061020 Labor Day Part 1

Monday, October 23 was Labor Day in New Zealand and my friend Nils and I had high hopes of spending the long weekend tramping in the Alps and exploring the glaciers on the west coast of the South Island. Nils is a physics student from Germany and we had each been planning on traveling independently over the weekend, but we decided to travel together once we realized that the other was planning on traveling as well. However, our plans were hampered by what looked like a weekend of rain across the entire island. New Zealand lies in the “Roaring Forties” (Christchurch is approximately 43.5 latitude) and weather can change quite quickly. Weather reports for the mountains can only forecast out one day due to the speed that weather can change. Winds from the south can bring rain to the east coast of the island, but the west coast can be dry. Winds from the west will dump rain along the coast, but Canterbury will be dry. Or the entire north can be sheltered from the rain by the mountains. So, we decided to be flexible and to decide where we would go just before we departed, based on the most recent weather reports.

As neither of us owns a car, we rented one from one of the many car rental agencies by the airport. For $33 a day, we had a brand new Daihatsu which was boxy and lacked the power to make bold passes on the highway, but which worked out well. The steering wheel was located on the right side of the car and I kept catching myself reaching to my left to grasp the seatbelt which was of course foolish since it was on the right. The car was a manual and so the gearshift was on the left. Fortunately, the order of the gears is the same as a car in the US with the first and second gears being on the left and fifth and reverse gears being on the right. The really annoying thing is that the levers for the directional signals and the windshield wipers are swapped. Whenever you try to signal that you are turning, you wind up turning on the windshield wipers instead of the directional. This is funny for the first half dozen times, but then becomes very, very annoying not to mention dangerous since other drivers may not be able to interpret the windshield wipers tearing across the windshield on as an indication that your car is turning.

This was my first experience driving on the left side of the road in a car and there were several important things to remember. There is the essential rule of looking right for incoming traffic before pulling out, rather than looking left as one would in the US. New Zealand also has a crazy left turn rule where basically, cars turning left must yield to all other traffic. For example, at an intersection, cars turning left have to wait for cars coming from the opposite direction which are turning right, even though the cars turning right must wait for gaps in the oncoming traffic. Rotaries (or roundabouts) are everywhere and of course, you must circle clockwise. According to our AA guide (Automotive Association) cars should have their signals on the whole time that they are in the rotary, but we never saw other cars doing it, but we did see cars pull out in front of us when we did not have our signal on (but our windshield wipers were flying across our windshield like no-ones business).

We picked up our car from the airport and went back to Ilam Village where we both live to check the weather and to consult our maps. We saw that the ONLY sunny place on the whole island that would be sunny was the town of Kaikoura which lies north of Christchurch and so we decided to head there.

To use the word highway to describe the roads that we traveled is deceptive because it conjures images of wide, multilane roads with gentle grades. Not so on the South Island. The “highways” that we drove all had single lanes in each direction. The speed limit was generally 100 km/h (60mph), but this speed was not obtainable when climbing or descending in the mountains where hairpin turns or steep grades made it impossible to go the speed limit, especially for two drivers who had not had a lot of experience driving on the left and were driving a rental car with a high center of gravity. Passing of other cars is common, but tricky on the winding roads. Passing lanes are occasionally offered or slow cars would sometimes pull over to allow the others to pass.

It seems that Kiwis don’t like to spend a lot of money on bridges and why build a two lane bridge when you can get away with a single lane bridge. We would encounter a lot of these, especially on our second day of driving in the north. Signs would warn that you were approaching a single lane bridge and a sign would indicate which direction had the right of way. Sometimes our direction had the right of way, other times it was the opposing direction. The problem was that often you could not see if there were cars on the other side of the bridge due to hills or turns and so you always had to approach the one lane bridges with caution. We got so used to the single lane bridges, that two lane bridges with a lane for each direction of traffic would amaze us. We figured that areas with the two lane bridges were more wealthy communities that could afford the extra lane.

Our route to Kaikoura took us along the east coast and up into the Alps as the mountain range cut across the island towards the ocean. Although we hit “rush hour” leaving Christchurch, by the time we neared Kaikoura and were in the mountains, it was getting dark and there were fewer cars on the road. Kaikoura lies on a peninsula that juts into the Pacific Ocean. At the land end of the peninsula lie the end of the Alps where they meet the ocean. Upon arrival, we followed the signs for the city center and stopped our car at a cluster of buildings. The road paralleled the beach and the air was much colder than it had been in Christchurch. We pulled on jackets and walked along the buildings in search of a restaurant. However, after walking but 100 ft we came to the end of the buildings without much luck. What a small “city center”! This did not look good. Fortunately, my guidebook had a map of the town and we realized that the true city center was a 1/2 mile down the road. The town center was still just a one lane street with most of the restaurants closed, but we were able to find dinner and then a nondescript hostel where we stayed the night.

