Since most of our money was spent on gallons of fuel while travelling across Australia, we decided that in New Zealand we will hitchhike and stay in as much HIT (will be explained later) houses as possible. At first, the decision was completely economical. In retrospect, that was one of the best decisions of our trip.
HIT stands for Hosting Israeli Travelers. It is an organization, members of which are mostly Christians that love Israel and would like to host travelers from Israel in their homes. We've contacted one of their agents, Chrissie, in Taupo on our last day there. Chrissie was a single mother. She and her boys have hosted Israelis for the last 7 or 8 years, so she knows us better than we do. She let us into her kitchen and explained us all we need to know about HIT and Kiwis in general. Tips such as: "If someone invites you for tea, they mean dinner, and you shouldn't refuse their invitation. Kiwis love to host people" and "Try to go to families in the more isolated areas, in farms, it will be much more interesting for both sides". We kept all the useful tips she gave us in our heads, and headed south towards Wanganui, about 2.5 hours from Taupo. Our final destination was Taranaki, a big conical shaped volcano on the west side of the north island.
It took us 4 different rides to get to Wanganui. The first ride was with a young mother and her few months old baby who Lilya tried to entertain while being covered under her large backpack. The second one was an artist with good intentions but a very small jeep, so this time Lilya had to sit on her backpack in the back trunk. The third ride was a young, extreme sports loving, Maori guy, who stopped few times so we could take pictures of the three impressive volcanoes on the way, one of the main attractions of the North Island. The last ride took us all the way to Wanganui, and even found us a hostel there, since we didn't manage to find an available HIT family there. The hostel appeared to be very nice, an old house with a beautiful garden that was converted to a hostel, and we got to share the room with a guy from Japan, which is not very common. In the evening we went to explore the town and to find an internet cafe. Since it was after 5pm, even though there was still plenty of light outside, everything was closed and the main street looked like the main street of a ghost town. In order to find an internet cafe we had to go to the other end of the long street to McDonald's. Later we've also visited the local supermarket, which was open, surprisingly enough. On our way out, a lady stopped us. "Are you travellers?" she asked. "Where are you from? How much time are you going to spend in NZ?" and few more questions of this sort. After we answered them all, she asked: "Would you like to come to my place tomorrow morning? I can pick you up from your hostel". We were a bit shocked to be invited like that by a complete stranger who stopped us on our way out of a supermarket, but then we remembered the words of Chrissie about the Kiwi's hospitality and accepted the invitation. We were planning to hitchhike to Taranaki on the next day, but we decided to make some time for such a special experience. We were even more excited since it was Halloween, and the lady had a lot of kids.
The next morning we got up early and waited outside for the nice lady to come and pick us up. We waited and waited, but no one came. Lilya even walked to few other hostels in the area, but no luck. There must have been some misunderstanding regarding our hostel's address, and we felt really bad about it. After waiting for almost two hours we decided to start hitchhiking to the Taranaki area. In order to get to the best spot for hitchhiking we had to walk quite a lot and to climb a very steep hill, which isn't very fun when you have around 25kg on your back. We got a ride from 3 cheerful guys from Stratford, a small town in the Taranaki area.
The conical mount Taranaki wasn't the only attraction of that area for us. Before arriving we arranged a homestay with a very unique HIT family. They were a couple, Allan and Wendy, in their early 50'ies with 11 children that lived in a farm. Since we are both city mice and this was our first HIT family visit, we were very excited and curious about this unique experience. Since we had no car we had to be picked up by Allan in Stratford. We waited outside the local library when an angel girl with long blonde hair and long dress approached us. We immediately understood that this was one of the 11 children. Her name was Ruth. She took us to the van where we met Allan, a big guy with a big beard with a classical farmer's look. On the way to the farm Ruth told us that 10 of the 11 children are girls. The oldest sister is about 30 years old and the youngest is 4 years old. The boy is the 8th child. 4 of the sisters already left home, only 7 left. Although it's not big, the farm is truly beautiful, with lots of small hills, and mount Taranaki in the background. When we arrived in their home we met the rest of the family, Anny, Merry, John, Miriam, Lora, Sarah and Wendy, the mother. All the girls were beautiful with long hair and long skirts, as if they were taken from "The sound of music" movie. Lilya immediately made friends with two of the youngest sisters, Merry and Annie, that showed her all the interesting things around the house.
