So I guess I normally try to write these travelogue things during the actual trip and send them out piecemeal along the way, but this time I unfortunately am forced to do it as a recollection of entirely known events. The uncertainty and angst associated with tomorrow's outcome are thus lost which may dim the freshness of the writing. In other words if this one sucks, I am blaming time as the culprit.
I begin this now back in Hong Kong with a few hours of sleep in me. I woke up early and Slingboxed the Giants getting their asses (be forewarned this will be an R-rated email with strong language and some partial nudity) handed to them without much of a fight. What a lackluster game and I only caught it from the 3rd quarter. However, this email is not about the Giants, it is much bigger than the Giants. This email will be about the magical land dubbed Middle Earth where orcs and hobbits alike frolic under sun-kissed mountain and clear, blue skies. This email will be about New Zealand. (Spoiler alert – we didn't actually see any hobbits, though there was this really short dude like who looked like he might have played a background hobbit role in the beginning scenes, but I thought it might be awkward to ask him).
Joy and I picked New Zealand as our destination somewhat as a fallback plan upon learning that flights to Argentina from Hong Kong take a whopping all-in 35 hours of flying each way. We knew we wanted to escape Hong Kong's notoriously frigid winter (read: no central heating), and also liked that it was consistent with our earlier Southern Hemisphere theme. When you have a rare block of time post-Christmas when you both can be free, you have to take advantage of it and go somewhere different.
The plan was that we would first fly down on Christmas Eve to Singapore to see Joy's family for the first time post-engagement and celebrate Christmas, then we would clumsily return to Hong Kong on the 29th on a 6:50AM flight, and catch the mid-afternoon flight out to Auckland the same day. We knew the 29th of December was going to suck, but we were prepared to let it.
Things certainly begin auspiciously enough. After a relatively easy flight up to Hong Kong in the morning, at the gate while boarding our CX flight, we learned that we were upgraded to Business Class which always is extra sweet when it is a long-haul 11-hour flight (geography alert – much longer than I realized at first too). After a non-eventful flight which involved minimal crashing and following a super-efficient spin through customs and biological control where they actually washed a thin layer of dirt off of Joy's hiking boots to protect the local fauna, we made it to the car rental place by 8:30AM, a little worse for the wear.
Now let me share something that I wasn't completely honest with Joy about at the time of our trip, though I am confident that she was aware of (note- wrongly as I found out when I let her read this draft first). While my intellectual interest in going to New Zealandwas very real, hell, I had a map of the world in my room up when I was a small (and clearly dorky) child and would spend hours when I couldn't sleep staring up at Wellington wondering what it was like on the other side of the world, my heart just wasn't in it. It was something I felt I would have liked to have done, but not necessarily do, like many a book or woman.
And though it pains me to admit this, my passive aggressive nature probably asserted itself in the way that I did so pathetically little in planning and preparing for this trip, despite a copious amount of free time. I guess I figured we could wing it once on the ground, as New Zealand was rumored to be a first-world country. Part of me was also dreading that Joy was going to have to cancel last minute because of her job, so I was suppressing my enthusiasm in anticipation of this impending disappointment, a skill I honed to perfection during my seven years in investment banking. Another part of me thought this trip kind of seemed like a whole lot of work for it still to be called a vacation: driving around for thousands of kilometers, searching for places to stay each day, and having to unpack and repack all our belongings every night of the trip. I'm from the City; I like to walk, I don't like to drive. How does that sound like a vacation? I know lots of people whose judgment I trust say New Zealand was the best vacation they had ever been on, but then again lots of people I trust also liked the movie Being John Malkovich, and I hated the movie Being John Malkovich. I even watched it twice in case I missed something, and hated it even more because it wasted even that much more of my life than it needed to have.
We leave the Backpackers car rental place in our little, blue 1.3-liter Daihatsu manual car and we're off. I'm driving and Joy is the Navigator (always capitalized as she's that f-ing good). I would be lying if I said my adjustment to driving on the non-right (notice I didn't say wrong even though it is) side of the road was immediately smooth. The problem was not so much the stalling which only happened twice across a very hilly, windy 2,000 km, but my constant reach for the windshield wiper whenever I needed to make a turn. Goddamn that is confusing! And there really is no good way to hide it when I fuck up, at least on days like the sunny one we arrived on. Once or twice, mid-screwup I would awkwardly pull back on the lever to squirt some soap onto the windshield as if to pretend like it was intentional and I was cleaning an already spotless windshield, but who was I kidding, the Navigator knew her lower-case driver was a moron.
So the pedals stay the same, left is clutch, middle brake, right accelerator, the manual shift is now of course lefty and the windshield wiper and car lights are switched. My foot brain and hand brain have to simultaneously process the new rules of the road, even as I actively try to suppress 32-years of driving instinct that screams at me "You're on the wrong fucking side of the road!!!" I did get the hang of it, though every time I turned on a main road I would say aloud "big right, big right". Hey, to each their own.
We had a bit of time to kill before we were due up at Paihia in the Bay of Islands, around 250 km or so north of Auckland, and figured we should check out Auckland city a little bit first. Only later were we to realize that Auckland city is an oxymoron. We hit the Botanical Gardens near the airport which was nice, though both of us were feeling skuzzy and sleep-deprived from our red-eye flight, and this park would safely not qualify as a top-tenner by any stretch. Drove into the City and trolled the CBD, which took approximately 3-4 minutes, as Auckland is a fairly piddling city. Decided there wasn't anything much worth seeing in town, and began our journey north, as our overnight cruise on The Rock departed at 5pm, and it was depending on who you asked a 3-5hr drive up to our destination.
The drive up to the Bay of Islands while visually beautiful was really not a whole lot of fun, and frankly spooked me a bit. Firstly, the traffic was really bad, and the journey took us much closer to 5 hrs. Though we didn't know this at the time, it would be the ONLY time we experienced traffic the entire trip (see how knowing in advance what happens later ruins things…). Secondly, I was exhausted. I had only slept for 2.5 hrs in Singapore two nights before, and only 2 hrs on the flight into Auckland, so I was quite sleep-deprived. Lastly, towards the end of the trip, my trusty partner in crime kept falling asleep on the seat next to me, and boy did that seem like a great idea. Fortunately, the road was crowded and it was stick-shift, so it is much harder to completely tune out. We knew the first day would be the hardest and it was.
