Bluff Hill and Goodbyes

Napier Prison is located on Bluff Hill, which is a great look out point since the rest of the town is down at sea level.  Originally, the hill was used by Maori elders to study the night sky as they used astronomy to figure out the best times for planting, harvesting, and fishing.  Later when Europeans arrived, the bluff was converted to an army barracks and a place for a lighthouse before the prison took over.  Thanks, Tour Guide Danielle!
But prison is actually only part way up the hill.  If you climb up to the very top, there is a great lookout spot complete with benches and a large compass/bowl installation that details the surroundings of Napier. On one of my first nights in town, the inmates all headed up to the top to have a few drinks and look out over Napier, the ocean, and the unfortunate looking Ahuriri port, which is full of shipping containers, lumber, and the odd cruise ship.  It's quiet up there at night, and quite lovely.  We went up a number of evenings in the dark, and it always felt like a special place just for the inmates.  It was also always made much more exciting by the fact that we walked through Sturm's Gully to get there, which is a small forest in between the residential zone and the park at the top.
Bluff Hill is actually a big tourist destination for Napier, and so I was determined to see it in all of its daytime glory at least once.  So yesterday, I headed up with Kat and Destiny.  It was nice to be able to see things other than the artificially lit up port, and the views were worth the climb.  Still, the tourists made it less magical.
Tonight we headed up one last time as a farewell activity for me on my last night in prison, and the Bluff instantly regained its magic.  We could hear some kids hollering in the forest on our way up, but their voices died away as we got closer to the lookout.  The night sky was totally clear, so we all laid down to take in the stars.  I enjoy star gazing at home, but I have never been too fussed to know what constellations I was looking at... At least until I came to the southern hemisphere.  The unfamiliar star patterns have inspired me to learn a bit more about my own stars.
Destiny and I climbed into the bowl/compass to star gaze, and something about it gave us the giggles that were lost on the others.  However, we were all on the same page as we watched satellites travel from one side of the sky to the other and shooting stars appear and disappear faster than we could share them with eachother. 
At one point, I was asked to reflect on my favourite and least favourite parts of prison life.  It was a hard question.  I have had a lot of fun being a tour guide and scaring people with real stories from prison history.  I also love being 5 minutes away from the ocean and having it lull me to sleep every night.  Although I think the best part of prison was the amazing connections I made with my dear fellow inmates.  I will miss them.
If I could ban all cockroaches from crawling around in my cell and have the writing portion of my job happen at 2AM when I'm used to writing, I think prison would have been close to perfect.  As it is, I still can't complain and am sad to be leaving.  Although I am getting super stoked to start exploring more of this beautiful country.

Ocean Spa

One of the last things on my to-do list in Napier was go to the Ocean Spa, which is a pool area right next to the ocean. It's super popular, mostly because Napier Beach has crazy rip tides and locals don't like swimming in it. I hadn't gone at all during my month here since it does cost nine dollars to get in, but the lactic acid was really building up in my muscles after my hike up to Sunrise Hut. Every time I stood up I thought my hips were going to snap. Time for a soak in a hot tub.

Destiny, Kat and I headed down after dinner with the hope of avoiding screaming children. We were mostly successful. We stayed in the hot tub for a long time, only taking two quick breaks to jump in the cold pool. The hot tubs are on a bit of a raised surface and have glass fences, so we could look out at the ocean waves crashing in just metres from where we were sitting. After two hours, my muscles were perfectly relaxed and I was ready to head in for the night. We walked back to the prison in the dark with only our towels wrapped around us.

It's January 16th, and I comfortably walked for ten minutes outside at night barely wearing any clothes. I guess what I'm really trying to say is that it's currently -25 in Edmonton. Suckers.

The Sun Rise

The original plan for sunrise was to walk up for another half an hour to a higher peak, but the wind and cold killed that one pretty fast, and we crawled out of our bunks at 5:15 still wrapped in our sleeping bags and sat on the benches outside of the hut.  We watched the sky change from black to red to brilliant daylight.  It was so refreshing to watch - I can't remember the last time I've just sat and watched a sunrise.

Sadly, Kat and Gaston had to work at 9AM, so we had to pack up and run down the hill by 6:30.  Even though it took us 3 hours to get up, we booked it down in only an hour and ten minutes.  Tired but happy, we arrived back at the prison on time, recharged with the beauty of nature. 

