What Polynesian settlers, who arrived in Aotearoa / New Zealand around the 10th century, found was a land much different from the tropical isles of Polynesia. It is a land of mountains with a more seasonal climate and no large mammals to hunt for food. But there was a large flightless bird called the Moa, which stood up to 15 feet tall. The Maori found it easy prey, and by the time Europeans arrived in New Zealand, the Moa had been hunted to extinction.
New Zealand is a country of thirty thousand million sheep, three million of whom think they are human.
Barry Humphries
New Zealand diary
Road to the south island
Rotorua to Wellington, New Zealand 11.20.05
Lake Taupo, biggest volcanic lake in the world, with Mount Ruapehu in the distance.
Stiff upper shtick: Being mostly of English stock, New Zealanders have carried on their forebears' slightly skewed use of the mother tongue. They have a vaguely odd sounding alternative to a lot of American terms:
- trail = track
- campground = holiday park
- hike = tramp
- meal = feed
- recreational vehicle = camper van
- mug of beer = handle
- parking lot = carpark
- vacation = holiday
- friend = mate
- french fries = chips
- chips = crisps
- highway or freeway = motorway
These verbal twists are most apparent on road signage. Yellow triangular signs don't say "yield," they say "give way." A warning sign showing a skidding car will be accompanied by an explanatory addendum saying "when frosty." A catchall diamond-shaped warning sign merely shows a giant exclamation mark, beneath which almost any message may appear by way of explanation. One warning pertaining to likely but unapparent traffic delays because of road work ahead merely said "hidden queues." A perilously winding mountain road on the north island said "slow down, this road claims loved ones." Even more to the point, a similar south island road approaching a small town had two signs. The first said "slow down." The second said "no doctor, no hospital, one cemetery."
A small-town family solemnly sends off an aged family member on the bus.
Running commentary: Kiwi bus drivers love to regale their captive audiences with information ranging from the sublime to the irrelevent. As with any country, New Zealand has an abundance of gee-whiz statistics (largest volcanic lake; first geo-thermal power plant in the southern hemisphere; biggest hand-planted forest in the world; birthplace of Lord Rutherford, Great Britain's first nuclear scientist, New Zealand's oldest gold mine, etc.) that tend to first make bus passengers hang on their drivers' every word but eventually prompts them to instead nod off.
Rest stop attractions in predominantly agrarian New Zealand.
Alphabet soup: Most of the place names in New Zealand are adopted from the original residents, the Maoris, who have an alphabet of only 16 characters. Many names are confusingly similar - Rotorua is a town on the north island, Rotoroa is a river on the south island. To form almost any place name, take at least one K, one or more R or N or T, liberally sprinkle with vowels, especially U's and A's, but no Y's. If in doubt, repeat portions of the word as with Rotorua's golf course, Rikikapakapa. To get the most bang for the buck with such a limited alphabet, the Kiwis pronounce any WH combination as an F.
Wellington/Picton/Nelson, New Zealand 11.21.05
Wellington, seen on a not-unusual blustery day from aboard the ferry plowing through white caps en route to Picton on the South Island
Remote control: The north end of New Zealand's south island is a remote area full of bays and inlets, mountain ranges and broad valleys. Moving across it with anything other than a rental car is damn difficult. While waiting for the last bus of the day out of the area (the only earlier one was full), the pub next to the bus terminal happily is showing ESPN's Sunday night football game live in the middle of Monday afternoon.
Tourists keen for a look at a South Island inlet.
Eat this: Molly Malone's, a semi-authentic Irish pub in downtown Wellington, offers rousing entertainment by a small groups. In this case, a duo played button accordian, fiddle and dobro. Toot n' Whistle Pub in Picton offers ESPN in the pub and harbor views on the patio.
The harbor at Picton, northernmost port of New Zealand's south island.
Road signs: New Zealand uses a series of ominous billboards to promote sane and sober driving. One portrays a cadaver in a morgue on a steel table and under a sheet. An identification tag is attached to the exposed foot's big toe. The caption: "Speeding ticket." Another shows a white cross planted adjacent to a highway with the wheels of traffic whizzing by. The caption: "Life in the fast lane." A third shows a dented-up license plate with the number NVR2L8 and the caption underneath "To sleep it off at a friend's."
The majestic valleys and mountain ranges near Nelson.
Unforced busing: An Intercity bus flexi-pass allows travel in orderly segments across the sprawling south island. German girls in groups of two and three particularly seem to gravitate toward this form of transportation probably because it's cheap and reliable.
Realities of the road, south island 11.24.05
Fellow travelers: Some could be your distant relatives, others
escaped felons.
Home on the strange: Travelers are so taken with the endless succession of photogenic natural wonders and breathtaking vistas in New Zealand that it is easy to forget the mundane realities of being on the road. The lodging for those who strive to stretch their travel budgets is often dingy but also distinctive, seldom drab. The people one encounters traveling along well-established tourist routes run the gamut, from folksy to scary. The odd decors and signs are at times funny or disturbing.
A typical New Zealand hostel, known as a backpacker for the type
of
travelers it attracts, the Duke in Greymouth on the south island's
west
coast. These type of places typically are painted with all the
gaudy
colors in the paint sample brochure that no one would every
consider
buying for their home.
A (semi-)clean, well-lighted places: Every town in New Zealand has at least several cheap hostels, called backpackers, and the competition is fierce. Tourist traffic is down again this year, the newspapers have been trumpeting, and the future of these colorful but low-profit-margin operations is the subject of much speculation. To grab travelers' attention, backpackers often give themselves bizarre names. Recent favorites: the Hairy Lemon in Greymouth, Cactus Jack's in Rotorua, the Hippo Lodge in Queenstown, the Fat Camel in Wellington and Hogwartz in Dunedin. Such places come equipped with ratty furniture, leaky plumbing, strange wall decorations, a hodgpodge of kitchen utensils and crockery and the occasional odd green guitar.