We arrived in the beach town of Paihia, and Joy immediately introduced me to New Zealand's Hokey Pokey ice cream (basically vanilla with honeycomb bits in it. New Zealand is known for its honey and rightly so). After sorting through our stuff and storing the car, we went to board the boat. The Rock was a family-owned vessel that would take us snorkeling, kayaking, and sight-seeing while providing dinner, breakfast and quad-share lodgings onboard for a single night. Seemed like a really good all-in-one package to get us started, and it was.
The highlight of this trip for me was definitely the snorkeling. The water temperature was around 18 degrees (64.4 F), and they provided wetsuits for $5. The real exciting part of this activity was it gave us a chance to test whether the Olympus 1030SW could truly pull its weight as advertised. Now I promised that I wouldn't sell space in this travelogue to push products on you innocent bystanders, but this is an As Seen On Television-good level product. It is shock-proof (Joy dropped it), and it works great underwater up to 10 meters. Now we tested it up to 6m, and by we I mean one of the guys that worked on the boat because though I am a very competent swimmer, I am still allergic to the cold, and water that cold strangely compels me to involuntarily try to breathe underwater despite my full knowledge of the fact that I possess no gills. I probably went no deeper than around a few feet and that was by accident when I got caught in some of the bigger waves.
The other cool thing is that New Zealand seems to be home to an inordinate number of animals that glow, and there were these trippy phosphorescent algae in the water where we stayed that glow when the water around them is disturbed. So when you do some night kayaking in the pitch dark, the water is slightly illuminated by each oar stroke in the water. The glow itself is fairly bright, but it is a bit of a mindfuck because your brain is telling you that there is no way there is light coming from the water, and it is too small to really light up much. It's probably most similar to how you see bright lights everywhere for a few seconds after you get hit by a camera's flash. Anyway, worth noting, cool phosphorescent algae, every school boy and girl's dream.
We also lunched on a gorgeous beach on Motuarohia island where one of the local group operators told us the heart-warming tale of the family that first settled there. The husband Captain John Roberton was lost at sea, and his wife and children hired two outside workers to assist in taking care of the property. After a period of time, one of the workers, a disgruntled Maori named Maketu, had a row with the other white sailor that worked there, and decided the best way to resolve their differences was to axe him in the back of the head which he did. When the wife and kids learned of this incident, they scolded him, and he promptly set fire to the house burning them alive. One of the children was able to run up to the top of the mountain to escape, but Maketu hunted him down and similarly axed him in the back of the head before throwing him off the very cliff where we were quietly enjoying our chicken wrap. Funny story huh? Note: I just Googled the tale now, and I guess it's actually true as this Maketu dude was the first person legally executed inNew Zealand.
The other great part about The Rock was that we managed to catch up on sleep, and the drive down to Auckland the next day on New Year's Eve was totally gorgeous and much easier. While in Hong Kong we had booked a room at The Quadrant Hotel in downtown Auckland and arrived there at around 8:30pm. Both of us were still a little knackered, but it was New Year's Eve for gods sake, so we went out and roamed the city a bit in the light rain. Settled on a Belgian Beer place off of Queen's Road where we had some pomme fritte, and at 11:45PM walked over to the Skytower where a crowd was forming in anticipation of some fireworks.
We were standing as part of a crowd of probably three to four thousand people which I think is half the population of NewZealand, and at somewhere between 11:55 to 11:57 fireworks started going off from the tower. And then the strangest thing happened, or I should say didn't happen. The fireworks continued at a steady clip – your blues, your whites, your bangers, your whirlers, and your whirler-bangers - and I kept looking around for some type of countdown device, whether it be clock or ball or gong or horn or anything!After a bit, the fireworks petered on out without any gigantic, culminating display, and parts of the crowd hugged and cheered and kissed over the next two to three minutes, and then slowly disbanded. No one had the faintest idea when the New Year had actually been rung in. I give a giant WTF out to the planners of Auckland's New Year's Eve. Throw us a bone here. Just give us some type of indication that the countdown is beginning, a pathetic local newsman counting down off an LCD screen, a clock with a second's hand, preferably with hundredths of second as it always seems to count faster that way, or a bell or just something that shows when the NewYear is approaching. Simply pathetic. Auckland sucked. 2009 whimpered in with all the energy of a clubbed seal.
Next stop for us was to be the Waitomo Caves around 200km south of us. This also marked the last of our pre-booked locations. Prior to our arrival in New Zealand, Joy had booked us three nights lodging, a car for North Island, and a return flight from Auckland to Christchurch; everything else would need to be booked on the ground. On the way down to Waitomo, the lady that runs the Abseil Inn where we were going to spend the night informed us that there were these two famous ice cream stops en route, each serving Tip Top ice cream. She suggested that we stop there and try cones from each to compare. We faithfully followed those instructions, and were we ever disappointed. The ice cream tasted like low-quality budget supermarket branded ice cream, the kind that is perpetually on sale in the U.S. for like $1.99 per big tub. And if that wasn't enough, we decided to try a sausage from one of the places, and it was honestly the most revolting non-rancid sausage I've ever had. It tasted like someone had distilled the armpit sweat from the local rugby team and placed it in this fatty meat roll casing. Simply inedible. Remember we are living in Hong Kong where a pig's asshole is a rare delicacy, and this thing was still that bad. It was disposed of roadside in an environmentally friendly way.
