If you talk to anyone who's got a wide exposure to things photographic, the topic of different camera companies and their strengths and weaknesses will come up. Nikon versus Canon, what second-tier companies like Pentax and Olympus will do to sell cameras... an so forth. Photographers who love cameras will mention exotic brands and films. Among these, for cameras, Leica has a history with cameras as Rolls-Royce has to cars - solid, dependable, luxury.
Leica came late to the digital party, and their flagship model is the M8. The M-series of cameras are renowned for their ruggedness - serving many a combat journalistic in gritty war environments - so it seemed only natural that photographer Michael Kamber would try and take the smaller, unobtrusive M8 with him to Iraq. His experience with the M8 in that environment, however, he sums up in one word - unusable. I'd call his article more of an indictment than a review, but it does show how in the real world a camera can completely miss the mark.
An update on us
What? What happened to September? Where are Andrew and Amy? Last you read we were in New Zealand and heading off to Australia - are they still there? Did they fall in love with the outback and settle down there? The answer is no, in fact our trip is sadly over, and now that we've returned to real life in Canada, it has overtaken my ability to carve out the time I needed to write about what's been happening with us. But soon, soon - I will be finishing the epic tale that has been our round-the-world voyage, and describe our wonderful seven-week jaunt through Western Australia. In the meantime, what has been happening to us?
We returned to Canada in the middle of August, landing in Vancouver and passing remarkably easily through Canadian customs. While I will probably write more about British Columbia, suffice it to say it was a lovely stay in Vancouver and Victoria, where we met up with my friend and fellow flickr-photographer Joel and crashed on his pleasingly robust chaise-longe convertible-futon couch-bed thing.
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| Gatineau park, outside Ottawa. |
No, I am not looking forward to snow; when it flies I'll cast my mind back to happy times in Portugal, where we lunched with our hosts Norm and Noeme close to Christmas on the patio in a balmy twenty degrees celsius.
Nomads in New Zealand (part 3)
During the cruise through Doubtful Sound, our nature guide Kimmy had mentioned a documentary called Shadowland that was playing in the nearby town of Te Anau. The documentary was created by a local helicoptor pilot and lover of the sounds, and when no one expressed interest in actually showing it in a wide release, he built a theatre in his home town in order to show it. With Kimmy's obvious enthusiasm for the documentary (she'd seen it over a dozen times) and the fact that we hadn't seen an actual film in weeks, it seemed like the perfect next thing to do.
Our return to Manapouri was filled with the trading of addresses and goodbyes at the dock that is probably typical of all cruise trips. But people's schedules march on, and within thirty minutes everyone was on their way, ourselves included. The van started without a hitch, and we were on the road to Te Anau.
Despite the fact that the sounds themselves are towering behemoths, the countryside away from the coast is actually quite level, more so than our dancing and dodging drive through the north. Te Anau is a nice town, with fairly modern conveniences, and the theatre was a delightful surprise: instead of the shack I had envisioned, complete with a single guy wringing his hands, filled with melancholy towards "the system that wouldn't play his movie," we would encounter as modern a movie theatre as you would imagine. The foyer was decked out in lush carpetting and deep wooden trip; a fireplace separated the snacks counter from a cafe with very comfortable chairs. The theatre had taken to running new releases, but the Shadowland documentary was still obviously its prime focus, and it ran a dozen times a day (only being about thirty minutes long).
We were joined by several other people from the cruise, who had clearly had the same idea. The seats were very plush, two chairs separated by a small adjoined side table. Whoever designed this theatre really enjoyed going to movies. Of course, all of these trimmings were just icing on the cake: were they up to the quality of the documentary?
I can happily report the quality was superb. Crafted from years of helicoptor aerial filmography, Shadowlands tells the story of the Sounds in images, with no narration, and careful musical accompaniment. What we were not exposed to during our time in the sounds was the rush of waterfalls, created when the usual torrents of rain collect on the top of the massifs and are summarily dumped down the sides into the waters below. Some of the shots I saw in the movie took my breath away: you'd be flying overtop of a high mountain stream, only to have the ground drop away from you as the water falls over the side, exposing a wide panorama of the sounds themselves. The film was put together by a guy with a true love and admiration of the place. The movie was filled with shots like that, as well as slow panning sequences through some of the raw forested areas. If you didn't have two weeks to spend on helicoptor "flight-seeing" and wilderness tours, thirty minutes in the theatre was about as good as you were going to get.
After restocking some supplies, we turned the van southwards towards the bottom of the south island, and the largest city in the area: Invercargill. We knew it wasn't going to be more than a stopping point to refuel both ourselves and the van, as we headed towards the next alluring location of New Zealand's south island: the Catlins forest reserve.
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| The ubiquitous New Zealand sheep. |
We did pass through Invercargill, and as expected, it was a city like most others. We pushed on through towards the Catlins, which is noted for dozens of natural attractions. We visited a petrified forest, which rested in a basin overlooking the ocean; when the tide rolled in, it would be covered in water, and penguins would sneak onto land to return to their nests. The forest itself looked more like a stone quarry, but on careful examination you would see the unmistakeable wooden grain of a tree, seemingly carved into the rocky floor beneath your shoes.
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| A Moeraki boulder. |
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| A waterfall in the Catlins. |
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| A sea lion. |
On our way out of the Catlins, on our way north towards Dunedin, we passed by one of the few "free" glow worm dells you can visit in New Zealand. Glow worms are another New Zealand phenomenon; I'm not sure if they're worms at all. In complete darkness you can see them: they have the appearance of tiny blue-white pinpricks of light, seemingly suspended in midair in the various grottos and caves in which they inhabit. They are a staple for many caving tours, and it seems that everywhere we heard of them there was a price tag attached: but not this particular place, a small cul-de-sac at the top of a short hike. When it got completely dark, indeed, we were rewarded with our own private field of stars, encompassed by the gloomy forest canopy above.
The next night we drove north towards Dunedin, a city with deep Scottish roots, and the site of the first Salvation Army mission (I'm not sure if it's the first mission ever, or the first in New Zealand). The city itself is laid out from the centre outwards, surrounding a triple-octagon of streets that surround a central square. The people were warm and friendly, and we stayed at a motor park slightly north of the city. By this point I was just getting tired of the constant overcast grey, and was starting to itch a little for some sunshine. To that end, we were starting our drive north, gradually towards our next WWOOF visit in the northern Marlborough region of New Zealand.
We drove off northwards towards the glistening blue lakes Tekapo and Pukaki, which lie in the shadow of the omnipresent Mount Cook, one of New Zealand's largest and most famous mountains. As always seems to be the case in New Zealand, the landscape changes again, with a drive over a series of mountains (and back onto squiggly roads) which seems to leaves the clouds behind us. Cold-weather gear is stowed and the sunglasses come out. In addition to windy roads, something I have completely overlooked took us by surprise in the south island: the one-lane bridges.
