Nomads in New Zealand (part 3)

During the cruise through Doubtful Sound, our nature guide Kimmy had mentioned a documentary called Shadowland that was playing in the nearby town of Te Anau. The documentary was created by a local helicoptor pilot and lover of the sounds, and when no one expressed interest in actually showing it in a wide release, he built a theatre in his home town in order to show it. With Kimmy's obvious enthusiasm for the documentary (she'd seen it over a dozen times) and the fact that we hadn't seen an actual film in weeks, it seemed like the perfect next thing to do.

Our return to Manapouri was filled with the trading of addresses and goodbyes at the dock that is probably typical of all cruise trips. But people's schedules march on, and within thirty minutes everyone was on their way, ourselves included. The van started without a hitch, and we were on the road to Te Anau.

Despite the fact that the sounds themselves are towering behemoths, the countryside away from the coast is actually quite level, more so than our dancing and dodging drive through the north. Te Anau is a nice town, with fairly modern conveniences, and the theatre was a delightful surprise: instead of the shack I had envisioned, complete with a single guy wringing his hands, filled with melancholy towards "the system that wouldn't play his movie," we would encounter as modern a movie theatre as you would imagine. The foyer was decked out in lush carpetting and deep wooden trip; a fireplace separated the snacks counter from a cafe with very comfortable chairs. The theatre had taken to running new releases, but the Shadowland documentary was still obviously its prime focus, and it ran a dozen times a day (only being about thirty minutes long).

We were joined by several other people from the cruise, who had clearly had the same idea. The seats were very plush, two chairs separated by a small adjoined side table. Whoever designed this theatre really enjoyed going to movies. Of course, all of these trimmings were just icing on the cake: were they up to the quality of the documentary?

I can happily report the quality was superb. Crafted from years of helicoptor aerial filmography, Shadowlands tells the story of the Sounds in images, with no narration, and careful musical accompaniment. What we were not exposed to during our time in the sounds was the rush of waterfalls, created when the usual torrents of rain collect on the top of the massifs and are summarily dumped down the sides into the waters below. Some of the shots I saw in the movie took my breath away: you'd be flying overtop of a high mountain stream, only to have the ground drop away from you as the water falls over the side, exposing a wide panorama of the sounds themselves. The film was put together by a guy with a true love and admiration of the place. The movie was filled with shots like that, as well as slow panning sequences through some of the raw forested areas. If you didn't have two weeks to spend on helicoptor "flight-seeing" and wilderness tours, thirty minutes in the theatre was about as good as you were going to get.

After restocking some supplies, we turned the van southwards towards the bottom of the south island, and the largest city in the area: Invercargill. We knew it wasn't going to be more than a stopping point to refuel both ourselves and the van, as we headed towards the next alluring location of New Zealand's south island: the Catlins forest reserve.

The ubiquitous New Zealand sheep.

As the day wound on, we stopped for the night outside of a town called Orepuki, and parked the van on a rocky promontory overlooking the ocean. The beach was called "Gemstone beach," noted for the wide variety of geologically significant stone which washes up upon it. Of these are indeed emeralds and rubies, but in such rare quantity that you'd be very lucky indeed to find one. But that didn't mean we didn't spend an hour or two walking along the beach, playing with interestingly coloured stones, and seeing how lucky we'd get.

We did pass through Invercargill, and as expected, it was a city like most others. We pushed on through towards the Catlins, which is noted for dozens of natural attractions. We visited a petrified forest, which rested in a basin overlooking the ocean; when the tide rolled in, it would be covered in water, and penguins would sneak onto land to return to their nests. The forest itself looked more like a stone quarry, but on careful examination you would see the unmistakeable wooden grain of a tree, seemingly carved into the rocky floor beneath your shoes.

A Moeraki boulder.

Our next stop was the Moeraki boulders, another natural wonder. Dozens of completely spherical rocks, ten feet in diameter, adorned the coastline, looking like marbles that the children of giants might play with. To make them even stranger, their surface was not smooth, but segmented like a soccer ball, and in some cases the segments had fallen apart, exposing a hollow core. It turns out the boulders are the result of yet another natural process of geological evolution, and these massive boulders were formed, thousands of years ago, from a single grain of sand (how geologists discover these things I am awed not to know). The best part is there are likely dozens more of these boulders, hidden beneath the sand and in the earthen shoreline, and they will one day be exposed for the world to see as they are ejected from the earth; indeed, two boulders were already visible, protruding from the shoreline.

A waterfall in the Catlins.

The next day was to be our "waterfall day," the Catlins home to over a dozen waterfalls, all accessible by short hikes. On planning our trip, we had written down a list of things that we had wanted to make a priority in seeing through the countries we visited: waterfalls had made that list. So, today was all about waterfalls. And we weren't disappointed, seeing no less than six, all in varying stages of height, girth, and power. The first, glibly named Niagara falls, was a six-inch drop with a big sense of humour; the last dropped in several segments, the first being a straight drop of over one hundred feet into a pool, which then emptied out into a rocky cliff and onto a series of channels, as it wound its way down the mountainside.

A sea lion.

We also had the opportunity to hide in a blind and watch Yellow-Eyed Penguins hop out of the ocean and waddle up the side of a hill to their roosts. It was an interesting couple of hours - as much for the penguins as for the sea lions. A sign warns you to give sea lions and seals plenty of space, never to corner them or stand between them and the water. As it happened we walked by a sea lion on the beach, sleeping away the remains of the afternoon, so we cautiously tip-toed by it. Walking up the hill to the penguin blind however, we walked not two feet from another sea lion, who gave a mighty bark and snarl as we passed unwittingly close. A sea lion is like a thousand-pound seal with a teeth of a great big dog; generally, not what you want to take an interest in you. We ran to the hide and barred the door. The penguins weren't as scary, and unfortunately, didn't get too close to the hide, so it was actually hard to make them out in the dwindling light of the day, and take a good picture of them.

On our way out of the Catlins, on our way north towards Dunedin, we passed by one of the few "free" glow worm dells you can visit in New Zealand. Glow worms are another New Zealand phenomenon; I'm not sure if they're worms at all. In complete darkness you can see them: they have the appearance of tiny blue-white pinpricks of light, seemingly suspended in midair in the various grottos and caves in which they inhabit. They are a staple for many caving tours, and it seems that everywhere we heard of them there was a price tag attached: but not this particular place, a small cul-de-sac at the top of a short hike. When it got completely dark, indeed, we were rewarded with our own private field of stars, encompassed by the gloomy forest canopy above.

The next night we drove north towards Dunedin, a city with deep Scottish roots, and the site of the first Salvation Army mission (I'm not sure if it's the first mission ever, or the first in New Zealand). The city itself is laid out from the centre outwards, surrounding a triple-octagon of streets that surround a central square. The people were warm and friendly, and we stayed at a motor park slightly north of the city. By this point I was just getting tired of the constant overcast grey, and was starting to itch a little for some sunshine. To that end, we were starting our drive north, gradually towards our next WWOOF visit in the northern Marlborough region of New Zealand.