Sun Rise Hut

Joaquin used to work in the prison before my time, but left when he got a job in town. He still hangs out with the inmates a lot, and he has one of the best things a friend can have in a foreign country - a car.  Joaquin had heard about a hiking trail about an hour away from Napier where you hike in, sleep in a hut, and wake up in time for a beautiful sunrise.  The trail is cleverly called the Sunrise Track.  I love hiking, and have only used my hiking shoes once since I've been here.  I was definitely down.

Joaquin, Kat, Gaston, and myself took off from Napier around four, and headed into the country. It's been really nice basing myself in one place and recharging my travel energies, but I didn't realize how much I missed the New Zealand countryside. After two months, I still can't get over how beautiful the rolling green hills are with the small white dots of sheep grazing everywhere as the road curves around the small valleys throughout the countryside. It's constantly stunning.

We arrived at the trail head at six, and prepared to climb a mountain. Well actually that was mostly me.  When I read a description of the hike, I read a fun, easy 3 hour hike made for families and casual hikers.  I'm not sure where my brain was when I knew I was going to watch the sunrise, but I wasn't quite expecting three hours of walking straight uphill.

The trail started on grassy farmland and was quite wide and flat.  Shortly after, we left the farms and entered reserveland, where it actually felt like we were on a trail.  The vegetation was fantastic and kept changing the higher we went up.  I know this is the same as in the Rockies, but I've spent so much of my time there and am so familiar with the vegetation that I don't really notice when we move out of different temperate zones.  It's sad to think that New Zealand used to be covered in forest and it was humans that cleared it all out to become a massive farmland today, but at the same time I wouldn't be here, enjoying this hike if it were any other way.

Three hour hikes uphill are good, in the way that they teach me just how out of shape my short little beer and butter loving body is.  I feel like I walk more in Napier than at home in Edmonton since I don't have a car, but prison life has proven to be a lethargic one - surprise surprise.  At least I did it though! Slow and steady wins the race.  We arrived at the top in just under 3 hours, and thankfully there were still bunks available in the hut.  The hut itself is gorgeous.  It's made out of very solid wood, and has triple decker bunk beds.  There is a large kitchen/dining area with gas stoves (although you need to bring in your own pots) and partly purified water. For only 15 dollars a night, New Zealand has definitely got its priorities in order.

The wind that we had heard in the trees the whole way up was unleashed on us at the hut since we were finally at the top of the mountain. We wanted to have a look around before we turned in for the night, as the hut doesn't have electricity and we didn't really feel like entertaining each other by flashlight.  Standing in front of the hut, the building sheltered us from the more intense winds, but Gaston said he wanted to see sunset too, so we climbed to the top of the top of the mountain. The best way I can describe what happened next was that the wind made love to us.  We started climbing and thought it was funny that the wind could make us lose our balance if we weren't paying attention.  The further we climbed, the more intense the wind got to the point that it was easiest to sit and shuffle your way up hill.  At a certain point, I recklessly ran further up, and Joaquin intelligently went back to the hut.  Gaston followed me, and caught up when I was laying against a ridge.  I was half paralyzed there by wind, half by laughter. My tight sweater with the elastic band at the base was lifting up in the wind. The snot was flying out of my nose and I couldn't stop it. I was half afraid that my contacts were going to be ripped out of my eyes. It had to be 100 km/hour winds. It almost reminded me of skydiving. Gaston and I sat there laughing for minute, trying to talk to eachother but having our voices ripped away by the wind.  This is your brain on drugs? Nope. This is your brain on wind. I wanted to go higher and get even more intense, but I motioned to Gaston for his opinion first - up or down?

DOWN!!! 

So, with one sane person in the party, we started down the dangerous trek back to the hut.  On a normal day, we wouldn't have batted an eye, but as it was, we were seriously worried about being blown off.  It was fine until we reached a two meter stretch without any lip of land to hold on to.  Gaston scurried across first, and then I half crawled, half ran over to the other side.  It was at this point that I finally  started to notice my hands taking on the same colour and feel as the worst frost bite days of an Edmonton winter.  I'm glad Gaston was paying attention and made us go down, because I was oblivious.  We slid down the rest of the hill on our butts, and made it back to the hut with uncontrollable giggles.

I'm now laying in my third level bunk, typing this out on my iPod.  I only brought it so I could avoid the bad snorers in a mixed dorm, but I'm glad I was able to write this down when it was so fresh.  When I was little, my family would camp in Waterton National Park where the winds seemed like they might push over the tent trailer in the middle of the night.  The hut, as solid as it is, is still creaking and shifting in the wind and I'm very happy that I'm inside, snug as a bug in a rug. 

