The Barriah

Left Auckland in the wee hours of the morning to catch the ferry to Great Barrier Island, 4 hrs from the city. Saw whales spouting up water. A great omen methinks. Arrived in the harbor and already loved the scenery - beautiful blue water, inlets, little mini bays, flowers, 2 thumbs up all around. Got to work at the Pohutukawa Lodge/Currach Irish Pub in Tryphena. Louise and John run it and are super cool. The rest of the employees are twentysomething ladies that make me and Koos look like old nuns. A typical sentence, "yea I slept with a married man once.... I felt bad for a bit, til I slept with his wife!". And other comments too dirty for this blog. They were funny but I started to get sincerely scared after a while, despite my attempts to not look surprised and offend them. One of the their phrases that we will carry on (verbally, not literally) is "sneaky passion" aka getting friendly with other people in the room.
Work was light gardening and dishes in the pub kitchen. One shift involved some promos - aka getting driven around in the Marvey by John, drinking beer, eating lollies and yelling out the sun roof for people to come to the pub to see Sean Kelly and the Irish Flyers. Waved some Irish flags for good measure, and saw quite a bit of the island, and peoples backyards. Also caught a couple exiting their ocean swim in the nude. John proceeded to drive donuts around them. Koos introduced everyone to her famous Mariachi cry. Hard day at the office.
Off hours were spent hitch hiking (its a tiny island so its safe for everyone to hitch) to beautiful beaches. Saw a grom surf comp at Medlands and swam in the mermaid pool (tide pool that is deep and freezing). Caught a ride to the hot pools and lazed about in them, making sure not to get our heads under to avoid amoebic meningitis as the sign warned. A guy we were chatting with dunked his head before he read it. Hopefully hes still alive, as it can be fatal, but he wasn't too stressed about it. Currently reading: Tales of Beedle the Bard and Minds of Murderers.
Musselfest was pretty much the biggest event of the summer on the Barrier, and the Currach girls drove us to Port Fitzroy where we listened to music, drank and met some irie locals. Sean Kelly ended up being a great band, they were our roomies too in the backpackers at the Currach. They covered 500 Miles by the Proclaimers which Koos and me love, and added the line "When I'm wankin, well you know I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be the man who's wanking off to you." Actually in Irish and Scottish accents, even that sounded charming.
Had a fun night with some Barrier Boyz at the Truth Tree, getting silly and free styling jazz songs, laughing, giggling, spilling beer (you're throwin you're piss everywhere!) as they phrase it. One of the boys blew smoke to the other via mouth to mouth. Thought it was just good old fashioned homoeroticism til we learned they were brothers. Kinda weird, but hey, we're on a tiny island..... anything goes. The girls here are strapped for variety when it comes to romance, so they tend to get together with really really old men. Thats fine for them, but the down side for us is that the old men think they have a pretty good shot with all young ladies under 25.....
John bid us farewell at the dock with some cold brews and we saw dolphins playing at the front of the ferry really close. So long Barrier, thanks for the shock, awe and beauty.