It works like this. You're driving along, and you see three words written on the road in succession: ONE LANE BRIDGE. You then get a sign which tells you if you have the right of way or not, governed chiefly by who has the better view of oncoming traffic. If you don't see anyone on or near the bridge when you round the corner and see the actual bridge, you proceed: if you do, you decide whether to stop or go based on who has the priority. One-lane bridges: it sounds like a recipe for disaster, but it actually works quite well, given the low density of traffic, and the relatively low speeds people drive. My theory is that the bridges were around for longer than there were cars, and there simply isn't the traffic demand to expand them into two lanes. But every time we saw that one-lane bridge indication, my knuckles whitened just a little on the steering wheel.
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| Lake Tekapo, with Mt. Cook in the background. |
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| A New Zealand fur seal. |
Our next move was northwards towards the beach town of Kaikoura, which is renowned for its abundant variety of sea life. The area is just nearby a coastal shelf, into which it seems everything comes to feed. Our objective in Kaikoura was to see (and for Amy, to swim with) dolphins. Apparently the success rate of encountering dolphins in Kaikoura is very high, so we were armed with some high hopes. We had blocked off two days for dolphin watching, as suggested by our guide book, as the trips can be called off for a variety of reasons.
The guide company, Dolphin Encounters, is the only one that holds a DoC licence in the area for tours of this sort. Their storefront is a combination gift shop, cafe and education centre, as well as being the central complex from which they launch their excursions. Dolphin swimmers get equipped with a wetsuit, flippers, goggle and snorkel, and everyone has to watch a twenty-minute educational video about how to interact with the dolphins. There is also a strong message in the video: don't be disappointed if the tour doesn't work out the way you would have wanted it to, as the dolphins are wild, and nothing is done to entice them into a given area.
As it happened, we never did see dolphins in Kaikoura. Our first excursion got us out onto the water, but even with a plane in the air, no dolphins were sighted, and after forty-five minutes of bouncing around on two-metre swells, we turned back to base. We got a refund, booked again for tomorrow morning, and spent the rest of the day bumming around the (tiny) town of Kaikoura. Apart from getting out there with the marine life, there isn't much to do in Kaikoura but shop - and even then, there's not much. The next day we didn't fare any better: the weather conditions made it such that they didn't even launch the boat this time. So we didn't see dolphins: at least, not in New Zealand.
We continued northwards, stopping in Hanmer Springs. The town is known for its proximity to a series of geothermal hot springs, and a whole resort town has developed to take advantage of them. It was a cold day when we went, but it was worth it: the resort had about twenty different pools at varying temperatures, from tepid to almost scalding. You feel like a different person when you walk out of one of those pools. Surprisingly, they didn't smell overly bad, but in the hottest pools, there is the unmistakeable trace of sulfur: that smell of burnt eggs.
It was time for us to head onwards to Blenheim, to meet our next WWOOF hosts, Anna and Chris. We had originally been in contact with another WWOOF host, an orchard, for the same period: but shortly after we had confirmed by email, they contacted us to let us know they had made an error in their scheduling and had already booked in some other WWOOFers. They did have some friends who needed some help and also hosted WWOOFers, would we want to go stay with them? They lived in the heart of the Marlborough wine region, would that be interesting for us?
It didn't take much to get things sorted out: in fact, our help would turn out to be quite welcome, as they were in the process of a number of changes in their lives which were extracting much from their personal schedules: and to top it off, Chris had recently had an accident with a chainsaw (sounds worse than it thankfully was) that had slowed him down significantly.
Arriving in Blenheim, we realized that this part of New Zealand was definitely different than most of the rest of the south is: it hardly rains here, and is usually sunny. An ideal climate for growing grapes, if not scads of other types of fruit. We toured a few vineyards before heading out towards Anna and Chris' house on Queen Charlotte drive: the same Queen Charlotte drive on which we had started our voyage across the south island, three weeks previously.
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| It's always deer season in New Zealand. |
While we were there one of the things that was big in their lives was getting an organic certification. We had experienced a bit of this while we were in France with Ronna and Honore, in that they were getting their annual certification audit. There are so many factors you wouldn't normally think about in terms of being an organic farm: to my mind (before I started to think about it) it was just about not using pesticides on your produce. But even things like the hay you've carted in that you use as spread over crops, was anything sprayed on that? How about the horse manure you've carted in to use as compost - what were the horses eating? The whole deal with organic certification is that you're able to provide a paper trail for your produce, to ensure that nothing untoward has been used to produce the crops. If you've ever wondered why organic foods cost more, that's just one of the reasons.
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| Sunset on the Queen Charlotte Sound. |
The next day, after an uneventful crossing of the Cook strait, we hooked up with some friends from Canada, Anders and Sarah. It was a chance meeting at a wedding in Toronto before we left on our trip, that would connect us with them; after a few minutes of conversation we figured out that we would be in New Zealand at around the same time, and they offered that we could come visit them in Wellington.
It turns out Wellington has worked out very well for them, and they both work in some capacity for the federal government's library. I can certainly see the appeal of living in New Zealand, but Wellington wasn't the first place I would have envisioned. The weather is generally inclement (when we visited, at least) and the city is built upwards into the rolling hillside. That said, it's a cafe lover's paradise, with (according to our guide book) more cafes per capita than New York city. There's a bohemian feel downtown and plenty of places with great character.
After a few nights of crashing on the couch, card games and exploring the city, we said our goodbyes and took back to the open road. We drove northwards through Palmerston North and Wanganui, towards Taupo, Rotorua and Tongariro. The landscape and highway became increasingly hilly and mountainous as we entered the volcanic region of the north island. I was impressed that on the shores of lake Taupo you can collect as much pumice stone as you like, from small pebbles to apple-sized rounds.
The great Tongariro mountain came late into our planning: its chief tourist draw is a day-long crossing that brings you through an arrid, windy landscape that comes straight out of Dante's Inferno. Several scenes of The Lord of the Rings were shot here, to provide a backdrop for Mount Doom: a the steamy, craggy, otherwordly landscape. However, you can't do the crossing unless the weather cooperates, and for the couple of days we allowed ourselves to do it, we weren't so lucky. Instead, we hung out in the resort-style town of Rotorua, which serves as a trailhead for all manner of outdoor activities. On our way we visited and bathed in the tepid of waters of Kerosene creek, one of a huge number of unofficial (and free) hot springs, which we were able to locate with help of the New Zealand hot springs web site.
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| Wai-o-tapu's champagne pool. |
We headed back north towards Auckland, to spend a few days with John and Karen, friends of my dad's who visited him during their tour through Canada. We decide to take the path less travelled, driving north up a parallel highway to the main one on the west side, and hoping to find something suitable to spend the night at as we go. We didn't. In turning around to head back towards something, I managed to put the back wheels of the van into the ditch, which left us helpless and perpendicular to oncoming traffic. There were a few tense moments! Luckily, there wasn't a whole lot of traffic, and within a few minutes not one buy two vehicles had stopped to help and within ten minutes we were sorted out. In addition, a fellow caravaner (in a much more flash vehicle than ours) suggested a good place for us to stay: the parking green of a local country church, St. Alban's.
We pulled into John and Karen's the next day to a warm welcome: despite the fact that their second son was getting married next week, they had insisted that we should stay with them (although it worked out well that we were intending to continue our trip through the northern part of the north island during that time). John and Karen have a fantastic property moments from the heart of the city, a house that he designed (being an architect) and built over several years. They made our stay very comfortable as we caught our breath to head out onto the road again, only needing to do one considerable task before we went: getting the van a new "warrant of fitness."
