New Zealand -- the first 6 weeks
We arrived safely in New Zealand on Nov. 23 and are loving the country
and the people here just as much as we did when we were here on Harry's
business travels over 10 years ago. The following is a sample of
the "flavors" of New Zealand.
A NEW ZEALAND CHRISTMAS
We bought a 1989 Mazda 626 on Dec 22--cars are very cheap and easy
to buy and register here--and on Dec 23 we drove to Auckland to spend Christmas
with Noel and Sue Wordsworth (Harry knew Noel from work back when we lived
in Singapore). They have three grown daughters and one son 18 years
old who had just gotten his hair done in dreadlocks. Jane questioned
him thoroughly about the procedure--it took two women working six hours
to do the job, but we never learned how much it cost.
We
went to a cocktail party on Saturday night at a beautiful home in Half
Moon Bay overlooking Auckland harbor. Sunday we went to Devonport,
across Auckland harbor from the city, for lunch at the apartment of one
of the daughters, and that night we drove downtown for Carols and Lessons
at the big stone Anglican cathedral. It was packed. Most of
the carols we didn't know and of those we did, the melodys were different!
Learn something different every day. Christmas day was non-stop eating,
drinking, socializing, opening of presents, and playing Petanque (same
as boules) and Trivial Pursuit (NZ version). All three daughters,
their partners, the son, and the mother and daughter of one of the partners
were there for the day. It was really nice. Christmas dinner
consisted of turkey with macadamia nut and cranberry stuffing-- which was
wonderful but really just a tiny part of the feast--along with roasted
white potato and kumara (like our sweet potato)and a beautiful range of
salads with mussels, smoked fish, avocado, papaya, banana, spinach, pine
nuts, etc. Fantastic. The petanque was the interlude before
dessert, which covered the table again. There was traditional Christmas
pudding (a rich dark moist cake/pudding with raisins, made months before
and hung on a hook in a cabinet and then steamed for one or two hours before
eating) cooked with wrapped coins inside, Christmas cake (which we would
call fruitcake but with a thick marzipan icing covered by a hard-as-a-rock
decorated icing), Pavlova (a high cake of merangue topped with whipped
cream and mango), trifle (yum), AND a huge bowl of fresh fruits.
We rolled into the family room for trivial pursuit. We were really
made to feel like part of the family and we thoroughly enjoyed our Kiwi
Christmas.
DRIVING
New Zealanders drive on the left, but luckily we have experience
from our three years in Singapore so we adjusted quickly. Almost all of
the roads are two lane but there are frequent passing lanes and even in
the height of holiday season--summer school vacation along with Christmas--
traffic isn't bad. The maximum speed limit is 100 kilometers per
hour even on the few miles of "motorway" near Auckland, but New Zealanders
like to drive FAST. We just pull over and let them go by while we
gawk at the scenery. Around every turn is a whole new type of countryside
it seems. We drove through desert, fern tree rain forest, eucalyptus
forest, pine forest, sheep farms, venison farms, cows, craggy bluffs above
the sea and along sandy coves. One stretch of highway 2, the second
major road in the country, is one lane all the way up a long hill, with
pull-over areas for traffic going down to stop and let the uphill ones
go up. It's never boring!
POSSUMS
Big surprise here! Early in the century New Zealand imported
some possums from Australia in an attempt to have some animals which could
feed in the forest understory and yield fur for trappers. It succeeded
all TOO well, as often happens with introduced species. The possums
have no natural predators and the population has exploded to the point
where they are endangering the kiwi along with other native birds and animals.
Now they are trying to get control of them through bounty hunting and creation
of a market for possum fur. These possums don't look like North American
ones at all. They have long reddish-brown fur and even have furry
tails. but like N. American possums they are active at night and don't
have the sense to stay off the roads...
GANNETS
The Australasian
Gannets are large seabirds, relaives of the boobies. New Zealand has several
large gannet breeding colonies, one of which is on the mainland (the others
are on nearby offshore islands). We visited the onshore colony by
riding on a haytrailer pulled by a 1949 farm tractor. The trip can
only be made at low tide as the "road" is the beach and half of the time
we were riding along in knee-deep water, lurching over large rocks.
The tractor driver was kind enough to time the incoming waves so as to
avoid wetting his passengers (mostly). The gannet colony is closed
to visitors while the gannets are laying, but while nesting and rearing
their chicks, the gannets totally ignore visiting humans. We could
walk up to within a couple of feet of the thousands of adults and big fluffy
chicks, watch the adults do their bowing and beak clicking "mate recognition
dance", and even glimpse an egg or two incubating under nesting birds.
BED AND BREAKFAST TRAVEL
Just as in
Europe, bed and breakfast accomodations are plentiful and usually affordable.
We had some trouble finding places during the week between Christmas and
New Year and ended up staying in hotels or lodges (motel means something
different here--motels have a full kitchen and often a separate bedroom
and living/kitchen area). But we also stayed in one separate cottage
on a farm with donkeys, sheep, climbing roses, etc.--for only $32 US.
Another cottage in a little village in the wine area was called the Venetian
Affair, and it had a garden just bursting with new potatoes and a lemon
tree over the deck. The owners told us to take all the potatoes and
lemons we wanted, so we did! Everyone has a story to tell so it was
fun to meet the people who ran each place.
PLANS
The cruiser motto is "we have no plans and we are sticking to them".
In general though, we will be sailing and exploring New Zealand now until
April, when we will store the boat somewhere as yet undecided and fly to
the US for a good long visit. It will be getting cold here and warm
there so this makes sense to us! We will visit in Florida and then take
a long road trip as far west as Louisiana, as far north as New Hampshire,
and as far east as Savannah--with lots of points in between. We'll come
back to New Zealand--probably in July--and do all of our projects on Cormorant
during the winter. Then we'll still have next spring and summer to
sail and explore here before going back to the tropics in May 2002.
All subject to change, of course...