Hawke's Bay Wine Tour

On the morning of Rachel's last day in prison, we both had the 9-12 shift.  It was overcast, and I didn't really expect much of the day as we were shut in the office working on our scripts.  Around 11, the skies cleared up and the sun started shining.  Brilliant! Rachel wanted to do something, I wanted to do something.  But what? Everything in New Zealand can be really fun and exciting so long as you're willing to pay ridiculous amounts of money for it.  I guess that's how the world works, but it seems especially true here.  Rachel had wanted to do a wine tour of area since Hawke's Bay is the second largest producers of wine in New Zealand.  However, she didn't want to drive herself only to stay sober, so it never happened.  I had seen some wine touring buses advertised online, so I asked Rachel if she was willing to blow her budget a bit.  For wine? Always! After a quick call to the i-Site and an easy transfer of funds, we were signed up for the Prinsy Wine Tour-complete with cheese board.

Hamish, our driver, picked us up from the bottom of Bluff Hill about 20 minutes after we booked, and  I immediately satisfied that we had made a great decision.  He was super friendly, and immediately got the positive energy flowing throughout the bus.  Hamish had spent some time working on a ranch near Calgary, and his daughter is currently living in Vancouver, so I felt the comfort of someone knowing where you come from. We had 4 other tour mates - Beryl and Jerry from England, and two quiet but very nice Korean girls.  Rachel and I were quickly nicknamed Oregon and Canada, which stuck for the rest of the afternoon.

We went to the Mission Estate, Moana, and Black Barn Wineries, along with one more I'm afraid I can't remember the name of, but that was where I had the most delicious cheese plate of my life, so I shall call it Cheese Plate Winery. I'm talking 5 different kinds of cheeses, olives, whole grain bread, crackers, apples, dolmas, hummus, plum sauce, pickled onions, and delicious, delicious wine on a sunny Monday afternoon.  Heaven.

My favourite winery was Moana, where their philosophy towards wine making means they are organic and vegetarian.  They also don't use sulphates during the harvesting process, which is what gives you that horrible wine hangover.  What I mean is, you can drink all the wine you want, and you won't get that horrible day after headache.   Ohmygods.  When you get to the Cellar door at Moana (which is a general name of where you taste wine at vineyards), a staff member sits down with you and spends as long as you want talking about the wine you're drinking and all of the practices they have going on behind the scenes.  Our lady told us a funny story about being at a Vegan Convention where she was selling her wine, and accidentally telling a customer how good it tasted with steak. Whoops.  They are also connected to a winery in Creston, BC.  I didn't even know Canada had wineries.

Hamish also took us up to Te Mata Peak, which is another of the 'must do's' in the area.  It was stunning - a 360 degree vista around Hawkes Bay all the way to the ocean.

All this was amazing, but my favourite part of the wine tour was spending the day with Beryl and Jerry.  They were in their 80s, but spunky as hell. They started the afternoon off by reminiscing about that time in Greece when Beryl had a lot of wine to drink, and danced on the tables in the bar they were in.  I was immediately smitten with her.  We were encouraged to give our opinions on what we were drinking, and whenever Rachel would offer up an answer, Beryl would immediately respond with "I like the way that Oregon thinks. Very clever girl."  After the first two wineries, Beryl decided she had enough to drink, and started to pour her serving into my wine glass.  Love her.

With the help of wine, any conversation can flow easily, but this extended to the point where we were all invited over to England to be wined and dined at Beryl and Jerry's house.  You just need to take Exit 23 off the M6, and it's the 3rd house from the end.  I can't wait to go.

Cape Kidnappers

One of the top activities to do in the Napier region is the hike to Cape Kidnappers.  The Cape is large jut of land that makes up the southern tip of Hawke's Bay, and got its name way back in 1769 when Captain Cook was exploring the area.  His crew was trying to trade with local Maori who were on the sea in their canoes called waka, but a Tahitian servant of Cook's interpreter named Tiata was grabbed by the Maori.  Tiata only escaped when the waka was fired on and he jumped into the sea.  I also heard another story where Tiata wanted to go with the Maori because he felt more at home in their culture than with the English, but this wasn't communicated properly and the English explorers thought he was being kidnapped.  Who knows.

