New Zealand Weekly Update #2

Last updated on November 6, 2022

30th of October until 06th of November 2022

Approximate reading time: 10 minutes

You’ll never walk alone

While I was sitting at the terrace in Albert Town and try to overcome this massive headache, I heard some noises from behind. And suddenly, Thomas and his girlfriend Julia were standing next to me. Thomas is an experienced canyoning guide from Austria and we will guide together until the end of the season 2022 / 2023. We just sat together, had some nice talks and were waiting for Ros to come back to Albert Town. Ros arrived in the evening and we just had a welcome hug and some talk about the next day. She told us, that we will get some theoretical training about the company Deep Canyon Ltd., about the canyons we run, the procedures, how to check the water, the weather and other important stuff. Even I’ve met Thomas, Julia and Ros for the first time in real life, it felt like we have known each other for forever. Easy going, relaxed and honest talks. These are guys I want to work for and with.

Make yourself at home

As we were still looking for a house or rooms to rent, we had an appointment at 5pm in Wanaka to checkout a possible house. Julia was a little afraid prior the appointment, as the pictures we’ve got from the owner didn’t look that amazing, but we dediced to go to the appointment anyways. So we drove to Wanaka and met Vicky in front of the house. She told us that she is not the owner of the house but will show us everything. Julia and Vicky became friends quite fast as both love horses. As we went into the house, I was stunned. It smelled so new, the interior was amazing and the house is completly furnished. Two bathrooms. Three bedrooms with queensize beds. A garage with carpet. And a nice kitchen combined with a living room. No doubt, this will be our location and our place to be for BBQ’s in summertime (for you guys in Europe unfortunatelly winter time hehe). Whenever you want to visit us in New Zealand, just have your stop at 189a Plantation Road, 9305 Wanaka, New Zealand 🙂

As we headed back to Albert Town, we just had dinner together with Ros (Julia prepared some great soup for all of us) and went to bed quite early. And my headache was still there even after several medication – so I was a little afraid to work the next day.

Training days are long days

Our training day started at 9am in the morning with some theroretical stuff. This would be much too boring to write down and even for you to read guys, so we’ll skip this part of the day. At about 12am we went to the canyon „Niger Stream“ (you spell it Naidscher Streem), located at the Matukituki River (I love the spelling of this River, Matukituki). The river is located in the area of Otaga and which is part of the Mount Aspiring National Park. Its about one hour drive from Wanaka, just along the beatiful Lake Wanaka and afterwards a long gravel road in between huge and amazing mountains.

After we reached our starting point to walk up the canyon (we had to cross several gates of a farmers area with a lot of cows and sheeps), we headed up to the entrance of the canyon with a lot of ropes, a big wodden board (for safety reasons) and a lot of excitement. Niger Stream canyon is quite remote and you don’t have any internet connection or mobile phone connection to call a rescue team if necessary. So we always have a radio phone with as as well as an Inreach to call the rescue team (this could last some time as you need to have a good connection to satellites and if you are unlucky the next one may be above you in 20 minutes…). So you better don’t have any incidents and accidents 😉

This day we rigged some ropes, explored the canyon and get comfortable with the several sections of this one (and every section has it’s own name – so you can talk about them quite easy and everybody knows which section is meant to be). Section names in Niger Stream are for example „The Pipleline“ (which is our entrance to Niger Stream), „Made in Japan“ (which is a big pool after the second Abseil / Rappel) or even „The Generator“ (which is an Abseil section with about 25meters in height through a small waterfall).
While doing all the rigging and preparing the ropes for the tours, I recognized that I was a little rusted with my knowledge and definitly need to update myself again in rope and knot techniques (and Thomas showed me how to do several things as he is also a very experienced climber). As we headed out of the canyon we recognized a lot of gravel and some smaller trees in the last pool, which we will try to remove the next days.
After arriving in Albert Town, we cleaned our stuff, tried to get everything in order and drove to Wanaka, for our first night in our new house (which is by the way 800NZD per week plus bills, which is about 65NZD, all in all ~ 500€ per week).

