Auckland

On Sunday February 1, I left Taupo on a Newman bus bound for Auckland. Newman is the name of one of the bus companies which I had expected to be the most luxurious of the bus lines because their coaches are all listed as being five star. However, I actually like the other busses I had taken better. There were of course long breaks during the trip to allow the passengers to buy refreshments at cafes and there was driver commentary along the way to explain what it was we were seeing out the windows. The bus also had seatbelts and children under the age of twelve were required to buckle up.

I had checked out of the campground in the morning and had brought my backpack to the bus terminal where they had stored it until my bus departed at 14:00. The bus ride would get me into Auckland around 20:00. It unfortunately was a bit of a waste of a day since I could not have time to do anything adventurous in Taupo and I would be arriving so late in Auckland. However, it was the only way that I could get from Taupo to Auckland from where my flight would depart the next day.

The ride was uneventful and not nearly as spectacular as the bus ride from Greymouth to Nelson had been. The bus ride that day had been full of site seeing. The bus to Auckland was more along the lines of just being transportation. One reason was that we were stopping in urban areas such as Hamilton rather than going through forests or along rivers.

We arrived in Auckland and after getting my bearings and looking up information on the airport shuttle for the next day, I checked my map and started out for my hostel. I had chosen this hostel because it was located right downtown which would allow me quick access to the sites without having to take busses from the suburbs and the hostels there. If I were to stay longer in Auckland, I would have chosen a hostel in the Ponsonby area which had been reported by the guidebook and friends as being a thriving area populated by cafes and restaurants. The hostel I chose called the Queenstreet Backpackers was not particularly nice as it catered to buses of teenagers and had a cleaning crew that was not very particular, but the staff was friendly and it worked out well for what I wanted. So, once I had set down my bags, I headed out to the city to explore.

I believe that after having spent so many days in Christchurch both exploring and talking with people, that I was predisposed to dislike Auckland. As I mentioned before, the people in Christchurch spoke of people from Auckland as being cosmopolitan snobs and snubbed the city much in the same way that people in Jutland, Denmark snub Copenhagen. However, Auckland is a nice city and I am not really in a position to judge it since I only spent one rainy day there and predominantly within a several square kilometer area around Queen Street which is the main street. Plus I had come to New Zealand to see the spectacular countryside and after coming from Taupo, it was a bit disheartening to be in an urban setting.

Approximately one quarter of the population of New Zealand lives in the city of Auckland, making it the largest city in the country. Geographically, the sprawl of the city straddles a thin strip of land between the Pacific Ocean and the Tasman Sea and it is only a few kilometer walk to get from the harbor on one side to the harbor on the other. To the east lies the Haitemeta Harbor which is the city’s deep harbor port which fills with sailboats during the summer, earning the city the name “City of Sails”. Auckland was host to the Americas Cup over the summers of 1999-2000 and 2002-2003. Looking out into the harbor, one can see islands and extinct volcanoes rising from the water. The city was built amongst fifty extinct volcanic cones and is dotted with parks and green areas, often around the volcano cones. The landscape makes for a hilly urban setting and so the tourists are always walking up and down hills.

Auckland is the worlds largest Polynesian city with twenty percent of the population either claiming Maori descent or decent from migrants who arrived from the Pacific islands. Yet for such a large population, I did not see a lot of restaurants serving indigenous food, but I was not looking particularly diligently. What one mostly sees are a lot of Asian restaurants (Chinese, Japanese and Korean) and along Queen Street there is a McDonalds, Burger King and Subway on every block. By the civic theater on Queen Street there was a complex that housed not only a Barnes & Noble, but also a Starbucks and a Planet Hollywood. There are big food halls with lots of restaurants inside and the best and most adventurous dining establishments are rumored to be in the inner-city suburbs.

Dominating the skyline of the city center is the concrete Skytower which was built in the 1990’s and is currently New Zealand’s tallest structure at 328 meters in height. There are of course skywalks where one can look out through the windows to get great views of the surrounding city. Part of the fun is that sections of the floor in the observation tower are made of glass. Signs assure the visitors that the glass is thick and therefore as strong as concrete, but it truly is a bit nerving to be standing on glass and watching people scurrying about far below you. Since this is New Zealand, the tower of course offers chances for adventure experiences. There is the Skyjump where “daredevils who love life” can pay to jump off of the tower for a mere $195. The jump is a base jump by wire and the speed of the jump is controlled at 75 km per hour. Guide wires prevent the jumper from being blown about the building and the jumper is slowed to a gentle stop to land on a tower at the base of the Skytower. If a jumper runs back up the tower without taking off their jumpsuit, the next jump is only $75. There is also an adventure called Vertigo Climb where people pay $95 to climb up through the narrow spire of the TV tower to reach a small platform that is at 270m. It sounds tame, but the climber must wear helmets, overalls and a body harness and must pass a test in a simulator before being allowed to climb.

Unfortunately, it rained through out the night and it continued to drizzle all throughout the next day. I made some breakfast in the hostel kitchen and then packed up my things for the airplane ride back. The hostel had left luggage where I stowed by backpack and they even sold me a ticket for the airport shuttle. Since I had stayed at a backpacker hostel, I was eligible for the backpacker rate on the shuttle which picked up directly outside of the hostel. It was all extremely convenient.

I had decided that my two main objectives for the day were to get a guided tour of the city’s concert hall and to try to walk the Coast to Coast Walkway which should have taken 4 hours. The walkway is billed as being a great way to take in much of the best that the city has to offer, including harbor views and the summit of some of the volcano cones. I had been assured by a friend from Auckland that climbing the volcano cone was definitely worth the trip.

I walked over to the information office to see if I could get a map of the walk so that I would know where I was going. The woman at the office kind of laughed at my request as it was pouring outside and wished me luck. In hindsight, I would have been better off just sticking around the downtown as the projected time for the walk may have been a bit off, but I did get to see some of the sites. I wandered past the Albert Park overlooking Queen Street, Auckland University and the massive Auckland Domain which is a sprawling park. Unfortunately, the author of the map of the walk was not very concerned with details such as street names. Nor was the walk always marked and so I just kind of wandered about on my own until it was time to head over to the concert hall.

I arrived at the concert hall early out of fear of not being able to get a tour of the hall due to the crowds. Amazingly however, not every tourist in the city had decided to queue up for the tour and the nice woman at the reception desk led me about as soon as I arrived because she did not expect anyone else to come that afternoon. So, I got a personalized tour of the hall and the surrounding facilities. The small, wooden hall is used not only for symphony orchestras, but also rock concerts and other events such as fundraising event where hairstylists had cut hair on the orchestra floor to raise money for charity.

I endeavored to walk to the summit of Mt. Eden but it took much longer than I expected and my route took me through industrial neighborhoods which did not make for a pleasant walk. So, I decided to turn around and spent the rest of the remaining time in the tower and around Queen Street until it was time to return to the hostel to collect my things.

I made a quick change in the hostel’s left luggage room and quickly reorganized by backpacks for the flight. Catching the airport shuttle was painless and within an hour I was at the airport. However, when I boarded the bus, there was a woman having a discussion with the bus driver because she had no idea where to get off of the bus. She was coming from the airport and knew her hotel was in Auckland, but did not know where. The bus driver tried to help her to figure it out but eventually she just got off in the center of the city in hopes that her hotel was close by. I hope she found her hotel.

Once at the airport, I had to pay the $25 airport tax before I was allowed to enter the long halls of tax-free shopping. I wandered past one store and stopped short when I realized the Super Bowl was on the televisions that were for sale. It late Monday afternoon, but it was still Sunday in the US due to the 18 hour time difference. There were four minutes left in the game and soon a big crowd of people were stopped to watch, much to the dismay of the store owner who would not permit the volume of the televisions to be turned on. I wound up standing next to and chatting with an Australian who knew all about the game since sports from the US are broadcast as part of the normal cable package in Australia rather than on cable channels that one must pay for. We made good efforts at guessing the signs that the referees were making to try to make out what was happening. The Australian man had his daughter with him who he kept sending into the store to look for perfume for mom so that she would not be totally bored. The game finished and after farewells, I went through security and walked to my gate.

The flight back was uneventful other than the fact that we were on the Frodo plane and the fact that one of the passengers had gotten off of the plane for some reason. This was not discovered until we were about to take off and so we had to go back to the gate to pick him up and to get more fuel.

We left hours late, but the pilot made up most of the time by the time we arrive at LAX. I had left six hours for my connection and so I had plenty of time to get to the American Airlines gate. The queue for security was unperceivable in length and so I chatted with others in line. It was very odd to be queuing up for a flight which was leaving five hours earlier in the day than my eleven hour long flight from Auckland had left.

So ends the story of my whirlwind trip to New Zealand. The trip was not long enough to really get a taste of what the country had to offer, but it was long enough for me to know that I would like to return to that corner of the world some day.

Taupo

My flight arrived in Taupo and I bid farewell to the Canadian family as I boarded a shuttle bus into town. The driver offered the other shuttle passenger and I door-to-door service and so he took me right to the campground where I was staying. Actually, it was not just a campground, it was called the Taupo All Seasons Holiday Park. The park offered not just camp sites, but caravan sites (campers), rooms in lodges and other facilities. Central to the park was a spacious kitchen and barbeque facilities that were well stocked and sparkling clean. The bathrooms were also cleaned several times and day and were immaculate. Clearly the park earned its five star rating and its only drawback was the twenty-five minute walk it took to get from the park into town.

