Day 2 NZ - Arataki Honey Center

I awoke this morning at 9, having had the best night's sleep since I left home. After about an hour of puttering around I drove out to Havelock North, passing numerous vineyards, orchards, and fields filled with fluffy sheep greedily tearing up the luscious green turf. I caught sight of the pacific. It shone iridescent-blue, lapping gently against the grey pebbled shore.

On my agenda today is a visit to the Arataki Honey Center, one of the largest beekeeping operations in NZ. As I drove through the lovely countryside I ached to be outside rather than tied to meetings and schedules. However, the Arataki Honey Center did not disappoint. After being shown around their fun and very educational honeybee learning center, I sat down with John, their beekeeping manager and chatted about small hive beetle and beekeeping in NZ.

I learned a lot of interesting stuff about kiwifruit. Did you know that they are dioecious plants (male and female flowers are on separate plants)? Did you know that they only have viable flowers for 4-5 days? That the flowers do not provide nectar? That the pollen is nutritionally poor? Did you know that it takes 70-80 honeybee visits per flower to get full-sized fruit? Basically, it's one of the hardest plants in the world to pollinate. Kiwifruit growers have done everything they can to make pollination happen. They saturate the orchards with bees for the 4-5 days that they are in flower. They hand-harvest male flowers and spray the pollen over the orchards and the bees.

I also learned a lot about New Zealand's miracle honey plant - Manuka. Apparently they still don't really know what makes one batch of Manuka highly antimicrobial and the next batch not as antimicrobial. Each batch has to be tested as it comes in and after it is packaged before it can be certified antimicrobial. Activity seems to increase with storage up until a certain point. The honey produced from Manuka can be light or dark, and it always darkens with age.

I had the best honey in my life at the taste-testing center. It's called Pohutukawa (poe-HOOT-uh-kaw-uh). Fill a chocolate truffle with creamed Pohutukawa honey and I'd subsist on that alone for the rest of my life if necessary.

I learned that there is poisonous honey in New Zealand. It's made from the honeydew of a vine-hopper feeding on the Tutu plant. So now every batch of honey in NZ has to be tested for the neurotoxin called Tutin. It has caused many beekeepers to cease production of comb honey since you have to be able to show that each individual cell of honey is Tutin-free to be able to legally sell the comb honey.

After Arataki, I went into Havelock North to have some lunch, then decided to visit Te Mata peak. It was a scary drive all the way up to the top in my little car, but I and all the drivers, mountain bikers, and hikers that I met on the way survived. I was rewarded with another view of the pacific, of Napier, Hastings, and Havelock North, and of the surrounding country. My Elvish eyes spotted mostly sheep.

Descending from Te Mata, I drove into Hastings and visited the grocery store. A woman was offering wine samples in the aisle. There are so many wineries in this place they're practically pouring the stuff down your throat at every turn. I found a yarn store offering me a selection of yarn from NZ sheep and a "bin shop" offering me everything from almonds to window cleaner in bulk. The place definitely has the feeling of a popular holiday-spot on the off season. Ice cream parlors and posh cafes stand open but few patrons enter. The only other people walking around are the Kiwi school-kids wearing their regrettable school uniforms and fancy purses that play music. Why you would want a purse that plays music, I wonder?

I returned home to my luxury accommodations, greeted by a calico cat and a brand new television. As I ate two kiwifruit, I thought about the 140-160 times that a bee touched a flower to bring me my dinner.

For my NZ pictures, see the new Picasa Album here

Onward to NZ

Our stay in Australia over, I have traveled to New Zealand. How can I describe it? It's a land that I would like to marry and settle down with, filling the rest of my days exploring all the little sheep-dotted hillsides, pebbly beaches, and rich green mountains.

I haven't even really been here very long. I spent the first night here in a cheap motel in Auckland run by an Indian family. They were lovely and it was reasonable for the price, but it was definitely not a place that inspired rest. Early the next morning a shuttle driven by a woman named Ngaia took me to Hamilton and I disgraced myself by falling asleep. Fortunately, I am both a discreet and fetching sleeper. I was deposited at the AsureQuality office and met with Byron and chatted a bit over some needed coffee. Drip coffee this time. Kiwis apparently aren't as picky about their coffee as the Aussies. We drove over to the Plant and Food Research Apicultural division and I met Byron's wife Michelle who works on varroa-resistant bees and her boss Mark who gave me his opinion on everything bee-related and un-bee-related, particularly Australia, USA, and why New Zealand is superior to those countries.

