Life in Te Puke

Te Puke is a peaceful with low population small town. It only becomes lively when reaches kiwi fruit season.  During kiwi fruit season, the town will be full of people such as working holiday permit holders, working permit holders, students and residents from the neighbourhoods to work as kiwi packers, kiwi graders and kiwi picker jobs. Kiwi fruit season is last for 3-4 months (Mar-June each year), the best choice for accommodation is to search for home-stay at that period.  You can find room-for-rent notes at the supermarkets’ notice board such as New World and Countdown, or asking the people around the town, backpacker house or lodge. Everyone in the town is kind enough to give you a hand on searching for a suitable accommodation.  The average rental price at the town is NZD100 per week per head included room with bed and blanket, water and electricity usage and internet access. 

We were so luckily that we met a super lovely home-stay family, Ivan & Robyn with their children, cutie grandchildren, and grandparents during our time there. They have a smart and big black dog named Boofie staying together with them, too. Ivan and Robyn treated us as part of their family and we are free to do whatever we wanted, as well as swimming (we didn’t swim because we can’t stand the cold weather). We enjoyed the dessert (ice-cream) from Ivan, bacon and egg pie baked by Robyn, and crazy moment when playing WII together with them. Beside, Robyn taught us the best way to cook steaks as different meats have different methods to cook in order to have the best taste, this is the best tips ever we have! Ivan always share the family photos and told us many stories about them, it was gorgeous! When the children and grandchildren came to visit them during weekends, they welcome us to join their family day; it was the warmest moment we had in our working holiday period. We would like to take this opportunity to thank Ivan and Robyn for your hospitality and we enjoyed every moment staying with you and your family, the house is really nice and warm. We will never forget you all, and the yummy farewell dinner prepared by Robyn and Ivan. ^^

Sharing with you our happiest moment in Te Puke, enjoy ^^

  Have a walk nearby the house

 I like the weather, windy and warm

This is the house of our home-stay family, and that was our car :P

 1.Living room, 2.Kitchen with cute Liam,

3.Our room, 4. With kiwi fruits and swimming pool

 Robyn and Ivan, our home-stay owner, miss you^^

 

Start our day by reading newspaper. 

Yeah, you can get Chinese newspaper at NZ (We got it when we were at Auckland)

Celebrating the grandchildren, Madison's bday. There are so cute:) 

 

1.Kiwi fruits we got from our pack house, it's free^^, 2. Misshaped Kiwi fruits >.<

3.Kiwi fruits again, 4. Gold and green kiwi fruits ready to be served! 

 Picking Mandarin Oranges at friend's house *fresh*

1. Avocado tree at friend's house, 2. Thanks Fiona and Max for the Avocado *Yummy & Fresh*

3.Picking Feijoe at roadside, 4. Feijoe taste like guava but its softer *nice*

Yummy dinner cooked by ourselves: 1. Fish and Chips,2. Steaks

We have tried many yummy snacks at NZ, all of them were nice especially Bluebird potato chips, Vanilla and Hazelnut Yogurt, L&P soft drink, Nut Bar and Cookie Time's cookie. We are totally addicted to them, you must try them when you are in NZ!

1. Bluebird Grain Waves 18 Snack Packs and Kiwi As

2.Vanilla and Hazelnut yogurt

3. Bluebird (Thick Cut, Honey Baked Bacon, Original Cut)

4. Our snacks! You must try L&P soft drink which taste like lemon juice, Nut Bar, Cookie Time, Cadbury, MORO and Picnic chocolate.

5. Hot Cross Bun for Easter day, thanks Robyn :)

6. Hokey Pokey ice cream, famous in NZ, thanks Ivan :)

7. Kiwi fruits ice cream, thanks Tim and Siew Yee

8. Boysenberry ice cream, thanks Ivan again :P

Our NZ trip mates :)

Our housemates

Can you tell me there are how many Micky in total? :P

Baking Egg tart with Max and Amy

Farewell lunch and birthday celebration with friends we met at NZ. Nice to meet you all and thanks for the yummy food^^

Farewell dinner prepared by Robyn and Ivan. The food is very delicious, thanks^^

Gifts from Robyn, very appreciate it, thanks

Living in this small town was really a great experience for us. We will miss Te Puke, Robyn & Ivan family, friends we met there, and Trevelyan pack house forever.

Visiting around Te Puke

Have you stayed in a mobile home before? Yes, we did! And this was our first time staying in a mobile home or travel trailer which is known as Caravan in NZ. Caravan is like a room with 4 tires attached to it. Due to it does not have any engine, you have to connect it to your vehicle in order for you to bring it along with you as your room at the destination.

