This past week...

Started off the week with a trip to Karamea (the northernmost settlement on the west coast of the south island). This is where the Heaphy Track begins... a beautiful 4 day tramp.  We did some rock climbing, trail running, grilling, cave exploring and boshing.  It was nice but I did forget my bug spray and my legs got dominated by the sand flies.  The rest of the week has consisted of bone carving (carved a bone into a really cool necklace), cooking for guests, landscaping the gardens out back, shoveling gravel for new paths, and teaching people about Thanksgiving. For Thanksgiving, "Number 2" (the manager), hosted a Hangi in honor of this holiday.  A Hangi (pronounced Hungy) is a traditional Maori meal that is cooked in the ground.  The following is a description: We dug a knee deep pit 4 ft X 4 ft. the day before.  Then yesterday we put in chunks of iron and metal, then a fire on top and got it real hot for several hours...Usually you use rocks instead of metal but the rocks here will explode so we used metal. Then Number 2 and I prepped the food...duck...stuffed chickens...pork butt...potatoes...kumara (like a sweet potato). Next we dug everything out of the pit...ash, rocks, metal... it was really hot and we had to do it quick (20 minute window to keep the heat).  We put the metal back down, draped a wet duvet cover on the rocks...placed our food that was in crates on the metal...draped 3 more wets blankets on top of that...then recovered with tons of dirt and sand and packed it down. The food gets steamed for about 5 hours and no steam can leak out or it wont cook.  Pretty intensive but fun!  About 8pm we uncovered it and pulled everything out...it was DELICIOUS!  So moist!  We had about 35 locals show up and everyone enjoyed it.  Number 2 made a little anouncement about the Hungi in honor of my Thanksgiving holiday!  Choice!