We got to the Abseil Inn with around half an hour to spare before the tour we booked en route through Black Water Rafting into the limestone caves would begin, just enough time to drop off our bags and change clothes. That was of course assuming that our little car which I could beat in a 10m dash even in my crappy shape could make it up the steep hill that led up to the Inn and for which the Inn is renowned. So on my first go, I didn't go in with a lot of momentum because the road was totally beat up and gravelly, and there was a goat at the bottom of the driveway (??? Yeah really, there was just a goat down there chilling in what looked like a doghouse. Not making a joke, just stating an unusual fact). With limited momentum, flooring the car in first gear did not even take me a quarter of the way up the hill, and I had to guide it back down in reverse since the ascent is quite narrow. Take two. Revved it a little faster before the incline and made it halfway up to the even steeper part, and then we started going nowhere. Now this was a bit scary because the car was sliding backwards even with the parking brake fully engaged; in other words, I had one shot to back down this curved driveway, and there would be no second chance, as the car would be off the road and in a ditch by the side.
Finally, we called the woman inside who ran the place and she came down, confirmed that the top of the hill was unobstructed, and said to just gun it from the bottom. So I made Joy get out to reduce weight (yeah, cuz clearly she was the problem there) and floored it from near the bottom of the hill, and this time made it comfortably, despite nearly chewing up my tires on the rocks below. Steepest road that I have ever been on, and no, I don't know what they do in the winter mom (anticipating your question I bet). That's what she thinks whenever she sees a steep road.
The Black Abyss tour we went on was run by the Black Water Rafting Co, and was not cheap, coming in at NZ$205 per person, but it was truly worth it. They teach you how to abseil, which is French for rappel. The journey sees you rappelling down into the mouth of the cave, and the outfit provides you with a host of heavy-duty wetsuits and booties so you don't gash yourself on the rocks too badly and don't freeze in the 12 degree (53.6F) water, inflatable tubes to float on and headlights on top of your helmet so you can see. The goal in all of this is to explore an incredibly cool place and see the thousands of glowworms hanging from the cave wall. The glowworms as we were to learn are actually a type of parasitic fly, whose fecal matter glows with 99% pure phosphoresce. Without that light, you would be in true lights out darkness. It was just Joy and I with one other good French, not annoying French, couple and our guide Andrew.
What was great about this hike is that you spent a lot of time moving around, and you were truly in the water, which was at a depth above your head in a couple of places. Although nominally a tubing expedition, we definitely spent probably 2 hours hiking through the caves without the tubes, which we used only for around 30 minutes in the beginning. This is very different than all the other limestone cave tours I've been on, which number in the one (Belize with my sister). Finally, at the end of trail we had to climb up two powerfully gushing waterfalls, which I must admit triggered a slight sense of claustrophobia in me. The falls were so steep that we had to do it one at a time, and while waiting for the others to finish, you basically had to lie down, semi-submerged in the rapidly flowing water in a place around 3 feet tall. If you were to really let that fear run, then it would be amazing how crazy you could have gone.
After a bit of dinner at Curly's Bar where we supped on crappy fish though quality beer and hard cider, we were off the next morning to Rotorua, a town known for its adventure sports and thermal springs. The drive was fast and uneventful, and we decided to go straight to the whitewater rafting place before checking into the motel we booked the day before for $99, Jack and Di's. I've only done non-Great Adventure whitewater rafting trips once before in Bali, and this one was supposed to be one of the best semi-beginner routes that culminated in a section of true Class V rapids with a waterfall drop of 7 meters, the highest in New Zealand.
After suiting up in our life jackets and footies (no wetsuits as it was a little too warm in the sun), we were split into four different boats. Consistent with the adventure-loving Kiwi spirit, my guess is that each trip out the guides play a game with each other and try to load up the heaviest people in the tour in one boat, just to see if they can capsize it. Test of each guide's metal I suppose; it must get boring for them if they don't figure out a way to mix it up each time. In typical Kiwi fashion, the loser needs to buy beers at the pub each night if they fall out. Anyway, Joy and I had the privilege of being stacked in the heaviest boat, which included us and a North IslandNew Zealand family whose step-kids were visiting from South Africa. Upon reflection, it did puzzle both Joy and me how these children could be step-kids to both parents, but we never got an explanation. Death or multiple divorce was our best guess, but those thoughts really only came later. In the short-term, we were thinking hard about how not to get thrown out of the fucking boat and drown.
They positioned us in the boat, and Joy got the front left while I got back right in front of the guide. After teaching us the appropriate strokes and "brace brace" positions, we were off and man was it a good time. In the end, the 7-meter waterfall would see our boat become completely submerged in the water and then pop out at a near vertical angle. Only two people fell out – the guide and me. Had my life depended on it, I almost certainly could have held on tighter, but part of me wanted to swim in the water and the fear of being trapped under a capsized raft even with the large air pockets that existed between the seat cushions did not seem too appealing to me. My inability not to try to breathe while submerged in cold water also probably played a factor as well. You can see in the pictures a play-by-play of me falling into the water, including one with my leg at an utterly unnatural angle.
After the waterfall ride, we hit the thermal springs at a place colorfully known as Hell's Gate, which believe it or not was given by none other than George Bernard Shaw. It was raining a tiny bit, but we decided to take the walk through their park where you can see the bubbling mud pits, the cold water stream, sulpher crystals, Sodom and Gomorrah and the Infernal pits. Dante would have loved this place. The place reeked of rotten eggs, and the pools of water varied in temperature from 60 to 105 degrees, and in Ph from 1 to 4. We next made probably the worst value decision of the trip and paid for the mud baths and spa, which were really not all that impressive and cost like $65 each (can someone say ripoff?). All things considered, not the worst thing to have happen to you on a 2-week long trip.
We made our way to Jack and Di's at around 5pm and were mildly distraught to find no one at the place. We called the number they left, and after the third time someone finally picked up and gave us the number code to the door, and then bam, we were in our room. Strangely, we never even met Jack and Di, and had to call them back later to figure out how to pay them, as we'd booked the thing with my decommissioned credit card. I guess they ran their B&B like an internet business, never having to see the clients. Not a bad model, unless of course we rob their place blind.