We drove off northwards towards the glistening blue lakes Tekapo and Pukaki, which lie in the shadow of the omnipresent Mount Cook, one of New Zealand's largest and most famous mountains. As always seems to be the case in New Zealand, the landscape changes again, with a drive over a series of mountains (and back onto squiggly roads) which seems to leaves the clouds behind us. Cold-weather gear is stowed and the sunglasses come out. In addition to windy roads, something I have completely overlooked took us by surprise in the south island: the one-lane bridges.

It works like this. You're driving along, and you see three words written on the road in succession: ONE LANE BRIDGE. You then get a sign which tells you if you have the right of way or not, governed chiefly by who has the better view of oncoming traffic. If you don't see anyone on or near the bridge when you round the corner and see the actual bridge, you proceed: if you do, you decide whether to stop or go based on who has the priority. One-lane bridges: it sounds like a recipe for disaster, but it actually works quite well, given the low density of traffic, and the relatively low speeds people drive. My theory is that the bridges were around for longer than there were cars, and there simply isn't the traffic demand to expand them into two lanes. But every time we saw that one-lane bridge indication, my knuckles whitened just a little on the steering wheel.

Lake Tekapo, with Mt. Cook in the background.

We arrived at Lake Tekapo at the beginning of the afternoon, expecting to be dazzled by the reportedly piercing blue of the lake: apparently, the minerals in the water make it appear extremely blue, but to my eyes, it was about as blue as you'd expect a lake to be. Perhaps it was the strong sunlight. We decided to drive on and see if we had more blue at Lake Pukaki, but again, and perhaps I was getting a little cynical, it wasn't any more blue than I would have assumed. It did, however, offer a stunning view of Mount Cook and its associated mountain range, and we opted to stop there for the night. We had fun building a tower of rocks on the shore of the lake (which was surrounded by rocks of all sizes) and ate a feast of a meal.

A New Zealand fur seal.

We did some more sightseeing the next day on our way northwards towards Christchurch. Way back when we bought the van, we figured out that getting the Transportation department to mail us our certificate of ownership was going to be tricky, owing to the fact that we were moving around so much and didn't have a permanent address in New Zealand. You don't need the piece of paper to sell the van, but it's nice to have. So we put down the Christchurch central mail centre as our address, and sent them a post card to ask them to hold our mail for us, explaining our circumstances. Two months later, it was time to see if it had all worked out. Long story short, it hadn't, but we got a nice walking tour of Christchurch in the process. It is a very "British" city, complete with grey, overcast skies (at least, on the day we visited). One of its main features is a small river which winds its way through the city, which I'm almost positive is called the Avon, and has a sizeable number of ducks and geese swimming through it.

Our next move was northwards towards the beach town of Kaikoura, which is renowned for its abundant variety of sea life. The area is just nearby a coastal shelf, into which it seems everything comes to feed. Our objective in Kaikoura was to see (and for Amy, to swim with) dolphins. Apparently the success rate of encountering dolphins in Kaikoura is very high, so we were armed with some high hopes. We had blocked off two days for dolphin watching, as suggested by our guide book, as the trips can be called off for a variety of reasons.

The guide company, Dolphin Encounters, is the only one that holds a DoC licence in the area for tours of this sort. Their storefront is a combination gift shop, cafe and education centre, as well as being the central complex from which they launch their excursions. Dolphin swimmers get equipped with a wetsuit, flippers, goggle and snorkel, and everyone has to watch a twenty-minute educational video about how to interact with the dolphins. There is also a strong message in the video: don't be disappointed if the tour doesn't work out the way you would have wanted it to, as the dolphins are wild, and nothing is done to entice them into a given area.

As it happened, we never did see dolphins in Kaikoura. Our first excursion got us out onto the water, but even with a plane in the air, no dolphins were sighted, and after forty-five minutes of bouncing around on two-metre swells, we turned back to base. We got a refund, booked again for tomorrow morning, and spent the rest of the day bumming around the (tiny) town of Kaikoura. Apart from getting out there with the marine life, there isn't much to do in Kaikoura but shop - and even then, there's not much. The next day we didn't fare any better: the weather conditions made it such that they didn't even launch the boat this time. So we didn't see dolphins: at least, not in New Zealand.

We continued northwards, stopping in Hanmer Springs. The town is known for its proximity to a series of geothermal hot springs, and a whole resort town has developed to take advantage of them. It was a cold day when we went, but it was worth it: the resort had about twenty different pools at varying temperatures, from tepid to almost scalding. You feel like a different person when you walk out of one of those pools. Surprisingly, they didn't smell overly bad, but in the hottest pools, there is the unmistakeable trace of sulfur: that smell of burnt eggs.

It was time for us to head onwards to Blenheim, to meet our next WWOOF hosts, Anna and Chris. We had originally been in contact with another WWOOF host, an orchard, for the same period: but shortly after we had confirmed by email, they contacted us to let us know they had made an error in their scheduling and had already booked in some other WWOOFers. They did have some friends who needed some help and also hosted WWOOFers, would we want to go stay with them? They lived in the heart of the Marlborough wine region, would that be interesting for us?

It didn't take much to get things sorted out: in fact, our help would turn out to be quite welcome, as they were in the process of a number of changes in their lives which were extracting much from their personal schedules: and to top it off, Chris had recently had an accident with a chainsaw (sounds worse than it thankfully was) that had slowed him down significantly.

Arriving in Blenheim, we realized that this part of New Zealand was definitely different than most of the rest of the south is: it hardly rains here, and is usually sunny. An ideal climate for growing grapes, if not scads of other types of fruit. We toured a few vineyards before heading out towards Anna and Chris' house on Queen Charlotte drive: the same Queen Charlotte drive on which we had started our voyage across the south island, three weeks previously.

It's always deer season in New Zealand.

Anna and Chris greeted us warmly, and over the next few days, we fit right in on the homestead. The major focus for us while we were there was strawberries: they had had an excellent season (indeed, the bushes continued to produce long after they were supposed to) and now the bushes had to be trimmed back, weeded and re-planted where necessary. As well there was a lot of work to be done with the fences. We all got along very well, and we met many of their friends. I learned to play a new boardgame, The Settlers of Catan, but didn't prove to be a quick study. Of the games we played, I usually got slaughtered. While we were there we did a few walks in the area along the Queen Charlotte Track. We contemplated doing a similar tramp as we did in Abel Tasman, but quickly found out it wasn't the same thing. It was much more popular, and there are many lodges and hotels along the track. It took the wind out of our sails a bit.

While we were there one of the things that was big in their lives was getting an organic certification. We had experienced a bit of this while we were in France with Ronna and Honore, in that they were getting their annual certification audit. There are so many factors you wouldn't normally think about in terms of being an organic farm: to my mind (before I started to think about it) it was just about not using pesticides on your produce. But even things like the hay you've carted in that you use as spread over crops, was anything sprayed on that? How about the horse manure you've carted in to use as compost - what were the horses eating? The whole deal with organic certification is that you're able to provide a paper trail for your produce, to ensure that nothing untoward has been used to produce the crops. If you've ever wondered why organic foods cost more, that's just one of the reasons.