I had rented a caravan which turned out to be a really fun experience. The park owners gave me bedding and showed me to my caravan. I had called the park to ask about one of their rooms because I had planned to spend all day Saturday on a difficult hike and wanted a place to myself to crash rather when I got back rather than a shared room. The park had not had any lodge rooms left, but offered me the caravan which turned out to be a neat treat. I had a space in the camper park for my little camper. I had three beds, a refrigerator and electric lights. I stowed my belongings in one of the cabinets and put together some sandwiches for lunch before wandering into town just in time to be caught in the rain.

The town of Taupo is located on the edge of Lake Taupo which fills a large volcanic crater and is the largest lake in NZ. The eruption of the volcano in 186 AD was so violent and so colossal that it blackened the sky in China and the Romans noted a reddening of the sky which helped geologist to later date the eruption. The Waikato River flows from the lake at one end of town and there is a large offering of boating and kayaking from the town. Taupo is also a good base for the exploration of the Tongariro National Park which lies about 50 km to the south.

Tongariro National Park owes its existence to the Tuwharetoa chief, Te Heu Heu Tukino IV who in the nineteenth century recognized that the only chance the Maori had to keep their sacred lands intact was to donate them to the nation on the condition that the land could not be settled or spoiled. The park that was created is dominated by three great volcanoes of Ruapehu, Tongariro and Ngauruhoe which rise from the desolate wasteland. Peter Jackson chose Mt. Ruapehu and the surrounding, desolate plateaus as the model for Mt. Doom for the Lord of the Rings. Mt Ruapheu is active with the last eruption occurring in 1996. The whole are was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1991.

The park is the location of a hike which has been described as the single most spectacular one day hike in all of New Zealand. The hike is called the Tongariro Crossing and it crosses over frozen lava flows a crater floor as well as running nearby geothermal areas and blue and red colored lakes. There is even an option to ascend to the cinder cones of one of the volcanoes. I had chosen the hike because I have never hiked on an active volcano before, let alone Mt. Doom. The day hike is done by being dropped off at one point and picked up at another several hours later. Some companies offer early shuttles where you are dropped off at 6:30 to try to beat the rush of the hundred or so hikers who walk the crossing each summer weekend day.

I wanted to take one of the early shuttles from Taupo to the crossing, but when I called the telephone number of the shuttle company, I only heard an answer machine message that there was bad weather along the crossing and that tours for the day were canceled. The messages were updated every few hours, but all were pessimistic. The information office in Taupo had short range weather reports which were no much cheerier. I wandered about the town, planning contingency plans if I could not hike the crossing the next day. I bought some groceries from the Woolworths and made the walk back to the campground.

In the evening, I called the tour company once more and actually reached a person. He told me that they were not running the early shuttle, but that they might be able to run the normal shuttle the next morning. I told him where I was staying and he told me that they would be there to pick me up at 6:20. However, I should call at 6:00 to check to make sure that they were going to make the run that day.

Since I was getting up really early, I opted to go to bed early. My bed was near the windows of the caravan and I woke up around 2AM to find the skies clear and full of stars. I contemplated going out and trying to find the Southern Cross, but sleep seemed the better option. Alas, the stars were gone when I woke up again to eat some breakfast and to pack my daypack with lunch and my gear. I called the company at 6AM and received bad news. The messaged told me that heavy squalls were occurring on the crossing and that I should go back to sleep which I did. I could have tried to go with another company, but as I had been told that trying to make the crossing in foul weather was pointless, I opted to not do so.

It was a bummer to have staked so much on making the hike and then not being able to do it. My whole schedule had been based on hiking that day and therefore I was missing other sites in New Zealand. But, if I had been able to hike, it would have been worth it.

Instead, I chose to hike along the Waikato River for a few hours. But first, I walked down to Taupo to make a booking to kayak on the river later that day which was silly since a simple phone call would have saved me an hour of walking. From the campground, I walked to a park and then followed a trail down to the river. As I neared the river, I saw steam rising from the vegetation. There was a bridge over a small stream of hot water which was fed by a thermal vent back in the vegetation. The water was hot and people were sitting in pools in the rocks or down where the hot stream met the cold river water. If one were to sit at the meeting of the stream and the river, one could adjust ones position until the temperature of the water was just bearably hot rather than really hot as it was further up the stream. There were signs warning people not to dunk their heads under the water because of the risk of catching bacterial meningitis, but some locals claim this is a farce.

In the distance I could see other plumes of steam rising above the trees. The whole area has thermal vents and nearby is a geothermal power plant. There is also a park called Craters of the Moon which was born when the geothermal plant was built and the natural plumbing under the ground was disturbed. Craters of the Moon is a geothermal area which offers pools of bubbling mud and hissing steam.

I continued past the bubbling stream and followed the path up the hill on the side of the river. It was the river which made the hike rewarding. From the cliffs above, one could look down at the crystal clear water and easily see the bottom. Some parts of the river were tinted topaz due to the sediment and the water was amazingly blue. By this time, I was really looking forward to kayaking later in the day!

I walked for a while until I came upon the Huka Falls which is a narrow, rock chasm which the river is funneled through before falling over a 10 meter high shelf. Although the drop is not high, the shear volume of water flowing though and the spectacular hues of blue make the falls a site worth seeing even if the river level is low. For a long time, no one dared try kayaking through the falls until one mad German made the attempt a few years ago.

As I stood on the cliffs above the falls, I heard a roar that announced the arrival of one of the jet boats which ply the river. Jet boating is a popular adventure sport because the drivers veer towards rocks and trees, turning away just in the nick of time. As the boats approached the falls, the drivers spun the high powered boats about in dizzying circles, much like a car spinning out on ice. There is also a company called Rapid Jet which offers a whitewater jet boating trip over an area of rapids further down the river. According to the Rough Guide, the entire boat gets airborne and the company makes no secret about having sunk three boats in the attempt to give the customers the most thrilling ride possible. The boats look neat, but it is a bit disappointing to hear the high power engines long before the boats appear as you hike through the otherwise quiet landscape.

From the falls, I had hoped to walk up to see the Craters of the Moon, but there was not a walking path. Instead I would have had to have spent an hour and a half walking on the side of a busy road and so instead I decided to continue walking along the river. My time was limited by the departure time of the kayak trip and so I never made it as far as the Aratiatia Dam further downstream. The Waikato River has several hydroelectric dams along its length and the water level is carefully controlled to keep the dams viable. The amount of water flowing into the river from Lake Taupo is controlled by a sluice gate and the Aratiatia Dam. Below the dam, the river is reduced to just a trickle running through the rocky river bed except for four times a day when the dams are opened. The opening of the dam changes the river from a trickle into a class five whitewater rafting course as the water surges and sprays over the rocks.

I turned around to hike back to the campground and was rewarded by lots of rain. I arrived at the campground much earlier than I expected and so I went into the kitchen to grab some water. I saw a family outside, eating at one of the covered picnic tables and said hello to which the father responded with a “hi”. As I was standing in the big kitchen, the father and his young daughter came in to prepare more food and I turned an ear to see if I could pick up words of the language that they were speaking. Sure enough, I started to recognize words, Danish words. I asked in Danish if they were Danish and the man confirmed that they were. I explained, still in Danish that I had lived in Denmark for a while. He told me that they were from outside of Kolding in Jutland and I responded that I had been their neighbor to the north when I worked at Grundfos. However, my Danish only took us so far and we switched into English for the rest of the conversation. His daughter must have reported to the rest of the family that they had met a Danish man because his young son came in to listen. Eventually the son asked his father in Danish why we were speaking in English if I were Danish which I found humorous and his father explained to him that I only knew a little Danish.

I asked how long they would be in NZ and the man explained that he, his wife and their children were currently on a nine month trip which they had started last September. They had started in South America where the adults had spent their first month taking Spanish classes. They had lived with a local family in their home and so between the several hours of Spanish classes each day and conversations with the host family, their knowledge of Spanish grew quickly. From South America, they had come to New Zealand where they would be spending some time. From New Zealand, they would go to South Africa before returning to Denmark.

He explained that for the children, the whole trip was an amazing experience. They were being exposed to different ways of doing things and different cultures, particularly in South America. The children had begun to ask why people that they met did things differently than they did in Denmark. Or the children saw things that they liked and would ask why people in Denmark did not do things that way. The whole trip was broadening their horizons and was a tremendous learning experience.

The man reported that NZ was not that much different than Denmark in the quality of life or the way that things were done. However, he said that people were a lot more friendly in NZ than in Denmark, especially in the cities as compared to Danish cities. People would say hello to each other which was a big difference from Denmark.

I asked how they were able to take off the time for the trip. The man explained that he is a school teacher in Denmark and he had taken off the school year which is why they had left Denmark at the start of the school year. He just could not take off in the middle of the school year because it would have been disruptive to his students. His wife was currently between jobs. During the trip, they were home schooling their children so that they would be able to travel, yet would not fall behind their schoolmates in Denmark. He explained that in Denmark, there is a system in which you are allowed to take a sabbatical the length of which is determined by the number of children that you have. During the sabbatical, the Danish government would pay them a stipend which covered the cost of their mortgage payments and their other financial obligations in Denmark.