After the day's activities we were starving as we had missed lunch, so we drove into town and saw an authentic-looking Thai restaurant called The Amazing Thai Restaurant. Well how wrong could you go with that? It had Thai squiggles written on the menu and the pictures of the food didn't look completely gwailoified, so we were sold. And let me tell you, we were not disappointed. As a man who has spent a fair bit of time in Thailand, this place was legit, and better than any Thai restaurant that I had ever been to in Hong Kong. We walked a bit more after dinner and were disappointed to discover the main restaurant strip just a few blocks away, with all sorts of delicious looking foods. We settled on ice cream, and after Joy took care of some work calls, we went for round two of dinner at a local pub, ordering some really tasty beef and bean nachos and beers. Great end to the evening.
Now up until this point I had pretty much been exclusively doing the driving. The car was my precious, yet Joy like the young Samwise Gamgee wanted to do her bit to share the burden, so on the leisurely, gorgeous evening after our second dinner in town, I thought I would let her give it a go. She slid over to the driver's seat, confidently adjusted her mirrors, and started to pull forward. She then struggled to put the car in second as it picked up some speed, and needed my sage advice that depressing the clutch to switch gears might work better than grinding them into submission. After a needlessly close call with a parked car on the passenger rear mirror side, and a final stall for good measure around 100 meters after she began to drive, an executive decision was made to switch drivers. To her credit, the issue was much less the driving on the non-right side than simply not knowing how to turn within the dimensions of our miniature car. That was her only attempt on the manual, though she did do well a few days later on the automatic driving along 22km on Telegraph Rd, the straightest, least busy road in all of New Zealand.
The next morning, we left Jack and Di's early in the AM as we had a flight to catch from Auckland to Christchurch, and cruised on up turning a 3:50 guidebook time into a 2:15 time. We had some time to kill, so we went to the mall by the airport and had tasty Indian food before we returned the car. I had scraped up my left front hubcap on the curb during a brief moment where I too apparently forgot the dimensions of our little car, so was a little worried I would have to shell out some coin in damages, but Backpackers accepted the car with no additional charge. We were shuttled over to the domestic terminal with our bags and we were soon bidding adieu to North Island.
Crazy New Zealand fact time. On the domestic flights, you only need to arrive at the airport 30 minutes prior to your flight and you print your own boarding passes with a swipe of a credit card or entry of a booking code number. Not only that, you also print your own baggage tags, affix them to your luggage and drop them off on the conveyor belt. One metal detector later and you are at your gate. Here's the real kicker. Absolutely no photo identification is required to fly domestically. You could write the name Homer Sexual, and as long as you had the e-ticket number, you are on that flight. Guess New Zealand isn't exactly ground zero for terrorist activity, but I expected a little bit more in the way of security. Seemed like people were more concerned about whether you were smuggling a deviant fruit species that might muscle out some pansy, indigenous variety, then if your toothpaste tube was full of C4. But then again, maybe that is a better way of looking at this post-Obama world.
Another thing about New Zealand worth noting is that it is THE friendliest, most efficient tourist destination that I have ever been to, bar none. All the tour operators and bus drivers are just so friggin' nice, and not that canned, U.S. service industry nice where they put the plastic smile on and are friendly, even though you know they are privately cursing you behind your back and going home to tell their families about the assholes they had to deal with today at work. I mean these people are genuine, or at very least impressively sociopathic as a people, if they are faking.
When we arrived in Christchurch, we picked up our luggage around 2 minutes after getting off the flight (see what I mean by efficient), and decided to Supershuttle on in to the rental car place in the city center for the low, low price of just $21 for the both of us. We had decided to upgrade our car from 1.3 liters to 1.6 liters, as our inability to accelerate up anything greater than a 4% gradient was sort of a liability, and Omega car rentals offered the best deal at $49 per day. On the drive on into town, it started to hail a bit, which we viewed as a somewhat inauspicious omen, though this was countered by the fact that we were the first dropoff on the Supershuttle which never happens.
We signed for the car, and started driving north to Kaikorua which is known for its marine life and the pretty stretch of road needed to be crossed to reach it. It was at this point that we hit our first major roadblock. Perhaps winging all the bookings on the trip was going to be more difficult than we thought, as the swim with dolphin trips, which was operated by a single company in Kaikorua, were booked solid at all dates and times for the next 10 days. Peak season vacation in New Zealand is a time when both locals and foreigners roam the countryside, booking up the monopolistically limited slots in droves. This was definitely a bit of a blow, because I love me my dolphins. As we pulled off to the side of the road to assess our different options, my fast-thinking Navigator was already coming up with a plan. A few dials on the now not so magic phone, and we soon discovered that this town called Akaroa around 85 km to the southeast of Christchurch also did dolphin trips, with the main difference in tours being they involved a different breed of dolphin. At Akaroa one could see the world's rarest and smallest Hector dolphins, where Kaikoroa's were I think the bottlenose variety. As luck would have it, only two spots remained on these tightly regulated trips for the next day, and we booked for 6 am. Fuck Kaikorua, Akaroa's better anyway. We turned the car around and off we went.
We decided to take the scenic route down and drove through a cute town called Lyttleton popular among foodies. The most interesting part of the drive down was that the earlier hail and changed into enormous storm clouds, and if you didn't know any better, you might think that we were at the entrance of Hell, where ironically we had just come from in Rotorua. I would be lying if I didn't say that I was wondering why the hell were we going here and were dolphins really worth this. We found a store called "Grounds", and though their menu looked awesome, for some reason they were out of everything that made their menu look awesome, and all they had left was a single meat pie with some salad droppings. The store itself however did have some sparkling kiwi fruit wine which we purchased for later, though I will fill you in now how awful it was. As a proud connoisseur of sub-US$10 sparkling beverages, this drink seemed right up my alley. However, when we tried it a few days later in a hotel, you could not even get this pink umbrella cocktail loving woman of a man like me to finish his glass, which perhaps explains why I had never heard of this product before, and hopefully never will again.