A little explanation on buying and selling vehicles in New Zealand. It's raised more than a few eyebrows in telling non-New Zealanders about the van, just how easy it was to buy and licence the van. You essentially take care of all the paperwork in the post office. The van needs a current warrant of fitness (a basic mechanical check to make sure it doesn't fall apart on the road, renewed every six months for used vehicles), and a road registration. After you do the paperwork at the post office with the former owner, you're ready to roll. Insurance isn't mandatory, but in our view, highly useful, and it's based on the driver, not the vehicle.
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| Our van, which we named "Pinot Blanc." |
John suggested a route through the north, which pretty much encompassed everything we wanted to see: forests of ancient Kauri trees; sand dunes stretching out from the ocean; small towns brimming over with character and personality.
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| Te Matua Ngahere, or "Father of the Forest." |
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| Te Paki sand dunes. |
From there we drove to Cape Reinga, the northmost-part of New Zealand, and spent a little time there, watching the Tasman sea to the west crash into the Pacific ocean of the east. Cape Reinga is a holy place to the Maori people, whose traditions hold that when a Maori dies, the spirit makes its way north to the Cape to enter the underworld. They then depart the mainland by leaping off an 800 year old Pohutukawa tree.
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| Kiwis on the vine. |
As our tour through the northland wound its way to its end, our thoughts began to weigh heavily with the prospect of selling the van. Given that we had had our pick of the litter when buying, we knew it was going to be a challenge to the spirit to be on the opposite end of the table when selling. Nevertheless, we cleaned it up, packed our stuff away, and did all our last minute stuff in Whangarei and drove into Auckland for a Saturday morning market. We parked the van next to a dozen other vans, set up the lawn chairs, and waited with books to read; neither Amy nor I expected we would have any interest. It turned out we were delightfully wrong. A young couple stopped by later in the morning, and took a shine to the van; they were recently granted residency status in New Zealand, and now wanted a vehicle for traipsing around the country. Pinot Blanc couldn't have gone to nicer people. A road test and a mechanical check later, we had ourselves a deal and everyone walked away happy. It was almost a tearful moment, watching the van drive away without us.
From there we connected with another set of new friends we'd made while tramping in Abel Tasman park, Michelle and Duncan. We had a great couple of days with them, the first marked very well with a pirate-themed costume party. I seem to recall getting into swordfights (plastic swords) and a lot of pictures being taken. Not that I know where any of them are. Haar!
We reconnected with John and Karen, and without the van to sell, had a luxurious couple of stress-free days with the prospect of heading to Australia now in our sights. John is an accomplished hunter, and on the Friday before we left, took me deerstalking on a friend's huge property. I recognize this dispatch is running a little long, so I'll relate the hunting story, and then come to a close; the next dispatch will be all about Australia.
John and I went out in the late morning to "South Head", a stretch of land about an hour from Auckland owned by a cousin of his who lets him hunt there. The area is home to black deer and pheasants primarily, but it's also populated by peacocks and other wild birds.
We had some fun finding the key to open the gate, but soon we were doing some four-by-four driving over lumpy grasslands to a find a good place to make a tasty lunch of frankfurters and coffee over a campfire. After a few test shots on his exquisite muzzleloading rifles, we set off across the country: more big, lumpy rolling hills. We would approach a vale and creep into it, so as not to let our motion attract the attention of the deer. We found two, a hind and a yearling, but they ran quickly off and there was so much foliage in between us and them a shot wasn't feasible. We trekked onward.
John enjoyed telling me stories of past shoots, showing me the exact location where a deer walked right up to him, or where he shot a rabbit with a bow and arrow. He'd clearly been here many times and knows the lay of the land very well. I consider myself in pretty good shape, especially having done a year's worth of walking, but found I had difficulty keeping up with John. I wondered how it was possible that even though he appeared to be walking, I had to jog to keep up with him. I chalked it up to his long legs.
We finally had our chance; as we rounded a large hill and approached a large copse of trees, I saw a line of five deer running away from us along a deer fence. "John," I whispered, but he didn't hear; again, I whispered urgently, but he didn't hear again; finally, I barked it out, figuring that the deer had already seen us and wouldn't be much more spooked. If anything John was spooked, pointing his rifle skyward, until he followed my pointing finger to where the deer were running. No shot was going to be possible, from our range; but they stopped, about two hundred meters away, regarding us evenly. John and I froze like statues, and then John started backing us up, foot after foot, keeping our gaze on them. They bolted again, cresting the hill and out of vision. John thought for a moment, then said, "come on," as we ran back around the hill we'd just passed. We tore off to meet them, as he had figured out that they would meet a deer fence and have little choice but to follow it along.
He was right. It wasn't long before the deer came into view, and he beckoned me to get into position. "Don't fire while they're moving," he advised, "wait until they stop." So I waited, and he whistled, which may have actually caused them to stop. A white-and-brown deer, the one that attracted my eye, fell into my sights. I tried to focus and let my heart slow down, which was no easy feat when we just sprinted the last hundred meters. I pulled back the hammer on my flintlock, pulled the set trigger and then when I thought I had it aimed right, pulled the main trigger.
A flash and a bang, but the deer didn't fall down dead. John tracked the deer as it ran on, moving himself into a position of his own. Unfortunately, while they did stop again, it wasn't long enough for him to get a good shot. They tore off into the night.
That was our one good chance; we walked back, adrenaline souring in our bodies, to the car.
It was like John had said on the way to South Head: "I can't promise you'll shoot a deer, but I can promise you'll see one."
Nomads in New Zealand (part 2)
As we drove the van down the off-ramp into Picton from the Bluebridge ferry, the sun was already getting low in the sky. We'd arrived around three thirty, and so only had around two hours to find a place to park the van for the night before it became exponentially more complicated by the lack of natural light. We spent a few moments in Picton figuring out our general course through the south island - down the left side, through the centre and back up the right - before embarking west along some of the craziest winding roads that we had come to know and love, towards Abel Tasman national park.
New Zealand is a hiker's paradise, filled with a multitude of well-maintained, multi-day "great walks." As well, there are hundreds of smaller trekking trails, ranging from a few hundred metres to month-long, pack-in-pack-out odysseys. After having driven a rapid pace towards the south island, we realized we weren't really taking advantage of the fact that we had much more time to see the country than we had in previous countries. So, we decided we would walk the Abel Tasman "great walk," camping as we walked up the forty-kilometre distance up the northwestern coast of the south island. To that end, we had to drive towards Motueka, an access town to the park, where we would reserve our campsites and plan our walk with help from the Department of Conservation ("DoC") staff.
But we wouldn't make it there today, travelling along the spaghetti roadway that is the Queen Charlotte Drive. We passed very little that looked accomodating for a night's freedom camping. Finally we ended up pulling into a DoC campground, "Aussie Beach," where we watched the sun set, cooked some food and spent the night. It was around this night that I realized the construction of the bed wasn't going to be satisfactory; it was essentially a pallette, made from particle boards, so they had buckled into a curve in the middle. We would wake up in a pile in the morning, and the normally difficult process of putting one's trousers on lying down was made doubly hard by having to work up a hill.