A Pain in the Ass

The next morning, I woke up and realized that we’ve finally found a house we will live in for the next few months. Without the effort of Julia this would have not been possible and I would still look for a room or a house. Sometimes you just need some support and a helping hand 🙂
As Thomas and Julia are doing some Yoga for a while in the morning, they asked me to join them. So from Tuesday on, we do Yoga in the garage every morning with the nice carpet and a small wooden board with some candles on it – let’s get the morning started! This day we get in touch with Sandra from Spain, also a guide who is working for Deep Canyon (and has a lot of experience). She is also a DJ and is organising some events around the area.

Together with Sandra and Ros we get back into Niger Sream to setup a Zipline at the end of our tour. Customers will hang themselves with their lanyards into a rope which is tensed between two trees and will slide over the waterflow, which is a lot of fun. While we prepared the setup for the Zipline using a pulley system, we had a small incident. While I was pulling the rope to tighten it as much as possible, a supporting know got loose and I fell down on my ass with a big smash. I was lucky enough not to be almost at the edge of the slope, otherwise I would have fallen right down a lot of meters into the water… Nevertheless, the Zipline is ready to go and it’s a lot of fun to slide over the canyon into a big yellow mattress (even with some sore muscles in the right butt cheek haha).
After the preparation of the Zipline we went down to the big pool and try to remove as much gravel and wooden sticks as possible to ensure customers are able to jump into it (and this one is really really deep). But after a long fight with a quite big tree in the water I gave up. This day I had to accept that this one was just a little too stubborn for me (but I will come back and I will get you out of here my friend 🙂 )

Welcome at Wastebusters!

As there was no work to do on Wednesday, we decided to check out the Second Hand stores in Wanaka , as there are several of them located in the area. The first one was a quite small one, quite in the center of the town. A small shop with clothing, kitchen stuff, games, christmas stuff and some electrical devices. As I spotted the christmas stuff, I was wondering how it would be to celebrate christmas with 30 degrees outside temperature wearing a santa claus costume and drinking mulled wine out of a christmas pot 🙂 (I definitely will let you know how it feels like while sitting in the Lake Wanaka 🙂 )
While living part time somewhere else, especially on a small island, its always a good idea to buy your stuff in second hand shops, as it is sustainable as well as quite nice for your money pocket. Thomas and Julia bought some stuff for the kitchen and I found this already mentioned wooden plate which we use now for our yoga sessions (and what I will take back to Germany as a souvenir – for just 3 NZD which is about 2€).
After we checked out the first second hand shop, we went to two more shops – and I am still looking for my new favorite coffee pot as I did not found it yet.

After three second hand shops, we went to Wasterbusters, which is a quite big area, where you can get almost everything second hand (e.g. electric devices, climbing shoes, bikes which are not that good honestly, kitchen stuff, clothing, building stuff etc.). And most stuff is sorted in different containers and they also have a big shop. While Julia and Thomas bought a lot of stuff (especially some pallets for gardening), I just had a look around the area. And it was so impressing to see how organized the area was and to see the staff smiling while working. Do good, be good, receive good.
After about 90 minutes of shopping in that area, we headed to the local DIY store, which is called „Mitre 10 Mega Wanaka“, equal to OBI or Hornbach in Germany. And here the shopping escalated as Julia got a lot of seeds and stuff to grow and cultivate in our „garden“. Well, we will have a lot of vegetables soon and they can be quite expensive in New Zealand 🙂
After a stop at the grocery market „New World“ (and it is quite useful to apply for a free of charge club card as you get some discount depending on your product – be aware of the difference between „Saver“ [everybody gets the discount] and „Club“ [only discount with your club card!) I had an appointment with a guy who sold his car (a small Toyota, automatic, 3000 NZD). I was nice to drive, easy to handle, but the price was a bit too high for me (3000NZD is about 1800€). So I checked marketplace on Facebook and trademe.nz (which are both a quite nice option to check for anything you need when you are in New Zealand, also rooms, electric stuff, bikes etc.). And then I’ve found the one 🙂 (check Honda Civic section).