Now everyone that has ever been to New Zealand and done the road trip thing has talked about how easy and cool it was to just float on in to an area, and within a few minutes you could find a place to stay. While that certainly was generally the case from our experiences, it is worth pointing out that a notable exception to such rule would be Akaroa (and Franz Josef for that matter as well). Akaroa is a weekend destination for Christchurchers and fills up fast. When we arrived in town on Saturday evening, we called and dropped in on 20 different hotel, B&B and hostel options before we even found one that was available and that was for $275 a night, which in my view was a total rip-off. Then, in our final minutes of desperation, right before we were going to cave and pay up, the Penlington Inn indicated they had a single room that could sleep two for $100 bucks, and we were sold. It turned out to be a truly lovely B&B with amazing views of the surrounding area, and the woman that ran the place was also great.
We set the alarm for 5:20AM the next morning, and when I woke up to the 10 (50 F) degree weather, the thought of swimming around in 14 (57.2 F) degree water really did not sound all too appealing, despite the 4 degree pickup on the trade. Resolute in our knowledge that we had already paid for this damn trip, we lugged ourselves out of bed, got dressed and made it down the wharf to meet the rest of our groggy dolphin troupe. We put on these super-warm wetsuits and footies that fit like a glove and within a few minutes actually felt almost warm.
We rode out for around 5-10 minutes, the only boat in the harbor, and before you knew it dolphins were sighted in the distance. The reasons the dolphins are so comfortable in this particular harbor is that visibility is frightfully low, so the natural predators around them, orcas and, yes, great white sharks, cannot see and are much more vulnerable. Engines were turned off, and we were asked to get into the water and start cooing and humming into our snorkels like giant mermen. Apparently dolphins enjoy it when humans act like big idiots.
The water was cold, but the adrenalin associated with being near these amazing creatures in their element easily made up for it. It was a truly exhilarating experience being this up close to wild nature, and I caught a glimpse, however pathetic, of what those National Geographic photographers must feel when they go out into the wild Serengeti to film lions fighting hyenas over fallen prey at night. Or what a private investigator must feel when he catches a wild 50-year old actuary at a seedy motel in the act with a Vegas stripper, thus netting him his success fee and his client a rich divorce. Same kind of rush.
In the water, I spent the whole time with my Olympus camera in outstretched hands trying desperately to hold still and take a great shot of these shy, hyper-fast moving animals as they swam around us. Now apparently, soaking in all that cold water didn't exactly help jumpstart my creativity circuits. I spent my time trying to perfectly time the shutter underwater even wondering at one point if there was any way to take continuous shots like on our badboy Canon D50 DSLR. Only after we got out of the water and the dolphins left did a fellow dolphineer mention that taking a movie would have been a great idea. Why didn't I think of that? Let's see, fast moving targets who appear for a second in terribly poor visibility water and then disappear, good luck trying to get that shot, underwater no less. What can I say, a movie would totally have been the answer. That was definitely my moment of greatest stupidity on the trip, though Joy shares some blame for not suggesting it too, or at least trusting in her idiot man too much.
After this amazing morning, we went back to our place to eat breakfast and pack up our belongings. We managed to finesse our way on a 4-hr scenic kayak tour that started at 12:30PM by taking the spots of a couple who had failed to pay in advance for their tickets. We also decided to book the last remaining Doubtful Bay overnight tour out of Queenstown for that Friday as well. I think we were learning that winging the big trips that fill up months in advance is probably a bad idea. We left the wonderful inn, went downstairs, frantically devoured a pizza in five minutes and met our kayak tour leader.
All I can say is that I was so impressed with Shireen, the lady that ran the kayak tour, as she was clearly someone who was passionate about what they were doing with their life, even though they recognized they were up against nearly impossible odds. She and her husband were pretty much single-handedly trying to save the penguin population around the Bank's Peninsula (the area around Akarao), and having quite good success as well. We took a forty-minute ride to the kayak departure point which also happened to be her home, and near checkpoint three of the Banks Peninsula hike. We donned our gear, and hopped into our first real two-man ocean kayak experience. Was great fun, and for a part of the trip there were wild fur seals swimming right next to our boat. It is also safe to say that Joy and I dominated the other kayak teams, not that we were competitive or anything, as we clove the undulating waves like a hot knife through I Can't Believe It's Not Butter. The tour ended two hours later than was planned as Shireen took us around to see the little cubbyholes in which she raised penguins.
At this point, I broke the one firm rule I was given before we took off to New Zealand, and that is always keep your car fueled up while on South Island. When we left Akaroa following the awesome kayak trip, it was around 6:15pm, and our plan was to see how we felt and make a run at Arthur's Pass, which is New Zealand's Continental Divide but with wimpier mountains. Because fuel was so overpriced in Akaroa being a remote port with one gas station, I made the decision that we could fuel up as we got closer to Christchurch, again forgetting that it was a Sunday night and that 24-hr gas stations simply don't exist there. Apparently, Joy pointed one station out around 50 km into our drive, and I brushed her off, but I don't remember her doing this and am just writing about it so she doesn't nag me when she reads this part.
By the time we reached Lincoln, our fuel gauge was fast approaching E, and the gas station we found had closed at 5pm. I suggested that we keep going and that there had to be a place up ahead, and we gloriously found a huge 24-hr Mobil sign. Our excitement soon turned into a string of expletives, when we discovered that service was only available if you had the Mobil card, which I guess is their pre-pay card or something, so no refueling for you little Nissan. We again pushed on to the next town 11km further and were elated to see a BP sign, which sadly had closed 45 minutes earlier at 7pm, but at least was open the next morning. The BP station's sign read no more fuel for next 84 km, which meant Springfield was where we were going to sleep the night. We supped at the only place in the 10-store, 200-meter strip that constituted the town that was open for food and consumed a few bites of terrible lasagna, a nasty Panini and an ok muffin, all homemade by some terrible cook. At least they had a giant donut outside of their restaurant, dedicated to the Simpsons Movie.
We found lodging at a nearby motel and decided to sleep in the next day for the first time. We left around 11AM to nice weather and a gorgeous passage through Arthur's Pass with a freshly filled-up gas tank. We stopped in for a meal at Arthur's Pass, and it was too late for breakfast, so I had a bowl of soup and Joy ordered some garlic cheesy bread. Then we decided to take a short hike to break up the drive, and walked to the Devil's Punchbowl Falls, which took around 45 minutes in all and was quite scenic. The Falls seemed much more angelic than demonic, but everyone knows that Satan sells better.
