What Exactly do You Mean by "Boil"?

We awoke at dawn our third day on the South Island to the sound of a loud banging on our tent. For those of you that camp you can probably relate, it's always in the back of your mind....you're vulnerable to outsiders. Quite startled, I, Krissy, let out a scream and Norch looked at me just as alarmed. Norch moved quickly attempting to unzip the tent door, but not before we felt another punch. I just sat there frozen. As Norch got the tent open and prepared to defend us, we looked out to see a pint size tike who yelled "daddy" and ran off. A few moments later as we were laughing about the whole ordeal, the little boy came back for round two, but this time his dad stopped him and apologized after the first blow. Since we were up so early we figured we might as well get a move on it. Plus we didn't want the chaps we chatted with the night before to think we were actually going to take them up on their whitebait breakfast offer. I can't speak to the taste, because these undeveloped fish look more like embryos and we don't have the stomach to try them (see pic below).

Whitebait

We drove along the coast through Kaikoura where we saw sea lions perched on rocks alongside the road and enjoyed amazing views of snow capped mountains parallel to clear blue beaches. The drive along the east coast is a must for any future visitors! From there we headed south through Christchurch to an old French town called Akaroa for our first week of WWOOFing. We arranged with a local to help him prep his dolphin tour boat for the summer season in exchange for free accommodations at a local hostel (run by his business partners). The deal was actually quite sweet because we worked a total of about 10 hours painting and sanding and got a free tour of the harbor. So we had plenty of free time on our hands to explore the area, take in the community touch rugby league (to which Norch declared it was weenie and pales in comparison to flag football), and enjoy lawn bowling with local retirees (not to be confused with bocce).
We go to know the other, mostly international, WWOOFers at Chez La Mer hostel pretty quickly, especially when we bonded over the best YouTube videos (double rainbow has gone worldwide) and differing rules to playing kings aka ring of fire. One of the funniest moments was when David, one of the Germans we befriended, tried to explain that the tabloids in his country were reporting Lady Gaga had a "boil" and was actually a guy. After several confusing moments of trying to translate what he meant, he finally stood up and used his hand to depict a "boil"....at that moment we realized he meant boner. We had conversations with a bit more depth talking candidly about our countries. The question on the everyone's mind was what we thought about Bush. After making it clear that not everyone was a supporter of Bush it opened the gates to talk about more touchy subjects...namely World War II and Hitler. The two Germans talked about how they spend a lot of time studying the war and what happened. Mein Kampf is actually banned in the country and can only be read in University libraries but not allowed to be checked out. One said that his grandfather was a general at the time and had no idea about concentration camps or half of the atrocities that were taking place.

Akaroa on the Banks Peninsula

Pongo - a Chez La Mer regular

Our last day in Akaroa we gathered mussel along the harbor for our send-off family dinner at the hostel. I was picking what I thought were good sized mussels till I found Norch with mussels as big as my hand. And he came across a paua, which is a large snail found in New Zealand and considered a delicacy among the Maori. As luck would have it, a local Maori woman was patrolling the area to make sure no one was illegally harvesting young paua. She was quite a feisty lady and tried to convince us to eat our paua raw; we declined, thanked her for her tips on how to shell the mass and went home to cook it up with butter and garlic. It tasted a lot like octopus and was surprisingly delicious. That night we enjoyed our mussels which were cooked by one of our new friends and ended the night at the bar dancing with everyone to some kiwi tunes.

Mussel picking

Local Maori explaining how to shell the paua

Chez La Mer family dinner