean again.

For day three, we joined forces with the other groups (on Tuesday, we were divided into different groups, starting at different times) to do the most stupid work. The nets hanging over the trees had to be taken down and fastened to a wire on the ground with stupid bio cable ties. It wasn't much fun, but we could listen to music the whole time, which made it a bit better.

On day four, we only took down the nets, but this time thankfully with proper cable ties - much faster. Around 11 am, our team leader (we didn't understand his name, but we called him Mr. Ace - ACE was the company) led us to the next field, but all the nets had already been taken down. He then told us that the season was over and he wanted to check the nets to make sure we would reach 8 hours of work to get paid. Consequently, after the four days, there was no more work and we were once again without a job.

Since there is really nothing to do in Blenheim, we drove back to Christchurch and are now looking for a job and/or woofing position here - in horrible weather (meaning rain, hail, cold). We are now waiting for our money to be transferred so that we can tick off the remaining items on our little bucket list and hopefully spend the last few weeks here spontaneously and with some work.