Tossin´ bales in Golden Bay

During the summer season in Antarctica, I decided to put together an interactive workshop in order to learn more about a subject I am very interested in learning more about: living off the grid. Once a week, a different person volunteered to make a presentation on a topic they had researched or knew something about first-hand. Topics ranged from alternative contruction technologies (Earthships (houses made from pounded earth-filled tires), strawbale, and structural insulated panels) to solar, wind and geothermal energy and food preservation and hydroponics. I facilitated the speakers and sent out weekly minutes and additional information that I was finding on various topics on the internet. It was quite well attended and the enthusiasm was terrific. Some time in the middle of the season, I decided that it would be fun to participate in a strawbale construction workshop, where I could get some real experience working with making bale walls. Workshops are held all over the world, but as we were going to be in Australasia in autumn (pleasant temperatures) and the dollar was strong, it made sense to look for a workshop in New Zealand or Australia.

I made contact with Michael Thomas at the Sustainable Building Alliance in Golden Bay, New Zealand (NZ). Michael is an American who has been building strawbale homes in the Pacific Northwest for many years. He and his wife, Spring, decided to move to NZ in order to "bring the strawbale gospel" (my words, not his) to the Kiwis.
Michael was building the first major strawbale building structure to the South Island and he had already spent several months working with the owner, Kevin, on getting approval from the building authorities for this new technology.

Kevin's home is a 2 story structure with views of the farmland in front and the mountains beyond. The house is an infill type structure, in which the structural elements of the house are traditional stick frame (wood) and the infill between the posts is straw helpd in place with heavy chicken wire on the interior and exterior sufaces. The wire is sewn together through the strawbale using a big needle and galvanized wire (a very entertaining part of the process).

Along with Michiel and two other participants in the Living Off the Grid workshop from the ice and a lovely couple from Englad, we spent 9 days learning from Michael about everything from the foundation to the final plaster work (which, incidentally keeps out any moisture and rodents). The weekends on either end of the week were dedicated to wall raising and they were terrific events. On both weekends (one weekend per story of the house), nearly 25 people from the community and beyond acted as laborers. We were successful in getting nearly the entire second story completed and started on the first plaster layer (scratch coat) during the first weekend and the 6 of us who were participating in the full workshop acted as wall captains for the second weekend in which we completed the first story and started plastering, as well.

The best part for me (other than chainsawing the bales, which was super!) was the incredible feeling of community. Putting up a strawbale home is achievable for almost anyone (at least the wall construction aspect of it) and it was so amazing to see the walls go up so fast. Savoring the hard work at the end of each weekend (not to mention Kevin's homebrew), you couldn't help but feel that you'd been a part of something special.

Here's what the house looked like when we arrived. Notice the lack of actual walls



Nothing like sportin' a chainsaw!


Michiel is using a pneumatic stapler to attach the chicken wire to the top beam


Sometimes, the work involves simply stuffing straw


Once the walls are complete, they need to be trimmed with a (non-sparking chainsaw) or, as in these images, with an electric hedge trimmer or sheep shearer.



Michael and owner, Kevin, demonstrate how plastering is done


Closing ceremony on the last weekend. Notice that the second story is plastered (first coat)

Tonga without Tracy...sniff

Tracy left us despondent and lonely on Tapana Island but we consoled ourselves with more snorkeling and swimming. That night, though, we had a visitor. A large rat had been hanging out in the bungalow. He'd been gnawing on the soap bar and leaving his droppings behind, but on this night, he wasn't satisfied with soap. He went for anything plastic or rubber her could sink his teeth into, like the snorkel mask, the nose pieces on Michiel's glasses AND sunglasses, and various other items that we are still discovering to this day.

We'd been warned about the Tongans' flexible definition of borrowing from tourists (you know, like stealing, only not as frowned upon). In fact, we had no problems with any human behavior at all. We found the Tongans to be friendly and exceptionally laid back. So laid back, that they really didn't enjoy working much and if they ended up working in the tourism industry, they liked to tell everyone how hard they worked and how tired they were. Those few Tongans involved with tourists did work hard compared to their countrymen and women. Since Tongans have a communal spirit, all possessions within a family can be claimed by any family member. It's a system that doesn't lend itself much to working hard, innovation, entrepreneurship or capitalism for that matter. Most of the people working in the tourism industry are foreigners.

In the case of Taina, a Tongan lady who is running her own accommodation establishment on the island of Eua, she was married to a German and lived in Germany for many years, where she must have learned something about capitalism. Unfortunately for Taina, her kids and nieces don't necessarily have the same drive so not only does she run the homestay and cook for the tourists (not to mention the awesome service she provided us by tracking us down at the bank to tell us that we could catch an earlier flight) but she cooks and cleans for the family, too. Her place is lovely, though, and we enjoyed our day hike through the National Park with her son, Michael. He's the gangsta looking one in the photo with the machete and the fan (tee hee).



Taina's Place





Hiking on Eua


Eua Landscape






Our plane to Eua was broken and none of the employees of the airline company had thought to check to see if our flight was actually going to depart. It wasn't that they were lazy per se, more that they just didn't think of taking that extra step. We ferried by boat to the island instead and flew back the 8 minutes by special medevac flight which was necessitated by a domestic stabbing. Pretty gruesome sitting in the airplane with the sobbing woman, her bleeding wounds and her IV...no attendant, no nothing. They even dropped her while transferring her from the ambulance into the 8 seater prop plane.

