Stewart Island

This might be the last posting for a while since I'm getting cut off from free internet. It's actually up to date. This past weekend, Amanda and I and Petey and two friends, Elizabeth and Megan (from Platzberg, NY (sp?) and Colorado respectively) went to the southernmost point of New Zealand - Steward Island, a ferry ride off the southern coast. The island boasts a population of 390 humans and 20,000 kiwi birds. We tramped 36K over three days and saw some cool birds - a bellbird, a tui, an oystercatcher, a fantail...some seagulls. No kiwi needless to say since I didn't really feel like wandering around the forest at night. I heard one and feel pretty content about that. The bottom photo is the view when we took the ferry back to shore on the last day.

Southern Man

Our friend Petey probably merits his own post. He's not actually a southern man, being from Hamilton on the north island, but he is a Speight's drinker (the brewery here in Dunedin where Amanda's going to school which puts out commercials featuring the so-called "Southern man"). The first thing most people notice about Petey is that he is 6'5" and 300 or so pounds. It is hard to overlook. He also has a mullet and mutton chops as you might have noted. And sometimes he wears a canary yellow track suit.
Like the van, a minor library of books, lots of vitamins and a set of dishes, Amanda and I inherited Petey from Amanda's friend, Molly, who studied at the University of Otago here in Dunedin over the past year, and introduced us. Petey's a rugby player - I think a prop? and he studies finance and, most importantly, he's really funny and he laughs at your jokes. Among the best phrases he's busted out - calling us all repeatedly "silly sausages" and saying something about fancying "a slap and tickle" which might actually beat the horizontal hokey pokey.

Space

I've been really enamored with New Zealand's open spaces. Something like 85% of the country has been deforested to make room for cattle, sheep and the occasional goat. The open grasslands topped by billowy clouds are strangely compelling to me. The top pic was taken riding the bus on the north island from Rotorua to Wellington, the second taken a week ago while I was bicycling through Central Otago. I spent the day riding along a converted railroad right-of-way that is now a mellow bike ride through spaces so open you feel like you could disappear for being so insignificant. Strangely stunning.

Scariest bird ever

I am ashamed to admit I was relieved and even happy when I found out the Giant Moa bird is extinct. The extinction of no species should really be celebrated. However, the Giant Moa freaks me out. This model was at Te Papa, the national museum in Wellington. Our tour guide said hawks and Moa often fought to the death and proved it by pointed at a Moa skull with a hawk skull's beak partially embedded in it.

A note on hedges

I've taken what in the olden days would be referred to as "several rolls of film" trying to capture a bona fide New Zealand super hedge, but this is as well as I could do. Hedge is not an accurate descriptor. When we pass through farmlands, property lines are denoted by a tightly planted row of pine trees which are meticulously manicured into a giant hedge that appears inpenetrable. These hedges towering 10 to 20 feet high are everywhere. A Kiwi man I met said he had a tool for shaping hedges. It involved a hydraulic lift. I'm willing to say these hedges could easily replace any of those ancient wonders of the world that have been destroyed.

Sea harvest

Not all of them, but a decent amount of north island beaches are loaded with pipi and cockles, two shellfish you can harvest en masse for a mini-feast. We had a windfall of cockles from one salty mudflat that we cooked up for dinner.

Tongariro Crossing

Honestly, the photos pretty much speak for themselves. Tongariro Crossing is one of New Zealand Department of Conservation's 10 Great Walks and the only one doable in one day. In 14 miles, we passed through some seriously surreal scenery completely devoid of vegetation. We scrambled up a rock field, wandered across a flat crater, then continued upward, eventually emerging over the top of a peak and looking down on 3 stunning emerald lakes. Something else.

The smelliest place on earth

After parting ways with Molly, Jordy and Roz, who all had to return to the States, Amanda and I headed east, cutting down from Tauranga to Gisborne, Napier, Hawkes Bay area up to Taupo, where we did Tongariro Crossing (which merits its own post, forthcoming), then took Amanda to her school orientation in Rotorua. We were not more than one minute into town before the smell of rotten eggs was upon us. Some might smell the most wretched sulphurous smell on earth and think, "Maybe we should find somewhere else to sleep for the night." The founders of Rotorua did not feel that way. Indeed, they founded a good-sized city on the spot. The whole town faintly reeks, even more so when you walk around the lake, the edge of which is lined with belching mud holes. There were some very cool black swans (introduced from Australia) however. Even though I was in Rotorua for several days, I couldn't quite get used to the geothermal activity everywhere. The Government Gardens downtown, complete with lawn bowling, petanque and croquet areas, couldn't be more formal. Yet they are punctuated by holes of nasty, stinking mud and 212 degree water. The local rugby field had to be condemned when things got too hot and I spotted some sulphurous steam coming up from the storm drain on a residential street. Go figure.

AAAAAAHHHH!

I guess you can learn a lot about a culture from exploring their deepest fears. Amanda and I saw this poster for an upcoming feature at the cinema in Wellington. The vacant look that sheep have has seemed all the more sinister since then.

90 mile beach

Some things that might not get so much as an eyebrow raise from the Kiwis over here are still exciting novelties for me . Among them: driving on the left side of the road; digging my toes into the sand and pulling out loads of pipi (they're like clams) that I can cook and eat for dinner; and...driving on the beach. Not just any beach of course - 90 mile beach at the northern tip of the north island. It's actually 70 kilometers, but who's counting? Kudos to the PR girl. It's one long, railroad-straight, unbroken strip of sand so flat during low tide that you can drive a bus on it. Or even T-Rex.

