New Zealand Report #1 North Island

We have been in New Zealand for over two weeks, and, responding to popular demand, I hereby file the first blog report. We will be here a total of six weeks, and your faithful correspondent will try to send a few more reports. For those who just want the pictures, there is a link at the bottom.

We decided to travel to NZ this year for a variety of reasons: sunshine, English speaking (sort of), some adventure travel and wildlife, and a decent exchange rate. So far things have worked out as planned. The weather has been delightfully sunny and warm (about 75-80 degrees F), similar to September in the US, which was something of a shock to our system. Everybody does speak English, but with such a different accent and colloquialisms they are sometimes hard to understand. The beauty of the landscape has been astounding. The US dollar is exchanged for about $1.42 in NZ dollars, which is like going to Canada in the old days. Of course, we lose the advantage of that exchange rate because we buy more stuff. New Zealand also has great wineries all over the country, a major incentive.


Before we start, let’s give a quick “shout out “ to the 7th graders in Searcy, AR, who, according to a reliable source (Grandson Reed), have been studying NZ and Australia. So here is a study question: When we left San Francisco the date was Feb. 17. The flight was 13 hours, but when we landed (at 5 a.m.) the date was Feb. 19—we skipped a whole day. Also, when it is Saturday here, we are watching the US news as it is broadcast live on Friday. How can that happen? Hint: What is the International Date Line? Now back to regular programming.

Traveling in New Zealand is not exotic like Vietnam or Morocco, but you have to pay attention because everything is familiar, but different at the same time. We drive on the left side of the road, steering wheel on the right side of the car and manual stick shift with the left hand. Everything works smoothly most of the time, until old instincts take over and suddenly we (actually me) are driving on the wrong side of the road into oncoming traffic or forgetting to look right as we enter a highway. We have driven on the left in other countries before, most recently in Namibia two years ago, and it gets a little better each time. We must be ever alert.

And here are a few words that we don’t often hear back home: fortnight (two weeks of time, chinwag (conversation), and bitumen (asphalt road). I will try to record an audio file in the next report, so you can really get a feel for it.

During this trip we are consciously trying not to drive too much, preferring instead to stay longer periods of time in each place. For the most part we have stayed in apartment hotels and self-contained accommodations, which are easy to find. We have mastered the art of buying basic groceries (milk, cereal, salads, pasta, etc), creating our own version of home away from home. It makes us feel like we are eating healthier and not living out of a suitcase the entire time. Tonight we had lamb chops on the grill, potatoes and onions, salad, and desert. Very nice indeed.

We flew from Seattle to San Francisco and then to Auckland. When we arrived we had the usual in-depth security search, but the NZ security was not looking for bombs. Instead, they are more worried about bio-security, checking for any kind of plants that were being imported into the country. They even took my hiking shoes out of the bag, cleaned and bagged them, and returned them to me before I could clear customs.


We spent the first week in Auckland, the largest city in NZ with a population of about 1.3 million and growing, sits on a beautiful harbor. During the week we took a side trip by ferry to Devonport for a wine and jazz event, another ferry to Waiheke Island for a two-hour bike ride, long walks around the Auckland itself, a couple of movies, and a day at the Auckland Museum, mainly to study the native Maori collection (required by Linda Beeman, our friend on Whidbey who used to live in NZ). Marshall also celebrated her birthday (63!) twice—one day for the NZ date and the next day for the US date (see International Dateline above) and we had dinner at a five star restaurant, experimenting with various dishes, included crusted pork cheeks as an appetizer.

Our DC friends Jeanne and Marty put us in touch with Auckland locals Catherine and Peter, who they met while sailing in Greece several years ago. They lived for several years in Hong Kong and Singapore, but now returned to their roots in NZ. They graciously invited us to their home for a dinner, where we met their two mid-school sons and got to quiz them about life in NZ. We are under special orders from Susan in Asheville to learn if their nationalized health care system is really a socialist plot that is bankrupting their country. Here is the quick take: Sometimes they do not think they have the world’s best health care, and they are worried about losing doctors, but usually it is fine. They cannot imagine living without health care, or living in a country where it costs $10K per person to buy health care on your own. NZ does not have medical malpractice, so there are no ambulance chasers. In fact, the legal system apparently makes it difficult to sue for a number of reasons. They noted that recently six school children drowned on a river during a school outing, and nobody was prosecuted for the tragedy. (Another example of liability laws: They let tourists sky jump off the tallest buildings in the city! Obviously their insurance policies are different here.) We will continue to grill the locals about NZ health care whenever possible.


After Auckland we drove through the center of the North Island, in the landscape where Lord of the Rings was filmed, to the Taupo region. On Saturday we got up at 4:30 am to catch a shuttle for the famous 12-mile Tongariro Alpine Crossing Track, described as the best one-day hike in NZ. But by the time the shuttle arrived at the start of the hike Marshall was queasy and flushed with cold sweats and looking very peaked. She tried to hike, but was quickly falling behind. We decided it was best for her to stay near the bus while I took off, because it would be a real problem if she got stuck halfway on the trail. There were probably more than 1000 people heading out on the hike that day, so she was not alone, and she did some hiking for about three hours, but I did wonder how she was doing when I saw a helicopter circling. The hike itself was pretty strenuous, although not as tough as last year’s hike down to the floor of the Grand Canyon and back. (Of course, I did not have the Demarr boot camp program to get me in shape this year!) The hike was incredibly varied, crossing past waterfalls, volcanic lava, craters, dormant volcanoes, sulfur springs, geysers, alpine meadows and a rain forest. I pushed along and made it in six hours; of course, others were running the entire track as a cross country marathon. Marshall and I met up at the bus about 3 pm, and she was still queasy three days later.


The next day we drove two hours to the Hawkes Bay wine region, where we stayed for two nights. We drove to check out the Cape Kidnappers golf course, a fairly new course built along the coastline. I was hoping to catch a good deal, but it is now ranked in the top 50 courses in the world, and the price would have cost over $350, so I passed on that—can’t justify that with a 15 handicap! I later played a local course, which was drab and flat and uneventful and did somewhat regret that I didn’t make the splurge. Too late now. We also checked out the local vineyards, even starting at noon one day. I was very impressed with the wine in the area. We will have numerous chances to compare with other areas as we continue traveling.

While we were driving the coast to check out the golf course, we spotted a local vegetable stand with a sign that said "Tsunami Special," and that was our first realization of the Chilean earthquake. A few hours later it did funky things to the tides and surf in NZ, but no real damage. We have become especially alert to earthquakes, because we learned--soon after purchasing our house--that Whidbey Island sits on a huge fault line (in fact, it is called the South Whidbey fault line) and that small quakes occur on a regular basis. Time to buy earthquake insurance after all.


From there we traveled to Martinborough, a village in the south end of the island, and finally into Wellington, where we stayed at the luxury Intercontinental, did some preliminary sightseeing, an Indian dinner, and then got up early the next day for the ferry from Wellington to the North Island. We will pick up the next entry of the blog from there. Here is the link for photos: http://picasaweb.google.com/thomashall99/NewZealandBlog1#