We drifted through Nelson the next day, in what was supposed to be a short stop to see why the interior lights of the car and the CD player had stopped working. I tracked down the problem to the fuses - one of them had blown - but repeated attempts to replace the offending fuse resulted in more blown fuses. There was a short in the system somewhere that I wasn't going to find, or fix. This problem had been dogging us since before we got on the ferry, and we had met someone waiting in line who, when confronted with the problem, suggested we take it to an auto electrician. And when we saw a place advertising same in Nelson, we knew it was worth a stop.
When I walked in and greeted the guy, I asked him (in what I perceived to be typical Kiwi fashion), "How you going." He must have taken me for a native, because he completed the code phrase with the completely enigmatic, "Ah, box of fluffies." It was then that I had to break down and reveal I had absolutely no idea what he had just said, and could he explain it.
Box of Fluffies: Short form, "box of fluffy ducks."
Box of fluffy ducks: Can't complain.
We moved on to the problem at hand, and he said he'd take a look. He recommended some cafes and local stores, and we wandered around. What followed was a typical situation of car repair; getting your vehicle into the repair schedule. When we did come back to find the van under repair, we saw the dashboard torn apart, the roof ribs pulled down, wires strung, and the auto electrician on his back under the dash. It looked expensive. But when we strolled up, he nodded authoritatively and said he'd tracked down the problem; during a repair for rust, some steel plates had been welded over a rusted out hole, and an interior wire had been melted. It was just a matter of time. Fortunately, the repair was less expensive than it looked, but most of our day was gone.
We decided to press on to try and make some headway towards Motueka. Fortunately, one of the motorhome crowd we had met at Aussie Beach had tipped us off to a really nice place to freedom camp outside of Motueka: Kina Beach. Finding it prominently displayed on our map, we make tracks and get to the area just before sunset. We find one really promising spot seems to be taken by three vans and some guys doing some drinking; looking for a more secluded spot, we walk around a loop and find a nice spot looking up off the road towards the rocky beach. It all looked straightforward enough; a short hop onto the firmly-packed sand, a quick reverse and a perfect spot to spend the night.
Except, as it would happen, the sand wasn't as firmly-packed as I had thought. And here's the funny thing about vans; the weight isn't distributed well, so you don't get the power where you need it. And finally, rear-wheel drive works much differently than front-wheel drive.
In short, I got the van marvellously stuck in the sand.
After a brief panic, I tried what most completely inexperienced van drivers would do: rocking it back and forth by switching between first and reverse. This succeeded in a lot of encouraging motion, creating massive holes in the sand for the wheels to rest in, while not moving the van an inch back towards the road. Fortunately, we were next to a rocky beach, so there was no shortage of rocks to grab and bring over to try and create a more stable footprint for the van to attempt to drive on. And as we started to collect the rocks, I realized just how well dug-in the van was on the left side; the wheel was almost completely buried.
Two hours later, the wheels jacked up and rocks deposited, there was a bit more rocking, but no progress to be made. I admitted defeat and agreed with Amy's suggestion that we walk over to the party in progress and ask for help in dislodging the van.
In the end, they turned out to be really helpful and friendly guys; two Spaniards, a Briton, and another guy whose origin escapes me. We started out just pushing, with the van in neutral. Nothing. Then we tried rocking it, combined with the pushing; nothing. Finally we had to bring over one of the other vans, tie the two together with rope, and combine the pushing. To our great relief, the other van dragged our van out of the sand. Diagonally. A great cheer erupted when we put the van back on the road: three hours later in almost pitch black. We made some friends that night, shared our drinks, and went to sleep with aching, but relieved, muscles.
The next day we set off for Motueka, eager to leave the van for a few days and set off on a trek through the parkland. By the time we pulled into Motueka, we realized we weren't going to have time to set off today. We got ourselves sorted with the DoC, reserved some campsites along our planned route, and spent the remainder of the day outfitting ourselves for the trek to come. Originally we had decided to take the small camping stove with the rest of our kit - but when we saw how much stuff we were already going to be taking, we decided to leave it behind and stick to a basic regimen of cold meals.
The next morning we drove up a bit further north to the park entrance, leaving our van at the water taxi service that would pick us up a week later. As we set off on foot, a gentle drizzle began to fall, but we were well prepared with our MEC pack covers. I began to recall fondly our six-hour days of walking in Nepal, although in this case we were regularly passed on the road by boats, towed on trailers, taking people to the water and up the coast for a day's tour.
Even though we had slimmed down what we were carrying to the bare essentials, the packs were still quite heavy. In addition to our sleeping bags and tent, we were carrying plenty of extra clothing (it was starting to drop to around three degrees Celsius at night), and food enough for five days. While I knew that as the trek went on, we would gradually lighten our load as we ate through the food, it was no encouragement on the first leg of our hike. The rain didn't help. But as we passed into the main body of the park, crossing raised walking platforms of several hundred meters to keep human feet off of delicate marshland, I began to take in the truly wild nature of the park. The rain made it seem all the more lush, and soon we were walking through densely packed tropical forest. The everpresent symbol of New Zealand, the silver fern, shot up absolutely everywhere, while behind and above towered trees of all kinds. The forest path was quite popular, with hikers passing us in both directions, and every once and a while we would be rewarded by a view of the Cook Strait over our right shoulder.
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| Beautiful Abel Tasman beach. |
After returning to our campsite and having our first of many cold meals, we turned into our 2-man palace and, also reminiscent of Nepal, went to sleep shortly after the sun went down.
The next day was to be our most challenging. The hiking trail crosses three areas of water in total, and there are various windows for each in which the tide makes it possible to cross. If you miss a window, you have to wait for the next tide. Because of our campsite reservation (which were diligently checked each night by a DoC representative who dropped by to review our paperwork) we had to cross two in one day, which represented at least seven hours of walking.
After striking camp rather late (there wasn't much point in hurrying as we couldn't cross the first tidal area until the tide started to go out) we put everything back into our packs and set off. We ate our lunch in a lovely cove, and were just starting to relax when we could see nine kayaks in the distance, bearing down on our tropical turf for a place to beach. One of the attractions of Abel Tasman is a big trade in kayak tours, which we opted not to take. You can combine kayaking and hiking, leaving your kayak behind and having your packs delivered to you; seeing the park's coastline from the water is probably quite striking. But since you have to be part of a tour and really have no freedom to go off on your own, it didn't really appeal to us. As well, the kayaks have earned a nickname for the less-experienced as "divorce boats," as they can be challenging to operate as a team. Amy and I have canoed together, and it works, but that doesn't mean we wanted to spend a whole tour with people for whom it didn't.
After a few more hours of walking, we made the first tidal crossing, which involved taking off shoes and socks and crossing the frigid ankle-deep waters while trying not to step on too many pointy clamshells. The aches were already setting in, and we weren't even half-way to our next campsite. We pushed on towards the next tidal crossing, taking little delight in our surroundings and getting increasingly irritable as the day wore on. As we approached the second tidal crossing the sun was low in the sky, blazing directly into our eyes. I have distinct memories of feeling like we were walking through a desert, our destination constantly getting further and further away from us.