After my conversation with the Danish family, I have decided upon the course of my future. I now see that I was foolish to leave Denmark. What I intend to do is to return to Denmark, marry a nice Danish woman who enjoys to travel (which is not a difficult trait to find) and to have enough children to take a long sabbatical to travel the globe while the Danish state pays our bills.

Now confident about my future plans, I bid farewell to the Danish family and walked down to the kayak shop. The people in the shop were really friendly and had when it had been raining, they had considered allowing those who had signed up for the trip to cancel and take a trip the following day. However, the group consisted of a man from the UK and myself and we were both eager to go rain or not. Our guide met us in the shop and gave us nylon jackets to wear to keep us warm if it did rain again. We walked down to the river where we found our plastic kayaks waiting for us in a trailer. We put on our life preservers (they called them something different, but I can not remember the name) and dragged our kayaks into the river (the benefit of plastic is that they can be dragged). As both the other man and I have kayaked before, we did not need much instruction and just leisurely made our way down the river as the sun broke through the clouds, giving us a glorious day.

The man from the UK was competing with me for the shortest length trip to NZ. He was only in the country for a week during a short holiday from his job. He used to be in the Royal Air Force, but now flew commercial jets for a charter company in the UK. The British company was currently contracted by Garuda the Indonesian airline for chartered flights from Indonesia to Saudi Arabia for the Hajj. Indonesia has the largest Muslim population in the world and so a great number of jets and pilots were needed. The man explained that the cost of the trip could be in excess of $4000 which was more than a lot of people earn in a year. So what a lot of villages in Indonesia will do is to collective save money all year so that one person from the village can make the required pilgrimage. The pilot told us that the King Abdul Aziz International Airport in Jeddah, near Mecca is an amazing sight to see. You have these huge, 747s arriving from all over the world at the rate of one a minute at the start of the Hajj. The airport itself is only open for six weeks a year and can accommodate 80,000 people at one time. The length of the pilgrimage is a little over a week which is why the pilot was currently on holiday. Once the Hajj ended, he would again fly his jet back and forth from Indonesia until everyone was back.

New Zealand is the birthplace of commercial bungy jumping and after a short paddle, we came across as part of the river with a tall, stone cliff on one side. One enterprising company had set up a bungee jump by extending a platform out over the river. People would jump off and would be collected by boat once they stopped bouncing up and down. Our guide explained that it cost $135 for each jump. The rope was good for 500 jumps and they had about 160 people make the leap each day. We watched several jumps and our guide explained the proper way to jump since we saw lots of bad jumps. For example, we saw one woman jump feet first which meant that she was whipped about at the bottom as the bungee cord was extended. The proper way to jump is to go head first in a dive. Sometimes the operators will get the length of the bungee cord just right and we saw one man get his head wet in the river before the bungee cord pulled him back up.

We got out of our kayaks and swam in the cold, blue water until we came up on the thermal vent where we hung out in the hot water for a while. From the natural hot tub, we paddled downstream for a while before we took out before we got to the waterfall. The take out was located at a campground which is free to use with the condition that campers not spend extended lengths of time in the free sites. There was a group of guys hanging out near the river and they just nicely wandered down and helped us to carry our kayaks up to the waiting van and trailer. We got into the van and drove off and the guys went back to drinking beer and hanging out.

The kayaking trip was a lot of fun and afterwards I went back up to the campsite for dinner. In the kitchen, I met a retired couple from Colorado who saw my Lehigh t-shirt and asked if I had gone there. The couple had once taught in Darwin for some time and were now touring NZ before going to Darwin to meet up with old friends.

I bid goodnight and went back to my caravan to crash for the night.

Nelson

As our bus neared Nelson, we passed fields of hops which is exported all over the world, especially to places like Germany and the US for beer production. We also passed groves of kiwi fruit, or so we were told. Kiwi is a very fragile fruit and so to prevent the fruits from being damaged by the wind, the groves are usually surrounded by rows of other trees which serve as a break wind and make it difficult to see the kiwi trees themselves.

During one of the rest stops on our way to Nelson, the bus driver had asked everyone where they were staying so that he could drop off people who were staying outside of the city at their hotels rather than at the bus station. Everyone else was either staying downtown or meeting people as the bus station, so when I told the bus driver that I was staying at the Almond House, he offered to drive me there since it was a few blocks from the bus station.

During the short drive from the bus station to the hostel, he told me that since 9/11, the property values in Nelson have doubled. According to the bus driver, there has always been a large population of people from the US who live in Nelson for half the year during the New Zealand summer. Since 9/11, a lot of these people have now decided to live in Nelson year round which has sparked a housing shortage. As we drove into Nelson, we had seen new, luxury apartments being built along the coast. Most of these apartments are sold before they are even built. What is crazy is that many of these apartments are built into the side of cliffs and overlook the container port which is one of the largest in the Southern Hemisphere. The drastic rise in home prices is great for people that can sell their houses and move from Nelson, but it makes it difficult for people who want to move to the city.

A few days later, the shuttle driver who drove me from the hostel to the airport also confirmed that the prices have skyrocketed in the past two years, although he did not connect it with 9/11. As we drove to the airport, he pointed out a few new house lots that were being sold without houses for $100,000 and these were next to the main road. These were the usually 1/4 acre lots on which would be built ranch style houses. He also told of a man from the US who had come in last year and had bought up huge sections of orchids on one of the surrounding hills. The orchid owners named their own prices and the man paid. But, now he is selling sections of the orchids as house lots and stands to make back three times his investment.

I also read in one of the newspapers editorials that New Zealand is currently advertising in California to attract people to invest in the country. The move is a switch from similar campaigns which in the past targeted people in countries such as Japan. According to the article, southern California is being targeted because the climate is so similar to that in New Zealand. The author of the editorial grumbled a bit about how the US investors were driving up prices in New Zealand, especially Nelson in probably the same way that people in the US grumbled about the Japanese buying up property in Manhattan.

The South Island is also becoming a bigger player in the luxury yacht market. The luxury yachts can take upwards to two years to build and therefore some buyers prefer to buy yachts which have already been built rather than to place orders for custom yachts. Since the New Zealand Dollar is still less valuable than the US Dollar, a yacht purchased of the rack in NZ is still less expensive than the same one bought in the US. According to my sources, the yachts that are currently being built in cities such as Nelson are being sold as soon as they are finished.
I arrived at the Almond House where I would be staying for the next two nights and found my way out back where I was met by the manager. She was a friendly woman in her late 40’s who showed me the shared room and fetched me bedding while I chose one of the six beds. The hostel is mostly rooms with two beds each and has only one shared room. There is a house on the street that is part private and holds a few of the rooms. Out back is a grassy courtyard around which the rest of the rooms are located in a L-shaped building. There is also a small pool and a small building that contained the well stocked kitchen and common area with a TV and tons of information about the neighboring Abel Tasman park. Almost all hostels in New Zealand come with kitchens that include stoves, refrigerators, pots, pans, dishes, hot water kettles, toasters and storage space for the guests food. So basically, you can save a bundle of money by cooking your own meals rather than having to eat out each night. I saw a lot of people who have cars bring in a cardboard box with their food items in it which they use at each hostel and then take away with them. The hostel also had tables and chairs in the courtyard where people could lounge and eat their meals.

Although the shared room was a bit claustrophobic with only a skylight for air, the hostel was really nice and quiet. I later met the owner who lives across the street. She told us that she purposefully advertises her hostel in a way that discourages the big bus tours from stopping there to maintain the intimate feel of the hostel. She told us that a few weeks ago, a man from the US who had stayed there for a night had made an offer for the hostel, but as she had only owned it for a year, she was not yet ready to sell it.

I wandered into town in search of a grocery store where I could buy the ingredients for dinner. I was very pleased to see a large grocery store, similar to what you might find in the US. In fact, there was also a Woolworths which was a large grocery store. In Christchurch and in Auckland, one only finds little grocery stores downtown that have maybe one or two aisle. This is not the case of big stores versus mom and pop stores. The urban stores are all chains as well, but they are limited in variety and high in price.

Back at the hostel, I ate in the courtyard and later chatted with one of my roommates. He was from the UK and a molecular geneticist by degree. But, he had been working in hospitality for the past few years in the UK until he had enough of it. He decided to leave his job in the UK and to travel around NZ for a year. He was traveling solo which he described as both liberating and disappointing. Liberating because you could do what you want, but disappointing because he had no one to share it all with. I told him that I would be heading up to Taupo next to hike the Tongariro Crossing. He had just come from there and he told me that the hike had been fabulous and that it should be no problem for a hiker like myself. I was confused as to why he thought I was a serious hiker until I remember the heavy, full grain leather boots that I was wearing. They were the only footwear that I brought other than my dress shoes because I had no room for anything else.

We also met another roommate, Vikki from Essex in the UK. She had just driven into town and was going out for the night with a friend of hers from the UK who happened to be in town as well. When she bid us farewell to go out to the bars, the guy from the UK sighed and reported that all women from Essex were party animals and that we would not see her again till morning which turned out not to be true.

I stayed up for a while, trying to figure out what to do the next day. I had just assumed that there would be a lot of hikes and adventure things to do in Nelson, but I was wrong. Nelson was just a gateway to Abel Tasman park and if I wanted to hike, to kayak or to swim with dolphins, I would have to catch the 8AM bus to the park. I later learned that if I had planned ahead better, I could have been picked up by the kayak companies at the hostel. I also feared about getting to the park and finding out that without reservations, I would not be able to find a kayak. So, I opted to stay in town and wander about which was a bad choice. I should have gone to the park, but at the end of the day, I was in NZ, the sun was shining, the temperature was in the 70’s and I had nothing to do but to explore.

