Friday night headed across to Hokitika with Joe and Dave and Miriam.. for the wild foods festival. More traffic than I’ve ever seen going through Arthurs Pass. After stopping for the mandatory spicy wedges in the Bealey Pub it was on to our campsite at hokitika. We had to endure 2 hours of Burt Bacharach before we got there though, *thanks* Joe ;)
Hokitika has a population of about 3,500. For the wildfoods weekend it grows to about 23,000. So there’s a bit of an atmosphere!! I’d say the average age there (amongst the more splendidly drunk!) was about 16… Quite a large police presence… but no real trouble to speak of.
So – yes – the festival itself started at 11am. We started fairly tamely – trying ostrich (quite tough), snails (taste of garlic sauce), Mutton Bird – a sea bird which tastes of anchovies (or at least our one did), Whitebait (fairly bland but quite nice fish).
This pic is of Miriam eating punga (a fern root – it was – well.. not too bad, but covered in a white goo which was slimy and seemed quite like.. nasal mucus..!
Then it was onto more adventurous foods, not always with happy tasting consequences.. we sampled from the ‘tasty titties’ stand… sounds good I’ll admit.. but it was cows udder… which was really fatty – quite like eating pork fat..
Joe bought a plate of ‘mountain oysters’ (sheep’s testicles) and bulls penis… This was definitely the worst plate!! I steered clear of the oysters.. (unlike Dave in this pic)
But I did try the bulls appendage… and it really was awful. The taste was not good, the meat? or whatever it was – is extremely chewy.. and it’s difficult not to think about what you’re actually chewing on while you’re chewing.
not my favourite.
Then it was onto the hu hu grubs. They were actually quite tasty.. had one dead one and one live one…
They taste quite like peanut butter to be honest.. found in rotting wood mainly. There’s a short video of Joe eating his here (800kb)
Now, the reason – or one of the main reasons that Dave came, was so that he could get a flight up around Punakiki area where he and Joe have been prospecting for (and finding) new caves… Dave’s friend Leo has a pilots license and flew over for the day… so we had a short flight – (an hour) up and down the coast – in a 4 person plane!!! It was super fun.
That’s a pic of the wildfoods site from the air.. then we turned North and headed up the coast.
We also flew over Greymouth, which had just been hit a couple of days earlier by a tornado I *think* this pic shows some of the damage.. but it might just be an abandoned building too…
But mostly the flight was about getting to see a large area of potential caving sites easily and quickly. Mind you, how you’re supposed to match from the pictures you take to what’s on the ground.. tricksy I’d say when it all looks like this…
There’s a short video from the flight here (2.5 megs) I recoded it with divx.. so you may need to download a divx player from here
That was fun though.. then we had a bbq (and more alcamahol) at a friend of Miriams friend :) A guy called Tom. And he has a great little house down on the beach. He works for DOC – and you can see it in the way the house is set up and decorated… I dunno – just wooden surfaces everywhere, a huge veggy garden, an outdoor bath.. etc. etc.
I did go for a wee walk along the beach at night – hundreds of driftwood fires all up and down the beach with lots of friendly people to chat to! – twas a great evening.
The next morning wasn’t so much fun ;) but 2 ice-creams (Boysenberry and Hokey Pokey, and Passion Fuit + Boysenberry) saw me safely home. Unfortunatly, John Loane still holds the record for the biggest servings of ice-cream. Something I intend to work on!
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