So after leaving Thailand, I was heading to New Zealand to meet up with my good friend from McGill, Matthew Murphy and his friend Dan Beeler who he grew up with in Hopkinton, New Hampshire. They went over in October (or sept?) and were working on small vineyards. Originally they had planned to get jobs in Wellington and settle there, but the job market sucks and its expensive to live in Wellington, so they decided to go look for farm work and live in a tent. They had bought motorcycles upon arriving  so the plan was to drive around the south island with them, 3 of us on 2 motorcycles. I basically just got to hop on to their trip which was already figured out and happening.

I arrived in Christchurch at night and the next day we went up to the vineyard where they had been staying to organize our stuff and have a goodbye BBQ with the vineyard owners who were way sweet. When I arrived, I was greeted to New Zealand with an opportunity to go “bird scaring”. When the grapes start to get sweet, lots of birds like to come and eat them. Some use nets over the grapes to stop them, but its very costly. The easier and more fun solution is to drive around on a golf-cart kinda thing and shoot at the birds with a shotgun. Its pretty standard practice. So I got to stand on the back of this cart, and after a gas cannon is fired to make a loud noise, birds fly up out of the vines. Then you shoot at them with a shotgun. Im sure it gets old really fast, but for an afternoon its a pretty fun game to play.

The next day, we headed north to Marlborough sounds. The ride was insanely twisty and while it was kind of fun, got really scary and hectic as it got darker. Almost hit a few rabbits. Went bushwhacking around and did a light hike the next day.