After putting off my work decision for a little bit too long, I finally drove down to Alexandra in search of some work at an orchard. It is a pretty busy time for the orchards right now, so I didn't have much trouble finding work. I had planned on doing work as a cherry picker, but it turns out, they needed more help in the packhouse instead.

Really, working at the packhouse was probably one of the most boring jobs I've ever had. Staring at a conveyer belt full of cherries for 8 hours a day, 6 days a week is not too exciting at all. My job was too pick out the damaged or very small cherries, or sometimes even the very large cherries. There were a few different jobs that you could have in the packhouse, but basically, they all just involved looking at cherries all day. There was quite an age range working at the packhouse, from some pretty old people to 15 year olds. We had a cd player at work, but unfortunatly, the musical tastes of the younger people at work were never quite catered to. So, we listened to about the same 5 cds of oldies music instead every day. As you can imagine, that was also a lot of fun. Somebody put on a Led Zepplin cd once, and then one of the older people turned it off, and all the other older people cheered.

After a few weeks, I moved on to packing apricots. Still, not very exciting, but actually a step up from the cherries.

One day though, I did go out on the hydro ladder to pick apricots. A hydro ladder is basically a ladder that runs on gas, and so it does all the hard work for you. But, they are not easy to get a hang of right away! I definitly had a hard time working it at first, and never really quite got the hang of it. They are also a bit scary at first, because you can steer yourself right into large tree branches if you are not careful. I told my boss afterwards that even though I didn't pick very much fruit, at least I didn't kill myself in the process!

Still, I had a good time at the orchard. My bosses were wicked nice, and so were my fellow co workers. I camped out for free at the orchard, and our boss of course let us eat all the fruit we wanted, and, more importantly, supplied plenty of free beer! The towns of Alexandra and Clyde were nice little towns, and it was good to get away from some of the super touristy areas for a bit. It was also a really good time to be working, as I missed all the school holiday madness that goes on in January.

Now, I'm in Wanaka again, getting ready to do a bit of tramping before heading to Arthurs Pass and then up the east coast. I was in kind of a bad mood yesterday, as my car failed its warrent of fitness because of rust. They are ridiculously strict about that stuff here. But, it will not cost a lot to fix, and once that is done, my car should be good to go for the rest of my stay in New Zealand.