We all settled in around 1AM with the exception of three Israelis in or room who were party animals and came in quite late which is the disadvantage of a shared room.

In the morning, I wound up having a leisurely breakfast of toast and coffee with Vikki. She was in her late 20’s and had been a physical education teacher at a high school. One of her friends had recently left for a year of travel and kept sending postcards back to Vikki to try to get her to leave. But, Vikki was not ready to make that sort of leap. Then one day, Vikki was playing basketball with her friends when she jumped up and somehow managed to tear her Achilles tendon. She had not realized just how bad the damage was until she drove to the hospital where they immediately performed surgery to repair the damage. It took months before she was able to walk again. She told me that she remembered sitting in the hospital right after the injury happened and looking at her life. She looked at the going to and from work, the meetings and shopping for food at night because that was the only time that she had and she decided that she had had enough. Furthermore, she had broken up a few months ago with her boyfriend of several years and she was yearning to exercise a bit of independence. Vikki ended the term at school, sold her house in Essex and flew to New Zealand where she bought a car and has been traveling ever since. She has been traveling from place to place ever since and enjoying herself immensely.

After breakfast, Vikki headed out to the beach with friends and I decided to wander into town to find the information office to see what there was to do. Nelson is a sprawling town with rapidly growing suburbs. The city itself is divided by unpopulated hills which reach into the populated areas like fingers and separate the downtown from the beaches. The downtown area is nice with low buildings and palm tree-lined streets populated with little stores, restaurants and cafes. However, the Vikki reported that the bar area was a bit skanky. The downtown area is dominated by the Anglican cathedral which was built in 1924 and modified several times since. The city is also home to the World of Wearable Arts which showcases art that can be worn as clothing.

I set out for the surrounding hills and hiked up to a summit where a metal sculpture marks the geographic center of New Zealand. I was instructed by the manger of the hostel that I had to take a picture of my feet, one on each side of the marker if I were to achieve the real Kiwi experience. On the hill, I ran into Lexis and Totte who were a really nice couple from Malmö, Sweden (located across the Øresund from Copenhagen). Lexis is originally from the Philippines and her family has recently moved to Auckland. She and Totte had come to tour around the country and hoped to later find jobs so that they could immigrate from Sweden. I don’t know why they would want to leave the dark, rainy winters of Malmö, Sweden or the gorgeous summers of NZ. They were currently traveling through NZ as part of the Kiwi Experience which is a package transportation deal. They got stuck in Nelson because it is one of the only cities that you need bus reservations to leave and so they were making the best of their day.

I continued to hike through the hills, but it was not as good as the hikes in Abel Tasman would have been. I had to wear a hat and lots of sun block for protection from the rays of the sun. According to the manager of the hostel, in Australia school children are now required to wear hats when they go out to play and those who do not are punished. The hat rule is catching on in NZ as well due to the intense radiation thanks to the hole in the ozone layer in the southern hemisphere. It now takes less than ten minutes of exposure to the sun for a burn to occur and everyone picks up a farmers tan pretty quickly.

After the hike, I returned to the hostel where I had a great swim followed by a shower. I found that I now had two women from the US as roommates as well as a man from the UK who had just brought his motorcycle over on the ferry to Pincton at 4AM to take advantage of the discount in cost and who slept for most of the evening. The women from the US had been in Taupo the week before and they had tried to hike part of the Tongariro Crossing in the rain. They reported that it just was not worth it because the heavy clouds limited visibility to only a few feet. They saw some hikers who were making the trek without heavy gear and they reported that they looked miserable. I called a company in Taupo that runs a shuttle to the Tongariro Crossing and the message I heard reported bad weather and that all tours were canceled for the day. It was not a good sign.

For dinner, I had bought some of the green-lipped muscles which are native to the area. I found plastic containers of precooked and shelled muscles in Woolworths and expected to just bring them back to warm them up without the mess of the shells in the communal kitchen. However, much to my dismay the muscles were pickled in vinegar, much like picked herring. I had bought a lot because I like muscles, but due to the high vinegar content, I could not eat them all which was disappointing.

The morning brought with it rain and cloudy skies. I made some breakfast, bid farewell to everyone and went out front to catch the airport shuttle that I had booked to catch my flight to Taupo. I had opted to fly first to Wellington and then to Taupo on Origin Airline, a domestic airline to save time. Plus, the flight from Nelson to Wellington was $69 and took about 20 minutes whereas the bus and ferry to cover the same distance would have taken five hours and would have cost the same. The flight up to Taupo saved another seven hours over the bus or the train and cost less since I had booked in advance.

On the airport shuttle, I met a family from Canada. There was a mother and her daughter and young son. The daughter had a scarf over her face like robbers in the old westerns and the mother explained that a bug had bitten her on her face and she was having a bad reaction. They were also going to Taupo, but were considering canceling their plans so that they could go to the hospital to see a doctor about the swelling. The daughter said something about the problem and although her voice was muffled, I could have sworn she dropped a f bomb. I was surprised since she looked young behind her scarf, but later I learned that she was actually in her 20’s and living in NZ for a few months on her own.

We arrived at the airport in the rain and discovered that our flight was delayed for over an hour due to the weather. The problem was that our plane was coming from Christchurch and it was delayed there due to fog. I hung out in the airport and noticed that the Canadian family had disappeared. Later on, just as we were about to board our flight, they reappeared. The mother who was visibly relieved told me that they were unable to change their tickets and so they thought that they were not going to be able to go. But, thanks to the delay, the had been able to catch a taxi to the airport where they had been met by a specialist who knew exactly what was wrong with the daughter and was able to prescribe something to reduce the swelling. The mother told me that thanks to the NZ healthcare system, even as guests in the country, the visit to the emergency room and the treatment were all free.

We boarded our little, twin propeller plane and I was amazed that we did not go through a metal detector. When I checked in, I didn’t even have to give an ID to prove who I was. I just told them my name and that I had an eticket and they issued me a boarding pass. I don’t even know if our baggage went through a metal detector. The cockpit door was a screen. The flight to Wellington was uneventful and we arrived with only 30 minutes to wait for our flight to Taupo. The Canadian mother was also amazed at the lack of security as she had been worried about moving their Leathermen to their checked luggage at which point I remember that mine was still in my pocket. Oops.

Wellington is home to Peter Jackson, the director of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. It is where the Return of the King was premiered and the cast spent a lot of time in the city. A large display on the airport building features Gollum and welcomes visitors to Middle Earth. Inside the airport, numerous costumes from the film are on display.

Wellington is an international airport and so I assume that to get to the international flights, passengers would have to go through more screening. What was also odd was that the airport tower was located near the airport, but in a residential neighborhood with houses all around.

We boarded our flight to Taupo which was another twin prop plane and settled back for an uneventful flight.

I assume that you have seen the common story which I was told by some of the people that I have met as to why they came to New Zealand to travel. New Zealand, Australia and SE Asia are most certainly the destinations of choice for people who have tired of their life and have decided to travel for a year. Are these truly adventurous people or are they tormented souls on the run? Whatever their reason for their decision to quit their jobs, to sell their possessions and to travel, one can not deny the courage that it must have taken and the strength of will to live out of a backpack for a year. Eventually they will face the question of what to do next. I wonder what will happen when they try to go back.

Travel from Christchurch to Greymouth and on to Nelson

My plan for Wednesday, January 28 was to take the train from Christchurch to Greymouth on the other side of the South Island and then to take a bus up to Nelson at the top of the South Island where I would spend the night. The train is called the Tranzalpine and it makes its way across the Canterbury Plains before working its way across the Alps through a series of tunnels. I had chosen to go this route rather than to take the direct route to Nelson so that I could take the train through the Alps. The Tranzalpine has been described as one of the top five most beautiful train rides in the world and it did not disappoint. The views of the mountains and glacial fed rivers were absolutely brilliant.

The passenger train service in New Zealand is now defunct with the remaining few operating lines serving primarily as tourist trains. For example, from Christchurch, there is only one train each day to Picton as compared to the multiple busses plying the same route. There is also only one train a day to Greymouth. As the train system is no longer in regular service, the train company sold the railroad station which was in the city and moved its operations to the suburbs. Fortunately, a shuttle bus runs around to various hostels and hotels in search of people who were taking the trains and so all I had to do was to get up early and to meet the shuttle van outside. There was another hostel down the street from mine where we picked up a woman from Darwin who I wound up chatting with a lot in the van and on the train. I had booked my ticket in advance from the US and so all that I had to do was to walk into the station to get my seat assignment. The woman from Darwin and I wound up in the same train car, but at different ends. The rest of the seats in the car were taken up by a tour group from the US and I wound up sitting across from the leader of the tour group who was a man in his forties and from Pawtucket, Rhode Island.

The tour guide has led tours of NZ and Australia for years. In the northern hemisphere summer months, he also leads tours through Scandinavia and he agreed that Norway is probably the most beautiful country in the world. He was busy chatting with his group and with confirming that the hotel they were going to that night knew that they were coming. While he was chatting with someone from the hotel, he actually lost his mobile telephone signal which would have sparked a national outrage if it had occurred in Scandinavia where even the most remote regions have clear reception.