The town of Kaikoura may be small, but it is a huge draw to tourists due to the depth of the ocean just off the shore. (http://www.kaikoura.co.nz/) Here cold ocean currents from Antarctica meet warm water from the north creating very good conditions for krill to grow, thus attracting sperm whales, Orcas and other whales. The area was heavily settled by Moari in 1000 BC and signs of the settlements can be seen in the surrounding hills. The first European to arrive was Robert Fyffe who set up a whaling station in 1857. More recently, a whale watch company began taking people out to see the whales a few years ago and Kaikoura has been a tourist destination ever since. However, you need not be limited just to boats. There are several companies which will also take people up in small planes to see the whales from above.

We awoke early on Saturday morning because Nils was quite keen on booking a spot on a whale watch. His grandfather had been an ocean explorer and had discovered several new species in the depths of the ocean, but Nils had never been on a whale watch before. The first order of business was finding a bakery or store to buy coffee and bread for breakfast. Once back at our hostel, we called the whale watch offices at 7AM to inquire about the 7:45AM sailing. They told me that the 7:45 was fully booked but that the 10:30AM had space. During the time that Nils and I were conferring, the 10:30 filled up and so we booked spaces on the 3:30.

Since we now had several hours on our hands before the cruise, we decided to drive down to the end of the peninsula to see the place where a colony of seals had taken up residence. The area by the sea was very rocky and cliffs rose up above the sea. There were more tourists wandering about than seals, but we did see an amazing site. We were standing over one of the tidal pools when Nils spied an octopus making its way amongst the seaweed and rocks. The octopus was brownish / redish in color and about two feet long. I have never seen an octopus in the wild before, let alone in a tidal pool. We walked up the cliffs and were rewarded with views of the Alps meeting the ocean. Unfortunately, bad weather was coming and so a haze lay along the ocean and gray clouds were in the sky, but it was a neat view nonetheless.

We decided to head out to Mt Fyffe to walk up to a lookout which was supposed to be a 1 hour tramp each way. Mt Fyffe is about 1600m high and we saw other tramper with big packs who were planning on going to the top and spending the night. The way up was a wide trail that started climbing right away and never stopped climbing. In the forty-five minutes that we walked, with breaks for photos and for shedding jackets or zipping off pant legs, we climbed a little more than 600m, or better than 1/3 of the way up the mountain. It was a bit more of a workout than we were expecting. The views were nice and we could see the plains descending from the mountains to the ocean below us as we sat on a bench and ate our lunch.

We walked back down (such a steep walk burns the knees) and made our way to the southern side of the peninsula. Her we found outcroppings of layers of rock, jutting from the ocean. It was as if someone had sandwiched several layers of rock, each a few inches thick and then bent then smashed the sandwiches together, causing the sandwiches to break and to jut out at strange angles. Clinging to the rocks were shellfish with round, dark shells that were about an inch in diameter. These creatures were everywhere, but I have not been able to find out what they were. We went up a nearby walk that offered great views of the coast. The mountains ran along the coast and the lush, green hills were all about us. The ocean water was turquoise which made everything quite lovely.

We returned to town to the whale watch company’s offices which are conveniently located next to the train station for the tourist train from Christchurch to Blenheim. Upon arrival, we saw waves crashing on the nearby beach that were over 2m high. Great for surfing, bad for being out in a boat. We discovered that all of the whale watch cruises for the day had been canceled due to rough seas. So, when we had been told over the phone that the earlier cruises were full, what had really happened was that the earlier cruises had been canceled, but they didn’t want us to know that in hopes that later cruises would be able to sail.

After taking some photos on the beach of the massive clouds crowning the nearby mountain peaks, we hopped in the car and drove along the coast to the town of Blenheim, about 2 hours north of Kaikoura. There are only three highways that make the east-west crossing across the South Island and so we had to plan ahead as to where we would go next. Spending the night in Blenheim would put us in a good place to drive west the next day since the weather forecasts showed sun on the west coast.