Eua Airstrip



It all sounds pretty grim, but we had a surprisingly good time. Almost everywhere we went, we bumped into happy ice people who were fun to be with and the slow pace suited our temperament. Other than post-ice trauma, I'm sure it was the heat that slowed us down to a crawl. When I now think back on those 2 weeks, I don't think about the humidity, the mosquitos, the dengue-fever lite that Michiel got (it's carried by mosquitos; there's no vaccine; there's no real cure; it's like a bad flu), the lack of motivation of Tongans or the cockroaches. I think about the Lysol blue water that is so warm that we could snorkel for hours, the markets with their woven baskets of taro, the tropical fruit, the enormous umu feasts and traditional dancing performance, the boisterous preaching and loud singing in Sunday churches, the steady pounding of mallets against wood as women prepare leaves for tapa cloth, the South Pacific version of Mormon missionaries in their woven skirts (the men!), white button-down shirts and flip flops, the pigs roaming freely and even swimming at the beaches, the Tongans with gold teeth (most of them have at least one), and most of all, the good times we had with Tracy, Barb, Steve, and lots of other ice people (and even some fun people who weren't from the ice!)

The market in Nuku'alofa


The root vegetable in the woven baskets is taro and/or sweet potato. Taro is the plant in front of the baskets, above



Steve (in yellow) and Barb at a Tongan feast and dace performance at Hina Cave


Tongan dancers


Stuffing my face with guava

We´re fine

Just a quick note for anyone who has read about today´s sad incident in the Dutch city of Apeldoorn in which a driver plowed through a parade on Queen´s Day. The driver apparently was attempting to hit the Royal family, who were traveling in an open air bus on the parade route. Instead, he hit several policemen and marching band members, 4 (now 7) of whom died. The driver is a white Dutchman, so they are not considering this a terrorist act at this time. For more info, check out this article in the New York Times (if you don´t speak Dutch): http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/04/30/world/AP-EU-Netherlands-Parade-Crash.html

We were nowhere near Apeldoorn today. Luckily, we aren´t real fans of parades, crowds or Queen´s Day.

Sun and sand in the South Pacific

We moved on quickly from New Zealand to Tonga, an island kingdom in the South Pacific. Tonga is not a location I would have normally thought to visit, but the flights from NZ were so cheap that we couldn´t pass up the opportunity to thaw out. Additionally, Michiel had never experienced a South Pacific island and since we weren´t sure that we´d return to New Zealand any time in the near future, we decided to go for it.

Tonga is number 19 on this South Pacific map:



It was a lovely two weeks, especially the week we spent with our friend, Tracy, from the ice. We spent the first week on the island group of Vava´u, which is a 50 minute flight from the main island group, Tongatapu. Perhaps another map would be helpful here:



All international flights land on Tongatapu, which doesn´t have much to recommend it. Sadly, the cost of flights from this island to the much more beautiful and less Dengue-fever infected island groups of Vava´u and Ha´apai are about the same as what you pay to get to Tonga from Australia or New Zealand. No matter...we were totally prepared for this as we got plenty of travel advice from ice people who had been there the year prior.

Flights to the outer island groups are made in small propeller planes which are surprisingly comfortable and punctual (unless they aren´t running at all due to maintenance issues). This, by the way, is an excellent way to see Tonga. From above, you get a great sense of how the islands have been formed and a real desire to explore each and every one of these bit of tropical paradise. (You can´t see the mosquitos or the rats from up high, so EVERYTHING looks idyllic.)





Vava´u is known as a yachter´s playground, but as we were there in the cyclone season, we weren´t bothered by the rich and famous. We rented 2 different places for 3 nights each and both provided us with fantastic hosts, good snorkelling, free kayaks and comfortable accommodation in peaceful and beautiful surroundings.

One place was an entire island owned by a Spanish couple who created two little bungalows and a famous paella restaurant. Here we are getting excited about our tapas or was it the red wine after a day of swimming and snorkelling that made us look so radiantly happy?



Tracy was an incredible travel companion and I think she enjoyed the fact that I made all the arrangements and Michiel did all the cooking (when we weren´t dining out). Together, we discovered that geckos are quite fond of tropical drinks and become pretty bold after diving into a glass of rum, pineapple juice, lime, Sprite, and soursop. After a stare-down, this guy attacked a completely startled Tracy.

Treated like royalty

As usual, we´ve waited a long time to update the blog and now we´re so far behind that it feels like a big task to cover all of the things we´ve done since the last posting. But here goes...

We left the ice on February 20th in a luxurious manner...in a normal passenger Airbus with real seats, flight attendants, beverage service and windows! The Airbus, nicknamed Skippy, is generally used by the Australian Antarctic Programme but we received some free charter flights (and paid for the rest) in return for the use of our planes and personnel in a medevac operation from one of the Australian bases.



The 4 and a half hours flew by, especially since we were continually offered coffee and soft drinks by the flight staff who miraculously changed from their cold weather gear into neatly coiffed flight attendants (complete with cravats, perfume and makeup) somewhere in the middle of the flight. The highlight was an up close view of Mt. Erebus, the active volcano that forms a major part of our local landscape.









Notice that the "luxurious" flight didn´t keep anyone awake.