Nowadays you can get to the cape at low tide either by a very expensive shuttle bus that takes you all the way to the top, a wagon pulled by a tractor where you still have to hike up to the top of the cliff, or for free by walking an 18km round trip from a trail head near a campground.  Naturally, Rachel, Alex, and I chose the free option.  Saturday was the only day we could all go, and the tide was out at 11.  This meant we had to start the hike by 7:30AM.

It was definitely worthwhile.  The walk to the cape is gorgeous, and as you stroll along the beach, you can look up at sharp cliff faces that are composed of sedimentary rock.  The deeper layers go back 5 million years.  The path is made more exciting by the threat of falling rock (although we were walking well away from it so there was no possibility of being hit).  On the other hand, we were fighting the tides, and at certain places along the trail we had to wade into the ocean to continue on. This made it all a bit more exciting.

About an hour in, we came across our first Australasian Gannet colony.  These birds use Cape Kidnappers to breed and raise their young during the summer, although they head elsewhere for the winter months.  The birds are quite beautiful, with white bodies and burnt orange heads.  The smell was pretty horrible though.  The beach ends where the cliffs come right into the ocean, and the trail starts going uphill to go to the peak of Cape Kidnappers.  The inland area was beautiful, with rolling green hills and sheep grazing.  The tip of the Cape held a lighthouse and a huge number of the birds.  With my scarf over my nose, I could get right up close to the birds without them being bothered in the slightest- even the ones that were still caring for down-covered chicks.  We had lunch on a lowered section of the cliff.  The view was beautiful, and we were upwind of the gannets.  Wonderful way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

Goodbye Death Row, Hello Conjugal Unit

When Will left the prison for bigger adventures, he left the Conjugal Unit open for grabs. It's not actually the conjugal unit though, back when it was a backpackers, the owners let the backpackers label the units with things like conjugal, parole board, penthouse, and psych ward. The original prison had exciting names like Cells 1 through 26. Units are the best cells in the prison, because they're big, have two beds, and have their own sinks and toilets.

Rachel was up for a swap, but didn't want to sleep on her own in the scary, haunted prison. I was getting a little bit tired of the uncomfortable bed in Cell 16, and because it was so close to the kitchen, it was noisy and made it hard to sleep. One quick test of the bed in Conjugal and I was sold. The hilarity of the conjugal bed being the best in the prison is not lost on me.

As a final tribute to my time on death row, I will now showcase just how tiny it was.

Need I remind you I'm only 5 foot 2 (and three quarters)?

Finding Your Peace in the Hanging Yard

I've been in a weird mood for the past few days. I think I'm getting restless. I want to see things, but they're all just far enough away that it's not worth getting a bus, and I have to think seriously about walking or taking a bike to see them. I always go to the same places in Napier, and it's usually pretty dead. Not to mention the fact that I don't really have the money to spend on going out since I don't have a job.

This went on until tonight, when Rachel came up out of no where and suggested we do yoga. I'm always up for yoga, so I changed into some stretchy clothing and we headed out. Well, we 'headed out' to the hanging yard. Rachel put on some chill music that was complimented by the sound of the ocean just below us, and as we went through our poses, the clouds cleared and the skies of the southern hemisphere came out. It was the weirdest yoga I've ever done. So long as I was ignoring the fact that our safe space was actually an area where people had been executed for horrible murders, I really could find that inner peace.

Oh Prison.

Canadian/American Relations

The offer of free accommodation at the prison attracts backpackers from all around the world. Apparently, there always seems to be a majority nationality that dominates, although this shifts as people come and go. Before I came, apparently there were a lot of Germans working here. Now, we have Welsh, English, Scottish, French, Dutch and Canadian, but the majority status goes to Americans. This creates fun, playful jokes between us as we bug eachother about stereotypes from North America. I was playing Taboo with Kat, Destiny, and Anabel who come from Alabama and Arizona. If you don't know, Taboo is a game where you have to get your teammate to guess a word by describing it. The trick is, you can't use the 'taboo' words that are listed on the card. My mind locked up when I had to make Destiny guess "Palm Tree" without saying Florida or beach, and even though I was playing with Americans, my first hint was "Canada doesn't have any".

Quick as a whip, Destiny responded, "Happiness?"

Clever girl.

Perogies!

It was hard to anticipate what the worst part about being away for Christmas was going to be. As it turned out, I had such an out-of-the-ordinary spectacular time that it was hard to remember what I was missing at home. Still, when we had our prison Christmas feast on Christmas Eve, I was very aware of the lack of perogies, cabbage rolls, and cubasa. What is a holiday without excessive amounts Ukrainian food?

