Better Keep Moving: Thanksgiving in the Rainforest

We arrived in the little settlement of Punakaiki and were immediately amazed by the change in scenery. I've mentioned this before, but the diversity of the New Zealand landscape never ceases to surprise me. Coming from the dry, rolling hills of Murchison, the vivid green slopes of the West were about as shocking as it gets. We had officially entered the rainforest.

Our wwoofing placement was at a place called Te Nikau Retreat. It's a series of secluded lodges, all separated enough from each other that they felt truly isolated within the rainforest. Being a guest there would be fabulous.

This retreat somehow functions while completely depending upon unpaid work. The team of housekeepers is made up of only wwoofers, with only four paid staff members keeping things running. In other words, us wwoofers had loads of work to do every day -- always 4-5 hours of housekeeping work, not to mention the two extra hours of baking some mornings as well as cooking for up to ten people in the evenings. Te Nikau Retreat comes unpleasantly close to surpassing the 6-hour daily work limit wwoofers (or technically HelpX-ers, in this case) are supposed to have.

Luckily, our wwoofing team was awesome, and our disgruntled attitude at having been misled helped us all become fast friends. We managed to have a fun time joking about forming a "wwoofer's union" and sneaking tea breaks when the managers weren't looking. In other words, we turned a weird situation into something fun.

Another perk at Te Nikau Retreat was learning how to bake muffins and "German" bread (which, according to German wwoofer Shirley, is nothing like typical German bread). Cooking in the evenings was less fun and more burdensome, but once again we wwoofers came together to cook as a team every night, which defied the management's expectations of having one of us cook alone at a time. We were apparently "breaking all the rules," according to one manager.

I have to say, I did love the little community we'd formed in our cozy staff house, and the staff meals were a big part of that. Since two of us were American (the other one being Kate from Colorado, whom I bonded with early on when we assigned Harry Potter characters and places to the various people and locations of Te Nikau), our group decided to celebrate Thanksgiving altogether as a "family," something that I was indeed very grateful for. We even had pumpkin pie!

Kate and our glorious Thanksgiving meal.

By the end of our two weeks we had managed to do all sorts of cool things despite the frequent pouring rain. We left on a good note, vowing to see our friends Kate and Shirley again soon.