Well, well, it's nearly Christmas and the days are at their longest and the sun is getting hotter every day. I hope all is well in good old Blighty and you aren't suffering from too much frost bite.
It seems that the best part of a month has passed since I last updated this blog thing and thank you very much for the comments that you have posted. It's so nice to hear from you.
I have spent time with the waders again and we were even successful in catching some. We were also swabbing them by sticking a cotton bud up their bums and sending it off to a lab to have them checked for bird flu, to get an idea of the bird flu distribution (if any) in the NZ wader population.

I have also done some more wwoofing at two absolutely gorgeous places. The first was at a hostel called the Innlet, just down the road from Farewell Spit (top of the South Island) and I spent my time weeding their organic vegetable plots and linseed oiling one of the wooden buildings. All very thereputic as I had my CD of salsa music playing so I can try and improve my ear for catching the beat when whirling young ladies around the dance floor in that hot latin way. The Innlet is a great Hostel, very chilled out and set in amongst glorious native forest and a stones throw from the beach. There are bath tubs with hot water in the gardens and lovely sunny verandas to laze about on. Working at the hostel was rather fun, as it enabled me to gossip with guests every evening and find out about their home countries: America, Germany, Slavinia, Holland and a strange place called England.

My second wwoofing place, where I still am at the moment, is on top of a mountain on the edge of the Able Tasman National Park. This is an absolutely gorgeous place with views across Golden Bay, that I'm sure it would be absoutely impossible to get bored with. I am helping to build a meditation and yoga retreat, which will be a timber building consisting of a number of round rooms.. The work mainly involves digging the trenches for the foundations, but as you know I'm good at digging holes fo myself. The chap who owns the place has already built a couple of timber round houses and has installed solar panels, a composting loo and has plans to install a small hydo electric generator. There is a real "Good Life" feel to the place, but unfortunately with out Felicity Kendal. There's even the odd bit of yoga thrown in for good measure. No meditation sessions but we have been playing a board game called Settlers, that has been developing a sense of competition and capitalism instead.

The new year will see me travelling on to the North Island, attending a meditation course, where I have to stay silent fo 9 days! Aswell as getting up at 4am. Catching more waders on the northern tip of North Island and a attending a 3 day Salsa festival in Wellington. I expect I will have to do some fruit picking at some point too.

Any way, enough of this rambling, I hope you all have a cracking Christmas and aren't suffering from too many pre Christmas celebrations. With just 3 days to go it still doesn't feel like Christmas here, with the shops selling Christmas decorations next to bikinis and sun cream. I'll be spending Christmas day basking on the beach with a Picnic.

Ho Ho Ho!

Lots of Love
Nick
xxx