Day 170 - Colville

Greetings and salutations from the Coromandel Peninsula.

This is the first time I've been able to access the internet for 4 days - quite exciting. There's actually been a change of plan already and I am now helping out at the Mahamudra Buddhist Centre in Colville. This is due to the fact that I rang every single Wwoof place in Whitianga only to find out they were all full! Must be high season in Whitianga. So I resorted to Plan B and rang the centre and found out that they had room and were desperate for people to help out because they had a lama visiting from Tibet.

Bit of a mission getting here. My bus was not going to Coromandel, and NZ public transport being what it is, I had a mission impossible to get to the centre. First I batted my eyelashes at my bus driver to get him to stop in Byron where I changed over to a different minibus heading to Coromandel. In Coromandel I stayed for a night in a random African-inspired hostel before getting a lift with the postman to the centre the next morning. Carl was not quite your typical postman - big & beefy and wearing a grubby vest. His freckled 8 year old son sat between us and asked me questions about animals in India and Australia, and told me he wanted to be "a racing car driver slash secret agent" when he grew up. Both were very entertaining, and I was dropped off at the centre with a "byeee, enjoy being a monk-ess" at about 10.

The centre is a lovely place, with a big green garden. The odd shaven-haired old nun wonders around, wrapped in maroon. And us wwoofers are there to break the silence with our cackling and do all the washing and cleaning. Luckily having fun is not frowned on, so time has gone quickly. The first 2 days were manic: because the visiting Lama was giving lectures, the place was full of visiting nuns and people staying for the 4-day course of lectures, all needing cleaning up after
Luckily the lectures are finished now and the place is a bit quieter. I'm really enjoying myself; we all work in the morning and chill out in the evening. The people are so fascinating - ranging from friendly to wonderfully bizarre, and I've already had lots of fun and had many random conversations.

Tonight is a pot-luck meal leaving party - a bunch of us are going out to a commune near the sea, so we'll stuff ourselves silly and have a good time before Colette and Laura leave in the morning. I'm planning to stay here til tuesday :- I've received a call from John and Jean (my grandmothers old beau and his wife), so I've promised to visit them in Orewa on tuesday. Soo, I'm going aaall the way back to Auckland... at least the bus is cheap.

I am getting very jealous of the people with cars. Most people wwoofing own one (as many of the placements are very isolated), and being stuck out here makes them seem more and more appealing. A campervan has come up for sale for $2100 (bout 750 pounds) and I am sooo tempted. It would be amazing to zoom around to all the little places I can't get to by bus... plus I'll save money on accomodation as I can sleep in the van. Well, we'll see...

It'll probably be a few days before I write again - the 'town' of Colville has only 1 shop and 1 pub so, as you can imagine, internet cafe facilities aren't so great. I'll just hitch a lift with the next lovely person with a car to go to Coromandel!