New Zealand grocery stores do not come stocked with these things like they might be back in Canada. There's sausages, but not proper cubasa. There's dolma, which is rice balls held together with grape vine leaves, but no holopchi. I don't think I could make those things anyways, but I was bound and determined to have some petaheh for the holiday season. With the ridiculous amounts of food we had over Christmas, there was no point in making them. But on New Years Day, I was channeling my Ukrainian heritage more than ever and was full of energy from the amazing evening I had the night before. It was perogy making time. While the kitchen in prison has a lot of cooking utensils, it's still quite sub par to a kitchen I'd own myself. I got the recipe from my aunt Trish, who is basically half professional, and makes the dough in a special food processor.

Made-of-Fail Cooking Utensils

On the other hand, I was dealing with a flimsy plastic mixing bowl, an electric mixer with only one functioning beater, and whatever else I could get my hands on. In terms of the ingredients, I had the cheapest flour I could buy, and real cottage cheese instead of dry because couldn't find any in the store. This made me pretty nervous for how watery the filling would be.

My first attempts at making the dough were quite miserable. The butter was hard even though it had sat out at room temperature, and I was having trouble mixing it with the flour. I felt a bit better when I realized Babas of old wouldn't have had dough machines, so I used knives to mix the ingredients together as best as I could. Eventually, I had a strangely dark lump of dough, ready to be rolled. I'm guessing the colour was from the difference in yolk colours from the eggs here to the ones in Canada.

I made my filling out of potatoes and cheese, and started to fold it all together. It was working. I excitedly called Trish to wish her a Happy New Year, but more importantly to get some praise for my impossible task. Perogies!!
In the end, I had 37 delicious little dumplings in front of me, ready to be devoured. I froze most of them, but boiled up a few to have with some fried onions and sausages. All the inmates tried them and said they tasted good. This may have been because I hadn't stopped talking about making them all day, but I was still on Cloud 9. Little taste of home on the other side of the world.

And That's How You Ring in the New Year

I woke up on New Years Eve morning to rain, which continued for the entire afternoon and well into the evening. This is common for New Zealand, but still disappointing for New Years. Every time it seemed like the weather might clear up, the rain just fell even harder and it seemed like New Years Eve might be a bit ruined with all the outdoor activities planned around town.

The inmates and I had some drinks and played taboo in the prison for a while until we finally dragged ourselves out at 10:30. Unlike every other night, Napier was bumping. They closed down Marine Parade and a few other main streets so that it was pedestrians only, and they had vendors set up and a band playing in the permanent live band shell next to the ocean. Since we had a lot of time to spare before midnight, we wandered around town for a bit, danced at The Cri, and then went back out around 11:30. The rain was still pouring down, but the band was quite good. I quickly ditched my shoes since they were little flats with 'fashion' holes in them anyways, and the ground was soaked. I paused for a second to take in my surroundings.

The rain was falling, and I was dancing to a live band in my bare feet wearing a tank top on New Years Eve. Life felt pretty spectacular right then, and then the countdown started. Literally at midnight, the rain miraculously stopped, and a brilliant 10 minute fireworks show began.

When the crowd cleared after fireworks, I looked down to see the damage I had inflicted by jumping around for the past hour. We were dancing on grass, but the rain had made the dirt come up to the surface. Vero and I had danced the hardest, and our legs were coated in mud that travelled all the way up to our waists. It just added to the wonder of the evening.

Our energy levels were off the hook, so we went back to The Cri (with the rest of the town) to dance our pants off. The Cri has this tacky stage with multi-coloured lights that flash underneath. I love dancing on that stage, but Napier night life is such that I'm usually one of the only people on it. On New Years Eve, we couldn't even get a spot on the stage. Like all over- crowded bars, it quickly became unbearably hot and I moved outside to cool off. My friends quickly followed, which led to a dance party in the middle of the street. Around 2, we headed back to prison for food. Some inmates decided to stay up for sunrise, but at 3 I was falling asleep on the chair and decided to go to bed with no regrets. I love my life.

The Amazing Race: Hohepa Edition

Elsa is a wonderful inmate here at the prison who comes from Southern France. Her English isn't quite as strong as her French or Spanish, but that's still 2 more languages than I have, so I'm not judging- especially since I decided to spend my year abroad in an English speaking country and she has chosen to challenge herself and come to New Zealand.