Normally, traveler will park the caravan at Holiday Park that near to the recreation area. It is a place which offers variety of accommodation options such as camping site, caravan parking site, self-contained motel and cabins. Each caravan’s parking lot has a faucet for water usage and electricity connector for you to connect electricity to your caravan. Public toilet, washroom and kitchen are available at there, too.

Our caravan was those which are already placed in the holiday park as a room, so we did not travel around with it. It was really a special experience for us to stay in a caravan for a week.

This is our caravan :P

Inside of the 3 people caravan. There are also caravan with smaller size available for 1 to 2 people.

Can you spot us? Hello~~

Opportunity shops are very common in NZ, we can find it in any town. It is a shop that selling second handed clothes, kitchenware, shoes, bags, bed sheets, curtains and etcetera. The price can be as low as 1NZD if there is a promotion. If you spare some time at these shop, you may get something nice and cheap, especially jacket or winter clothes.

Family Store is the biggest shop among 3 of them and the clothes selling at there looks nicer :)

Can’t find any night activity in Te Puke? You are definitely wrong. There is a cinema which open until late at night for mid night show in Te Puke.  The size of each show room is same as the smallest show room in those big cinemas. It is quite comfortable, new and clean inside. You can get to watch the international film as well as local firm at there.

Cinema main door

We chose to watch this local film called "My Wedding" and it’s very nice

 Snapped a photo before the show started

We have been drinking Comvita Manuka Honey for few years before visiting NZ, thanks Shirley for bringing it for us across the sea every time. It is really the best honey product which contains pure NZ Manuka Honey that good for health-maintaining. We used to drink UMF^® 5+ Manuka Honey from Comvita. You can take the higher UMF^® that provide better effects to your body with higher price.:P

It was so surprised to know that Comvita Visitor Centre is just location at Te Puke while we were on our way heading to the town from Maketu. It is just located near to KIWI 360 (one of the must-visit places in Te Puke).  So, we dropped by to pay a visit at Comvita Visitor Centre. You can find others products such as propolis, body lotion, omega and candies beside honey. (Click here for more information about Comvita)

Main entrance of Comvita Visitor Centre

Bee-lieve it or not!

Stay tuned for our next post, enjoy reading^^

Kiwi Country - Te Puke

Welcome to the Kiwi Country - Te Puke.  From Auckland to Te Puke, it took about 5 hours to reach there by Inter-City bus. You may get the bus ticket as low as $1NZD if you are lucky, but not for us because ours were last minute tickets. : P (Click here for InterCity website).

Te Puke is known as "Kiwifruit capital of the world" due to it's one of the main kiwifruit producers of the world. Yes, our mission getting to this small town is to search for a kiwifruit packer job during kiwi fruit season (March-June).

We stayed at Hairy Berry Backpacker house for a couple of nights as recommended by our friend due to its location is near to Trevelyan’s pack house, which is the pack house that we aimed for working over there. However, some people claims that Hairy Berry is a little expensive compared to others, you can get cheaper accommodation by staying at the lodge in town or caravan at Holiday Park.

We had no idea how to get to Hairy Berry Backpacker house from Te-Puke town although it is just a 2km-away-far distance. Luckily a kind bus driver offered to send us there, so we faster hopped into the "Not In Use" Bay Hopper bus.

 Hairy Berry Backpackers House

Our 4 people room

Living room with books, information, internet and TV for all backpackers

Kitchen for all backpackers

Our day in Te-Puke was going smooth with the help and kindness of everyone we met there, it was too warm for us. ^^ After we got a job from Trevelyan’s pack house, we paid a visit to the town centre. Although the town centre is just occupied by 2 rows of shops along the main road, but you can find any thing you need at there, such as grocery shop, book shop, photo shop, Post Shop(Post office), library, cinema, petrol station, workshop, restaurant and etcetera.

History of Te Puke

Church

Most delicious bakery in the town, our favourite Egg & Bacon pie is always out of stock, it's the best pie we ever had :)

Library

Post Shop (Post Office is known as Post Shop in NZ)

The road sign and sign board in this town are decorated with "Kiwi fruit", so cute^^

MCD for our lunch! The ice-cream tasted nicer than Malaysia. You may also try MCD Fish burger at NZ and you will feel the differences, it's fresher and thicker.

More to come about our life in Te Puke, enjoy reading ^^