Sunset on the Queen Charlotte Sound.

After two great weeks with Anna and Chris, it was time for us to hit the road again, ostensibly back towards the North Island. But before we left we had to give it one more try with the dolphins in Kaikoura. We drove back south down the main highway to what had become our freedom camping spot of choice, and the next morning, drove in early to Dolphin Encounters. We got our tickets, saw the dolphin video (again), Amy got suited up, and drove out to the boat. After sitting in the boat for a few minutes, the word came down: no dolphins were sighted. We drove back to the cafe and got our money back. We hit the road back north.

The next day, after an uneventful crossing of the Cook strait, we hooked up with some friends from Canada, Anders and Sarah. It was a chance meeting at a wedding in Toronto before we left on our trip, that would connect us with them; after a few minutes of conversation we figured out that we would be in New Zealand at around the same time, and they offered that we could come visit them in Wellington.

It turns out Wellington has worked out very well for them, and they both work in some capacity for the federal government's library. I can certainly see the appeal of living in New Zealand, but Wellington wasn't the first place I would have envisioned. The weather is generally inclement (when we visited, at least) and the city is built upwards into the rolling hillside. That said, it's a cafe lover's paradise, with (according to our guide book) more cafes per capita than New York city. There's a bohemian feel downtown and plenty of places with great character.

After a few nights of crashing on the couch, card games and exploring the city, we said our goodbyes and took back to the open road. We drove northwards through Palmerston North and Wanganui, towards Taupo, Rotorua and Tongariro. The landscape and highway became increasingly hilly and mountainous as we entered the volcanic region of the north island. I was impressed that on the shores of lake Taupo you can collect as much pumice stone as you like, from small pebbles to apple-sized rounds.

The great Tongariro mountain came late into our planning: its chief tourist draw is a day-long crossing that brings you through an arrid, windy landscape that comes straight out of Dante's Inferno. Several scenes of The Lord of the Rings were shot here, to provide a backdrop for Mount Doom: a the steamy, craggy, otherwordly landscape. However, you can't do the crossing unless the weather cooperates, and for the couple of days we allowed ourselves to do it, we weren't so lucky. Instead, we hung out in the resort-style town of Rotorua, which serves as a trailhead for all manner of outdoor activities. On our way we visited and bathed in the tepid of waters of Kerosene creek, one of a huge number of unofficial (and free) hot springs, which we were able to locate with help of the New Zealand hot springs web site.

Wai-o-tapu's champagne pool.

We eventually caved in and bought day passes to a local geothermal park, which showcases the steamy and smelly wonders of the volcanic underworld. The Wai-o-Tapu thermal park offers acres of bubbling mud, steaming fissures, and a daily geyser. The colours of the water in the popular "Champagne pool" were quite striking: a deep emerald green, transforming to a rusty red as the water grew more shallow and you could see the chemical remains growing upon the stone. The steam filled the air and obscured the view, and it truly felt like you were taking a step back in time. I took so many photos I ran out of space on my memory cards, and we were both glad to have forked over the not-insubstantial ticket price. What would we do, wait until the next time we were driving through New Zealand?

We headed back north towards Auckland, to spend a few days with John and Karen, friends of my dad's who visited him during their tour through Canada. We decide to take the path less travelled, driving north up a parallel highway to the main one on the west side, and hoping to find something suitable to spend the night at as we go. We didn't. In turning around to head back towards something, I managed to put the back wheels of the van into the ditch, which left us helpless and perpendicular to oncoming traffic. There were a few tense moments! Luckily, there wasn't a whole lot of traffic, and within a few minutes not one buy two vehicles had stopped to help and within ten minutes we were sorted out. In addition, a fellow caravaner (in a much more flash vehicle than ours) suggested a good place for us to stay: the parking green of a local country church, St. Alban's.

We pulled into John and Karen's the next day to a warm welcome: despite the fact that their second son was getting married next week, they had insisted that we should stay with them (although it worked out well that we were intending to continue our trip through the northern part of the north island during that time). John and Karen have a fantastic property moments from the heart of the city, a house that he designed (being an architect) and built over several years. They made our stay very comfortable as we caught our breath to head out onto the road again, only needing to do one considerable task before we went: getting the van a new "warrant of fitness."

A little explanation on buying and selling vehicles in New Zealand. It's raised more than a few eyebrows in telling non-New Zealanders about the van, just how easy it was to buy and licence the van. You essentially take care of all the paperwork in the post office. The van needs a current warrant of fitness (a basic mechanical check to make sure it doesn't fall apart on the road, renewed every six months for used vehicles), and a road registration. After you do the paperwork at the post office with the former owner, you're ready to roll. Insurance isn't mandatory, but in our view, highly useful, and it's based on the driver, not the vehicle.

Our van, which we named "Pinot Blanc."

So, in preparation for selling the van, we decided that getting the warrant done now was better than rushing to get it done before selling. In addition, John and Karen knew of a good local mechanic. We drove by one morning and left the van for a while with our fingers crossed: it turned out the only work that needed to be done was an extension of a tailpipe (so the exhaust didn't sneak back into the van) and a rear brake needed to be fixed. These repairs completed, we got our new warrant of fitness and were all set to go.

John suggested a route through the north, which pretty much encompassed everything we wanted to see: forests of ancient Kauri trees; sand dunes stretching out from the ocean; small towns brimming over with character and personality.

Te Matua Ngahere, or "Father of the Forest."

The Kauri forest is a massive section of old-growth protected Kauri trees, the highest of which, Tane Mahuta, reaches 169 feet tall and 45 feet in circumference. It may seem odd that a dozen trees in various parts of the area are tourist attractions, but it's hard to describe just how awe-inspiring these trees are; they are monstrously big. Your eyes wander up the trunk, and keep on going until you are craned backwards and looking almost straight up. The Father of the Forest is 98 feet tall and 59 feet in girth, and is estimated to be fifteen hundred years old. Very, very humbling.

Te Paki sand dunes.

The weather was deliciously warm and sunny, peppered by frequent and brief showers, as we drove up the coast towards the tip of the north island and Cape Reinga. Looking for a toilet we actually encountered the Te Paki sand dunes. For about two kilometers between the vast ocean and the lush forest, a lengthy band of high sand dunes interposes land and sea. It was, as most things New Zealand, a stunning contrast. We spent a couple of hours walking the dunes, and when you're in the midst of it, it's sand in all directions and you could be in the Sahara for all your senses tell you. There's the faintest breath of the salty sea breeze that passes across the sand, but the silence is almost deafening. It was remarkably peaceful, and one of my favourite places in all of New Zealand. Desolately beautiful.

From there we drove to Cape Reinga, the northmost-part of New Zealand, and spent a little time there, watching the Tasman sea to the west crash into the Pacific ocean of the east. Cape Reinga is a holy place to the Maori people, whose traditions hold that when a Maori dies, the spirit makes its way north to the Cape to enter the underworld. They then depart the mainland by leaping off an 800 year old Pohutukawa tree.

Kiwis on the vine.