"We can go to the farm to feed the calves, if you wish" offered Allan. The main income of the farm is from buying very small calves and selling them when they reach 100kg. Since we had never touched a cow before we were really happy to join Allan and two of his girls in the farm. When we arrived the calves were already very hungry and started bawling. We filled a big tank with water and milk powder and entered the paddock. The little calves immediately surrounded the tank and drank the milk with great pleasure. They continued sucking even when there was no more milk left. After Allan took out the tank the calves surrounded us and tried to suck whatever they could: our fingers, our pants. Maybe we are their mummy? According to Allan, a Japanese guy was knocked down of his feet by this hungry crowd a week before that. We returned full of calves spit but very happy.
Apparently, this family has hosted dozens, if not hundreds of Israelis, for the last 8 years. And they feel that they are blessed to have an opportunity to host descendants of the people that gave them the holy bible. Even though Allan has already done it millions of times before, he explained us everything about his farm and answered every stupid question with great patience. Not only that, he also explained us the way these things work back home in the Israeli Kibutz. From what he said we have a pretty impressive dairy industry. It was strange to meet someone at the other side of the world that knew things about Israel that we didn't.
According to Allan his life as a farmer is not too hard most of the year. They mostly raise calves in this farm, which need to be fed couple of times a day. Other than that, there is only some maintaining to do. So since this is not a dairy farm, they don't have to get up before 7am, and since it is a farm, everyone goes to sleep at about 9pm. So in the summer time, when the sunset is at 9pm, some of the children don't even get to see darkness.
An interesting thing was just watching them in their everyday life. Being such a large family makes things complicated, but it seems like they figured it out. Just imagine how hard it is to share a single bathroom with 9 sisters, 1 brother and parents, every morning.
The meals are especially fascinating. All the family and the family's guests sit around a huge table. Allan reads from the bible and explains, while he's doing that the rest are sitting still and listening. You will not hear an argument around the table. 5 minutes after the meal ends, everything is clean. It looks like a beehive. Everyone knows exactly what to do. No one tries to dodge. All the house work is under Wendy's strict command and so is the homeschooling. All the children are homeschooled, since Allan and Wendy don't want their children to be exposed to the wrongs of the world in the public schools. They do get exposed to lots of different people that pass through the family's house, though. They host not only Israelis, but people from all over the world, that wish to volunteer in their farm. It really looks like they are used to meeting all kinds of people.
We were so fascinated by the opportunity given to us, that we decided that we prefer to spend another day in the farm rather than visiting another waterfall. Allan tried to think of something he could do with us and at the end he asked: "Do you have a driver's license?". "Of course, what do you need us to do?" we asked. "Great, so you can take Sarah's car and visit all the interesting places in the area". We were once again amazed. A person that knows us for less that few hours offers us the keys to his car.
In the evening we had few interesting theological conversations with Allan. We never expected to have such deep religious discussions during our journey. Allan, on the other hand was used to all sorts of discussions with all types of Israelis, orthodox and total atheists. Nothing could surprise him.
On the next day we helped a bit with the calves. We helped feeding them, we helped to lead them to a special place where some of them were weighted. But the most exciting part was at the end. They had three young calves that were not used to human contact. So they needed to be fed as well. The first calf was not very big so Miriam (Allan's 14 year old daughter) caught and dragged it by herself, just like in a Rodeo show. The othe r two were bigger, so Allan asked if any of us would like to helped. Lilya was more than happy to jump in and to chase and wrestle the two Angus calves together with Miriam (one Angus at a time). Oren, was busy documenting this special moment. There was much more struggle than the pictures reveal...
Somewhere around noon we took Sarah's car and drove to the direction of the Taranaki mountain. We hiked at the foot of the mountain, which was by that time covered with a cloud, as it often does. Later we drove to New Plymouth, a very peaceful city on the western coastline, with very nice gardens. But all of this was nothing compared to the experience we had in the farm.
When we returned Miriam and Ruth took us to see the glowing worms in a cave they have in the farm. An attraction most of the tourists pay quite a bit for. One the way there the girls tricked us into unnecessary crawling into small holes here and there for their own amusement.
On the next morning Lilya had a challenging mission ahead of her, to prepare our famous pancakes for 12 people by 8am. She worked on two parallel pans and the pancakes were ready just in time.
Saying goodbye to this incredible family was not easy, and we were sorry that we couldn't stay any longer. This was definitely one of the highlights of New Zealand and of the whole journey to us.
Tip 1: The concept of HIT might sound A little intimidating, but joining HIT was definably the best decision we made in NZ. You get to meet interesting people in a way you wouldn't expect in such a trip. They will host you in their houses and will let you get a glimpse of real kiwi life. You shouldn't be afraid of the fact that Some of them (not all!) are really religious Christians. No one will try to convert you! If you are not Israeli, we ave sorry. This tip is not for you.
Tip 2: Listen to Chrissie. She is a real kiwi. If some one invites you to tea, they mean dinner, and you should accept the invitation.
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