Since I aspire to lead specialty tour groups some day, I asked him about his job and what it was like to be the tour leader. Having known other people who have led tours in the world, I knew that the job was hardly a picnic. I don’t know how long this tour had been on the road, but he was open to talking with someone who was not one of his paying customers. He told me that at one time he had managed a hotel. Then one week he wound up working over one hundred hours and decided that there had to be more to life. He resigned from his position and began to work for the tour company. He said that part that he dreads the most abut the job these days are the long flights. He will usually fly to Australia a few days before his clients so that he has time to adjust. He also will lead several tours in succession so that he does not have to go back and forth from the US. In the old days, he did not care, but now the travel part of the travel grates on him.

He also said that the most difficult part of his job is the clients who are ungrateful. People who complain about the food or the hotel or about getting up early. Other people complain that the tour does not allow enough freedom which is a bit silly since it is an organized tour. People will find fault with anything and it annoys him because in his mind they are all so lucky to have the time and the money to be able to travel in the first place. He said that one just can not take the complaints personally or else it would just constantly build up to the point that one could not take it any more.

It was nice to be sitting amongst his tour group because he was full of commentary about the land that we were passing. He explained that although the Canterbury Plain is flat, it is inclined at a steep angle from the ocean up to the Alps. So during the 45 minutes or so it took the train to cross the plains, we gained a lot in altitude even before entering the mountains. One person asked about the sheep we saw out the windows and the tour guide explained that a few years ago, there were 80 million sheep in New Zealand as compared to 4 million people. He joked that at one point, he expected to arrive in NZ and find the sheep running the country. But, declining prices on the world market for wool and lamb has caused a lot of farmers to look into herding other animals and the number of sheep has now declined to only 40 million. Dairy is now growing and in fact the cheese and butter I found in Yantai, China came from NZ. Farmers are now also herding deer to sell. It was odd to pass herds of deer in pens since these same animals can be found grazing in my parent’s back yard.

I left my seat and made my way forward in the train, through numerous cars until I reached the observation car. This was a metal car without seats or windows so that we could look out on the scenery we were passing and take pictures without worrying about the glare from the windows. The only problem was that the observation car was only a few cars behind the diesel locomotive and every time we went through a tunnel, those in the observation car were left gasping for breath in the diesel fumes. At the end of the trip, I wiped my face with a white napkin and it turned black from all of the dust and soot I had collected from standing in the car for most of the ride.

I arrived just in time for the train had just started entering the mountains and soon the car was full of people. But surprisingly, the car cleared out after a short time until the only people who were left were the woman from Darwin, a woman from New York city and myself. The mountains we passed were striking, but what I found to be more amazing were the glacial fed rives that were aquamarine in color. The rivers ran in cannons that were about 100 feet deep with white sand and rocks at the bottom which made the rivers even more striking. The mountains were not so much high, tree covered affairs, but more like gentle hills with low, green shrubbery or brown grass on them. The tops of the mountains were obscured by fluffy clouds that hung low in the sky and imitated the cows and sheep grazing in the fields below. The mountain sides were stained white where runoff from prior rain storms had flowed, cutting into the earth.

We passed people out hiking or biking on trails or kayaking on the clear, blue waters. Plus there are ski fields in the surrounding mountains, all of which were only an hours drive from Christchurch. What an amazing resource for outdoor enthusiasts who live in Christchurch.

As the scenery rolled past and as I shot picture after picture (you would have been proud, Sue), we drew up to the station at the village of Arthur’s Pass. The village is nestled in one of the U shaped valleys and was originally established by railroad workers who were building a tunnel through the pass. The entire tour group got off at this stop to catch a bus to see the nearby glaciers and the woman from Darwin got off for a day of hiking. In fact, most of the passengers got off at Arthur’s Pass rather than to continue on to Greymouth.

I seriously spent several minutes debating about just getting off of the train to spend the night in the village. I had thought about it when I was planning the trip as well, but had opted to spend the day in Nelson instead. I would later regret not getting off of the train, but to do so would have meant eating what I had paid for the bus ticket from Greymouth to Nelson and canceling my reservation at a hostel that night. My later regrets about not spending the night in Arthur’s Pass were only offset by the really neat people who I would meet in the next 24 hours and who I would not have met otherwise. If not for the people, I would probably still be upset about my choice.

Once the train left the Arthur’s Pass station, it plunged into a 8,529 meter long tunnel which was the longest in the British Empire at the time of its construction in 1923. The tunnel completed the Christchurch to Greymouth rail link and was originally designed for electric locomotives. The tunnel steadily increases in grade and trains making the return trip must use two locomotives, one serving to the brake the train.

It took about 15 minutes to travel through the tunnel during which time the observation car was closed. Soon after we cleared the tunnel we found ourselves once again in hills, but ones that were not quite as dramatic as before and with more tree cover. The vegetation would become more tropical, reflecting the 5 meters (16.5 feet!) of annual rainfall the west coast of the South Island receives each year. Since we had passed to the other side of the mountain ridge, we were now following the route of the Grey River as it made its way towards the west coast of the island and the Tasman Sea. There were more signs of settlement as we passed some houses and the occasional dam. We also passed a lot of sheep and cattle and even an occasional emu ranch.

The original impetuous to build the rail line through the mountains was to be able to get the gold discovered during the gold rush of the 19th century into Christchurch. I don’t know if the source of the gold has been exhausted, but there is still coal mining in the area.

The train ride took a total of four and a half hours and we pulled into the Greymouth train station at 12:30. The train would then be making the return trip to Christchurch. A roundtrip ticket was only a little more expensive than a one way ticket, but even though the trip was spectacular, I don’t think I would have wanted to have made the trip back. However, one could also get off in Arthur’s Pass and then catch the return train to Christchurch later in the day, allowing for several hours of hiking in the mountains and which would have been a good option for a day trip from Christchurch.

The bus station in Greymouth is conveniently located in the same building as the train station and so I only had to get off the train, collect my bag from the luggage car and wait. The town of Greymouth has been described by the Rough Guide as one of the most dispiriting towns on the west coast and so I left without regretting having a chance to look about. The Intercity bus was large, comfortable and easily one of the nicest bus rides that I have ever taken. As there were only a few passengers, I could spread out and enjoy the scenery as we passed. The road took us on a ridge along the coast, affording beautiful views of the beaches below and the coastline beyond. I am very happy that I took the bus because the scenery was beautiful.

When I had looked at the bus schedule, I had wondered why the bus trip would take seven hours. I soon found out when after only 45 minutes of travel, the bus driver announced a rest stop that would last for 45 minutes at a roadside café and shop. The bus driver urged us to walk across the road to the Paparoa Nation Park which is home to the Pancake Rocks and blowholes. The rocks are accessed by walking along a trail though a short woods to the edge of cliffs that descend rapidly to the sea. According to the Rough Guide, the limestone rocks at the waters edge have been weathered to resemble an immense stack of giant pancakes created by stylobedding, a chemical process in which the pressure of overlying sediments creates alternating durable and weaker bands. The stacks of rocks, just crying for some syrup are undermined by huge caverns where incoming waves may send spumes of water sprouting up through blowholes.

The bus driver had put the fear of God into all of the passengers by warning that we only had a few minutes to see the site and told tales of passengers left behind who had been eaten alive by the Westland black petrels which breed in the area and are cousins of the albatross. (I made that last part up to see if you were awake). So a group of us from the bus quickly made our way over to the track and walked out to the rocks. I wound up walking next to Kelly, a woman from the UK and we started chatting as we made our way out to the rocks. The rocks were really neat, but we did not see anything resembling a blowhole. We asked one of the rangers working on the trails and he explained that you had to have high swells in order for the blowholes to work. Unfortunately, we were at low tide at the time which made matters worse and so we had to settle for the pancakes which were novel enough to please.

Kelly and I had been speaking about places that we had been in NZ and beyond and once we reboarded the bus, we moved to sit next to each other to continue our chat. Kelly is currently on a one year trip around the world. She had just come from Australia where she had spent several months and several months in south-east Asia before that. She would spend a good number of weeks in New Zealand before continuing on to the Pacific islands such as Fiji and Tahiti. I asked her how she was able to do this and she told me a bit about her story.

In the UK she had been working for twelve years at a big insurance company, staring in human resources. Later she had moved into web development because although the companies technical people made great web sites, they lacked the people skills to make them user friendly or to convey the message that they company wanted on the sites. Her career was going well and she had a house, a car and all of that. Then one day, she looked at her life and the routine of going to work from 9 till 5, returning home tired and only having a little time in the evening for herself. She realized that this was the rest of her life and that perhaps there was more. She decided to sell her house, her car and her belongings and to take off and travel around the world for a year while she was still young enough to be able to backpack and to enjoy it.

There are guidelines for this sort of thing and the rule of thumb for one year of travel is that you only choose two continents to concentrate on. She chose Asia and Australasia and her travel was dictated by her plane ticket which required her to always move counterclockwise around the world. She could go from Australia to New Zealand, but not back. Her final stop would be in California on her way back to the UK. However, it sounds like she will never be truly be able to go back to the normal work day again because she was very interested in the WorldTeach program or other opportunities to volunteer abroad after her travels were over. Once one gets a taste of the freedom of making decisions such as, “I think that I will go to Laos today”, the thought of a daily job with two weeks of holiday is horrifically constraining.