The tide was just beginning to come in as we approached the second crossing, a shallow river with a kilometre to be crossed to get to the other side. The signage was particularly obscure this time around, so we made our best guess as to where to begin our crossing and started over. Even more frustrating was it wasn't clear where we were supposed to continue our trek on the other side, and we certainly didn't want to end up walking along the shoreline looking for it, as the tide rolled in. We had to take off our shoes and socks twice as we encountered deeper stretches of water that were coming in, and by the time we encountered the third creek of water we just left them off, muttering curses against the pointy clamshells as we went. Finally we saw an inverted triangle in the distance on the other side, and made our way towards it; indeed, it was the other side of the crossing. As the sun set behind the treeline, we emerged. Now it was only another twenty minutes before we would arrive at our campsite. Dusk set in as we arrived to the sign welcoming us to the campsite - another 150 metres away to the actual campsites - and my arms were about to fall off as we deposited our packs in a pile.
We shared a picnic table for dinner with a German couple, who were hitching their way across the country. While I had my doubts of the safety and effectiveness of this strategy, they had apparently found it easier than expected to get rides to where they wanted to go. If our van had seats for passengers, room for their gear, and was in fact headed in the same direction as them (it wasn't) I'm sure we would have offered them a lift. It was interesting to talk to them, as they indicated it's very popular for Germans to travel (we had certainly noticed a great deal of them in New Zealand) as it represents a sense of adventure and wildness that is not available in Germany.
We lazed about the following day, giving our sore muscles a chance to recuperate, as our walk for the day was only to be about three hours to our next campsite, where we would spend two full days - meaning, one of those days there would be no dedicated hiking at all. Other hiking groups packed up and left as we read our books on the beach, strolled aimlessly and generally took our time over breakfast - until we decided we were ready to go and packed up. Our trek took us across no less than four beaches, the path opening up from forest to a sandy beach, with a sign instructing us to walk along the beach to the next opening back into the forest where the path would continue. Giant rock formations constituted book-ends to the beach, worn down by centuries of weather and wind.
As we passed Totranui, the furthest most point that water taxis will drop people, we found the amount of other foot traffic dropped significantly; it would seem that most people just take day trips through the park, and few of those go north. With only four hours to trek today, slightly-lighter packs and muscles that were slowly adjusting, the walk was much more manageable. We arrived at our campsite, finding it to be very deluxe - in addition to a formed concrete fire pit, axe and firewood, there was an installation containing not one but two sinks with both treated and untreated water. Luxury!
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| An Abel Tasman sunset. |
We thought we were the only ones hardy enough to brave camping in the cool temperatures, until we were joined by another another couple, Duncan and Michelle from Auckland. We ended up getting along very well, sharing our meals and company before heading to bed. The next morning was a treat - hot breakfast, coffee and tea - before we packed up our respective camps and parted company in the drizzly morning, them heading for a mountain hike to get a panoramic view of the park area, and us to head back to Totranui to connect with our water taxi back to civilization. The ride back is as good as a roller-coaster, and it's hard to believe that what took us five days to travel by foot takes us thirty minutes to travel by boat.
The showers we had back in town were some of the best ever, and when we spotted Duncan and Michelle being dropped off from their water taxi (in fact, the same company as ours) we hooked up and shared some well-deserved beers and pub grub. We arranged that we might meet again at their place in Auckland when we returned up that way.
After our hike through Abel Tasman, we thought we would try to drop into a farm nearby for a WWOOF. After they had helped us extract our van from the sand, the Spaniards we hung out with mentioned that they had volunteered on a commune on the other side of Abel Tasman park, called the Tui Farm. It had apparently been so popular through the WWOOF website that they had decided to de-list themselves and be referred solely by word of mouth. The farm was well-knwon in the area, so we decided it would be worth a shot just to swing by and see if they had any availability to WWOOFers. This entailed some more mountain driving through winding roads, but was worth it if just to visit the small town of Takaka. Takaka is the largest settlement to the other side of the Abel Tasman park (you can enter the park from two sides) but even then it's no bigger than a town. That said, it's a town which is clearly buzzing with activity, and no trace of a single franchise store. The town's probably not big enough to justify it. Instead, you had locally owned hardware stores, grocery stores, butchers, and restaurants with exceptional character (my favourite being called "The Dangerous Kitchen"). While we were essentially just passing through to resupply and head towards the Tui Farm, it would have been fun to stay for longer. We did find the Tui Farm after some doing, but unfortunately, they were already fully stocked with WWOOFers. Which was a shame, given the range of produce they farmed and products they fabricated on the farm. We pushed on.
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| The Franz Josef glacier. |
We also make a stop at a series of natural blow holes. They're quite impressive solely as geological formations, with a vast series of eroded trenches and mounds, seemingly towering stakes of pancakes. But as you pass by the larger pit formations, you are regularly rewarded by an almost volcanic jet of water blasting into the air from one of the aforementioned blow holes. As the larger waves come in from the ocean, the water is under pressure, and is careened down natural formations until it erupts through a hole in the ground. Unfortunately, as much as water is being ejected upwards from the ground, it was also falling quite substantially from the sky, so we decided that we had got a good idea of the blow holes, and made a bee line back to the van.
After a couple of days sleeping in the van and living on the road (or, at times, right beside it) we made it a policy to check into a motor park to have some showers and wash some clothes. Our next stop was Wanaka, a small picturesque town named for the lake which it sits adjacent to. In many ways it reminds me of Takaka, with its community buzz and small town feel; however, with its traffic in adventure sports and bus tours, there are far more up-market options available in Wanaka.
It was, however, very much worth the stop, and so highly recommended by my cousin Mary (who used to own a home there) that we ended up staying for three days. Mary used to work at the local cinema, Cinema Paradiso, a place of infinite character and classy selections. When we went to see a film there, the cinema was adorned with a giant sheep, advertising the new horror-comedy, Black Sheep. Our film wasn't as good as that would have been, but the whole experience was well worth it as we sat in comfortable couches and had freshly-baked cookies at intermission. Our stay in the Mount Aspiring Motor Park was as rewarding, if for two words: hot tub.
In Wanaka we fixed the woefully-warped bed in our van, with the friendly assistance of the kind folks at the local Mitre 10 (New Zealand's national big-box hardware store: North Americans should think Home Depot). When we went in to look for a replacement hose for our propane stove, I asked casually if there was a place we could rent tools so that I could fix up our van. When the guy asked me what I needed, I realized all I really needed was a power drill and perhaps a hammer: they were only too happy to loan us the tools we needed, and even a box of screws to use. They sold us the wood we needed, cut to size, and an hour later we were set up for full bed stability.
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| The infamous New Zealand Kea parrot. |
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| Amy's a hit with the Japanese tourists. |
After Wanaka, we hauled back into the van and drove further inland, towards the winegrowing heartland of the south island. We make a stop in Cromwell, a small regional town, with the intention of heading on towards Queenstown. Staying the night in the Cromwell Chalets motor camp, we notice a notice for seasonal grape pickers, which got us to thinking. We had struck out with grape picking in France, and none of our WWOOF visits had anything to do with grapes, so perhaps this could be our opportunity to get a closer look at the wine industry. This is of course complicated by the fact that we have no work permits for New Zealand, so we decide that we'll just ask at some of the places we expect to do tastings at, and see if something casual can be arranged.
