South Again to Blenheim and the Vinyards

After giving up on IT work I headed back to Raglan (after a quick trip to Piha where I surfed some very big and heavy waves on a beach break) to meet up with Ash and Liz. They had only a week or so left in New Zealand and were spending it chilling at Raglan and surfing. Ash and I score some amazing waves and had a surf I won't forget at indicators. Looking down on the breaks from the hill above is awsome, you can see the waves lining up and breaking for miles. I then said goodbye to Ash and Liz, I was sorry to see them go but glad it wasn't me going back, not yet anyway. I traveled back south to Taurmanui to visit Chris and Steve. The have an amazing small holding on the edge of town and are living the lives that a lot of people dreamed of and possibly moved to Cornwall for, out of the rat race. They fed me up and sent me off laden with Fijoa's and Fijoa jam (fijoas are definitely my favourite fruit) and I went back to the Blenheim in the South Island to work in the vineyards again. Pruning turned out to be very hard work and very, very bad for my arms. The vines need to be pruned (using loppers), stripped (ripping the pruned branches out) and trimmed (with secateurs). Pruning quickly requires quite a bit of skill which takes time to develop and using the secateurs to trim is painful. The work causes everyone agony on the first week as tendons swell etc getting used to the work. But even once your used to it it is really hard on the body. I was waking up with numb fingers and on the third week after a really hard day I woke at 5 am with numbness, tingling and pain and couldn't get back to sleep. So that, I thought, was enough of that. I rang up a restaurant, The Store, which I knew tended to employ travelers as staff and provided live in staff accommodation and got lucky, I got a job. While pruning I stayed in the Grapevine backpackers and made some good friends and was sorry to leave, but not sorry to stop pruning.