Speaking of Laos, the vegetation that we passed by as we skirted the coast was included palms and other tropical looking vegetation. It struck me as looking like what I would picture SE Asia to be like and Kelly confirmed that it reminded her of Laos. The abundance of dark green vegetation that climbed the surrounding hillsides is what drew the comparison.

To my disappointment since our conversation was really interesting, Kelly got off the bus in the city of Westport to sample the jet boating. Kelly had spent a night in Greymouth as well and she had said that the town was as boring as the guidebook said. She had gone to the information office in Greymouth (every little town in New Zealand has a staffed information office, full of brochures and the staff can help to book accommodations or outings), but when she had asked about things to do that might keep her in Greymouth for another night they staff had not been able offer anything and so she left. I doubt she found much better in Westport which the guidebook describes as running Greymouth close for the dubious honor of being the most dispiriting town.

After Westport, our bus left the coast and began to climb through the surrounding hills. The road made for some adventurous driving. There were times when the road narrowed to a single lane in order to make its way around a cliff with the river below us and rock extending above. There were mirrors on the side of the cliff so that drivers from each direction could see if there was a car currently making its way around the bend. There must be some rule about who has the right of way.

We passed through wooded areas that showed signs of logging. It turns out that the entire area is the largest man-made forest in the world, specifically made for the logging industry. I saw a lot of pine trees that only had branches at the very top. It was later explained to me that the lower branches were all cut away so that the trees grew straight. I also learned that the pine tree is not indigenous to New Zealand, but was brought by the European settlers.

We passed by a section of river which was used for one of the river scenes in the Lord of the Rings (bus driver commentary). The LOTR filming sites are scattered throughout NZ and it would take a persevering and wealthy person to visit them all. For example, I later met a man who had signed up with a tour of Hobbiton. He said that most of the set had been disassembled but that one could still make out Bilbo’s door and the party tree. Small concession for the $50 he paid for the privilege.

Our bus made another long stop for dinner and it was close to 20:00 that we finally arrived in the town of Nelson.

Christchurch

My flight from Los Angeles arrived in Auckland, New Zealand close to midnight on Saturday, January 24. Although the hour was late, there were also other flights arriving at this time from other destinations. It might be that the airlines schedule flights to arrive at certain times during the day so that the customs workers do not have to be at their posts 24 hours a day, but rather only when the groups of flights arrive. The airport shops were of course open and I went to an ATM right outside my gate to get some cash for the airport shuttle to my hotel. What I did not realize at the time was that although the ATM belonged to the Bank of New Zealand, it had an option to give the user Australian Dollars. I mistakenly chose to get Australian Dollars, a mistake that I did not realize until later since I had never seen either currency before and I never looked at the bills other than to check their value.

There were the usual lines for customs after which we had to collect our bags and to go through a very stringent import control. All food products had to be declared as did any hiking or camping equipment. To ensure that each person had declared everything, all bags had to be x-rayed once more in search of food products. I was wearing a pair of heavy hiking boots that had picked up a bit of dirt in the treads in LA and so I had to go off to a back room where they were disinfected by walking over a pad soaked with disinfectant. Plants and animals and tourism are the lifeblood of the NZ economy and so these strict measures were taken to prevent a disease such as Hoof and Mouth disease from entering the country.

Since I was to fly out to Christchurch in the morning, I had booked at a bed and breakfast which was located near the airport and which also had a free shuttle service. However, the free shuttle did not run so late at night and so I would have to find my own way to my bed for the night. At first the taxi and shuttle vans turned me away as the B&B normally had a shuttle service and they told me where to find it. However, since the owner of the B&B had told me that I would need to get to my room on my own, I returned to the shuttle driver and asked the price. Fortunately, I had asked the B&B owner how much I should expect to pay and so I knew the drivers first number was too high. The haggling went quickly and soon I was in the van. The airport shuttles in New Zealand are mostly small vans with lockable, metal trailers behind them where the luggage is stowed. The driver waited until the van was full before departing from the airport. Once at the B&B, I paid the driver and found the key under the entrance mat as promised by the owner. Inside, I found a note with my room key and I settled down for the night.

As I lay in bed, I was overwhelmed by a strange smell that I think was coming from a plant outside my open window. The smell reminded me quite strongly of smell that I remember from India. I was disappointed that it was dark out and so I would have no chance of determining where the smell was coming from before I would get used to the smell and stop noticing it. Sure enough, by morning I had forgotten all about it and never noticed it again.

I had breakfast at the B&B after which the owner took me in her van to the airport for my flight to Christchurch. I mentioned to her that her advice regarding the cost of the airport shuttle had been quite useful the night before. She told me that other guests had been terribly overcharged in the past and she blamed it on the Indians who would rip anyone off. I did not quite comprehend what she meant at first because what did people from India have to do with anything. It was later that I realized that she was talking about the Maori or perhaps other Polynesians in general. It was my first hint that the two populations of people still did not quite get along.

The Qantas flight to Christchurch took about one hour and I arrived around noontime. An airport shuttle van got me from the airport to the hostel where I would be spending the next few nights. I had a single in a clean, quiet hostel near the large city park. The hostel had a kitchen, lots of shared bathrooms, common areas and even laundry facility available. After checking in, one of the first order of business was to find a grocery store where I could purchase the makings of lunch. I failed to find a grocery store, but I did find a Shell gas station with a market where I got the makings for a picnic in the nearby park. It was the teenager at the register who first gave me a clue that I had taken out Australian Dollars instead of New Zealand Dollars when I offered him a $50 bill. Fortunately he was honest and told me the problem since the Australian bill was worth more than its New Zealand counterpart. I guess that the shuttle driver in Auckland had gotten the better of the deal after all, but on the other hand if he had refused the bill, I would have been stuck since I had no other currency at the time. After lunch, I set out to explore the city.

The city of Christchurch was not quite as I expected. The city is small with a population of just over 300,000 and the downtown area is easily seen by foot. The city was originally founded on the Canterbury Plain as an outpost of Anglicanism by the first settlers. The city itself is low rise with most buildings being under four stories tall. The center of the city is the cathedral which is a Gothic revival Anglican church, fronted by a large plaza called Cathedral Square. Most of the downtown area lies within a few blocks of Cathedral Square before turning over to residential areas. The sites include the stunning Christchurch Art Gallery, Christ's College, various other museums and the Christchurch Town Hall.

The Town Hall is the site of a world renown concert hall which was quite revolutionary in design when it was built in 1972. Since I was in Christchurch, I had to visit the hall as part of my quest to visit the great concert halls of the world. The hall itself is shaped sort of like a punch bowl with the stage at one end and two levels of seating around the edges. The hall was revolutionary due to its shape and the fact that it actually works. A lot of effort was made by the acoustic engineers and the architects to ensure that the sound was correctly distributed by using reflective and sound absorbing panels which are quite prominent in the hall. The natural wood color of the panels and the burgundy upholstery give the hall a warm feeling.

Through the downtown area winds the Avon River and it is possible to hire boats to navigate its narrow banks. West of the city center lies Hagley Park which is gigantic in size and includes a botanical gardens and playing fields. The park is larger than the built-up downtown area and rumor has it that the park was created to separate the Anglican districts near the cathedral from the Presbyterians in the suburbs beyond. There are also areas of thriving restaurant and cafés as well as upmarket shopping.

I am not quite sure what I expected Christchurch to look like, but it was not quite what I found. I think that perhaps I am used to European cities with central downtown areas with old town areas. Although a nice city, Christchurch's not so orderly or centralized downtown lacks lots of impressive architecture. Furthermore, as you drive outside of Christchurch you find lots of new housing developments as the city sprawls outwards from its core. The developments are mostly 1/8 acre lots with small, one story houses dropped down side by side. The development sites were once orchards or farm lands and beyond the new construction is the countryside which does not take long to find.

Christchurch lies on the Canterbury Plain which is fertile plain which slopes upwards from the ocean to the Alps. The plains were broken into huge tracts by the original settlers and a good number of these tracts still remain and are farmed by the descendents of the original settlers. To the east of the city lies the coast with numerous beaches and to the south of Christchurch lies the Banks Peninsula.

I set out for a day trip to the Banks Peninsula on Monday, specifically to visit the little town of Akaroa which is a 90 minute bus ride from Christchurch. I caught the 8AM bus in Cathedral Square and it was funny to watch the other backpackers stumble out of Starbucks to catch the bus. The Banks Peninsula is made up of two massive drowned volcanic craters the cones of which jut out from the otherwise flat Canterbury Plain. The craters now form the protective harbors where the towns of Lyttelton and Akaroa are located. Lyttelton serves as the harbor for cruise ships which call on Christchurch. The surrounding hills are mostly bald due to over forestation by the early settlers and only covered with long grass, brown due to the drought. Captain Cook originally thought that the volcanoes were islands due to the salt lakes which extend from the ocean into the plain and he named the area Banks Island after his botanist Joseph Banks.

Our bus made its way out of Christchurch quite quickly and soon we were skirting between the hills and the salt lakes. The road up through the hills wound its way up and up, hugging crests and rims before descending to Akaroa. I found that the bus drivers in New Zealand often add commentary so that the passengers know what they are seeing and our bus driver that day was no exception. He explained about the landscape, the trees we passed and the settlement of Akaroa. The town of Akaroa was originally settled by the French and today one can still see French flags flying around the town. Today the town is a picturesque place to get away. There are easy hikes around the area, but many tourists head right for the docks from which boats set out to allow their patrons to swim with the dolphins which live in the harbor (book way in advance). For those who choose to stay on land, there are lots of little cafes, sandy beaches, small sailboats moored in the harbor and mountains all around the bay. I later met one woman who spent four days living on a nearby farm. Each day she would go down to the beach to relax for the day and then to dig the muscles which would be her dinner for the night.