We visit first Rockburn estate, where we sample their wines and decide to ask on our return where we pick up a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc to go with the night's meal. Our second stop is at Quartz Reef, where we meet an older couple who have been picking, and ask casually about doing some picking; we're directed to Dom, who's not actually connected with Quartz Reef, but is the manager at another vinyard, Gibbston Valley, as well as managing his own vineyard. We chat for a while and get along well, and in the end we decide to volunteer to do some picking, which works out well as we can park in the vineyard's extensive parking lot.
The next day (and the next, actually) are spent picking grapes. Our first day is spent picking Pinot Blanc and Pinot Gris, small green grapes with light brown shades. It's easy work and the time passes quickly in thankfully good weather. It's been getting nippy in the mornings, but nothing we can't handle with sweaters and jackets, and by mid-morning we're in short-sleeves. The picking crew is made up of the Gibbston valley staff, and a legion of contract workers made up mostly by international backpackers. We met Anika, a German girl travelling on her own who picked up a job working for the vineyard to make some money. At the end of the day we park next to her van at the Gibbston valley vineyard, and we make a feast of spanish omelettes and fried potatoes. I got a first-hand view of grape pressing, and the rapid pace they try to set; turns out they aren't pushed to turn grapes into wine for fear of losing the grapes to frost. In Gibbston valley's case, they actually only have so many grape containers and need to clear them for the next day's picking.
The next morning the van wouldn't start; it's just too cold. So we hitched a ride with one of the Gibbston valley staff, Nathan, in his truck. It's a good thing too, given the thin, bouncy gravel road we have to climb to get to the second vinyard. I'm glad someone else is driving. The night was so cold there was quite a substantial frost, which is the equivalent of an earthquake in this winegrowing region: quite a lot of money is spent on frost prevention. Every vineyard has a frost alarm, and if the temperature goes below a certain point they spend thousands of dollars hiring helicoptors to come and fly over the crops. The idea is that the updraft of air created by the helicoptor rotors will raise the temperature by a few degrees, and often, that's all you need to prevent frost from settling. In addition there are windmills and drums filled with burning diesel. With hundreds of thousands of dollars tied up in grapes, a frost can wipe out an entire plot: there's no insurance for this kind of event. So, when one of the frost alarms didn't go off last night, it's the talk of the harvest, and everyone is chatting about it all day.
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| Pinot noir grapes. |
After saying our farewells to Gibbston valley and Cromwell, we made our way towards Queenstown. It was probably a lovely little town until it became the unofficial epicentre of New Zealand's adrenaline sports, and now it is jammed packs with high-end restaurants, outdoor supply stores, and tour operators. There are now direct flights to Queenstown; you can make it your only New Zealand destination, if you wish. On the recommendation of some people we've chatted to, we decide we want to investigate going on a cruise through the Fjordlands, the southwest coast of New Zealand, made up of towering bluffs. There are two main cruises: a shorter day cruise through the Milford Sound, and a longer overnight cruise through Doubtful Sound. The latter was recommended as better value for slightly more money, so we sign up for that one but it doesn't leave for a few days. We go on hikes, hang out in the town, catch up on email, generally waste some time before driving towards Manapouri and the beginning of the Fjordlands cruise.
The cruise was wonderful. We meet some other tourists and revel in the fantastic scenery that is the Fjordlands. We don't have any rain, which is great, but on the other hand we don't see any of the fantastic waterfalls the area is known for. The transit to the Navigator, the main boat taking us out into the sounds, is a bit of a big deal; you take an hour-long boat ride to a stretch of intervening land, a bus across it, and then board the Navigator. There is only one road in this neck of the woods, which is used by to service the hydro dam - and that road is purpose-built, not connecting to any other road in New Zealand. Everything has to be shipped in, including petrol for the bus. According to our driver, it's the most expensive road ever built in New Zealand.
On board the Navigator, they stuff us mercilessly with great food. We have muffins when we board, soup a couple of hours later, a massive buffet dinner; the next morning, a cold/dry breakfast for the early risers and a full-on caloric fest an hour later. No one can complain we were left hungry. We ate like pigs. Speaking of pigs, the hunting and killing of them is actually big sport in New Zealand, and like all big sports, it has a dedicated fan base with its own magazine: "Pig Hunter." I'm actually not kidding about this. The magazine was shown to us by a woman we met on the cruise, who bought it as a gag; it's replete with stories and photos of pighunting exploits. The photos are mostly of men carting out dead boars on their backs, but there are also touching stories of women and kids getting in on the action, talking about their first kill. What seems to be absent (or taken for granted as known) in the stories and depictions of the pork stalking is that the kills are all made with a big bowie knife, which strikes me as particularly grisly.
We also meet Hugh and his wife Joan, Canadians from outside of Toronto. When we got to talking to them, they turned out to be some of the nicest, friendliest people we'd met, and by the kind of coincidence we have come to expect, they are actually grandparents to a child of the sister-in-law of a good friend of Amy's.
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| Sunset over Doubtful sound. |
At the mouth of the water body we were navigating, we stopped and saw the Tasman sea as the sun set. Several islands in the mouth were home to a seal colony, which barked and dove as they woke from the slumber of the day to go hunting for dinner. The boat turned a lazy circle around, and people descended for the night's feast as the boat lodged itself in a quiet bay to anchor for the night. We ate, drank and chatted until well past our regular bed times.
After dinner we attended a nature talk by Kimmy, the naturalist on the boat with a packed audience as she described the flora and fauna of the region, letting us know what animals we could feel free to run over on the highway (the possum, noteably) and which we should avoid.
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| Doubtful sound, completely still. |
One night in Bangkok
Our trip towards New Zealand would be made in stages. There are, unsurprisingly, no direct flights from Kathmandu to Auckland, so you have to go to the nearest travel hub in-between; in our case, Bangkok, Thailand. Bangkok holds the dubious world record for the world's hottest capital city. Bangkok would be a stopover for us, as we would be unable to make the next-scheduled connecting flight, which would prompt one of the air traveller's most famous questions; should I sleep at the airport, or make the trip into town?
But I get ahead of myself. The plane trip was actually quite entertaining. Amy and I sat next to a Nepali man, his first trip on a plane. Through our fragmented conversation in English and Nepali we learned he was flying to Indonesia (I think) to take a job in a relative's television factory. It wasn't a long flight, but he was just nervous enough to keep us from getting too distracted. My favourite moment though, was during the in-flight meal; it was dal bhat, ie., rice and a curry. As we finished our tv dinner portions, he flagged down a passing stewardess and demanded more rice, to which she responded that "she'd see what she could do," which left him very confused. Of course, for him, dal bhat just naturally comes with unlimited portions. He would, sadly, depart the flight disappointed.