While waiting for planes, trains and buses, there's always ample
time to contemplate the drudgery of having to lug too
much baggage.
(Semi-)high society: Greymouth is a drab seaside town whose only claim to fame is that it serves as the terminus for the scenic Tranzglacier Railway from Christchurch. The town looked deserted most of the 24 hours I was there, but I stumbled across the social hub quite by chance. The Railway Hotel bar happens to access satellite sports channels, and I was watching Monday Night Football live on Tuesday afternoon when promptly at 5 p.m. all manner of local citizenry flooded through the doors for happy hour and an intense gossip fest.
Typical though contrasting signs in a parking lot and at
a bus
lunch stop. Roadside signs are strictly controlled
and,
as a
result, few and far between in New Zealand,
so they
usually
are not mass produced. It is not unusual to
see men
on step
ladders hand painting what few billboards
are allowed.
Tuning in, turning off: Those who rent cars in New Zealand soon find the entertainment options are grim. Most rental cars have a station seeker function that assigns button presets to the available radio channels. Outside of Auckland, one is lucky if there are two FM channels and perhaps three AM channels. At least one if not all will be someone droning on about local and national issues, much like BBC in Britain. The best radio is usually on Maori stations, which tend to play an eclectic mix of music interspersed with unintelligible but somewhat engaging commentary and commercials in the Maori language. Similarly, television offerings are uniform throughout the country: three stations, channels 1, 2 and 3. At least one of them at any given hour is stuffy talking heads like BBC. Happily, one usually will have a mix of somewhat boring New Zealand dramas and sitcoms interspersed with an odd array of American network offerings, everything from South Park to Survivor.
Old buses and trailers apparently are cherished in New Zealand, finding uses after their days of rolling are done. One in Franz Josef serves as an internet cafe, while another in Te Anau lives on as a booking office for lake excursions.
A break in the weather: In a country that averages three meters (nine feet) of rain per year, the gods apparently are giving me a pass. Only one brief afternoon of misty rain in three weeks of travel and counting.
Queenstown, south island 11.27.05
Yet another beautiful mountain
lake scene replete with spring
flowers in full bloom.
Too much of a good thing: Queenstown and the fjords of southwestern New Zealand are overkill, so picturesque that the dozens of scenic photos one reflexively snaps tend to blur into a pleasant but indistinct portfolio. Milford Sound, reputedly one of the most gorgeous pieces of real estate on the planet particularly falls into this category.
Cuppa concern: Coffee buying is a challenge to newcomers. Ask for one and the response is "what kind?" After days of trial and error, I found the closest the Kiwis get to a cup of joe is called a "filter" coffee, not to be confused with a "long black" (a big espresso), a "latte" (frothy java) or a "flat white" (soupy capuccino). Gulp.
Shoe shorn: For some unexplained reason, the farther one travels south in New Zealand, hence toward Antarctica and the chillier regions of the country, the more one sees people who are barefoot. It started with one person in Greymouth. Then several in Franz Josef, an alpine town a half day to the south, and now dozens in Queenstown, yet another half day south and nearing the south end of the island, where penguins live year round. We're not talking about strolling down the beach; these folks are slapping skin on city streets.
The HMS Enssler, a historic steamship chugs across Queenstown harbor
past an immaculate beach with the Remarkables mountain range
as
backdrop. The Remarkables served as backdrop for one of the
climactic
battles in the Lord of the Ring film trilogy.
Killing fields: After traveling down hundreds of miles of New Zealand roads, most of which are disturbingly tidy, the question began to nag at me - where's all the road 
kill? The Kiwis claim they have anywhere from 18 to 80 million pesky possums scurrying about their underbrush (query: how does one estimate the number of possums?). Surely a few stray onto the highways and get flattened. Not until crossing the remote rainforest-covered mountains of the south island did I see a dead anything. Then the flood gates opened and there were dozens if not hundreds of lifeless and bloodied possums in a 100-mile stretch. And none since then. Why? No Kiwi claims to know or even much care.
Kiwis apparently appreciate giant roadside attractions as much as
Americans. Here, car-threatening fruit welcomes visitors to
Cromwell
in the heart of the south island orchard region of which
Queenstown
is part.
Shooting pains: While visiting a vineyard outside Queenstown during a wine-tasting outing, our group was plied with the local vintages in a pleasant garden. We were soon roused from our reveries by the report of a firearm. Over and over the gun fired somewhere nearby. When asked about it, the vintner informed us that one of the help was shooting rabbits with a 20-gauge shotgun. After listening to as many as 100 gunshots, I found myself wondering whether the vineyard was overrun by rabbits or we were listening to the world's worst marksman.
A tour group prepares to enter the futuristic headquarters of
Peregrine Vineyards outside Queenstown. The tour guide claimed
the
curved winglike roof to the underground facility had been
declared the "world's most important structure" by a group
of English architects.
Go figure.
Bacchalicious: Being a mostly agrarian nation and opportunistic as well, New Zealand is cashing in on the world's insatiable thirst for wine. Vineyards are popping up everywhere in the drier regions of the country's south island around Queenstown, supplanting areas long devoted to livestock grazing. The adage among wine connoiseurs apparently has always been order white when the wine is from New Zealand, but the vintners have refined their root stocks and now produce superior reds, particularly the often temperamental pinot noirs.
Budding bunches of pinot noir grapes at Gibbston Valley
Vineyards where the growing season is October to
April,
casks dramatically displayed at Peregrine
Vineyards .
Copyright Gary Olson 2010
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