Coming back from the north of the north, we had two great encounters with local New Zealanders: Mike and Mary outside of Kerikeri, and Bryan and Maureen in Paihia. Mike and Mary we met while dining on the world's best fish and chips, and after talking, they invited us to park our van on their property for the night. Mike runs a kiwi plantation, and is a very active part of the thriving kiwi business in New Zealand. He gave us a tour of the packing plant he has a share in, which was very informative: standards are demandingly high in the business, and there's very little room for error. Bryan we had met while tramping outside of Wanaka, and we met up with he and his wife Maureen in Paihia: they very generously put us up for the night and we had an impromptu feast. They, too, are contemplating a change in lifestyle which would see them wandering the north and south islands in a camper van; we had lots to talk about and had a lovely time.

As our tour through the northland wound its way to its end, our thoughts began to weigh heavily with the prospect of selling the van. Given that we had had our pick of the litter when buying, we knew it was going to be a challenge to the spirit to be on the opposite end of the table when selling. Nevertheless, we cleaned it up, packed our stuff away, and did all our last minute stuff in Whangarei and drove into Auckland for a Saturday morning market. We parked the van next to a dozen other vans, set up the lawn chairs, and waited with books to read; neither Amy nor I expected we would have any interest. It turned out we were delightfully wrong. A young couple stopped by later in the morning, and took a shine to the van; they were recently granted residency status in New Zealand, and now wanted a vehicle for traipsing around the country. Pinot Blanc couldn't have gone to nicer people. A road test and a mechanical check later, we had ourselves a deal and everyone walked away happy. It was almost a tearful moment, watching the van drive away without us.

From there we connected with another set of new friends we'd made while tramping in Abel Tasman park, Michelle and Duncan. We had a great couple of days with them, the first marked very well with a pirate-themed costume party. I seem to recall getting into swordfights (plastic swords) and a lot of pictures being taken. Not that I know where any of them are. Haar!

We reconnected with John and Karen, and without the van to sell, had a luxurious couple of stress-free days with the prospect of heading to Australia now in our sights. John is an accomplished hunter, and on the Friday before we left, took me deerstalking on a friend's huge property. I recognize this dispatch is running a little long, so I'll relate the hunting story, and then come to a close; the next dispatch will be all about Australia.

John and I went out in the late morning to "South Head", a stretch of land about an hour from Auckland owned by a cousin of his who lets him hunt there. The area is home to black deer and pheasants primarily, but it's also populated by peacocks and other wild birds.

We had some fun finding the key to open the gate, but soon we were doing some four-by-four driving over lumpy grasslands to a find a good place to make a tasty lunch of frankfurters and coffee over a campfire. After a few test shots on his exquisite muzzleloading rifles, we set off across the country: more big, lumpy rolling hills. We would approach a vale and creep into it, so as not to let our motion attract the attention of the deer. We found two, a hind and a yearling, but they ran quickly off and there was so much foliage in between us and them a shot wasn't feasible. We trekked onward.

John enjoyed telling me stories of past shoots, showing me the exact location where a deer walked right up to him, or where he shot a rabbit with a bow and arrow. He'd clearly been here many times and knows the lay of the land very well. I consider myself in pretty good shape, especially having done a year's worth of walking, but found I had difficulty keeping up with John. I wondered how it was possible that even though he appeared to be walking, I had to jog to keep up with him. I chalked it up to his long legs.

We finally had our chance; as we rounded a large hill and approached a large copse of trees, I saw a line of five deer running away from us along a deer fence. "John," I whispered, but he didn't hear; again, I whispered urgently, but he didn't hear again; finally, I barked it out, figuring that the deer had already seen us and wouldn't be much more spooked. If anything John was spooked, pointing his rifle skyward, until he followed my pointing finger to where the deer were running. No shot was going to be possible, from our range; but they stopped, about two hundred meters away, regarding us evenly. John and I froze like statues, and then John started backing us up, foot after foot, keeping our gaze on them. They bolted again, cresting the hill and out of vision. John thought for a moment, then said, "come on," as we ran back around the hill we'd just passed. We tore off to meet them, as he had figured out that they would meet a deer fence and have little choice but to follow it along.

He was right. It wasn't long before the deer came into view, and he beckoned me to get into position. "Don't fire while they're moving," he advised, "wait until they stop." So I waited, and he whistled, which may have actually caused them to stop. A white-and-brown deer, the one that attracted my eye, fell into my sights. I tried to focus and let my heart slow down, which was no easy feat when we just sprinted the last hundred meters. I pulled back the hammer on my flintlock, pulled the set trigger and then when I thought I had it aimed right, pulled the main trigger.
A flash and a bang, but the deer didn't fall down dead. John tracked the deer as it ran on, moving himself into a position of his own. Unfortunately, while they did stop again, it wasn't long enough for him to get a good shot. They tore off into the night.
That was our one good chance; we walked back, adrenaline souring in our bodies, to the car.

It was like John had said on the way to South Head: "I can't promise you'll shoot a deer, but I can promise you'll see one."

Andrew and Amy in the Ardeche

After a short train ride from Chambery and a longer bus ride from Valence, we arrived after sunset in the small french town of Les Vans. We had traded emails with Ronna and Honoré leading up to our arrival - on our part, we had to tell them about our incredible coincidence that Mary, a former WWOOF participant on their farm, was none other than my cousin, and for theirs, to tell us that a movie that they were interested in was playing that night in Les Vans, and would we be interested in seeing it?

A neat beginning to our WWOOF experience: start it off with a movie. In this case, "Indigènes", an award-winning world war two drama concerning the experience of Algerian soldiers fighting under the French flag to purge France of the German occupation. An excellent and suspenseful movie, it also had a blessed amount of subtitling to translate the Algerian spoken by the lead characters into French. My french is good enough to get by, but when they spoke quickly, in accents and colloquially, I was lost. With subtitles, I could comprehend it much more easily.

Ronna and Honoré make an interesting couple. They've raised two daughters, both out of the house: one recently married, and having started a farm of her own out in the Alps. Honoré is the quiet one, generous with his opinions to his friends but to those he doesn't know, conservative with his comments. During our first week, we didn't get much conversation out of Honoré; in addition, his accent is so different from what I'm used to I really went more by instinct than anything when it came to properly interpreting his instructions when it came to farm-related activities. There were more than a few times I had misinterpreted. He also doesn't speak English: not a bit. Honoré has no fondness for technology: doesn't concern himself with cellphones, computers or new cars.

Honoré's truck is a well-loved Ford pickup with absolutely no automatic anything. The seats bounce around during a trip, the passenger door must be opened from the inside, and the dash is a veritable workshop of miscellaneous tools and implements you might need when driving around farming properties. The sides of the cargo area can be unlocked and swing down to make it easier to load things in and out, and when I pointed out that one of the mechanisms wasn't actually secured by the bolts, he shrugged and showed me how it could be wedged to work just fine. What will stick with me about Honoré is his capacity to put things in the easiest form to understand: perhaps this is from dealing with the sixty-plus WWOOFers they've had over the years. He doesn't waste a lot of time explaining something and tends to show you how to do it rather than talk you through it. Sometimes it worked with us: sometimes, it didn't, but in the end, we figured it out.

