Wananananaka
Okay.
After leaving Laura and Jenny in Christchurch I headed on down to Wanaka (stopping briefly in Queenstown for a Fergburger) to start work on the vinyards.
I booked into the cheapest hostel I could find, The purple cow and went to the agency. I had no trouble getting work and started the next day. I met a few nice people on the yards the main one being my mate Ivan. We started chatting one day then ended up going jogging and kayaking together throughout my stay in Wanaka.
The work wasnt hard at the vinyards but the pay wasnt too good either. I needed to find cheaper accomodation in order to be making a worthwhile profit. I went round town asking hostels if they had jobs for accomodation, looked at alternate places and even flats. I returned to my hostel with a list of numbers and decided to phone after lunch. Before I could start though a guy came into the hostel and asked if I wanted to do an hour's work for 20 dollars. I agreed and headed out with him and another guy who he'd got to help him. We started off by going to the pub for a pint. We then headed round to his house and spent around 45 mins unloading a trailer. After that he gave us another beer and invited us to come test out his new spa bath. I decided I liked his idea of "an hour's work."
He told us he'd just moved in and I asked if he had a room to rent for three weeks.
"Yep. No problem" he said
"How much would you want a week for it?"
"Nothing."
And this is how I met Pricey. He was a good lad and looked after me well for the three weeks I was staying with him. He introduced me to his kids: Nicole (6), Elise (4) and Helene (3). I helped him build a playpark in his back yard, helped him move into his house and hung out with him and he cooked me dinner most nights and gave me free beer. It was a good relationship.
Two weeks before I left Ivan came by and helped me to get a new job up on the proving grounds above Wanaka. I spent most days at 1200 m planting grasses and enjoying the spectacular view. A few days before I was due to finish my partner, Brenda, had to leave. This gave us a slight problem of how I was gonna drive down from the utility shed to the area I was working at since I couldn't drive. A problem quickly solved by giving me a quad bike! A mistake really since on my last day i ended up driving it around in my lunchbreak and generally slacking off to have a go on it.
After I finished work Pricey gave me a lift to Dunedin so I could meet Jenny. And I just wanna say that he knows how to ride in Style. We drove down in a 1963 Red E-Type Jaguar convertible. What a ride!