Man makes plans, and God laughs.

I've always liked that saying, and it happens to appear in my internal dialogue quite often these days.

Evidence: Matt and I are now relaxing in the trout fishing town of Turangi, near Lake Taupo, New Zealand. Three and a half years after meeting while volunteering in Peru, we are still living out of backpacks, still relying on out of date guidebooks and locals for hot tips, still debating the merits of spending $5 on wifi or a local juice. No, we are not in the U.S., we are not getting ready to run our first Origins of Food program, we are not settled into a place of our own, as were our plans a year ago.

A year ago we had recently gotten our scuba diving licenses in Belize, were amping up to run summer programs in Guatemala for Operation Groundswell, and aiming to both be settled in the states by Thanksgiving, end of year, tops. All we needed was a green card with Matt's name on it so he could live and work in the U.S. legally. In October Matt flew home to Australia to await his TBD interview at the consulate (as we found out the hard way, you must do this from the country where you have residency). I went home to Florida to visit family and wait for Matt's arrival. I started interviewing for jobs in Oregon, telling them I could start after the holidays. Thanksgiving came and passed. Instead of news on Matt's interview date with the embassy, we received a notice that the pre-interview processing would take longer than anticipated, potentially another 1-2 months, potentially longer.

Plan B was needed. In early December Matt convinced me to fly to Australia for three months (the length of a tourist visa in Australia), at which point surely we would have notice on his interview. I could then fly home and start interviewing again.

So Down Under I went...

reunited, and it feels so good

Matt was working as a specialty coffee barista, adding more finesse to his already impressive coffee-making skills and knowledge. I, on the other hand, couldn't work legally in Australia, and had hard luck finding cash in hand jobs.

So I spent my time in the kitchen, fermenting (cheese, yogurt, pickles, pickled eggs, kombucha, with weekly flavors dependent on what fruits were fresh at the market), baking (chewy granola bars full of seeds and nuts, dark Russian rye and pumpernickel loaves, Macedonian sesame cookies, Turkish pita that you actually don't bake, but pan fry), creating homemade concoctions of things I had never considered making at home before (mustard and alcoholic ginger beer among others). I trialed different kinds of milks to perfect my yogurt-making (non-homogenized vs. homogenized, raw vs. pasteurized, cow vs. goat, etc.). I roasted coffee.

kombucha flavors based on the week's market specials

lacto-fermented okra, cauliflower and cabbage

tomato fettucine drying

pickles, hummus, baba ganoush, pita!

Matt indulged my nostalgia for NYC by making everything bagels and we topped it with homemade fresh cream cheese with homegrown chives. (They were awesome).

everything bagel with chive cheese

I scoured hipster homemaker blogs for best how-tos and recipes, I became so obsessed with checking out cookbooks from the library that it became a joke that I couldn't visit the library without coming home with a new cookbook. (Hey, there was no max on checked-out items and the library gave four hours of free wifi daily! Two birds, one stone.)

library booty

I read food books that weren't cookbooks (The Ethical Butcher and Homeward Bound are recommendable). I was as productive as possible without having a day job. I also went on a few runs and hikes to make sure I still fit into my pants!

exploring sydney's coastline, working off those bagels

Then, in late January, about six weeks into my trip, came news from the National Visa Center that they needed more information for Matt's visa which would delay the process an additional 60 days, minimum. So Plan C was hatched from Plan B. My visa would be up in early March, I would need to leave Australia, postpone my ticket home, we would need to put Origins of Food on hold. (Starting a business while not knowing what side of the world we were going to be living in was too daunting for us.)

Looking at cheap flights, two options became clear. We contemplated jumping over to SE Asia, and save our dollars by spending our nights in Thai hostels and our days on the beach, but that didn't appeal to our hunger for learning. So we opted for the second; that hiking-camping-backpacking mecca of the kiwis, where farms and local food systems are abundant. Additional pros: New Zealand is still close enough for Matt to hop back to Oz in case of a quick interview schedule and the WWOOF network is strong. Neither of us had been there before, and if you talk to anyone who has traveled extensively, NZ is always top of the list. It was obvious.

So we booked our ticket to Auckland, signed up for a membership to the NZ WWOOF network, messaged a few Kiwi friends, and scored a 2006 NZ Lonely Planet from a thrift store/op shop for $3. Everything fell into place soon after that. After short listing our favorite properties from the WWOOF website, we reached out to about 20 different places. As we started hearing back on availabilities and projects, we set a tentative itinerary for 5-6 different farms, letting them know we might need to be flexible with dates.

We arrived in Auckland on Wednesday, planning to stay in the city for two nights and on Friday head to our first WWOOF property a few hours south, on the west coast in a tiny surfer town called Raglan. In our typical laissez fare backpacker mentality, we did not have a hostel or place to stay yet, thinking we'd find something in the city no problem. As I mentioned, we have a few Kiwi friends from our travels in Latin America and figured something would pop up. Dianne, a coffee aficionado from our very final OG program, picked us up at the airport with open arms and took us to lunch at her favorite cafe, Rad, tucked away in one of Auckland's cute suburbs. She drove us to downtown Auckland, admitted there wasn't much to see in the city itself, and recommended heading out of town to nearby Waiheke Island. We bought a NZ sim card, stopped at a Lonely Planet recommended hostel, and were less than impressed with what was on offer for the price ($68 for a cramped single room with no window in a building shared with other businesses, and a very institutional feel in the common areas). We sat on a window ledge outside of a cafe and called around to others, finding they were booked up. Uh, oh. This might be harder than thought. We stopped into the cafe whose window we were perched in, and it was just what we needed. A charming local foods purveyor mixed with tea house, we bought a few cold brewed coffees and asked the girls at the counter for advice. One had WWOOFed extensively around Europe and India and was familiar with our kind. They also recommended we head out of town. Waiheke came up again, as did a few other beach towns. We used our new sim card to set up a personal hotspot, opened up the computer, and started researching Waiheke. A 30 minute ferry ride to a former artist colony island, now full of vineyards and walking trails, isolated beaches with turquoise water, a hostel with an available double room for the same price as the windowless one in downtown Auckland. But on an island. Near the beach. Sold.

unplanned island beach adventure in NZ

We jumped into a Countdown grocery store (the NZ version of Woolworth's, more on that later), stocked up on food for the weekend, knowing island prices would be extortionate, and headed to the docks. By sundown we were walking up 187 steps to our hostel, blocks from the beach. We checked in, threw our bathing suits on, and ran back down those 187 steps to wash off the day's travel. The water was warm, the sky was magically turning from blue to pink to purple, and our hearts were happy, reveling in how changed plans (or not having plans) can lead you to some beautiful places, both mentally and physically.