In many ways, Ronna is the complete opposite to Honoré. She's vibrant and talkative, with a quick wit and a gift for telling stories that are rich with detail. In fact most of her stories begin with her saying "and the story with that is...", which led me to tease her a bit about it. And then we developed a great conversation about the ways people from different countries speak, how people begin sentences, and how they fill silences. It's actually quite interesting if you think about it: how many times do you say "uh" in a sentence when your brain is thinking of the right thing to say next? Or do you just ramble on until your brain catches up?

Communication became a key issue during our stay because there were a few things we managed to do incorrectly, however (I think) none were so grave that they were major setbacks or things that couldn't be done again, correctly. It's a tricky thing to be a WWOOF host; you aren't paying the volunteer, so you can't just fire them or dock their pay if they mess up. You basically work with what you get. And because most volunteers only stay for a week, how much time do you spend explaining a task to ensure it's done properly? Do you over-explain and spend more time than it takes to do the task, or under-explain and hope the volunteer figures it out? Or hope that they'll have the sense to ask questions to clarify?

And as a volunteer, the same quandaries exist: you don't want to come off as slow or stupid by asking a continuous stream of questions, when you want to be working, but at the same time, you don't want to risk getting it wrong. Ronna and I had this conversation a couple of times, which reminded Ronna of a conversation she'd had with previous WWOOFers, who described a previous farm they'd visited. Before they arrived, they received in the mail a questionnaire from the WWOOF host farm, asking them some questions in order to figure out what they can do. While Ronna thought it was a good idea, it would take a fair amount of effort. In her mind, she'd just ask one question:

Your WWOOF host gives you a task to do, and goes off to do something else. You start to do the task, then realize something that you hadn't thought to ask when the host was describing what to do. Do you:

a) Keep going, doing the task as best as you understood the instructions as described.
b) Stop working, track down the host and ask them to clarify the task.
c) Stop working, and wait for the host to return to clarify the task.
d) Cry.

So after our initial cinematic introductions, we headed back to the farm. The drive back to the farm from Les Vans takes about a half an hour, and as the movie had ended around eleven-thirty, we were driving back in pitch black. You would have thought that driving with Mary for a week would have put us at ease when it came to driving in the mountains: this was not the case that first night. I remarked at the sharpness of Ronna's turns as she drove the car out of Les Vans, and wondered if it was a hallmark of how the car drove. But as we wound our way onto the mountain roads that lead to their farm, charmingly known as Le Soulier, I quickly realized why her turns were sharp.

The roads hug the sides of the mountains, which makes them all curvy. Typically, you'll encounter small bridges every couple of hundred metres, linking one mountain road to the next. Most bridges have solid walls that would probably stop a car careening off the road into the gorge waiting below: some have tiny flags implanted into the bitumen showing where the new bridge wall was going to be built, the last having been swept away in a torrential storm, and you should be wary of the edge. In truth, it was probably better that it was pitch black that first drive home, as we couldn't see just how far down the base of the mountain was from the side of the road that we travelled. Again, for Ronna or Honoré, regardless of who was driving, they've lived there a long time: for Honoré, all his life, and the roads are just roads. For the new visitor, it's a white knuckle roller coaster ride, and you're not even going that fast. It just feels like you are. Couple this with the fact that the roads are just wide enough to fit two cars, in some places; for most of the roads, when you get far enough out of the way, the road can accommodate one-and-a-half cars. So if you meet someone, you have to stop, and someone has to back up enough to get to a point where two cars can pass each other.

It wasn't until much later on in our visit that I realized, during a drive somewhere, that my eyes would be glued to the road, even during conversation, with the completely irrational belief that if I took my eyes away from it, something horrendous might happen. There we were, passing panoramic vistas, gorges, and an impressive hydroelectric power dam, and where were my eyes? Glued out the front window. I don't think I really adjusted to those roads.

A little about Ronna and Honoré's farm, Le Soulier. The main household is a collection of buildings, well over a hundred years old, that's been in Honoré's family for generations. The buildings are all built of stone, which being up in the mountains, is in bounteous supply. The main and most-frequented area of the house is the living room, which houses a hearth and fireplace the likes of which I've never seen: the fireplace takes up an entire wall, such that you can place huge logs onto the fire. Indeed, Honoré was not satisfied with the efficient, steady fires I would gravitate to: he'd happily add a eight-foot long tree trunk (or three) to the fire, put the bellows to it, and give it a satisfied grunt.

The property is surrounded by stacked terraces on which grow a variety of different trees, but for the most part, different varieties of chestnut. When I say stacked terraces I need to step back and explain a bit more, as I don't think I'd have understood what that meant if someone were just to drop that term on me. I guess farming on a mountain has its own set of challenges, the first of which is that it's a constant struggle to get up and down the mountain. Creating access roads is one thing (ie., with switchbacks) but if you don't do something about how the land forms on the mountain, everything that falls off a tree just tumbles down the mountain.

So, what you do is scoop out large tracks of land and dump the soil below. You then use the stones you find, or bring around, to build hefty retaining walls to make sure the soil doesn't gravitate back to the slope to which it would be accustomed. At least, this is the scenario I created in my head for how these immense rock walls, holding back level sections of earth, came to be. I boggle at the amount of labour that would have been required to create all the terraces you see when you wander through the area: not just Ronna and Honoré's farm, but everyone's farm, and the roads: everything has been cordoned off with these carefully constructed rock walls. It certainly didn't get that way by accident. Luckily, being in the mountains, there are plenty of rocks to find.

Ronna and Honoré also have gardens of different plants, fields sown with varieties of crops, apple and peach trees, grapevines, and are even graced by surprise mushroom explosions. In short, they have lots of things to harvest, and no shortage of things to keep them busy. In addition to the everyday tasks directly related to the management of the fruits and vegetables, they also spend a lot of time preparing their yield for sale at either a wholesaler or at a weekly market in Les Vans. Tantalized by the advance knowledge from Mary that Ronna and Honoré produce wine, Amy and I thought we might finally get a chance to try out our secaters, but alas, harvesting grapes was not to be our task while we were there: that had been done earlier in September (probably while we were trying to do the same thing in the Loire). No, our task would be picking chestnuts.

It was perhaps auspicious that during our visit to Maggie and Sandy in Ireland, we would happen across a chestnut tree that had produced some nuts. Before that, the sum total of my knowledge of chestnuts was that there is a song that begins by roasting them over an open fire. In fact, Amy and I tried that once, and were not captivated by the results. No, I knew nothing about chestnuts. This would change.

A chestnut grows to maturity, protected from the world in a hard, spikey shell called a bogue. When the nuts ripen the bogues fall to the ground and split open (or split open and fall to the ground. I don't know which, as the bogues were all off the trees when we got there). In a really well-developed chestnut bogue, there are three nuts side-by-side. More often, the nuts have already fallen out of the bogue. Then they fall into the crevices of the land, are covered by leaves and twigs, and become generally hidden.