After the hike it was off to Greymouth to catch a 4pm Monteith beer brewery tour that we had booked en route, a perfect way to cap off a long day of driving. I must admit that it was an amazingly efficient facility with only 7 full-time workers producing hundreds of vats of 13K liters. The place was a step up to the quality control that I saw on my tour of Chongqing Brewery in China, where in the span of 15 minutes of watching, I watched the lazy foreman moving the bottles nearly get blinded by exploding glass. One of the bottles was not fed into the machine properly and shattered, spraying glass everywhere including in all likelihood into the hundreds of open-mouthed bottles all around him. But that didn't stop the machine from moving along. All I could think of is people drinking down glass shards over the next few weeks, and how many times stuff like that must happen every day. Ah, there are too many people in the world anyway, especially in China, and bleeding to death from having your throat cut up from broken glass bits doesn't sound too painful.
After the brewery tour, we went and had some quality (by New Zealand's standard) pizza down the street, and stepped up to the plate and booked the all-day Franz Josef Glacier hike, instead of the half-day wuss one. I think that the amount of questionable pizza shops in New Zealand also warrants mention. The country seems to really like the idea of pizza and they do try really hard, and you have to give them points for that. However, they also generally fall quite short of the mark, consistently and at times impressively so. And they don't fuck up the Hong Kong way by putting corn and thousand island dressing and shrimp on a pizza, they do it be using solid ingredients where somehow the whole is magically transformed to dramatically less than the sum of its parts. I don't know why it is so damn hard to make a decent pizza! After dinner, we also wasted time waiting for Swiss people to finish using the internet at the I-Site.
As a further aside here, in today's modern world, the number of chargers, cameras, batteries, adaptors, splitters, spare batteries, phones, memory sticks, iPhones, and computer plugs we brought with us was frightening. Yet for want of one little non-standard USB Olympus cord, we lived in mortal fear that all our underwater pictures would be lost during one of our more violent adventures, or that the camera's legendary waterproofness would be compromised. We wanted to back it up. I won't bore you with details of the epic stupidity and bad luck we had trying to access these files, suffice it to say we had poor digital electronic success in NZ. Those I-Site computers that look all modern with their big LCD screens and their advertising signs that brag you can burn DVD pictures from them are not nearly cracked up to be what you expect of them. They don't tell you that these computers are fucking ancient, with slow-ass 4x CD-ROM writing capability and USB 1.1 connections that can take you half an hour to move 1 GB of data. I could nearly run those bits on over by hand faster. What bullshit! Don't use an I-Site computer in New Zealand to do anything except look at the internet.
Before we left Greymouth, I refueled the car (I do eventually learn), and then we were off south to the town of Franz Josef around 150 km away. Joy had found us a good backpacker place (Montrose) en route for $54 per night, as it is notoriously difficult to get affordable housing in town. We managed to get there just before it turned dark; one of the advantages of being so far south is that true lights out sunset is around 10pm. Longest distance day of driving but we split it into three almost equally long legs of 150 km each, so it really didn't seem so bad.
The next morning we got up and checked out of our hostel and ate a yummy breakfast at the corner café. We made our way down the street to the activity center and got geared up for the hike. The weather forecast was for sun mixed with some clouds, with a non-stop cover of rain for the whole next three days expected, so we made the cosmically short-sighted mistake of gloating about how awesome we were for picking the right day. Needless to say the weather gods smote us very soon thereafter, and unleashed a steady torrent of rain pretty much as soon as we made it to the glacier face.
Now both Joy and I are in pretty good shape, but I can honestly tell you that by the time we were done with this hike, we were pretty beat and soaked to the bone. We had been moving non-stop for the past 6 hours in the cold, and the distances involved were deceivingly long. But it was an amazing journey and definitely one of the eight top three things that we did. The pictures should speak for themselves. Can I also add that crampons are totally awesome. I had never before worn these rock-crushing, ice-piercing devices, and now I would love nothing more to own a pair to traipse around Central Hong Kong, crushing any honkie that gets in my path. There is just something so satisfying in the noise they make when they dig into ground, and the assurance that comes with having a solid base on which to stand.
So with Franz Josef thus harkened the rain chronicles of our journey. For the next 36 hours the weather consisted of non-stop rain, mainly of the pelting variety but occasionally oscillating between pouring, driving and drizzling. While still beautiful, as this NewZealand rain is non-acidic and smells deliciously ozoney, it still is depressing, and made us worry about what weather would be like further south in Queenstown. The drive down to Haast was pleasant enough, and we saw a frightful rockslide in which a boulder the size of two cars was just left in the middle of the original road, apparently the traffic department had built a newly paved detour around the rock, likely at considerable expense as it was on a steep embankment. I would have just moved the damn rock.
Haast was a completely isolated town whose World Heritage Hotel wasn't even connected to the powergrid. The whole town received absolutely no wireless signal at all, so zilch in terms of internet connectivity. It did, however, have a pretty good restaurant attached to it called the Frontier café. We were freezing by the time we checked in as we left straight after the glacier hike which had soaked through four layers of heavy clothing, and the sun had been hiding the entire trip. We lugged our bags out of the trunk and went to check-in, only to be told that our room was further down and that we needed to drive there. We were not that amused though it was quite cool that with this hotel, if you opened the sliding doors in your room wide enough, you actually could park your damn car in the room. Only the best for Baby.
We left in the AM to more pouring rain which continued for the next hour or two until we approached the town of Wanaka, where we finally saw a hint of blue sky in the distance. As we drove on, suddenly in the time it took to turn a bend around a mountain, it was sunny to the point of being hot. And so we entered the non-rainy, sun-dependent hot days of Queenstown.
The other bit of news we learned that next day was that because of the summer heat mixed with heavy rain, there was a major ice break at Fox Glacier around 20km south of where we had hiked. Two people died when the ice fell away beneath them. Very sad really, especially as the papers reported that the parents of one of the hikers witnessed the whole tragedy unfold from the ground. Apparently the appreciation of the macabre is as strong in the New Zealand publishing industry as in the U.S's.