The drive to Blenheim was along the coast with jagged rock formations on our left, and the ocean below us on the right. The rail tracks followed the road and we could see that the train plunged in and out of tunnels as it made its way. The drive was really nice and we soon were in Blenhiem in search of a hostel. We decided on one called Grapes that was in a building that had once been a maternity house. Canoes were available for free to go along the river out back and there was a kitchen for us to make our breakfast.

061014 Port Hills

For the past two weekends, I have been taking my bicycle up the Port Hills which lie just to the south of Christchurch. The hills are 1300 feet high and the climb up the hills has been either up a steep, winding road that goes to the top or up a dirt trail that is a little further east of the road. From the top, the plain in which Christchurch sits spreads out before you as it climbs to meet the line of snow-covered mountains 30 miles distance. To the east lies the Pacific Ocean. To the South is Lyttleton Harbor, the primary port of the Canterbury region. On the other side of the harbor is the Banks Peninsula which is basically a sunken volcano. Along the top of the hills is a road called Scenic Drive that allows people to check out the sites from their cars. There are also lots of walking trails, cycling trails and multi use trials all through the area which is mostly parkland. It is amazing to see how many people are out walking, running or cycling in the hills on a Saturday morning.

A few weeks ago, I went up to the summit with German friends from Ilam Village where I live. One of the Germans had just bought a car for $700 (US $420) and we took it up the hill to celebrate. We planned to do a bit of tramping (Kiwi for hiking), but first we stopped for coffee and cake at a café on the top of the hill. We set out for a short tramp with great views of the harbor and finished with another visit to a café at the end and ice cream. I like tramping with Germans.

On the trips up the hills on my bicycle, I have ridden along the trails that parallel the road on the top of the hills. It is so beautiful up in the hills with the blue skies, fluffy clouds, the cool breeze, the friendly people all of who say hi as you pass and the mountains in the distance. (who wouldn’t be in a friendly mood in such a fantastic place?) The hills are mostly covered with grass with trees lower down. The grass is tussock which tends to grow in large clumps. Sheep graze the hills and wire fences line the road to keep the sheep in their area. To access the hiking or biking trails, you have to either climb up steps over the fence or ride over a metal grate over a pit. The sheep cant cross the grate because their legs get stuck between the bars.

The clumps of grass are actually a pain while biking. I will be going along and one of my pedals will hit a clump, causing my bike to stop. (An example of the tussok is in the photo to the right). The problem is that even though the bike has stopped, my body keeps going and it is all that I can do to stay on the bike as both my feet launch off the pedals and my stomach heads for the handlebar stem as I am lifted off the seat. Needless to say, I am a bit wary of riding fast when I come to such dreadful stops with some regularity, but seeing as the other cyclists cruise along, there must be a trick to avoiding the hazards that I have yet to learn.

There are several downhill mountain bike tracks from the top of the hills. I took a look at one of these in expectation that I could ride it and instead kept going past. It was called the Lava Flow and it was insanely steep and with rocks all over. There is another part of the reserve called Victoria Park and it is home to crisscrossing trails which I decided to try. The trails are dirt and plunge into the tree line below the summit. Straightaway, I came to a part of the trail that was beyond my current level. A jogger was coming and so I pulled over to let him past. He called out that the trail looked a lot worse than it was. Sure, I thought. I realized that I was in trouble when everyone else on the trail that I saw had BMX helmets, knee pads and specially designed downhill bikes that looked like tanks with full suspension. I made it down with some hesitations and a lot of braking to a clearing in the woods. Here I found jumps for BMX or mountain bikes. There were a lot of trails departing from the clearing and as it was my first time on the trails, I did not realize that the trails were marked by difficulty. I inadvertently chose a black diamond which is the hardest. The most insane thing about it was that on the really steep parts, the trees are covered with carpet. Not that the carpet will help stop the rider who hits the tree, but I suppose that it is a lot nicer to get rug burns than to be torn apart by the bark. As I made my way down, I came upon warning signs that a 40 ft jump was coming up. Sure enough, there was a ramp going up and 40 feet away there was a ramp going down. I couldn’t imagine such jumps in a US park because it would be a lawsuit waiting to happen.

Anyway, I made it down in one piece. I tried the trails again the following week with a friend from Christchurch who rides the hills every week. He was a lot better than I am but fortunately we stayed on the blue trails which were less crazy. I really like biking up the hills and once I master the pedal obstacles, I think it will be a lot of fun.