Elsa found out about a job opportunity in the Hawke's Bay area at a centre for Autistic kids. It's on a farm called Hohepa that's about a 15 minute drive from Napier, so she asked Rachel, the only inmate with a car, if she could grab a ride out for a job interview. Rachel agreed, and since I had finished my shift and had nothing better to do, I jumped in the car to see a bit more of the area surrounding Napier.

When Elsa looked up directions to the farm on Google, they seemed straightforward enough. From the downtown area, you head west and then take a few turns before you're on the road that will take you right to Hohepa. So she scribbled down a few street names and off we went.

Rachel had just purchased her car, and was still getting used to driving on the other side of the road. This is challenging enough to do in general, but in this case the stress of trying to find a new place along with all the other traffic on the road made it downright difficult. I had driven on the 'other side' when I was in the Coromandel, and understood the feeling perfectly, so I was very empathetic to Rachel's stress.

Unfortunately, Elsa hadn't sketched out a map, and pronounced the street names in a way that Rachel and I couldn't understand. When we came to roundabouts, Rachel would ask which way we should go, and Elsa had trouble using clear, concise English directions like "Take the second exit on your right". There was more of the "Go there" and "Turn here" variety, when "there" and "here" could have been three different directions at once. The stress levels in the car were rising rapidly, and Elsa was supposed to be at her interview for one o'clock. We ended up in Ahuriri, which is another area of Napier and in the complete opposite direction of where we were supposed to be heading. An exasperated Elsa told Rachel she was going the wrong way, and an equally exasperated Rachel complained that Elsa wasn't giving proper directions. We kept going in circles as we tried to get back to the correct road, and it was 12:58. Elsa was swearing in the general direction of Rachel and asked if she could just drive the car herself, but Rachel said no and seemed like she was going to kick Elsa out of the car. Soon enough, she snapped. "Okay Elsa, you should have drawn a map. I am not going to drive you, this isn't working. We are going back to prison."

"... What?"
"Yup"
"PUTAIN!"

At this point, my phone finally loaded directions to the place using my fancy-dandy GPS. I told Rachel I knew how to get there, and asked her if she was still willing to go. Ever the angel, she agreed and I quietly started directing her while Elsa swore in the back seat.

After driving in the correct direction for 5 minutes, Elsa looked around and said, "We are going?"

"Yes Elsa. Danielle knows how to get there."

"RACHEL! THANK YOU RACHEL! THANK YOU!"

"Yup".

We arrived seven minutes late, but it didn't seem to be a problem. We agreed to meet back at the car in an hour. Unfortunately for Rachel and I, we were in the middle of farmland and there wasn't much to do. There was a large cemetery though, so we started wandering through it and chatting/decompressing from the drive up. There was a very pretty rose garden with each bush dedicated to a loved one who had passed. It was quite peaceful.

After the hour was up, we returned to the car. Elsa had a good interview, and we were able to get back to Napier without any trouble.

If I was in the drivers seat, I may have had a brain aneurysm. In the passengers seat, it was a highly entertaining way to spend my afternoon.

Merry Christmas to All!

Despite going to bed around 3:30 in the morning, I woke up bright and early at 9:30 on Christmas Day. The rest of the prison was still asleep, which was nice since I could Skype my family and wish them a very merry Christmas.

My day was planned thanks to Marion and Toro, the prison owners who invited all of us inmates to their family picnic in Eckland Park somewhere outside of Napier. The 'family' was definitely of the extended variety, so we ended up at a potluck with about 50 other people that featured just about every kind of meat imaginable, tons of salads and free beer (!). I brought cupcakes, which is always a crowd pleaser. Apart from the delicious food, the park itself was beautiful, and we could not have asked for better weather. There were tall trees spaced around the park so there was shade everywhere you might want it. Near the back of the park, hidden behind some tall grasses was a river that we chilled in for a while to cool off, and then sun tanned til about 3 when we came back to the prison.

Me! On Christmas Day! Suntanning and splashing in a river!

Jonne bought some water balloons, so we spent the next half hour filling them all up for an epic battle of boys versus girls.. that lasted all of 10 minutes. The prison grounds were covered in colourful plastic pieces of rubber, but we were not discouraged. I'm not sure who started it, but we all grabbed pots from the kitchen and chased each other around the exercise yard with buckets of water. No matter how drenched we got, every new bucket was just as cold and wet as the first one. My weapon of choice was two metal mugs filled with water that I splashed in people's faces. Will had a huge stew pot, Rachel and Jonne had big buckets, and Nic had a sauce pot which you think would do more damage, but apparently my perfect aim that got everyone right in the face every time was a whole other level of weapon. Our battle lasted about 2 hours until we were finally exhausted and had probably wasted enough water to solve Australia's drought problems. Since we were already wet, Rachel, Jonne and I ran down the hill to the ocean and jumped in. We just bobbed for about half an hour, and the waves just kept crashing in on us. I don't know the last time I've laughed that hard. I was happy and exhausted, and finished off the night by watching Elf with some inmates and then headed off to bed, thrilled with my Kiwi Christmas.