Bangkok's new airport is very flashy; smooth finishes, rounded edges, and wide-open spaces. There is plenty of room to get around, and plenty of signs to make sure you know where you're going. After some thought and deliberation we decided it made sense to make the most of our short time in Bangkok and head into the city, rather than seclude ourselves in the sterile airport. Leaving the airport was fast and efficient; as well, we were unencumbered by our large bags, as we had elected to have them passed through to the Auckland flight.
As soon as we passed through the automatic doors to locate the downtown bus, I realized that Bangkok wasn't just extremely hot, but extremely humid. The airport is climate controlled, so every interior space is a brisk eighteen degrees centigrade and pleasantly dry. But outside, Bangkok was (at nine o'clock in the evening) around twenty-eight and you could feel the air dripping with humidity.
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| Kao San Road. |
We strolled down Kao San road, letting the crazy night scene play out around us. The average denizen was under the age of thirty, had a few piercings or tattoos, or if not that daring, necklaces or bangles. Lots of product in hair. Cheap party clothes and plenty of exposed skin. It seems this is where the foreign crowd comes to let it all hang out.
Standing out from the loud music (techno, rave and current American chart-toppers) at the other end of the road was a Christian missionary, his deep booming voice competing with stores' sound systems for peoples' attentions. He was very old school, dressed in black slacks, white short-sleeve Oxford shirt and black tie, bible in one hand and fist in the other. Like most street evangelists, it's hard to wander in to the sermon as it seems to ramble; however, to his credit, he did have a number of people tuned in to what he was saying.
As we passed him, a guy came up and offered us a place to stay, and we decided to go check it out (we really had very little to go on with Bangkok, not having a guide book to work from). It turned out to be perfect for our needs and we spent the night, paying a little extra for air conditioning. An air conditioner is in all the rooms, but your extra payment gives you the remote control that activates it. And given that we were already sopping with sweat by the time we got there, it would prove to be well worth the extra investment.
We slept the sleep of the jetlagged.
The next morning we had our whole day ahead of us, by now extremely pleased with ourselves that we had chosen to venture into town rather than hunker down in the airport, curled up on a bench. Even at eight in the morning the temperature had crept up to a balmy thirty-two degrees, but a light breeze kept it from being too terribly oppressive. The hotel restaurant was open-concept, seated on the ground floor. We were served by a pleasant young man wearing a t-shirt sporting the Starbuck's logo; at least, that's what it looked like, until you looked at it more closely to realize it said "Starfuck's".
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| Kao San Road. |
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| Bunches of Buddhas. |
The Buddhas themselves were quite impressive. The first monument stop we went to was closed temporarily for a service; we decided not to wait. The second was to the "big Buddha", a sixty-foot tall golden statute of the demigod, complete with a giant Buddha sun-hat. Regardless of the free admission, there were still plenty of people around the monuments, intent on selling us things, be it refreshments, souvenirs or caged doves we could release at the Buddha's feet for good luck.
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| Decorative carving. |
Our final stop after yet another jewellery store was a temple on top of a large hill (it probably has a special name, but I can't recall it). Our tuk-tuk driver abandoned us, with our consent; I think he realized that we hadn't bought anything from the stores, and since I think the way they made this scheme work was that the drivers got a commission from sales, he was more than ready to find someone else with looser pockets than ours.
The hilltop temple was exquisitely designed, surrounded by exotic plants and flowering trees. You climb to the top via a circular staircase which ascends the structure on both sides; one for climbing up, and the other for climbing down (though plenty of people seemed to just take whichever staircase suited their fancy). The view from the top would have been particularly astounding, if not for the gloomy haze that covered the city. The sun still managed to pierce through, and without the benefit of my sunglasses (they had been thoughtfully packed away, en route for Auckland) it was one of the brightest afternoons I can remember.
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| Prayers before Buddha. |
After several hours of full-on Buddha sight-seeing, we reached our saturation point and decided we would head back to the hotel for a late meal, some caffeine and air conditioning. The walk back wasn't that hard - Bangkok, at least downtown Bangkok, is pretty well laid out and it's surprisingly easy to navigate with the usual crop of shoddy tourist maps - but the sunshine and humidity were taking their toll. By the time we piled ourselves into the seats in the hotel café, we were knackered.
It was a neat, whirlwind tour, and I could have easily been persuaded to spend more time in Thailand. But we were already anticipating New Zealand, and after a day of punishing heat and humidity, the relative cool of eighteen to twenty-two degree weather looked very appealing. Getting back to the airport was a fairly painless exercise, and the flight to Auckland was exceedingly cushy, with touchscreen televisions on every seatback. The hours spent crossing the Indian ocean passed quickly and entertainingly - and we were quickly touching down in Auckland.
Nomads in New Zealand (part 1)
Arriving at Auckland's international airport put me in mind of our last long-haul flight; from Ottawa to Paris. I don't think I'll ever truly adjust to jetlag, as our first day in Auckland was only slightly less surreal than our first day in Paris after an eight-hour flight. The body rebels, reeling from the mismatch of time and space. It's like your spirit travels at its own pace and gets separated from your body, and the spirit just has to catch up on its own time.
New Zealand has a rigorous environmental security program. When you arrive, you are obliged to fill out a form declaring anything remotely objectionable in the realms of animal, mineral and vegetable. There are bins on your way from the arrival gate that allow you to toss anything you think might get confiscated; there are heavy fines for anything the environmental screeners might find you trying to sneak into the country. There are spot checks and sniffer dogs. It's not actually that big a surprise; to know a bit of New Zealand's history with introduced species, it makes an awful lot of sense that they are being so cautious. We declared anything and everything that we thought might not stand up to scrutiny, but in the end, we didn't have a problem, and we even got to work our shoes onto a special cleaning matt to remove any traces of foreign soil.
Outside the airport, and away from the stress of environmental security, the familiar other-worldliness of jetlag began to creep into the edges of my psyche. In theory, we should have been fine: we boarded the plane near the end of the day in Bangkok, had a period of darkness on the plane, and got off the plane around noon in Auckland. To look at it on paper, it more or less resembled a day. But the body knows differently, and lets you know about it. For me it just comes in the form of an insistent, subconscious demand: YOU WILL SLEEP NOW.
A few phone calls and a bus ride took us to the Oaklands Lodge, a hostel in a suburb outside of Auckland. It was a fair adjustment to pay seemingly outrageous prices for room and board; we weren't in Nepal any more. But the place was nice and friendly, and perfect for collapsing in a heap at three in the afternoon and sleeping solidly for seven hours.
We had figured out on the plane coming over that we wanted to adjust our schedule in New Zealand and Australia slightly; instead of spending two months in each country, we would spend three months in New Zealand, and one month in Australia. Both countries have so much to offer: there was just no way we would be able to see everything we wanted to see in Australia in two months. By contrast, you can see a lot of New Zealand in three months. The only question that remained was how we were going to see it. There were essentially two options: going with a tour, or going under our own power. While a tour is the most efficient way to go, there are all the limitations involved with it. Little choice about where and when, and they were also quite expensive. Going on our own meant getting our own wheels, and in that respect we could rent or buy a campervan, which as well as giving you the freedom to go where you want, saves you a lot of money on accomodations and food, as you can cook your own meals.