What's interesting when I heard about this news is how people have such different reactions to how the forces of chance operate in their lives. My immediate reaction was simply that it was too bad, and that they were fairly unlucky. One of the locals who heard the story was focused on how the hikers were not supposed to be on that part of the glacier, clearly trying to rationalize their death as something that could be explained and even blamed on the victims themselves. I overheard someone else indicating that it just must have been their time, i.e. the whole God's plan for everything angle. It is funny how we humans are always looking for answers to the questions posed by randomness, and how we do so in such predictable ways. I guess my answer is to simply embrace the uncertainty and be comfortable with and even try to enjoy the impermanence of our existence. What's interesting is that this is not a perspective I would have been comfortable with ten years ago, but it one that I believe I will be very comfortable with for the rest of my life. But don't ask me, I'm just an atheist.
Queenstown marked the first time that we had the luxury of staying at the same place for two nights in a row, and the first time we also stayed in luxury (really should edit that but no longer care anymore) at the Millennium Hotel. I cannot tell you how satisfying it was to not have to wake up and immediately begin to repack all your belongings including the veritable BestBuy warehouse of electronic components. The joy of being able to get up in the same bed twice is what makes a home feel like a home.
The plan was for us to have two nights in Queenstown, and then we would head off on the Doubtful Bay overnight cruise that we had booked a few days earlier. In Queenstown, we decided to do the riversledging trip, which in plain English means going down whitewater rapids on a boogieboard, this gondola ride up to an Alpine luge racecourse, and hang-gliding. It was also the plan to return our Omega car our second day in Queenstown, as the buses for the cruise would drop us directly off at the airport on our return.
After planning our remaining itinerary, we went out to explore the city and grab some much-needed food. Who would have thought that Queenstown would have the best Thai food outside of Bangkok? I wouldn't have, but it does. We had this delicious fried fish with garlic sauce and then this homak talay, or seafood dry red curry baked in aluminum foil. Just the tastiest thing you could ever imagine, and so good in fact that we went back to the same place the next day and even ordered the same thing again. There was also this confectionary shop on one of the shopping streets that had the tastiest fudge in no less than thirty different flavors.
I should stop for a moment here and give praise to Joy the Navigator because she was totally hardcore. Juggling Bberry and not so magic phone, she constantly was calling places, inquiring about activity bookings, all the while aiding me in going through the endless series of roundabouts, as New Zealand is an extremely roundabout-happy country. We also managed to squeeze our way onto the last seat of almost every activity. And not the real-estate broker, you gotta buy now because I have another offer type "last" seat, I mean tightly regulated number of people can go type last seats. Full marks go to the Navigator.
After a good dinner and a restful sleep, we began the next day's activities. Riversledging was a whole lot of fun, though much more dangerous and scary that I expected it to be. I would never take a small child to do that trip, regardless of how much more proportionally buoyant they are, and the one small 10-yr old girl on the trip injured her wrist. The gondola up to the peak that looks down on Queenstown was gorgeous and eminently worth doing. We also played mini-golf where I learned that my fiancée was a natural, at least in the way she tried to call some type of mulligan on every single hole, except for Hole 13 which she holed-in-one (for real). Though I only outscored her by 5 strokes against an agreed upon 8 handicap and therefore lost, I can sleep soundly knowing my scores were true in the eyes of God. I ask her, can she? She did have top score for a Singaporean, so she got to write her name on the chalkboard outside. The forces of fate conspired against us and it was way too windy for us to hang-glide; no flights took off at all during the 3-day window we were in Queenstown, and supposedly the airport had to delay some real flights as well.
The last big adventure for us was the big Doubtful Bay overnight cruise that we had booked on Fiordland Expeditions. Our vessel was named the M.V. Tutoko, and the whole thing was far from cheap at $575 a person, but it had the benefit of being very small at 10 people unlike the giant Real Journey boats, and included fishing, kayaking as well as very tasty food. One of the fun things on the trip was that there was a family of Germans on the boat (I know, what could be more fun than a whole family of Germans in a confined space). They had brought their two cute four and five year old daughters, who had spent the past year in Auckland so could even speak English reasonably well. What I thought was funny was that the youngest girl clearly acted the role of baby, and would often cry to get her way. At the very end of the trip, it seemed that she was sad to be leaving and didn't want to pack up, so she threw a mild tantrum. What was particularly cool about this foreign language tantrum, was that she kept screaming "Nein, nein, nein" over again, the only word in German I do understand. Probably had to be there.
One of the major perks of this particular cruise was that there was to be a fresh seafood dinner prepared on board. What we didn't know was that we would be catching all the ingredients along the way, beginning with the giant crayfish. Around three hours into the trip, our good Captain Richard jumped into a wetsuit, slapped on his scuba gear, and dove down into the water below where he had worked some traps. Half an hour later, he was back carrying with him a treasure trove of crayfish, which he indicated live in the thousands down on the bottom of the ocean.
The good captain also mentioned to Joy that the water in Doubtful Bay consisted of two main layers – the top was freshwater run-off from the vegetation above, while below for hundreds of meters (440 meters at its deepest) was saltwater that effectively hadn't moved in 400 million years. The visibility of the water was said to be so clear that you can see for 80 meters, and novice divers often can run into trouble because they don't realize how far they are have actually gone down.
After Richard came back with his ten giant crayfish, it was our turn to go outside in the light rain and fish, which Joy had never successfully done before. Joy was a bit of a natural and managed to catch the only blue cod among our group. I however was less skilled, though did catch the heaviest item which was a 15-pound branch. After a short kayak ride, we came back to find a full dinner prepared. Starters included a delicious soy-soaked sashimi cut from one of the fish which Joy and I ate almost in its entirety and steamed crayfish. We were already stuffed by the time the beer-battered fried fish filleted from the 25 or so we all caught, veggies and mashed potatoes were brought out. Everything was super fresh and delicious.