Enter the work, and it's simple enough: find the chestnuts, dig them out of the bogues if necessary, and drop them into buckets. Fill a bucket, and pour it into a burlap sack. Heft the sack into the truck. Of course, there are some twists. The first being that not all chestnuts are good for consumption: worms get at them. The more obvious examples have big holes in them and crush easily, however, some you can't see and look just fine. For this reason all the chestnuts that are brought from the fields are dumped into large tanks of water, and left to sit there for around two weeks. The water purifies the chestnuts, and the ones which aren't good float to the top.

The next trick is to get around the terraces without putting too many of the bogue spikes into your knees, legs and hands. Because they're everywhere, you can't really sit anywhere that you haven't brushed clear, so you end up stooped over for most of the time you're out there. I thank Amy's mother for getting us very good gardening gloves in preparation for our WWOOF visit, as they were great protection from the bogue picks, but that didn't stop us from getting more than a couple in our fingers.

On some of the terraces, Honoré had laid out great green nets for the bogues and nuts to fall into, and with a bit of twisting and throwing action, all the nuts fall into a convenient pile to be collected. As Amy was quick to note, it was like hunting for Easter eggs, and especially satisfying to find a whole cache of nuts waiting for you.

Of the times that I was on my own collecting chestnuts with Honoré, he would sometimes tell me not to collect nuts from a certain area, because they were, as he would put it succinctly, "pas bon" (not good). It took me a while of puzzling over how he could tell the difference; they certainly looked like the other nuts, but hey, I only work here, so if they're pas bon, that's was good enough for me. To this day I have not got the keen eye for finding a good chestnut from a bad one, but I have figured out enough that it depends a lot on the tree they dropped from. Some trees are better than others, I suppose. As well, there are indicators of quality that can be ascertained by just looking it over carefully. I will leave that to the experienced professionals.

Editor's note: Ronna sent an email to help clarify this and other points, and she comments on the chestnuts:

A bit of information: the chestnut trees (as all fruit trees) are grafted: some varieties are more tasty than others, or a particular variety may be the ones we need to be gathering for a particular sale, etc. Also, there are trees around (like behind the house) which we didn't get around to grafting and those are definitely "pas bon du tout"!

Once you've collected a sizeable number of chestnuts, it turns out there are a bunch of things you can do with them other than roast them over an open fire. You can turn them into jam, flour, or bottle them whole with spices or without. There are different varieties of chestnuts, of which Ronna and Honoré have several, and are quite proud of the work they do.

One memory that will always stick with me is the sound of jets breaking the sound barrier on a daily basis as the French Air Force practiced aerial combat maneuvers overhead in the Ardeche. Only once did I catch a glimpse of them, but there was no questioning what they were.

It took us a while to get to know Ronna and Honoré, certainly more than a week, which made me glad that we stayed two. Ronna is also keenly interested in photography, which prompted more than a few conversations there. She's also a Nikon enthusiast which in itself makes her alright in my books. Honoré is on the town counsel of their township, Malarce sur la Thines, and was actually the mayor of Thines for several years. The two of them obviously have a vested interest in the environment, being organic farmers, but they also are interested in issues which touch on them more indirectly. For example, the local hot-button issue in Malarce is the introduction of windmills as an alternate power source. France is heavily reliant on nuclear power, using reactors for over eighty percent of its consumption. There are big lobbies on both sides of the windmill argument, with the arguments falling something like this:

Pro-Windmill	Anti-windmill
Nuclear power creates waste that is, at the least, difficult to deal with	Windmills are noisy, and mar the landscape
Wind is a sustainable and renewable energy source	Wind is not a reliable energy source: some days it's just not windy
Windmills create no waste product	The creation of a windmill takes a great deal of energy and materials, possibly more than it will provide

There are other arguments, both those seemed to be the big ones that were voiced during our attendance at a town hall meeting on the subject. It seems to be a politically-charged issue; no doubt the nuclear industry would chafe at the prospect of their apparent monopoly on power being challenged by yet another source, especially when an experimental fusion reactor is in development in the southeast of France. If all goes according to plan, it is supposed to be a very clean source of nuclear power, but it won't be ready for some years, and I'm sure they're going to need every euro of funding they can scrape together.

During our stay with Ronna and Honoré we also harvested carrots, apples, squash, pumpkins and potatoes. I must confess that apart from some gardening I helped my mother with when I was very young, I haven't had the opportunity to be this close to vegetables in their native habitat. So pulling potatoes out of the ground and realizing that only a small percentage looks like something I'd see in a supermarket, was very humbling. The rest had bumps, folds and eyes running through them: in short, very "organic". And perfectly edible. Actually, let me qualify that: they were some of the best potatoes I've ever eaten. But it makes me wonder about those supermarket potatoes. Are they treated a certain way to increase the yield of "perfect" potatoes? Or are we just getting a very small selection, the rest of the "unseemly" potatoes being chopped up and turned into french fries?

I could go into great detail about the rest of our experience with Ronna and Honoré, but as I write this, we've already crossed two countries and I fear that I'll have to be a lot less verbose if I'm ever going to catch up. While WWOOFing might not be for everyone, for us it was a very grounding experience, and a very much needed break from the museum, restaurant and hotel version of tourism we had been cast into. Tourism from the inside-out, if you will. It was good to be doing something with my hands. While we never got much of an opportunity to sample the wines of the region (to be honest, it was nice to "detox" after knocking off close to a dozen bottles of wine with Mary) it does give us the perfect excuse to go back.

After a healthy dose off goodbyes, we hopped on a bus towards Montpellier. We had a few days to kill before our next country: Spain.

Norman and Noeme in North Portugal

It seems we bring good weather wherever we go, and our second WWOOF visit was no exception. Most of Portugal had experienced massive rains and flooding in the two weeks preceding our visit, and heavy rains had been drenching the countryside right up until our arrival. But for the two weeks after we started our visit to Rio Torto in Valenca, it didn't rain a drop, the sun was out, and we were having lunch in the garden.

Our first day, however, didn't look promising, at least as far as the weather was concerned. Our hosts on the other hand, Norman and Noeme, owners of the Rio Torto villa just outside Valenca, proved to be just as charming as the emails we'd exchanged had suggested they might be. We had agreed that we'd call them when we were in Porto, before hopping on the regional train that would carry us to Valenca, and they would pick us up from there. It always amazes me how people can sound differently between different media of communication; on email, Norman sounded conservative and reserved; on the phone, he was jovial to the point of goofy, energetic and full of life. I was caught off-guard because we didn't do the traditional exchange of names and "how-are-yous" that seems to ground a telephone call; he jumped into how good it was to hear us, how much they were looking forward to seeing us and that he'd be there to meet us at the station. When I hung up the phone I had a moment of uncertainty that I might not have dialled the right number, but as I would find out, this is very much a part of who Norman is.