'Twas the Night Before Christmas, and All Through the Prison...

For one reason or another, the prison staff have all gathered here in Napier as poor, displaced travellers away from their families on Christmas. This actually works to our mutual benefit, as we all have the same goal of making the holiday as memorable as possible in the weirdest of circumstances. We're all from the Northern Hemisphere, and so to have Christmas during the summer where snow is painted on store front windows while we walk by in shorts and Santa Claus is overheating in his suit is all common ground to marvel at.

This is what a Southern Hemisphere Santa should look like

We decided to all pitch in 20 bucks for a Christmas feast, and had a quick brainstorming session to figure out everyone's favourite Christmas dishes. On the afternoon of Christmas Eve, Rachel, Jonne, and I cooked a meal for 10. Mashed Potatoes, Asparagus, cranberry sauce, gravy, salad, Carrot/Pumpkin/Kumara/Potato bake, cauliflower with cheese sauce, and stuffing. Will came in a bit later to prove his mastery in cooking the lamb we featured as our main dish (it seemed apt, being in New Zealand).

Dinner was served around 6, and we all gathered together to eat, drink, and be merry. The food was absolutely delicious, and I was perfectly overstuffed as everyone should be on Christmas. Abi made tirimasu for dessert that she soaked in about 2/3 of a bottle of kahlua, so if we weren't feeling the wine we drank before, we were definitely feeling it at that point. I even got presents! The owners of the prison got everyone chocolates all nice and gift wrapped, and then the inmates did a white elephant gift exchange, where I got more chocolates. This was perfect for me, because A) I love chocolate, and B) I have absolutely no extra room in my backpack to carry anything around. After laying down to recover from a brief food coma (and while the others did the dishes, heh heh), a bunch of us went down to The Cri, a local pub, decked out in our Christmas cracker hats and some sparkly garland from the tree. We played some pool, drank, and danced for a while, but sadly they kicked us out at midnight. This didn't bother me since it was Christmas Eve, but apparently in parts of Britain, pubs are busiest the day before Christmas so the boys were annoyed. Oh well. We came back to the prison and Alex, Will and I played shithead (a really fun card game) for about 3 hours. Quite different from my usual tradition of eating at Baba's, church, and watching White Christmas, but no complaints here.

Feast!

Basil, the Ghost Cat

Sometime in the 1960s, Napier Prison welcomed in a man named Basil who was incarcerated on charges of fraud. Basil was a cat lover, and apparently had an obscene amount of them at home. If there was ever a stray cat hanging around the prison, he would always make sure it was fed properly and shown a little bit of affection. Sadly, Basil passed away in his cell during his sentence from natural causes. Two weeks after he died, a little kitten showed up.

The kitten was mostly white, but had strange markings on it's face: one side of it's mouth had a thin patch of black fur, while the other side had a patch of ginger fur. Now, Basil the prisoner was in a house fire when he was younger, so his face was scarred on one side with healed burns, while the other side featured his black moustache. This was too much of a coincidence for the inmates, who were sure the cat was a reincarnation of Basil.

That was over 50 years ago. Today, we have a prison cat named Marjorie, although everyone calls her Basil. She is the fourth cat to hang around the prison since Basil died, and she still has the markings around her face that seem so similar to the mans. When the complex closed as a functional prison and the owners moved in, they tried to get rid of the cat since they have a yappy little Chihuahua. The cat just kept coming back. Still, no one has seen her leave the prison even though it would be very easy for her to get out. She just sits in the hanging yard, staring at the gallows and runs away when you try to pet her.

Of course, compared to the other paranormal stories we have here at the prison, our ghost cat seems quite tame.

Prison Life

I have already picked up another job duty here at the prison: I'm going to be a tour guide! Since I already have experience as an interpreter from Fort Edmonton, they thought I would be good at leading visitors around the place. Once I learn the script, I'll be sure to record some of the cooler stories here on my blog.

For the writing portion of my job, I'm going to be researching and writing a script for Anchorage, Alaska. I'm pretty excited about it, since it's the largest city in Alaska, and I've always wanted to go there. It's going to be weird to write about a place I've never been to though.. Here's to Google Maps!