I unfortunately, had to catch an early afternoon bus back to Christchurch so that I could be back in time for my first interview that evening. I was to meet a man from the office at a popular pub downtown so I got cleaned up and walked over to meet him. My interview the next day with the director was over lunch, so everything was rather informal. However, I was glad that I had brought my suit with me. I was also very glad that I brought my umbrella because it was pouring that Tuesday. I was later told that New Zealand is currently suffering from a drought and so everyone was happy to see the downpour. However, normally such a heavy, sustained rain only happens maybe three times a year with quick showers or drizzles being the normal rule.

When we sat down for lunch, we chose a table outside near a couple that was smoking, but was about to leave. Their presence turned the conversation briefly to smoking. A new law will be going into affect in New Zealand this summer which will ban smoking from any public building including bars and restaurants, similar to the laws in New York, Florida, California and soon to be Massachusetts. What I was surprised to learn was that in New Zealand it is legal to ask a job applicant if they smoke and to deny that person a job if they do smoke. Marshall Day had a project on one of the new airports in the country and during one of the planning meetings the question of what to do with the smokers arose. If people were to be allowed to smoke in the airport, special rooms would have to be set up with a second ventilation system which would be expensive. The decision was made to just ban all smoking and to require that the passengers smoke outside before entering the building. It is a model which has been duplicated in other airports in the country.

I also learned that New Zealand is largely self-sufficient when it comes to its energy needs. The country depends on mostly geothermal and hydroelectric sources to supply the electricity and is blessed with an ample supply of both resources. However, the system has its drawbacks in years of droughts and rolling blackouts can occur when the water supply runs low. Therefore, New Zealand has a new project underway where six new dams will be built on one of the rivers on the South Island. However, other sources of energy are also being sought. The people I spoke with were appalled by the idea of using fossil fuels for energy due to the pollution, but were equally appalled by the idea of nuclear, particularly after the stance that New Zealand took with the US and with France. The people reported that wind turbines and not satisfactory which I took issue with, but apparently NZ is also looking at underwater turbines.

I mentioned that I had consulted a friend of mine from Auckland about things to see in NZ and she had written back that Christchurch was a boring town. I mentioned this to the guys from the office and asked if this is a North Island versus South Island type of thing. They responded that it is an Auckland versus everyone else type of thing. Auckland is by far the largest city in the country and the most cosmopolitan. Therefore, someone from Auckland might look at Christchurch in the same way that someone from Boston might look at Little Rock.

I was of course asked about how long I was planning to live in NZ. While we were on the subject, the people from the office explained how challenging it is to hire a person right out of university in New Zealand. The problem is that it is just generally accepted that people will spend a year abroad once they pay off their student loans and so the company knows that the recent graduate will leave them in a short time. At one time, people spent the year abroad right when they got out of school, but the rising cost of a university degree resulted in the change. The fact that most everyone takes off for a year to travel would go a long way towards explaining why you find so many Kiwis (New Zealanders) traveling all over the world.

One of the men who I interviewed with had spent several years going to university and then working in the UK. However, he returned to NZ because he belived that the quality of life was better and because it was a much more affordable place to live. During my travels, I would meet several people from the UK who had chosen to move to NZ for the same reasons, so there must be something to these claims. For example, at my hostel I met a man who was just starting a career at Pratt & Whitney in Christchurch. He had come to NZ to visit and had fallen in love with the place. It had taken him about two months to get his work permit, but now he was in NZ to stay.

After lunch was over, we went back to the office where I continued to chat with the director. It turns out that the whole idea of having the informal interviews was to get to know me on a social basis since it is difficult to judge that sort of thing by a piece of paper called a resume. The idea was that you can always train someone, but it is a persons personality which can not be easily changed.

What I was surprised to learn in the interview was that the Christchurch office was small with only three people currently employed. I had not realized that the Auckland office was the larger of the two offices, but it is the Christchurch office which is currently expanding. They have already hired a man from the UK. The British man and his wife are avid gliders and they specifically chose Christchurch as a place to live due to the consistent thermals in the area. The interviews were also a good way for me to learn about the office and to get an impression of New Zealand. As of this writing, I still do not know if I have the job or not or if I would take it if I did.

Once the interview was over and I could walk back to the hostel to change out of the suit, the sky became bright and sunny and chased the rain clouds away of course. So, I spent the afternoon wandering about the city. It was a bit disconcerting to be in a foreign country but to be able to understand what was being said. I also noticed that people were walking on the left rather than the right. However, this may have just been a fluke because I don't remember noticing it much later. One thing that I was sure of was to obey the crosswalk signs and to only cross with the light since traffic in NZ drives on the left. On a prior trip to London a few years ago, even after having been in the city for over a week I was still stepping out into traffic and so now in Christchurch when I was tired I was taking no chances.

New Zealand in general seems to have a large Asian population, particularly Japanese but it was difficult to determine if the people that I saw were residents or tourists. However, in the larger cities there are a number of Chinese, Korean, Thai and other Asian restaurants. I stopped by a Korean restaurant for some Bi Bim Ba'b which was something that I remembered from the Korean restaurant in Yantai, China. However, it was not the same as I remembered. That night I packed up my things in preparation for my first day of travel in New Zealand.

The Lord of the Rings is fiction, but Middle Earth is real

The trip to New Zealand all began when I returned to the United States at Christmas. I realized at that time that if I were to live abroad again, I would prefer to do so in an English speaking country. Although I love the idea of learning new languages and I relish the idea of being fluent in more than one language, I realized that to connect with people immediately, the language of the new country would have to be English. Therefore, I decided to concentrate on looking for jobs in New Zealand and Australia for about a week or so before turning my full attention to looking for jobs in the United States.

The search was done by looking for the acoustical society web site for these countries and then researching and contacting the member companies. I had heard of the New Zealand based Marshall Day Acoustics company while I was in Denmark and so I recognized the name when I saw it on the list of companies. I made contact with the company by using Google to find a list of names of people who worked at Marshall Day and their email addresses. I was lucky and contacted someone who passed my resume to the director of the Christchurch office. The director wrote an email to me to say that he had received my resume and that they were hiring, but that it would probably be a few weeks before I heard from him again. I wrote back to ask if he would be interested in meeting if I could get myself to New Zealand. He responded that he had thought about asking if I might be in New Zealand in the near future because he would have a difficult time in hiring someone he had not met. He told me that he did have an open position and he promised that if I could get to New Zealand, he would not hire anyone else until he had the opportunity to meet with me.

I thought about what to do and the expense of getting to New Zealand. Going to the other side of the earth is exciting but also a bit nerve-wracking. But I realized that the opportunity of interviewing with a company in Christchurch does not come along very often and that I would regret not going down to speak with people from the company. Maybe I would not regret it tomorrow, but perhaps in a few years I would wonder what would have happened. It was one of those times that you are presented with an opportunity that is crazy in nature, but that you simply have to grab onto. After all, what is the point of opportunities if you don't take them? So, I decided to go to New Zealand even though my chances of actually getting the job were slim. Besides, the worst-case scenario was that I had time to tour about New Zealand.

The emails with the company had occurred on Thursday and Friday, January 15 and 16. By Saturday, January 17 I had purchased my tickets and on Thursday, January 22 I started my trip to New Zealand, so this all went very quickly once the decision was made to go.

In order to make the trip affordable, I purchased the tickets in pieces rather than all from one place. The main ticket from Los Angeles to Auckland, New Zealand was purchased through Air New Zealand using an internet special. I used frequent flyer miles to purchase the ticket from Boston to Los Angeles and the Qantas (the Australian airline) web site to purchase a ticket from Auckland to Christchurch. The length of the trip would only be a little more than a week which was unfortunate, but the brevity was dictated by interviews with a company in the US, which was tentatively scheduled for early February.

Once the airline tickets were purchased, I spent several intense days with my guidebooks (Rough Guide and LP) trying to figure out where to go and what to see. There is so much to see in New Zealand that I wanted to try to see as much as possible in my short time. A person I met later in one of the hostels related how people go to Australia, see how big it is and ask how they can possible see anything. On the other hand, people go to New Zealand, see how small it is and ask how they can possibly see everything. Since the trip was so short, I wanted to make sure that all of my transportation and accommodation were booked so that I would not be stuck due to a full bus or walking all over town in search of a hostel with room. These fears were due to warnings in the guidebooks about full occupancies during the summer months (don't forget that summer in NZ is our winter), but it actually was not a problem. But, I could not know that before I got to NZ and so I booked everything online or by telephone including trains, busses, flights and hostels.

So, those are my reasons for going and some of the logistics of the trip. Now on to New Zealand!

This series of emails will be a bit different from the other emails which I have written about my travels. The emphasis of these emails will not be as much on what I did as much as the people that I met along the way. As a single traveler, one is far more apt to meet other travelers than if one is traveling with a companion. When you travel with someone else, you tend to spend most of your time with that person which is fantastic, but I think that other people may see it as an obstacle to engaging you in conversation. But, as a solo traveler, one is more apt to want to engage strangers in conversations and since other solo travelers may feel the same way, it makes it easier to meet people. Plus, I was staying in hostels and sleeping in shared rooms which means that I had several roommates to meet.