One thing about Christchurch that catches me off guard when I see it is bare feet. Mind you, most people that I meet wear shoes, but every now and then you see people at the grocery store, at school or at church wandering about in bare feet. A lot of other people wear Jandals which is a Kiwi word for flip-flops (New Zealanders are called Kiwis). Jandals, Flip Flops, thongs or whatever you call them are rumored to have actually been first created by a kiwi in New Zealand in the early 1930s. However, that is the rubber version that can be seen all over. The true origin of the sandal was Japan where they have been wearing different versions for thousands of years. Hence, the Kiwi word Jandals is derived from Japanese Sandals.

This past Sunday, I went to my friend Titus’s house for lunch. After lunch, we were cleaning up the dishes when I discovered the neatest dishwasher that I have ever seen. Actually, it was a dishdrawer, not a dishwasher. It is the same height as a traditional dishwasher in the US, but it is split into two halves along its height. Each half of the dishwasher, is actually a separate dishwasher itself. Titus told me that these are now quite popular in New Zealand and have accounted for the bulk of dishwasher sales over the past five years. The popularity is due to the fact that you don’t need a huge amount of dishes to run the dishwasher. I rarely ran my dishwasher in Baltimore because I had to plan to fill it. But with the Fisher & Paykel Dishdrawer, you can easily run a small load. You only need half the dishes to fill a drawer as it would take a full size dishwasher. Or, if you have a lot of dishes, you can fill the top and bottom drawers. Or, if you have people over for a meal and you are ready to serve dessert, you can be taking clean dishes right out of the top portion to use for dessert while putting the dirty dishes into the bottom section. My friend told me that you can buy one drawer if you don’t need two halves of a dishwasher. Pretty ingenious idea. Check out the one photo of the dishdrawers where they look like they are identical to the drawers in the cabinet. Pretty slick. Oddly enough, the company that makes the dishdrawer is also a healthcare company.

I have seen other neat appliances here as well. One is the WhisperGen which is a combined boiler / generator and is the size of a dishwasher (or two dishdrawers!). Running on natural gas, the WhisperGen provides the hot water for the house and any excess electricity that is produced can be fed back into the electricity grid or used in the home, reducing electricity costs. In addition to the home version, there is also a marine version that can be used to provide hot water and electricity on a boat.

The one appliance you don’t see too often in a house is a furnace. I am learning that a lot of houses in Christchurch don’t have central heating. Friends of mine who live in flats off campus keep electric space heaters running during the winter to stay warm. Other people use wood fires to keep warm. The lack of heat and the cost of running space heaters is why a lot of students like to move on campus during the winter where heat and electricity is included in the cost of the room. However, that can make living on campus far more expensive (double the cost in some cases) than living in a flat off campus. For what I pay per week (all rents here are per week, not per month) for my room in a five person flat, I could rent an entire, unfurnished house in the suburbs. That is not to say that the houses in Christchurch are inexpensive. On the contrary, the city has experienced the same soaring real estate prices as elsewhere and small homes can cost over $200,000. And when I say small, I mean square, one story houses with two bedrooms and small gardens (yards).

One location that can really use a furnace are the vineyards to the north of Christchurch. New Zealand has a wine industry with vineyards on the South Island that tend to grow Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay and Pinot Noir grapes. To be honest, I never saw a bottle of New Zealand wine in the US (but I wasn’t looking) and I have yet to try it here in the country because the Australian wines are less expensive. The problem that the vineyard owners face right now is frost. One night of frost will damage the harvest for not one, but two seasons which is a blow to profits. Tens of millions of dollars in lost production was attributed to frost burn in 2004. To prevent this, the vineyard owners hire fleets of helicopters from all over the country to hover over their vineyards. There are thermometers throughout the vineyard and when the temperature in one are drops too low, a light on a pole above the vines turns on, alerting the helicopter pilots to the dangerously low temperatures in the area. The helicopter pilot then swoops in and hovers about 20 feet off the ground to mix the air with the rotor blades which effectively raises the temperature on the ground. On a given night, you can have over 80 helicopters flying over the winery region at a cost between $650 to $2000 per hour. But compared to the loss of two seasons harvest, this cost is small. What is amazing is that with so many helicopters in the area over a small area, all of them swooping to the ground as the lights turn on, there have not been any collisions. I think that it would be really neat to sit and watch this all happening one night.