By far the worst part of this cruise was that we fiordland is sandfly country. About the same size as gnats, these little buggers were everywhere and would constantly swarm around any exposed skin, particularly on the hands and feet. What was so deceptive about them is that they are so damn light that you can barely feel that they are on your skin. The worst thing is that their bites age like a fine wine, and were itchier seven days later than they were after the first three days. These were the rip-your-foot-up-scratching itchiest bites that I've ever had. Joy's still itch now, 17 days later!
Although time did seem to fly, it did take us around five and half hours to get back to Queenstown once we got off from the boat. We decided to go directly to the airport where we checked our bags in, and then managed to find a very friendly supershuttle lady who agreed to take us into town and back to the airport for $30, enough time to let us eat at the Indian food court place and for Joy to return a piece of clothing she bought that had been the wrong size. It also was enough time for us to buy more of that accursedly delicious fudge, this time in peanut butter flavor which everyone knows is the best.
We made it back to the airport after running our errands, and lo and behold, we were upgraded again on the flight to Christchurch on Quantas Airlines this time. That made it three upgrades in a row (I didn't mention that the original flight down to Singapore on United was delayed and then transferred to a CX flight, and then subsequently upgraded as well). All eyes were focused on the trip back home. Since good things always come in threes, we figured that we didn't stand a chance.
For our last night in Christchurch we checked into this cool hostel called Chester Street Backpackers for $60 a night, and drove into the Botanical Gardens which are beautiful. We then had the worst meal of our trip, following bad instincts all the way. It is a remarkable thing the way two normally very sensible and rational human beings can make such bad decisions. We ordered terrible pasta with marinara sauce, instead of eating another NZ pizza, in what was by far the most unsatisfying meal, beating out even the Springfield lasagna that must have been prepared in the late 1980's only because we were surrounded by so many other better food options and didn't capitalize on them. We did get revenge the next morning and had the best breakfast of our entire trip at the Honey Pot restaurant on Lichfield street. Try the French toast, it's that good.
I think one of the cool things about New Zealand is that unlike other developed countries to which you travel, the activities you participate in really can lead to horrendous injuries and/or a painful death. River sledging for me was the first time I actually was afraid that I might drown, and I am a very strong swimmer. Had my first attack of claustrophobia and possibly hypothermia while burrowing through the caves at Waitomo. Two hikers were killed in an ice collapse on the glacier next to us two days after our ascent. Even during the dolphin tour, I must say the thought of being gobbled up by an orca or great white shark hungry for a taste of some rare Hector Dolphin meat crossed my mind, though to be fair, I sometimes get that fear wading around the kiddie pool at the local swimming pool. You sign that indemnity form, and you truly are on your own. I think the country safely earns its motto, "New Zealand, not for Pussies".
So we made it to the airport and transferred in Auckland to our CX flight. As we waited for the connection in the lounge and watched the Baltimore Ravens beat the Tennessee Titans, my name was announced on the loudspeaker, and I went up to the reception desk. We had gotten the upgrade. Thank you Cathay Pacific, and you too global economy for sucking so bad.
Humble advice to future travelers
The strangest thing about New Zealand is that it grows on you like a fungus. When I first arrived I was far from overwhelmed. It took me about five days before I really started to dig the place. And now, here I am, after close to ten days back in Hong Kong, and I really miss being there. Joy and I have put together some humble advice for those of you thinking of making the trip anytime soon,
- If driving which we recommend, buy a proper road atlas. We did and it was a life-saver.
- Book your key events early (overnight cruises, popular tours), and then you can fill in the rest on the fly. It's not only cheaper, but it will add some structure.
- Weather matters and will make a big difference on your enjoyment of certain types of activities, so realize you cannot plan for everything. (one point for the winging it camp)
- Don't waste time in Auckland. We thought it was pretty lame and didn't have much going on at all. Queenstown and even Christchurch seemed more interesting. No countdown clock.
- Use the I-sites, government-sponsored tourism stops, to check on tours and look for discounts/coupons. That being said, online discounts do apply for certain rides. We missed out on some 10% savings and free hats by not booking that way. I love free hats…
- Avoid paying for the Hells Gate spa in Rotorua if you are there. Definitely the worse value that we saw on the trip. Do go for the walk around the park there, but do the Polynesian spa as that looked better and was substantially cheaper (like 3x) instead.
- New Zealand local car rental companies are substantially cheaper than the big U.S. companies and comparably efficient, so wouldn't bother with Hertz, Avis or Budget. Try Backpackers, Omega, Ace or Jucy instead.
- Wotif.com is a pretty useful site to make bookings
- Stand by decision not to rent a campervan. For two people just didn't make too much sense, as hostels cheap, easy to book and clean. Parking and driving would be that much more of a bitch.
- Never drive more than 4.5 hrs in one day
- Packing and unpacking is annoying, but still think that unless you have a month off, there is too much to see in too many different places to stay in one place more than 2-3 days.
- Thai and Indian food will be much better than you might think
- Don't eat too much fudge in Queenstown. What were we thinking???
Pictures
http://picasaweb.google.com/
Pictures we have posted from the trip (be forewarned there are a lot of them). I know that Joy and I get carried away with our jumpy shots, but you have to admit that at least the first time you see them they look a bit cool. And there are just some amazing trees inNew Zealand, particularly yellow ones which I never seemed to get just right.
Itinerary
I also have attached here a route of the itinerary, in case anyone else is making any trips to New Zealand any time soon and wants some ideas on very manageable trips. We also compiled a detailed expense budget, which we can mail out if requested.
South Island Route –
Lastly, we have some wedding updates that I wanted to put on people's calendars. Our Singapore wedding will be held on Saturday, August 22 2009 at the Fullerton Hotel and our New York wedding will be held the following week on Sunday, August 30 2009 at the Riverview which is located 25 minutes north of New York City off the Hudson River and is accessible by train. More details to come soon, but wanted to get these dates out to be people ASAP because they are quite firm at this point. I figure if you have made it this far in my boring little travelogue, then you certainly are at least a good enough friend to be invited to the wedding(s).
CJ (and Joy for the wedding part)