I had almost run out of brain power by the time we got back to AsureQuality. I was ready to go to bed, but I still had a 4 hour drive to Napier ahead of me. Byron kindly drove me to the Airport to pick up my car and reminded me about the unique Kiwi road rules such as no left on red and yield to oncoming right-turners when you're taking a left. They love the roundabout in this country, too. Every intersection spins you like a merry-go-round, exits shooting off the center circle like so many bicycle-wheel spokes.

I got on the road by 4pm, driving an exceedingly cheap Australian-made car. I found out that the kiwi definition of "highway" apparently is "lonely two-lane track through nowhere." So strange to drive so far without the comforting presence of other drivers. I guess that’s what I feel like I’m doing here- striking out on my own despite the fact that I don’t really know anyone in this country, don’t know if I can get a job in this country, don’t know where I’m going in this country on this little highway in the dark. No one driving my way to encourage me, to say, “Yup, you’re going the right way!” Strange stars hang in the sky as I stop to take a look around in the dark. They are useless to navigate by. But I see a shooting star, and think, with a sigh, that it’s not a bad road that I’m on anyway.

I arrive after some delay finding my hotel in Napier. The hotel manager offers me "trim milk" and a newspaper. Then he has me park my car in a tiny little spot on the corner of the hotel. He crosses my own personal courtyard and opens big French windows to a small efficiency apartment, complete with mini-range, mini-fridge, mini-bar with mini-stools, mini-sink, mini-cupboards, mini-microwave, mini-tv, etc. He stashes the milk in the fridge for me and bids me goodnight. Everything in my room is tastefully selected from Ikea. Clean, simple, warmly well-lit. I open the door to the bathroom and I am greeted by a large, lavatorial refuge, soothing colors, a new shower, and multiple mirrors. There are premium soaps. There is an abundance of nice towels. I am in heaven. Then I walk out and notice that there is something hanging from the side of the bed. The controls for my electric blanket. How far did I have to come for this? It doesn’t matter.

Day 4 - Recreation

Yesterday we had a great day going out East of Melbourne to Marysville and Healesville. Our intrepid Aussie expert, Jared, drove us out of the city traffic and into a country populated by sheep and horses still shaggy with winter and endless vineyards, their closely pruned vines stretching in parallel lines over the hills. We passed so many vineyards, I wondered if they ever ran out of pretentious-sounding surnames to call them by. Climbing further, we encountered gum tree forests carpeted with soft green ferns. Large tree ferns filled the understory like palm trees, their armored, reptillian stems making us feel as if a velociraptor might pop out into the road at any moment. The bark peeled from the gum trees like they were giant brown string cheese sticks.
Further on, we crossed into a different sort of forest. This was the area where in 2009, brush fires had raged through, killing 173 people and destroying whole towns like Marysville. We pulled into Marysville, new houses everywhere, and marveled at how much they had rebuilt in a year. The forests are recovering curiously, the gum trees covered in a furry layer of new growth.
We turned around and hit Healesville, where we stopped at a bakery and had pies, a very traditional Australian treat like a pot pie but with lots of different options for fillings. Good Aussies like Jared squirt tomato sauce (ketchup) on theirs. There were also a large variety of sweets. I picked one at random off the menu- a "beesting." Jared had something called a lambington, which, as he promised, contained no lamb.

After lunch, we headed for the Healesville wildlife sanctuary where we got to meet all the most popular Australian animals: kangaroos, emus, koalas, wombats, platypus, tasmanian devils, snakes, echidna, dingoes, and numerous birds. Among the birds, we were especially privileged to see and hear a lyrebird singing. There are videos and pictures better than mine, so be patient, they will soon be coming to a picasa album near you. In the lyrebird enclosure we met a delightful sanctuary volunteer named Leigh, who also showed us the secret nest of an eastern yellow robin in the bushes.
Running out of time now, Leigh implored us to visit the dingo puppies instead of running off to make it to the footy match. I could have lived there all day, but, alas, Jared's friend Paul was waiting for us. Perhaps we will have time to hit up the zoo later.

The footy match merits a post all to its own, so I won't get into it right now. Suffice to say I stumbled home around midnight, incredibly tired after such a full day!