And Again Today, Rain Expected

South Island, New Zealand

Feb 28, 2004 – Kiwi Sign New Zealand in February – couldn’t have planned it any better. Right smack dab in the middle of the dry season – guaranteed good weather. And late enough in summer that kids have gone back to school and the tourists numbers aren’t as high as December and January … Except for 2004.

February is traditionally the driest month in New Zealand, but they’re saying that this year will prove to be the wettest February in 100 years. (We shouldn’t complain though, because we heard what kind of winter the east coast had this year). But unlike Italy or Thailand, we now have a car, which makes any amount of rain more bearable. We hadn’t planned on renting a car, but after getting to Auckland, we realized a car would be the best way to see the countryside, without us being limited to going only along bus routes. Somehow we managed to get a “touring” class car – in this case a Honda Civic 4-door – for the price of a “thrifty” class car.

A car opened up a whole new range of possibilities, the best being that now we didn’t have to know exactly where we wanted to go or where we wanted to stay ahead of time. We had the freedom to drive until we saw a place we liked, find a camp site not right in the middle of the town crowds, stay as long as we wanted … you get the picture. Very different from the first half of our trip. And just as well, because I’m a planner/list-maker by nature, and it took me this long to get comfortable with not knowing ahead of time where we were going or where we were staying.

Seal After 4 days in Auckland, we picked up the car and headed to the South Island. Since we’re below the equator, we wanted to go South first, since it’d get colder there first. (And yes, we checked and the water does go down the drain counter clockwise here). We took the 3-hour car ferry from Wellington to Picton and started on the east coast, stopping in Kaikoura (Marlborough province), Christchurch (Canterbury), Oamaru, Dunedin, Queenstown, Te Anau and Wanaka (all in Otago), Franz Josef Glacier, Greymouth (West Coast), and ending in Nelson and Picton.

We especially liked Dunedin, with it’s Scottish heritage and walk-around town. (Mark Twain said of Dunedin, “The people here are Scots. They stopped here on their way home to heaven thinking they had arrived.”) The views of Dunedin from Larnach Castle on the Otago Peninsula were my favorite on the South Island.

Queenstown, the adrenaline capital of the world, was a must stop for us. They say that if you want to “dive, ride, jump, saunter, float, dart, or glide through a spectacular setting, this is the place to be.” On Joel’s trip to Africa a couple of years ago, he did the highest bungy in the world -South Africa, 216 meters. Since commercial bungy jumping was founded in Queenstown (AJ Hackett), this seemed a good place for me to take the plunge. There aren’t any as high as South Africa’s, but I did do the highest bungy in NZ (Nevis highwire, 134 meters/440 ft). It was an amazing experience. I would definitely do it again, but I am a little disturbed that I never got scared or nervous. (I guess it’s true what my professor said about public speaking fears. Supposedly, studies have shown that when asked, people are more scared of public speaking than they are of dying. Even though speech communications was one of my majors, I always have some level of nervousness before speaking. But nada with the bungy jump. Even when I saw the glass cable car, and how far I’d be hurling myself attached to a bungy cord. Joel said I yapped away all my nervousness in the morning.) Watch a short video of my jump

The next highlight on our trip was Milford Sound. We caught a break with the weather on the day we drove there and did a Sound boat tour. We managed to see all the animals they told us we might see, including bottle nose dolphins, the rarer dusky dolphins, Fiordland crested penguins and fur seals. We must apologize ahead of time – our pictures don’t do Milford Sound, or any of New Zealand justice. We tried to capture the landscape and beauty, but it didn’t happen.

We can’t deliver the beauty in its entirety, but we can give you a feel for what it’s like in NZ. First, here’s the things we haven’t gotten used to:

- Grocery Stores: Eggs not refrigerated; Butter not with the cheese; Only 3 bags of ice for sale at any one time; Diet coke prices (US$6 for a 12 pack and never on sale); And the price of normal (they call it streaky) bacon (US$8 for a small package).

- Roads: Driving on the left; The most unintuitive driving rule known to man – the person turning left (from the left lane) has to give way to the person coming from the opposite side of the road, turning right onto the same road; Single lane bridges, single lane bridges that you not only have to give way to oncoming traffic, but also to trains; No road signs telling you what street you’re actually on (but 100 signs pointing out lookout points, camping spots, churches, etc).

- Food: Meat pies; Fancy, small pizzas.

- Clothes: No normal blue jeans; Opossum fur as a luxury item (isn’t that road kill?); Overall bad dressing, reminiscent of the 80s (Joel coined Auckland “the town that fashion forgot.” Think the movie Footloose.)

- Misc: Sinks having two faucets, one for hot and one for cold. How does one get warm water if they come out of two separate faucets?; Acura Integras called Honda Integras, complete with the Honda logo instead of the Acura logo; More sheep than people (35 sheep to every 1 person was the last stat we saw); Many stores closed on Sunday; Penned-in deer almost as common as cows; And paperback books costing US$17 (thankfully, we’ve found used book stores almost everywhere. We’re up to about 25 books each since we left on our trip.)

On the positive side, the people have been very friendly and nothing but hospitable. We’ll take nice people over good fashion any day. Some more positives:

- Landscapes – It’s beautiful. And it’s undeveloped – they say about 1/3 of land is set aside as protected land.

- Catering to Tourists – They have everything a tourist could want. They even have car dealers who specialize in tourists buying a car for 2 months and then needing to sell it back before their flights out. Campsites, picnic areas and internet cafes galore.

- Local Breweries – Each region appears to have their own brewhaha. Not complaining and we’re especially fond of Mac’s and Monteith’s.

- Love of Sport – ok, it may not be the NFL they’re into, but there are plenty of sports bars showing worldwide sporting events.

After spending four weeks in the South Island, we hopped back on the ferry to do the North Island tour. We must admit, even though we try to remember that we’re lucky to even be here, the rain has gotten to us. Today I actually looked online to see how much it’d cost us to fly home the first week of March. Too far a flight to be cheap though, so we’re here til March 27. (We’ve cut Fiji down from a week to one night, replacing the time with a short trip to Vegas for the Final Four. We’ve got our priorities straight. It’ll be good to get home.)

- L