Hip Hip Hooray for HIPPIES!! One last adventure in New Zealand

COROMANDEL PENINSULA, NZ

Rainbow in Coromandel

 

Trying to find the freedom farm- dark and wet!



Freedom farm living room

Freedom Farm!

 

The tooth brush bin at the Freedom Farm



Hot Water Beach



Hot water beach- dig dig!


 

Cathedral Cove



Tramps!  Armand (France), Forget her name (Israel), Kerri, Eric (Germany), Alex (Sweden), Erik (Sweden).  Bottom Row: Benjamin (France) and Jay (England)

          My plans for the following day fell apart.  I had met a guy named Jay on gumtree.com that wanted to visit the Coromandel but didn’t tell me soon enough that he didn’t have a driver’s license.  I woke up, ate quickly, packed up my belongings, and ran to catch a bus into the city in order to rent a car.  Half way there the Jucy guy said the only cars to rent were by the airport.  I had to get on a different bus to get to the airport and sat next to a very old man that was in the mood to share.  He kept talking and I’d say I half enjoyed the conversation because he was a little crazy.  He eventually told me that I would love the Coromandel Peninsula and he had actually stayed with this couple named Steve and Carli.  They owned some kind of organic farm and always let visitors stay with them for free in their large house in the country.  He gave me their phone number and street name and I didn’t really think it would be useful.  I was dubious of its importance.

                I held my modest ‘Jay- Coromandel’ sign outside the international arrivals and, thanks to Jay’s plane being 20 minutes late, we found each other!  The odds of our plan actually working out were so small yet we made it work.  We rented a car from Jucy and really hit it off!  What a nice guy!  Jay was 25, from England, and had taken a 1 year sabbatical from Kraft food (and his girlfriend) in order to travel the world.  He was such a savy traveler and we exchanged tips on NZ and Australia (where had just arrived from and where I was headed next).  We had a fairly easy drive out to Coromandel Peninsula and conversation poured out of our mouths- easiest traveler to get along with so far.  The drive into the Coromandel was so cool- very windy with beautiful coastal scenery.   Soon enough all of the scenery was lost with lots of clouds and torrential rain.  This was really becoming all too familiar.

Still not knowing where we would stay that night, we received one text from a couch surfers that told us he couldn’t host and there was horrible weather expected in the region.  We stopped into a pub in the town of Waitangi to ask if they had ever heard of this freedom farm.  With two degrees of separation in this country, of course they had.  They called Steve and Carli and drew out directions for us.  We could tell that this was going to be difficult since they kept repeating the landmarks along the way.  Fifteen km out of town, we found Mill Creek Road but had no chance of finding the house.  We were in the middle of freaking nowhere!  We ended up following a dirt road up a steep hill until 8 cows blocked the road.  We literally scared the shit out of them because they all had poop dropping from their behinds as they ran from our headlights in the rain.  The dirt road was so concave that we could hear our exhaust scraping and we thought that we must have gone wrong.  Forty minutes later we found what had to be the house.  Again we climbed a dirt driveway to what looked like an abandoned shed/house.  This is where we had to park the car.  From there we needed head lamps to climb the steep muddy path that we were told would lead to a house.  There was no light ahead and we questioned ourselves more than once.  What an adventure!

We made it up two hills before we saw a house.  As we opened the sliding door, we knew we were in a very special place.  Everyone was so welcoming…but something was off.  I felt like I was in a halfway house…or an asylum.  Were they full of peace and love?  Or were they a cult?  They had just finished dinner and there was a large pot of something good that was immediately offered to us.  There were about 14 people between the kitchen and large living space and they were about to start a documentary about conspiracy in America.  It was all about how the government was manipulating our minds through money and greed.  The narrator was taking the vocabulary we use on a daily basis and showing how it is used to destroy us. Wow.

The place was pretty dirty.  Food, crumbs, flies, bugs, dirt, and grime were kind of everywhere.  The house was really big and there was a huge, gorgeous, wooden table for dining.  There were dirty couches and chairs all over and it was really a free for all.  No one minded and therefore neither did  I.  I was so grateful for a place to stay and for what would definitely be a rewarding couple days.  Sarah was the first to introduce herself.  She definitely had a little bit of crazy in her eye.  She lingered a little too long and was very curt in conversation.  She asked for some of our bread which we were happy to share…but we saw her pilfer more slices later.  I felt like I had illegally smuggled an inmate food she wasn’t allowed to eat.  David from France brought us to a room at the end of the hall that was undergoing renovation.  He took two mattresses from a large room full of sleeping bodies and shared pillows and blankets with us- our humble abode for the evening.

                There a strong sense of family in the house.  They had about 20 people living there  and they all pitched in with the cooking, cleaning and caring for one another.  I tried to learn more about each person but it wasn’t easy.  I’d ask how long they had been there and they would answer, “I don’t know.”  When I asked how long they would stay, they would reply the same.  They had lived between areas for a number of years.  They would live at the freedom farm until they felt it was time to be somewhere else.  The Lord would show them where they were supposed to be.     

