GENESEO College whirlwind tour

20170108 213808 genseo 20170904 1303401884GENESEO students and faculty assembled on White Island

12 days on the road

Lovely Grub tagged along and catered for students from the American GENESEO College throughout their amazing whirlwind geology tour of the North and South Island.  Follow on for Gavin's story and photos

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What a cool job, working for Lovely Grub and catering for 43 geology students and faculty from the Geneseo College in New York State, USA. These guys were studying in some of New Zealand’s most beautiful places and Judy and I got to feed them on location. Two nights in Cass, 2 nights in Franz Joseph then on to Glentanner Station on the Mt Cook road, to complete the South Island leg. Every time I work at Mt Cook I am amazed by its beauty. This time we had a couple of beautiful sunsets to watch as our guests ate their dinner looking up at the peak from the lawn.

Then it was home for a night to put the Green Truck to bed, change some staff and off for an early morning flight to Auckland with 43 kilos of cooking equipment in a suit case. There, a hired car was waiting for our five-hour trip to Taupo where food supplier Bidfood Ltd had delivered supplies for the next four days.

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We didn’t have the comfort and support of working in our usual environment: our kitchen trucks. Instead we shared a kitchen with 150 holidaymakers in a camping ground. It was a little more relaxing being stationary so Nic and I were able to take in some of the local geothermal spots. It also helps when you have amazing staff to meet the exacting timelines of your guests. One of the perks of this job was accompany our guests on a field trip to White Island.

The next day, 5 hours back up the road at Auckland’s Muriwai beach, a final dinner barbecue needed to be cooked on equipment we knew existed but had to locate via Google. The Auckland City Council turned on splendid evening. After dinner, I got to photograph nesting terns and the gannet colony. What a fitting way to end a magnificent trip.

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This whole trip was organised by Skype and email with Dori Farthing and Dr Jeff Over in New York -  wonderful people, extremely professional and a pleasure to serve. To share our beautiful land with such friendly people was nothing but a pleasure. We introduced them to the novelties of hokey pokey ice cream and pavlova while they showed us how many and varied are the rocks that make up our country.