Making ourselves at home

As we said at the end of our last post, we are doing our second WWOOF gig and so far it's going great! Our host, Craig told us "to make ourselves at home" and we've had no problem doing that. Especially since our schedule is to work one full day (which we spent weeding the decorative garden along the driveway) and then one day off, the morning which we spent out fishing with Craig and his friend Gibby. We had to get up at 5AM but it was super beautiful out on the water at that time of morning.

From WWOOFing in Mangawhai

Craig is a great guy - he looks like John Goodman and acts like he's from Texas. He's a libertarian organic farmer. In other words, he loves to recycle and compost but doesn't want anyone to force him to do it. He also hates Al Gore, Michael Moore and doesn't know what to think of Obama yet. He's the first New Zealander we've met so far that likes Americans (compared to Australians who generally like Americans). This is especially in contrast to our last WWOOF hosts who didn't really hide their animosity to America. In fact from 2001 to 2003 they refused to host American WWOOFers because of what George Bush was doing.

But, enough politics...let's talk fishing. Today Craig took us out in his boat to the bay nearby to literally fish for our dinner. We've been having fish every night so far, and since his stock was running low we went fishing (you don't need a fishing license, he pointed out). I hadn't fished since I was a kid and Jaimee hadn't fished since she was 18. It was surprisingly easy - we used poles with three hooks each and we just dropped the lines to the bottom and waited for the fish to bite. I reeled in this Snapper (which goes for $30/kg in the store):

From WWOOFing in Mangawhai

We definitely have enough fish for the rest of our stay here (which will probably be through the weekend or Monday).

The weather has been outstanding too - mid 70s with a slight breeze. Jaimee got a slight sunburn while working outside and my allergies have been pretty bad, but otherwise we're safe and sound and really enjoying ourselves.

Remembering San Antonio

We are now in San Antonio, Texas, staying with Linda, my first cousin once removed, (my Mom's cousin). I haven't seen her since I was nine years old, when my family came here for Linda's daughter's (my second cousin) wedding. That was the only other time I've been to San Antonio and it's been really fun catching up with Linda (and Linda's sister Mary who stopped by yesterday for lunch).

Jaimee and I had a nice, quick tour of San Antonio. We went on the famed San Antonio river walk. We didn't take a river taxi, although we did walk alongside one for a little while to hear some of the history.
We also went through the Alamo, which is definitely worth a visit. You can tour the grounds and they have lots of artifacts and other items to look at. I learned that Texas has been it's own country, part of the United States (obviously) and also part of the Confederate States during the Civil War. And that Texas used to include half of New Mexico and stretched all the way up into Colorado before the Civil War, but they sold all that land in order to be a "slave state". As the man we met in Guadalupe told us - that was a "bad bargain."

Now we're on our way to New Orleans. We're getting a late start (as usual), so we're not sure if we'll make it all the way there today...

The Seattle of Texas

Although I've loved many of the places that we've visited so far, Austin, Texas is probably the first where I could easily see myself living. It's awesome here, but it could be because it reminds me of Seattle in so many ways.

We're visiting Jaimee's friends Karisa and Norman, who run a Muffin Trolley called Taste No Evil Muffins. It's definitely worth a stop if you're ever in Austin.

One of the many similarities between Seattle and Austin is their love of festivals. It was a weekend so there was a big festival, which is exactly how Seattle is in the summer; every weekend there is something going on. We happened to catch the Pecan Street Festival, Pecan Street being the other name for 6th Street downtown. It was a big street festival with crafts, food and music. Despite the 90+ degree heat with high humidity, it was fun to walk the festival and see all the people enjoying the fair.

Another similarily between Seattle and Austin is all the people enjoying the outdoors. We took a walk around "Town Lake" and again, despite it being in the 90s with humidity (it rained hard later in the day) the trail was packed with walkers, runners and bikers.

Austin also has great food. We ate at the Bouldin Creek Coffee house for dinner one night, and another afternoon had Texas Martinis - essentially a margarita in a martini glass with an olive. Super yummy!

Overall Austin is a great town, and if for some reason our move to Boston doesn't work out, I could see moving here instead! Although the humidity is kind of a bummer. But, like the rain and clouds in Seattle, if the heat and humidity keeps "Austin weird" then bring on the humidity!

Texas!

We actually got two e-mails making sure we're doing okay since we haven't posted in almost a week. We're glad to see people are following our travels and everyone can rest easy as we're doing fine and having a wonderful time! (It's good to know we have at least two fans!)

We were sad to leave Santa Fe, as we had such a good time with Asa's Aunt Debbie. We went south through New Mexico, making a quick stop in Roswell. Roswell is an interesting place, worth a drive-through, but not much else. We went to a museum there where we saw information about Robert Goddard, an early rocket engineer from the 1930s who was from Worcester, MA - interesting mainly because that's where Jaimee's family lives! It's a small world!

After camping at Brantley State Park in the Southeast corner of New Mexico we stopped at Carlsbad Caverns National Park. This is definitely worth a stop! We did the full self-guided tour through the caverns - it took us over two hours to walk the whole thing. It's a pretty neat place. It also seems to employ a lot of Park Rangers - they rove around the cavern on "Cave Watch" duty - looking for misconduct or for those who didn't "assess their hiking fitness" and need assistance.

We continued on to Guadalupe Mountains National Park in Texas which is now one of our favorite parks. It's a "wilderness park" meaning that if you don't want to hike or backpack there isn't a whole lot to do. It also contains Guadalupe Peak, the "top of Texas" at 8,749 feet. West Texas has some tall mountains! While climbing the peak we met the first, but definitely not the last Texan who was proud of his/her state. Texans love Texas, and they let you know that. I think that's great - you should love where you live.

After two peaceful nights, where our campsite hosted both skunks and deer, we traveled southeast to Big Bend National Park. Despite being about "10 hours from anywhere" it's also a great park. We camped up in the Chiso Mountains basin, the only mountain range in America to be entirely contained inside a National Park. We did a few hikes in the mountains before heading down to the Rio Grande side of the park.

I wish I had visited Big Bend prior to 2002 as that was when they began policing the border aggressively. Prior to 2002 the Rio Grande in this area was considered a "soft border crossing" meaning for a small fee a Mexican would row you across the river to one of several Mexican villages for beer and tacos. Now, the rangers follow the tourists making sure that no "Mexican Nationals" are illegally crossing over. It's pretty ridiculous - we essentially had our own escort of two law enforcement Rangers who tailed us as we went from section to section of the park. Then, when dusk came the mosquitoes were horrible! They were so bad that we didn't even cook dinner that night and just hunkered down inside the tent. We would have put our bug spray on but we'd actually just taken showers so didn't want to soil ourselves so soon!

The next morning we got up and made the long drive toward Austin. We took the "scenic route" by stopping in Del Rio, Texas and making a quick stop across the border into Mexico. This is one of the "approved" border crossings. Ciudad Acuna isn't that great, but I was able to get a $2 haircut. And we had fries and a drink for $2.50. The border patrol searched our car pretty thoroughly when we came back into America - I would have taken a picture if pictures were allowed as they let the K-9 German Shephard right into our car to sniff around. He didn't find anything although the border people did find a lot of broken glass which made them suspicious.

We broke up the pictures into two albums:

Into Texas

Big Bend and Mexico

Now we're in hot and humid Austin. We just toured through the Pecan Street festival and are having a fun time here so far. But more on that later...