Beaches of varying degrees of drop-dead gorgeousness

*These images have not been doctored in any way. They actually fall short of reality if you can believe it.

As I mentioned in Dispatch #1 (unnecessarily titled as such as it has indeed stood alone as the only dispatch for about 5 weeks), I wasn't expecting New Zealand beaches to be quite so knock-out. Even better, in our time on the north island, we were camping for free on them. I've posted a few pics to give you all a taste of our first three weeks here in NZ - walking along white and black sand beaches, ogling at all the amazing shells and occasionally devouring newspapers full of spicy wedges.

And now what you've all been waiting for...PHOTOS!

Meet T-Rex. He's a 1985 Datsun Nissan Vanette, currently taken so don't get any ideas, ladies...

Dispatch #1

I hope this finds you well. From the get go, I apologize for sending a mass e-mail. Unfortunately, I'm stuck in a catch-22 which is that if I send thoughtful individual e-mails to everyone, I 'll blow my whole budget on the internet and indeed won't have money to do anything worth writing about. So I'll try to stay focused on my goals here: 1) sharing amusing anecdotes which will hopefully brighten your day; 2) answering pressing questions about New Zealand as best as I can; 3) making all you 9-to-5ers jealous.
For the past three weeks I've been cruising around the northern half of the North Island of New Zealand with my friend Amanda and her friends, Roz, Molly and Jordan. Molly and her boyfriend Jordan left NZ a week ago and sold us their pimped-out van T-Rex. T-Rex is a silver 1985 Nissan Vanette which has had seven owners, 3 in 2002 alone. The first owner was Japanese so I hope the various warnings in Japanese all over the car don't contain any items of interest. T-Rex has a bed in the back, a set of drawers containing vitamins, books, shells and the like. There is a skull and cross bones banner across the front and what appears to be a huge rabbit skull, but which I think is actually some critter's pelvis. People wave at us a lot. The van is also currently covered with a thick coat of dust (as do my lungs), since we recently took a cruise at about 80-100km up 90 mile beach (actually 70 km), then up a gnarly stream bed. T-Rex won my heart forever upon delivering us more or less intact.
So where to begin...?
For anyone who actually knows the area, here is where we've actually been, everyone else can scroll down:
Flew into Auckland, went to Raglan, hot water beaches near Wawhai, Waitomo caves, worked our way around the Coromandel Peninsula, all the way up to Stony Bay at the tip, then back through Auckland to drop off Molly and Jordan, then up to Northland, up the east coast all the way to Cape Reinga at the northernmost tip, back down the west coast, dropped Roz in Auckland, now Amanda and I are in Tauranga for a few hours before heading towards Gisborne and Hawke's Bay.
Rather than boring you with too many details, I will start with my preconceptions of NZ and whether they've been panning out:
- Sheep everywhere.
Definitely. In fact, we woke up to 5 outside our van this morning.
- Looks like Lord of the Rings
That was pretty much filmed in the South Island. Thus far, besides the gorgeous beaches, a lot of the drive looks like the drive to Bolinas or Tomales Bay but a bit greener. There are all these Lord of the Rings tours though and one Kiwi told me that during the filming, being an extra was a legitimate excuse to miss class.
- Winemakers produce sauvignon blanc and nothing but sauvignon blanc all the livelong day
Obviously not true, that's just what they export. I've had some really tasty pinot noir here and some cab/merlot blends and even better, they don't charge tasting fees and the winemaker's usually pouring!
- NZ is woodsy and hilly
Deforestation - good God! Formerly forested hills are now covered with sheep and cows. Any trees that aren't in state parks are pretty much timber farms and look bizarre because there will just be this stand of trees that are all exactly the same height, very close together and that abruptly stop at the edge of the next property line There are only a handful of kauri left, the 2nd biggest tree in the world. Redwoods are taller and smell better.
- Kiwis are rugby crazed.
Absolutely true. The sports section of the newspaper rivals the World News section. I've also seen a lot of people playing cricket.

Now on to some things that surprised me:
- The beaches are drop dead gorgeous. We've found lots of free camping at breathtaking white and black sand beaches with water warm enough to swim and there are barely any peopel around - and this is still high season. There are also fantastic shells all over the place and you can dig up pipi which are like small clams.
- The forests are loud. There's always a hint of the tropical here and the forests are fantastically lush. They are full of cicadas which maintain a constant whirring crackling racket punctuated by the drone of flies and mosquitoes and constant bird tweeting.
- Towns are outrageously small and lots of roads are unpaved. We drive on gravel roads everyday. If the size of towns is supposed to correspond to the size of the font on our map, Auckland should read across a two page spread and most the rest should require a magnifying glass to work out.

At this point, I'd like to open the floor for questions. Angie already sent a good one: What do Kiwis eat for breakfast? Amanda says they have standard English breakfast which is eggs and tomatoes on toast in the like. They also drink enormous lattes out of bowls and eat Wheatbix which is like a bran cereal bar.
So keep the questions coming. If I don't have the answer, I'll look into it. Hit me.
Also, there is nothing more depressing than paying $2 to log into my e-mail and finding only junkmail so drop me a line and tell me how are things!
As the Kiwis say for hello, goodbye, okay and most things - cheers!