I left on Thursday, January 22 for LA where I would catch my flight to New Zealand the next day. Logistically, I could have flown to LA on the same day of my flight to New Zealand, but I would have been pushing it and risking missing my flight if the LA bound flight had been late. My friends Renee, Mark and Luke who live in Long Beach were nice enough to take me in for the night and to make sure that I caught my flight in the morning. I know Renee from my time at Washington University in St. Louis and the Catholic Student Center there. Renee is one of the people who have had a profound effect on my life and so it was really good to see her, her husband Mark who has been a tremendous help in the past in trying to find funding for my studies and their new son, Luke. Renee had two friends at Wash U who married two of Mark’s friends at his alma mater, Purdue. The mix of Wash U women with Purdue men seems to be a potent one. Thankfully the two universities are far enough apart geographically that the mixing of coeds does not happen too often or no one at either school would get any class work done. I also got to meet their friend, Ruth who has been on this email list for some time, but who I have never met before.

On Friday, January 23 I boarded my flight bound for Auckland, New Zealand. I remember sitting in the airport prior to boarding and trying not to think about the fact that I was about to go to New Zealand. Plus I would be arriving in Auckland on Saturday at midnight and I would need to figure out how to get myself to where I was staying for the night. It was easier just to be present in the moment than to worry about all of that when I could not do anything about it at that time anyway.

You know it is a long flight when the in-flight entertainment includes four movies. The flight was scheduled to take 12 hours and 45 minutes. Fortunately, the Air New Zealand flight was very comfortable and I had two seats to myself so that I could spread out. Air New Zealand really plays up on the Lord of the Rings popularity and it calls itself "the airline to Middle Earth". Several of its planes have been named after characters from the books and decorated with pictures of the actors. Plus the in-flight entertainment included a piece about the filming of the movies with interviews with the actors and footage of the filming.

The time difference between Eastern Standard Time and New Zealand is only six hours (NZ is 18 hours ahead). The flight took so long because we crossed both the equator and the date line. This trip was the first time that I had been to the southern hemisphere and the first time I was in Australasia (the continent of Australia, New Zealand and Melanesia (the islands in the Pacific northeast of Australia and south of Micronesia including Bismarck Archipelago, the Solomons, Vanuatu, New Caledonia and the Fijis). I had never heard of this name before I started researching for this trip).

Geographically, New Zealand consists of two main islands: South Island and North Island (I imagine that people spent weeks if not months coming up with those names) as well as a collection of smaller islands, some hundreds of kilometers away. The country is 10,400 km southwest of the US and 2250 km east of Australia. At 268000 square km in area, New Zealand is a little larger than the UK and about two-thirds the size of California. The country is inhabited by about 4 million people, 1 million of who live in the city of Auckland.

Both the North and the South Islands have mountains which were formed by different geological processes. In the North Island, the main process is volcanic and there is a rough line of volcanoes along the island, some of which are still active. In fact, the city of Auckland there are over 50 volcanic cones which rise up from the plains. New Zealand's largest lake, Lake Taupo was formed by a volcanic explosion in 186 AD and still has thermal areas nearby. In the South Island, two tectonic plates are smashing into each other, giving rise to the Alps which extend along the length of the island. The Alps continue to grow at a rate of 10mm per year. The islands receive a prodigious amount of rainfall, resulting in a great number of rivers and lakes.

New Zealand is rather young for a country, officially becoming a self-governing British colony in 1856 and a dominion in 1907. However, it was not a fully independent country until 1947. That is not to say that people did not inhabit the islands before settlers from Europe arrived. It is believed that the first Polynesian people who were the ancestors of the Maori arrived between 1000 and 1100 AD. The Maori are the native people of the land who would later struggle with the European settlers for land and rights. It is a struggle which continues to this day.

It was actually a Dutchman by the name of Abel Tasman who first set eyes on the South Island in 1642. Tasmans expedition was intercepted by a Maori war canoe and four of the Dutch sailors were killed before Tasman left the harbor. It was not until 1769 that a European returned in the form of James Cook who landed on the east side of the South Island. He made contact with the Maori who he described as a sophisticated people with a highly formalized social structure and impressive skills despite the lack of metal tools. Cook claimed the land in the name of Britain without consulting the Maori and much to the annoyance of the Crown which was spread a bit thin at that time with so many territories to govern. Unknown to Cook, the French were also landing on New Zealand at this time, but it was the British who would later sigh the Treaty of Waitangi with the Maori and therefore gain possession of the islands.

Whalers, sealers and escaped convicts from Australia began to arrive and to create a lawless frontier which Charles Darwin described as the "very refuse of Society". The Maori found themselves fighting intertribal wars and losing their identity with the influx of new people. The New Zealand War broke out on the North Island in 1860 between factions of the Maori and the colonists over the land and the Maori were defeated. The defeat resulted in the confiscation of land and the purchase of land from the Maori.

By the end of the 19th century, the country had been unified by a series of roads and rails. Most of the land had been bought up from the Maori and New Zealand became an agricultural and pastoral society. Wool became one of the main exports, only to be overtaken by meat once refrigerated shipping became possible. In 1893, New Zealand became the first nation in the world to enact full female suffrage and an old age pension in 1898. The standard of living by this time was one of the highest in the world.

By 1907, New Zealand was a dominion which meant that it controlled its own foreign policy, but a sense of patriotism to the motherland led to involvement in World War I with a tenth of the population involved in the war effort. The 1920s brought the depression, but also the birth of the welfare state which was the first in the world and the most comprehensive and integrated. A national health service provided free health care and medicines. Maori welfare was also on the agenda.

World War II saw one-third of the male population involved in the war. But, the war made the distance from the UK and the sphere of influence of the US very clear and New Zealand became an independent country. New Zealand troops would also serve in Korea and New Zealand joined the Anzus defense pact with Australia and the US, pledging mutual aid in the event of an attack. By the end of World War II, New Zealand was the most prosperous country in the world with a high quality of life and the welfare state to fall on. Between 1947 and 1975, 77,000 people from Britain used the New Zealand government's assisted passage to move to New Zealand to fill job vacancies. However, the prosperity did not always extend to the Maori who were suffering from unemployment and social unrest.

The 1970s were not kind times to New Zealand which suffered from debt and a slip in the quality of life due to the energy crises and decreasing exports. Unemployment rose and people began to leave the country in search of better work. Race relations hit an all time low with the Maori pushing for their rights and immigrants from the south Pacific islands being harassed.

In order to solve these problems, one of the world's most regulated economies became one of the most deregulated in the early 1980s. Income tax was cut, state companies privatized and the dollar was devalued. Maori issues spurred the government to give the Maori language greater prominence in schools and the media and to legally ban discrimination. New Zealand refused to allow US warships to dock unless they declared they were nuclear free and the US withdrew support from the Anzus defense pact, leaving New Zealand to fend for itself. Tensions between the US and NZ would remain high until the Clinton years when the problems were smoothed over. New Zealand also took the lead in protesting the French nuclear testing in the Pacific leading to the sinking of the Greenpeace ship, The Rainbow Warrior in Auckland's harbor by French commandos in 1985. The stock market crash in the late 1980's affected New Zealand badly and resulted in dramatic economic reforms.

By the 1990's the government had introduced free market reforms and welfare programs were cut. New Zealand made efforts to diversify its economy and to extend its trade to Asia and the US. By the middle of the 1990's the economy had improved greatly, but the gap between the rich and the poor widened. The government agreed to pay out $1 billion to compensate the Maori for land which was confiscated as far back as the 19th century. Today signs are in both English and in Maori and there are genuine attempts to improve the race relationships. Tourism now accounts for the largest proportion of the GDP with farming now only accounting for about 10% of the GDP.

Of all of the countries where I have traveled, NZ is the most set up for backpackers. Hostels are plentiful and include kitchens, sometimes pools and often transfers from the bus and there are backpacker busses, tours and discounts. The passenger train service in NZ is defunct with limited lines still open and those are mostly for tourists. The primary means of transportation is by bus and there are two main bus companies in addition to the backpacker busses. Roads are windy and sometimes treacherous which makes travel between cities take much longer than you would expect just based on the distances. There are also several small, domestic airlines which make hops between cities to save time.

Unless you want to fly, the only way between the North and the South Islands is by ferry. The ferry is not cheap with tickets costing about $50 one way. The cost of bringing a car on the ferry can be as high as several hundred dollars, but discounts are given for booking far in advance and for bringing cars across as odd hours such as the 4 AM ferry. The least expensive ferry for a car is $150 and $80 for a motorcycle. There is a huge proliferation of used cars in NZ and so many backpackers choose to buy cars if they plan to stay in NZ for over a month. I saw lots of cars in used car lots for less than $5000 and there are special sales in the cities where backpackers meet to buy and sell cars from each other. Gasoline cost $1.17 per liter when I was there. (Note that all prices which are mentioned in these emails are in New Zealand Dollars which was $1.25 NZ = $1 US at the time I was in New Zealand).

Now that the background is out of the way, the adventure starts in Auckland with the next edition. The Lonely Planet New Zealand and the Rough Guide to New Zealand were referenced for this email.