After that long day of shopping, Julia asked us to join a composting course free of charge conducted by Wastebusters (and yes guys, I joined the course and it was quite interesting). The guy who presented, called Dr. Compost (honestly, he is an expert!) was just amazing and made me think about how and when to compost after less than 30 minutes. He told us about the difference of cold and warm composting, the different options (using palletts in you garden, a special small box in your house, etc.) about the good balance between carbon and nitrogen (and where to find both) and that he is still thinking about how to compost a whole horse. And how he gets rid of rats in his compost (put rat traps a little above ground level and put some peanut butter on the traps to attract the rats). And how to avoid smelly compost (if it is smelly, add some nitrogen). Honestly, I was really not excited about the idea of attending the course, but this one was stunning and I’ve learned a lot!

Honda Civic – for the cool and brave

As I mentioned, I still was looking for a car (and in the beginning I tried to avoid buying one as I tried to keep my financial backup as stable as possible). But in New Zealand its quite hard to be flexible without any car. So I checked Marketplace on Facebook again and found an advertisment for a Honda Civic for 2500 NZD. After chatting with the guy and asking for some negotiation (we both agreed with 2300 NZD ~ 1400€), he picked me up for a short test drive and I was ready to go. Nice car, reliable, some scratches at the outside, one missing decorative trim on the side and rims tied to the tires with cable ties – let’s do it. And buying a car in New Zealnd is quite easy. The one who is selling the car just fills in a small document with the name and address of the one who receives the car – this document needs to be handout to a post office. The one who is buying the car needs to go to a post office and declare that he / she bought the car. Thats it! What you need to make sure is the up-to-date WOF (Warrant of Fitness), which is like the „TÜV“ in Germany but not that detailed (they check if you have an extra wheel for emergency cases and some basic stuff such as breakes, tire quality etc.). And you need to get a registration (REG) for the car and you pay for this as well. Insurance is always optional (but still recommended in any case of accidents). If you want to see my new, impressing and perfect litle vehicle, check out the video below 🙂

Afterwork activities gone steep

On Friday, 4th of November, Thomas and I headed out to Niger Stream alone to do some rigging, some work in the pools and to get more comfortable with the canyon in general. As we checked the water level on the bottom of the tour, we already recognized that we’ll probably not go into the canyon today. As we went to the entrance of Niger Stream, we decided not to go into the canyon. The water level was way too high for us. So we did some documentation, did some rigging on top of the entrance and went back to our car. And we were ready for some climbing in the area close to us and – Hospital Flat – a well known area for climbing and different routes. As this was my first climbing experience in the outdoors, Thomas lent me his climbing shoes (and I never knew they have to be that tight) as well as his climbing harness. On my way up to several climbing routes I really tried to do my best and listen to the hints of Thomas and Julia (and to be honest sometimes I was really afraid, I am used to go down a wall, not up 🙂 ).

I recognized that this kind of sport is just demanding, needs a lot of training and experience but is also a lot of fun. In the end I was able to finish a 5c grade route and was quite happy to handle a steep wall up to the top. And sitting on top of a big rock and to be able to enjoy all the amazing landscape around yourself is worth all the hard way up!

What else to say?

After some days of living in the house, it starts to feel like a normal daily life, it will even feels more like this when we start working normally. And I am really excited about the first tour with international guests. And the daily live of being a canyoning guide in New Zealand. While I was writing this blog on our great sunny terrace, several neighbours were talking to me. One of them (a girl named Cailey which is living with some more people in a house next to ours) was sitting together with us on the terrace and we enjoyed some great apple pie from Julia with ice cream and some coffee. There will be some comfy BBQ evenings in summer time for sure :).

I hope all of you guys are healthy, happy and cozy in cold Europe – I send some sunny, warm and happy greetings to you! Happy to update you in one week with some more stories from New Zealand, Wanaka and the life as a canyoning guide. Cheers!
Felix