A short while later we were in an extremely rainy Valenca. It was the kind of rain that comes down in five minute torrents of hard-hitting rain, coming in at funny angles, and the fizzles out for ten minutes, only to do it again. Norman had no trouble recognizing us: we were the only western-looking tourists with front- and backpacks bearing Canadian flags to get off the train. Norman also stands out from the rest of the Portuguese: literally, as he's quite tall. Retired from the off-shore banking industry, he's full of life and exuberance, enjoying every waking minute of the day and not afraid to make a big fuss about it. This is underscored by, as he would soon tell us, a health scare that he survived, that has clearly led him onto the smell-the-roses and seize-the-day paths of life to which we should all be paying attention.

On our short car ride back to Rio Torto, the name of their house just outside of Valenca, Norm let us know a little about the area and how they came to be there. Northern Portugal is one of the poorest regions of Portugal, if not the European Union (possibly pre-Romania and -Bulgaria); consequently, if you have saved up a fair amount from working a job that pays you in English Pounds, your money can go quite a far way. Norman retired from his job and bought the property; by western standards it's fairly modest, but their Portuguese neighbours think he's really wealthy.

Their property was quite a contrast to our first WWOOF experience; where Honoré and Ronna have a working farm property that is their primary source of income, Norm and Noeme have (essentially) a house with a large garden, half of it ornamental and the other half undeveloped, but judging from the massive weeds that had sprung up in just six months, extremely fertile. The property has both a front and back yard, with trees filling the front (apple, orange, fig and persimmon) and the ornamental garden filling the back, with trees and smaller plants surrounded by rocks and gravel in an Asian-inspired capacity.

So our job was essentially to remove the weeds, and if we had time for anything else, perfect. I'll admit that the sight of the weeds made me question whether we would actually get them cleared within the two weeks we were to stay. I'm not kidding, these things were massive. The common weed that was completely spread out across any hint of soil was bracken, a brown fern-like weed that had fronds up to two feet in height. The roots of this stuff are very pernicious, burrowing deep into the soil in one long, rope-like tendril. To completely remove it you have to dig deep into the soil with a pitchfork. But the real shockers were a type of weed we couldn't find the name for: "gigantic fuschia mini-trees" might come close to approximating what they looked like. The stalks were indeed fuschia in colour, and for the larger ones, at least ten inches in diameter. The weed shoots straight up and then forks several times, giving it the appearance of a tree, but it doesn't really have leaves; rather, at the end of the forks you have big clusters of what look to be purple blueberries. We didn't try any to taste, but they did leave marvellous purple blots on our clothes.

We met Noeme as soon as we got to the house; much younger than Norman, they had met by coincidence when Norm bought something from Hong Kong, where Noeme was working. It must have been a truly excellent example of customer service as not shortly after Norman was taking a flight for a visit (many emails later, we're assured) and not long after that, they were married. She's a bundle of energy - not used to being retired yet, I suspect - and would often refuse to stop working when the rest of us had taken a break. With her dark hair and Oriental complexion (a bit misleading, as she's originally from the Philippines) she was very generous and lively, and the perfect foil for Norm's boundless energy.

A great example of the two of them together is on the car rides we would take: Norm can't drive what I would call a "normal" car, with the steering wheel on the left; his car is a right-hand drive (or is it left-hand drive? You know, the kind of car designed to drive in Great Britain, on the wrong side of the road). Thus, on certain corners, it's difficult to do a shoulder check to see if the way is clear, and Noeme would have to provide a second set of eyes. And constantly remind him to drive on the right side of the road. They have probably been driving for years, but still they're working out how to signal that the way is clear; it had been "yes" for clear and "no" for not clear, but there was at least one misunderstanding in which Norm had asked whether there were any cars coming and Noeme had replied "No" in keeping with the no-for-not-clear system and the car lurched forward a bit to a squeal of "stop stop stop!" from Noeme. It was only when I manned the passenger seat and was assigned the role of second-set-of-eyes that the "all-clear" rule was developed: that is, regardless of the question asked, the response has to be "clear" in order for the driver to proceed. I'm hoping they're still using this system... Actually, this system has its roots from our first WWOOF visit in the Ardeche, where a similar question would be asked by Ronna on our drive out into town. In typical Canadian fashion, I would respond "You're good" which isn't a very erudite or even grammatically correct way to answer the question. As a part of our long conversation about what makes up the "correct" usage of language, we determined that just answering "the way is clear" would be perfect.

After just the first day we found we had much in common with Norm and Noeme and got along extremely well. When we did start to tackle the garden, we worked mostly by hand to pull out the more tenacious pieces of bracken from the ornamental garden, moving around rocks to make the soil directly accessible. It took us a few days but it was extremely rewarding to see everything take shape. Meanwhile, Noeme started the arduous process of pruning the trees, and after only a couple of days things were dramatically transformed. In addition, we were building up some substantial piles of weeds, the intention of which was to reduce them to ash with some good bonfires.

The fun didn't really begin until we began to tackle the back plots which were slated for use as a vegetable garden. Being completely overrun with bracken and purple monsters, you could hardly see through to the end of the property. It was then that Norm brought out the secret weapon: a gas-powered brush cutter. Six horsepower of harness-carried swinging cutting power, it cut through the bracken like a hot knife through butter, and toppled the purple monsters in a single swoop. It didn't take us more than two days to completely clear the back plot and reduce it to four piles suitable for burning. Very satisfying.

The burning, however, would take some work. We had dreams of being able to throw a single match onto the dry bracken and watch a towering inferno reduce the weeds in mere minutes; this was not to be the case. Quite the opposite, actually. The bonfire strategy went through several stages, including adding various forms of starters (paper, rolled-up cardboard, unpaid bills) to the mix of weeds; adding various accelerants including alcohol, paraffin and petrol, in a pyrotechnic but highly-controlled (Mum, I assure you) way; to finally, constructing a stone "burning table" out of cinder blocks and granite pillars. This final bonfire was the end of a cumulation of highly unsatisfactory burns; the purple monsters were completely filled up with water, so we ended up separating them into a separate pile to let them dry out over the next few months. The main burning area was an area about thirty feet by thirty feet, in the shade of the house, to which they had been slowly adding burnables from last year. The result was a massive pile about fifteen feet tall filled with composting bracken, suitcases, sticks, twigs, tree limbs, and old suitcases. I realized this thing was never going to burn unless we separated it out and started over (I realized this, of course, from a previously unsuccessful burn). So separate it we did, into more or less burnable items, large and small, the purple monster twigs and the bracken. Then we reassembled it into what was going to be the final, "if this doesn't work, we'll bury it" effort, complete with five starter boxes (cardboard boxes filled with two wooden stumps for lasting power, rolled up cardboard, paper, and liberal splashings of petrol) on top of the stone table. I'm happy to report that the thing went up with a great vacuum of air, and a flash of yellow fire that would have been guaranteed to remove eyebrows and lashes if it weren't for the Tiki torch that was used to light the boxes.

Now, I know what some of the more organically-inclined among you are probably thinking: petrol and paraffin accelerants? Suitcases on the fire? Isn't this supposed to be "world-wide opportunities on organic farms"? Yes, there were some conversations about long term consequences, but we also decided to remove all the ash from the yard. It will be some time before the soil could ever be called organic, and my feeling is Norm, when it comes to maintaining the crops he will be planting, will not be adding pesticides or GMO fertilizers; rather, he's the kind of guy that will plant things and be happy if anything manages to sprout at all. And the soil is really, really fertile; there were the weeds to prove it.