Prison is pretty cool so far. I haven't really had trouble sleeping at night, although once people start moving around in the morning the noise travels really easily since the doors aren't really doors, and it's pretty much impossible to sleep in. That's probably a good thing though. The kitchen is fairly well stocked in terms of pots and pans, and the TV room has SkyTV and freeeeeeeee internet! Oh how I've missed mindlessly surfing the net. It's also nice that I can actually Skype and upload pictures without having to pay for it by the megabyte. My friends were having a Christmas party, and I got to see all of their beautiful faces together. Technology makes leaving home so much easier.

Napier is absolutely gorgeous. The prison is located up on Bluff Hill, so I'm about a 5 minute walk from the ocean and 10 minutes from town centre. The beach is rocky, but there's a paved walking/bike path all along it and Pohutukawa trees that are just starting to bloom. Napier was hit by an earthquake in 1931 by a 7.2 magnitude shock, so the prison is a bit misaligned in places, but the town site largely destroyed (it also killed about 150 people). The whole town was rebuilt in Art Deco style, which was popular at the time and the most cost effective way to rebuild, especially during the depression. They've kept it up too, so it feels like you're walking in the past.

However, nightlife is a little bit dull. On my first night here, we went to the Dram & Cock Pub but were one of the only groups there. It was a Friday. My second night, I went to a Reggae show with a few other inmates. The concert was put on by the Shakespeare Dub Syndicate. They were pretty good, although when we got there at 9, there weren't too many people there. Lucky for the band, the place really picked up by 11 and when we left, they were about to play their fourth set.

I should try to get a job here, but there aren't any signs posted in any storefront windows and I feel awkward walking into a place and begging for a job. To make my reservations more legitimate, Christmas and New Years are coming, so I don't know how much I'd work anyways. I might as well enjoy the holidays.

I Guess That English Degree Came in Handy After All..

In my eyes, it's a bit problematic that my first experiences of trying to do 'adult' things like find a place to live and a job to sustain me (versus one to fund my travels), has brought me to the opposite side of the world. Now I realize people do things like this all of the time with absolutely no help, but if I wanted an easier time of it with my privileged lifestyle, I could have moved out of my parents home in Northwest Edmonton and into the Whyte or Jasper Ave areas of the city so I could still go home on Sundays for dinner and laundry. But nope, I decided to come to New Zealand. After almost a month of being a tourist, I have significantly drained my bank account. While I could survive over the next while without a job, the cost of accommodation would ruin me. As I seem incapable of just figuring 'it' out when I get 'there', I spent the last week on my tour of the country scouring backpackers boards for something – anything to guarantee me of a job. I didn't find something to pay me, but I did find a work for accommodation in a prison. Yes, a prison.

I stayed in a converted prison in Ljubljiana, Slovenia two years ago that had been renovated into a bright, cheerful hostel with daily art projects in the main foyer, a shishah den at the back of the restaurant and arty, warm prison cells to sleep in. That was part of the inspiration for signing up at the Napier Historical Prison. The thing is, it's not quite as renovated as the one in Ljubljiana. Well, it hasn't been renovated at all.

Napier Prison was opened in 1862, and for the next 130 years it was open for crazy criminals to be locked up for anything from fraud to cold blooded murder. Nowadays it's just a historical prison open for tours. I've been hired on as a travel writer/researcher, where I am going to research a city somewhere in the world and write a script for an audio guide to be recorded at a later date. I guess the owners of the prison also own the Audiotour company, so they can offer people a place to stay and work for the separate company for free. Relevant to my English degree? Yup!

My new home is on Death Row in Cell 16. My cell is basically a square box that is as long as my mattress. I don't quite think the cell would comfortably sleep anyone over 6 feet tall. There are layers of peeling paint and daddy long legs in the corners of the ceiling (any other spider might bother me, but I'm sure these guys are dealing with all the really bad bugs). The only window is high above my head and covered in thick bars. I have to stand on the shelves to see out of it, and it's also the only place in this tiny room that has cell reception. The light switch is outside, and I think the bed is an original. It definitely won't help to heal the stress I've put on my back from my overweight backpack. The door is original, and since it is a prison, the bolt only locks on the outside. As one guy here pointed out, a cruel joke would be to lock me in. I don't know if I could handle that.

Still, this is my home for Christmas. I'm so stoked. I hope the novelty lasts forever.