After crunching the numbers, we decided to see what we could buy in the second-hand backpacker van markets. Given that we were going to travel for about two months, we would be looking at spending about the same if not less money than on a rental, and if we sold it to someone else, had a good chance of getting our money back. Essentially, in the worse case scenario we could leave it on the side of the road at the end and be no worse off than if we had rented. In the best case, our cost of travel would basically be free, less the cost of petrol.
We quickly discovered we were in a great situation as buyers, which drove us more towards a decision to buy. The tourist season was ending with the end of summer, and people that had been travelling in campervans were now selling; many more than people that were buying. So we had our pick of a large selection of vans, and we decided to be very picky. We wanted something with automatic transmission, so we could both drive; we wanted diesel rather than petrol for the cheaper fuel. We wanted something relatively new so we wouldn't constantly be worrying about something going wrong. We saw many vans, met many couples trying to sell, felt badly when we figured out we couldn't help them out. One couple became quite desperate; their flight leaving in six hours, stuck with a van they couldn't sell, the guy told me I could have it for a thousand dollars. But it just wasn't what we wanted, and as the old adage goes, if it looks too good to be true...
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| Our van, nicknamed P.B. - Pinot Blanc. |
Our road trip itinerary was pretty wide open, in my opinion, the best itinerary you can get for a road trip. In case you don't know the general geography of New Zealand (which was us when we got there), the country consists of two islands: north and south, separated by a four-hour ferry ride on the Cook strait. As New Zealand approaches the winter months, the south island gets colder than the north, so we decided that we would make a relatively quick pace to go south, and then head back north at a more relaxed pace.
The day of our departure from Auckland was a bit chaotic, and we set off later than expected; in the end we made our destination for the night a campground about three hours to the east of the city, in the Kauranga valley. It was definitely a trial by fire for us both, with me as driver and Amy as navigator: not having driven since France, on an unfamiliar side of the road, again with manual transmission, in a van that drove like a bus (well, maybe not a bus, but bigger than the mid-size cars I was used to). As if that wasn't enough, there was a constant clanging coming from the back of the van that we couldn't immediately identify; and just as we were getting used to the drive, the sun went down and plunged us into darkness just as we left the major highway and entered the very rural backwater. The campground was ten kilometers down a narrow gravel road that twisted and turned, climbed and dived, and caused the clanging in the back to turn into a full-on scrap metal cacophany. By the time we pulled into the campground, our nerves were shot. But we made it.
The next day was spent sorting out the contents of the van to see what we had purchased. Boxes and bins of all kinds of bits and pieces; blankets, pillows, fishing gear, a cooking stove (the source of the rattle, and easily muffled) and propane tank, tent, sleeping bag, books, maps, everything. By the time we had reorganized everything into a way we could actually find things, it was noon. So began our new schedule, dictated by the sun and the moon. Because we didn't want to risk the car's battery by keeping the interior lights on, when the sun went down, that was essentially the end of the day. And because we would go to sleep relatively early, we would be wide awake an hour before the sun would rise. We did look into other options to give us some light to read by: battery-powered lights, rechargeable and not, but they were essentially not worth the effort and cost in batteries. In the end we found some great candles, which not only warmed up the van in the cold south, but gave a very cozy light.
The way out of the campground was much easier to navigate by daylight without the clanging, and so, we made our way eastwards towards the northeastern coast of the northern island. I figure the whole of our trip has, in a way, prepared me for driving in New Zealand. Driving in France introduced me to roundabouts and re-introduced me to the mysteries of manual transmission. Driving in the French alps with Mary and the Ardeche with Ronna steeled me to seeing perilous drop-offs out the car windows, breakneck turns and narrow roads. Driving in India acquainted me with unusual road obstacles and hazardous weather conditions. Even so, none of it really prepared me for what we were to drive through in New Zealand.
New Zealand is essentially a mountain range running north to south through both islands. People say that the south is more mountainous than the north; but to my perception, they're both chalk full of mountains. To make a road across and around the country, you would follow the path of least resistance, where it is easiest to construct said road. The end result of this is a road which is constantly turning left and right, up and down. You are never bored when driving these roads, which are helpfully signed with the appropriate speed to make the turns. While the speed limit for main highway roads is 100 kilometres per hour, the speed on curves averages around thirty, and at some points, fifteen. You'll climb up a mountain side, switching back and forth up a road, only to drive down the other side. The engine temperature will rise dramatically as you spend twenty minutes climbing, and then you can effectively put the car in neutral and coast downwards for the next twenty as you ride down the other side. You feel like you are rarely heading towards your destination. And to top it all off, the countryside is just so interesting to look at.
We began to tell people, when they asked us for our impressions of NZ, that the nature of New Zealand is very similar to Canada: it's just compressed into a tiny island-sized package. Every ten kilometres or so, the countryside completely changes. One minute, you're driving through a gorge, twisting and turning perilously; the next minute, you've entered a plain, stretching wide open for kilometres. Meadows of sheep will graze next to meadows of cows, and in the background will be a forest of coniferous trees, shooting up in the incredibly fertile soil to fuel a rich lumber trade. In the rich pasture lands, you see impossibly lush green hills, rolling into the distance, so pudgy the look like moss-covered balls of play dough.
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| Sunset over Napier's coastline. |
We visited "opportunity shops" as we drove cities and towns on our way, looking for little things to make our van more comfortable. After months on the road with just our packs and fragmented possessions, it was an opportunity to spread out, and be reminded of what it's like to have a place to keep your things. Our previously loved acquisitions were small but significant: a lid for a pot, a new sweater of infamous New Zealand merino wool, a new teapot. After drinking one too many glasses of wine out of plastic mugs, we lucked out at a wine shop, who sold us some fancy Spiegelau glasses for a pittance because they had actually just taken over the shop, and couldn't access the store's computer.
As we pressed further south to tour that island before the onset of winter, we passed through Carterton, the defacto paua shell producer for New Zealand. Paua shell is that distinctively irridescent, rainbow-hued shell that adorns much of the jewellery that comes from the country. It's harvested from a clam-like sea creature (the Paua) by hand, with a carefully-regulated code of conduct for the skin divers who pluck them from the sea bed. It's actually illegal to use any kind of SCUBA equipment to harvest them, as a few years of over-harvesting dwindled the numbers of Paua to dangerous levels. But now with these regulations the Paua is flourishing and business is booming. After they're brought up from the sea, there's a long process of sanding and cutting, polishing and perfecting, to produce a dozen or so pieces that are sculpted into various forms of jewellery. Amy found several raw pieces that will undoubtedly make unique items when we return.
From Carterton we drove the next day to Wellington, to catch the Bluebridge ferry to the south island. These ferries are massive ships, capable of taking thousands of passengers and dozens of cars at a time, with multiple levels, cafes, lounges and even a movie theatre. As it's a four-hour crossing, it can get pretty boring, and there are a variety of things to keep you occupied. Apparently if the wind gets choppy enough the ferry can get stranded on heaving waves until it's safe to dock; fortunately, this didn't happen to us. We stayed out on the deck, watching the land retreat until the wind made it too chilly, and then spent the rest of the time below decks, waiting for our arrival onto the South Island.
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