In the end, though, there was no way that pile was ever going to burn without something to help it. Believe me, we tried. And the moral of the story is, if you ever have a hard time keeping a bonfire going, just add another suitcase to it; they go up remarkably well. Perhaps some brands better than others.

During our stay, we learned a lot about persimmons. I knew of the name, but couldn't pick it out of a fruit lineup if you paid me; we learned a lot about them because Norm and Noeme had two growing on their property and were wondering what the heck to do with them. So if you've ever wondered what a persimmon is, and what to do with them, here is a brief synopsis of what I learned.

It's a fruit that comes in many shapes and sizes, but mostly, you see a reddish-orange variety about the size of an apple. There are two main varieties: a popular variety which is ready to eat as soon as it is gently plucked from the tree; a sweet, juicy fruit with a few, small seeds in the middle. Unfortunately for Norm and Noeme, this wasn't what they had growing on their property. Rather, they had a variety which can't be eaten without further assistance unless it's so ripe it falls off with a messy splat onto the ground. It doesn't really get to this point because it's attacked by bugs and birds when it approaches this level of ripeness. If you tried to eat one before this, you'd find (as we did) the fruit is so astringent that as the fruit touches your tongue it drains it of all wetness available, leaving your mouth feeling as if you've been sucking on sand. I can't say I enjoyed it. However, the astringency can be removed in a variety of ways: freezing it, exposing it to carbon dioxide (such as the CO2 that's produced by a ripening banana) or letting the fruit ruminate in alcohol. In fact, for the British variety of the fruit, called "Sharon fruit", this is exactly what they do: treat it chemically to remove the astringency.

So, while we tried to come up with things to help them go through their crop of persimmons, I don't know how successful we were. I'm sure there is some more experimenting to be done, but from my perspective, the best thing about the tree is its look when it's hung low with fruit. As well, I'm told the foliage and flowers are nice to look at.

Or, maybe the neighbours will be interested in them, using a secret Portuguese method to turn them into something divine. It would be a very useful trade, and would leave Norm and Noeme feeling a bit better, as their incredibly generous neighbours have a tendency to shower them with fresh lemons, oranges, and eggs; Norm and Noeme haven't got anything to trade back yet, but do suspect that their neighbours happily helped themselves to the figs from their wonderfully productive tree when they were away last summer. So some guilt could be being assuaged here. In the meantime, the neighbours have been very grateful for Noeme's trade back, spring rolls she expertly creates with a delicious recipe.

The weed clearing took us through the first week, so we decided to plunge into the planting of a vegetable garden, to which I had been assigned to design and orchestrate. What the heck do I know about gardening? I think I helped water some string beans when I was four years old in my mother's garden, and remember with some fondness pulling half-grown carrots from the ground and washing them straight in the rain barrel. Apart from that, gardens are where people who know things about gardening, well, do their thing. So it was a bit of a crash course through the Royal Botanical Society's Encyclopaedia of Horticulture (a.k.a. the bible for all things gardening) and "winging it". I was assigned as leader of this particular project mostly for my optimism, not for any particular skill or talent, or even promise of such. In fact I'm sure if Amy had been the one to say "sure, I suppose we could try our hand at that" it would have been her coming up with a plot plan and an idea of what goes where.

Nothing was going to get planted, however until we turned over the soil. For that, Norman decided he needed to purchase one more piece of garden equipment: a rotovator (I think in Canada we might call this thing a roto-tiller). Picture an engine on two wheels, with a set of adjustable wheelbarrow handles that let you steer; beneath the engine, the main event, six coarse steel sickles, which turn at a high enough torque that the earth gets chewed up magnificently. It took a little while to figure out, but when all the parts were fitted together properly we went over the entire plot area, turning up the earth like a hot knife through butter (I'm aware I'm using the same analogy twice. But when something really does work that easily, it truly is the best analogy to use). I can't express the satisfaction I felt when the rotovator went over a purple monster root, bounced around like a bucking bronco for a few seconds, and then produced in its wake softball-sized pieces of root. Much better than spending ten minutes with a pitchfork and shovel to produce a sore back and a few pieces of root.

It was into this fertile, brown-as-chocolate soil that we were going to plant vegetables. What kind of vegetables? In Norman's mind, pretty much whatever he could get his hands on. We went to the market to collect some, and fifty-odd euros later, we came back with a car so packed full of plants and vegetable cuttings Amy had a lemon tree pressing her up against the back seat. We negotiated with the seller to buy dozens of cabbage plants, lettuces, parsley, broccoli, brussels sprouts, and cauliflowers. Our transaction was conducted in a marvellous trifecta of translation: French was our common language, and it required us to translate back to Norman, and the seller to translate to his partner in Portuguese. But nothing would deter Norman; with peals of joy and excitement, he would say "oh yes! Let's have a dozen of those!" and into a bag they would go.

We didn't end up planting all of the cabbage, as we soon discovered that each bunch of cabbage contained a hundred plants, and we had bought at least a dozen bunches. I believe a tribute was given to one of the neighbours of those that were left over from the planting. In the end we planted about three hundred cabbages, all the different varieties of lettuce, and about a dozen each of cauliflower, broccoli and brussels sprouts. Of course it remains to be seen that these plants are actually what they were indicated to be; we can't be sure of what we asked for in French, and what was given to us in Portuguese. We can't even be sure that we were supposed to plant them now or later. It didn't help that it started to frost in the mornings, and at least one of our neighbours shook her head in a way that suggested she didn't think much was going to come of this exercise. But we set up some fabric over top of the fledgling plants to help protect them from frost, and if we're lucky, Norman will be sending us some very promising photographs in the weeks to come.

Our stay with Norm and Noeme was very rewarding, again confirming for me that the WWOOF experience might not be for everyone, but for the most part, is an excellent way to get behind the veil of the country and see it from the inside out. Perhaps less so for this visit than with Ronna and Honoré, as Norm and Noeme aren't from the area themselves, but it certainly helped assuage the culture shock we were feeling in Portugal and was a welcome taste of home (or home-like). Were it not for our mandatory return to Madrid to collect our Indian tourist visas, we would have liked to take them up on their offer to stay over Christmas.

We flew out from Porto back to Madrid where we were pleasantly surprised that our hosts were awaiting our return and we had the same room as before. Our time in Madrid was almost purely devoted to awaiting our Indian tourist visas, us having booked cheap flights to the south of Portugal on the following weekend (we figured if it hadn't come through by then, we'd only be out a little money). So when the visa experience worked out as completely positively as we could have hoped, complete with smiles of recognition and being pulled to the front of the queue, we were at a bit of a loss for what to do with ourselves. In the end, we wandered, I took photographs, we read, we dined, we toured.

And in the end, we took a comparatively boring Ryanair flight to Faro, where we would spend the next two weeks in relative sun and surf in the Algarve.