                And then there was Tara from Ohio via California.  She really believed in The Message.  She was so nice, full of smiles and had been shown the light.  She truly believed she was on a mission from God.  He had led her here and she believed that the brothers and sisters of the world would come hold hands and save the world.  They would share the light from the Lord and once they had reached true enlightenment, he would return to Earth and all would be new again.  She also looked like she was looking to recruit more believers.  The entire group believed in what I call ‘coincidences’. Tara had awoken that morning with a yearning for eggs.  However, in this Vegan household, there were no eggs, meat, or dairy allowed.  They didn’t even own a refrigerator, which amazed me.  But there I was cracking eggs when she appeared in the kitchen.  She knew that she had channeled  some energy from me- this was no coincidence!  It was ok that I had eggs since I didn’t know the rules.  They thought my meeting Jay was a sign as well as the old man on the bus who told me about the farm.

                After Carli spread the word around the breakfast table, we headed to hot water beach with a German visitor, Eric, who was just passing through and an Israeli girl who had been living there a few months.  Eric and I became good friends once he told me he was on a 2 week holiday from his job as a derivatives trader at no other than UBS in Germany.  He was incredibly smart and was well traveled. 

                Hot water beach was amazing!  At low tide, you can dig just below the sand surface and find scaulding hot water springing up!  Using shovels, you can dig a hole for yourself and enjoy your own personal Jacuzzi.  The sun had finally graced me with its presence so we had a great time in the hot water while getting wrecked by the fierce, cold waves from an incoming storm.    What an amazing place!  At the car, Jay and Israeli had met two French guys and we decided to all cook pasta together in the back of their van before heading to Cathedral Cove. 

                At the cove, we made more friends!  Two Swedish guys had met the French guys a week earlier in Wellington and had run into them once again.  Now a group of 8, we all made our way down to the cove together.  It was really beautiful and the waves were pretty rough when they crashed onto the beach and surrounding rock.  We made a human pyramid and took pictures together.  And to think that I was afraid to go on this vacation alone!  I hadn’t been alone for more than a few hours the entire trip.  The Israeli girl invited the 4 guys back to the farm for the night.

                We made it back for dinner and Carli’s daughter was very busy cooking.  There was a lot of chanting before the meal and they read from the book of values.  It was really uncomfortable when I passed the book and didn’t participate.  I love the part about love and peace but why the chanting?  Is there any way to feel that happy and content without God showing up?

After dinner, we were all engaged in conversation.  I was listening to Carli talk about her revelation 10 years ago and then how her husband and kids followed.  One of their daughters was an early childhood professor at a uni in Auckland.  There was no way she was hearing this message but they never clearly said so.  They had bashed higher education saying it was the worst thing a person can possibly have since it was pure brainwashing.  They also said that Osama Bin Laden was a fictitious character created by the CIA.  I really had never cared to listen to these conspiracy theories in depth but today I was in their home and would hear them out.  It wasn’t until hours later that I would learn that the USA had found and killed Bin Laden.  What irony.

                There was another conversation going on between Eric and Tara.  Tara and David had recently given birth to a baby boy through a midwife and had refused to register their baby with the NZ government and therefore didn’t have a birth certificate.  They issued him a world passport so that he belonged to no nation and would never have to fight in any country’s war.  They didn’t believe in governments or armies and didn’t want their child to be associated with either.  Did this also mean he would never pay taxes?  Did this mean he could actually stay in NZ for more than a tourist visa would allow?

                While everyone is engaged in both of these conversations, Sarah is walking through the middle of the room with a wooden branch she had taken from outside.  It was about 4.5 feet long and she was exercising with it like a baton.  She also slept with the stick in her bed.  There was also a very old man named Kenny who lived in the house and everyone looked after.  Kenny had lost his mind but seemed pretty fit in body and soul.  He mostly stared out into space or started conversation with just himself.  It was really sad to see someone who was stuck in a body but had no way of using it.  I was warned to be careful of where I plug in my electronics because Kenny had a tendency to pee on things. 

                Eric was fighting back with everything Tara and Carli were trying to preach, which I commend him for.  I didn’t feel like it was a neutral playing field.  These people had opened up their home to us and had fed us.  I was not about to knock their beliefs on their turf.  I just wanted to ask where their money had come from for this house and the 700 acres of land they lived on.  There was a hot tub run by a wood stove- who had paid for that?  The man.  The man got them where they are today and they played the game in order to acquire that money.   And were they not paying taxes on this land?  They were ‘murderers’ since they paid the taxes that paid for armies to pull triggers on their brothers and sisters.  Carli had been a school teacher at one point but I’m not sure what Steve had done for a living before starting the freedom farm.  No one here worked.  It was very strange to wake up and no one was rushing out the door to go to a job.  It’s hard to imagine what someone does when they don’t work?  Life is just consumed by jobs….but not for this group.

                It was all such simple living.  No one complained, no one judged and no one was unhappy.  They all enjoyed being a part of this family and that was nice to see.  The next morning we said goodbye to our peaceful friends and headed for Auckland.  I dropped Jay off to hitchhike from Thames and raced to get to the airport on time. Jay was a GREAT travel buddy.  What an adventure we had!  It was zany but beautiful in its own right and we were so thankful to have met these people.  The last two days were so eye opening.  What a great way to visit the Coromandel and an incredible 4 weeks in New Zealand.  Next stop:  AUSTRALIA.