Same Days, Different Island

Steve woke up Tuesday morning with the idea that we should not go home earlier, but should stay until Friday, when we were supposed to leave Tahiti. We went back to the airport and Air New Zealand agreed to change our reservation to Friday. We went to the i-site, the free traveler’s information desk at the airport. We should have tried this weeks ago. They found a place for us to stay on Waiheke Island off the coast of Auckland, and they booked our bus back to town and the ferry to the island.

We left most of our stuff at the airport, and took enough for three days with us back into town. We caught a ferry at 8:45 PM for the 40 minute ride to Waiheke. Punga Lounge, our B & B, had arranged for a cab to pick us up at the ferry dock. We got to Punga Lounge about 9:45, and the owners Rob and Dyan welcomed us and brought tea and home made apricot bars to our room. We had a king size bed, private bath and our own deck overlooking rain forest vegetation for NZ$125. The only problems were the mosquitos made us keep our screenless windows shut all night, the room smelled like bleach, and the wifi didn’t work.

Punga Lodge is about a 10 minute walk from Oneroa, the main town on the island. Waiheke is popular with Kiwis who come out for a day of swimming at the beach or visiting the vineyards. Some international travelers also make it their place to overcome jet lag at the beginning of their vacation, or like us, a place to unwind at the end. The island is inhabited by a variety of artists, activists, eccentrics and millionaires. Every blissful resident we met feels very lucky to live there.

Our first full day, we took a tour with Rochelle, the owner of Waiheke Island Adventures. She has been on Waiheke since the 1970s when it was a remote place, difficult to reach by infrequent and slow ferries. It was populated mostly by hippies, artists and retired people who collected rain water and lived in poorly constructed, unheated bachs, usually without toilets. She paid $6,000 for her bach. The island had 2,000 residents. She could have bought a nearby house for $2,000, but she decided to splurge and get the view lot.

Faster and more frequent ferry service has made Waiheke a suburb of Auckland. Now there are 8,500 residents and her house is worth $1.5 million. Of course, that doesn't matter, because like everyone we met here, she has no intention of ever leaving.

She took us to Goldwater Vineyards, where we tasted four nice wines. The young woman serving the wine and telling us the history of the vineyard calls Auckland "The Big Smoke". I asked her why, and she smiled, "It's different there". Seeing this didn't entirely explain it, she added, "You have to wear shoes there". We walked up a hill overlooking the vineyard and admired at powkanhani tree, a gorgeous green umbrella that was just starting to get its red bottle-brush-style flowers. It's New Zealand's Christmas tree, and will be in full bloom in another week.

She also took us to Top Knot Hill vineyard at Wild on Waiheke, a sort of party place and play ground. A chess board with three foot tall pieces was set up outside. We fell in love with a fabulous 2008 Chardonnay that was only $NZ25. Unfortunately, shipping a bottle home would have doubled the price. We might have done it if the lady serving the wine hadn't thought it was a really dumb idea. Jams, chutneys and the products of Waiheke Island Brewery can also be tasted and bought here. We tried the ginger beer and dark ale. Very good.

Two days in a row I had Scallops from Hell at Vino Vino in Oneroa while sitting on the balcony overlooking the ocean. The dish had a wonderful white wine and chili sauce. The scallops had a beautiful pink piece of meat curving around it that tasted like lobster. The waitress said scallops always look that way there. She also said Americans are always amazed by them.

Lacking public water supply system, each house has to collect rainwater in a big concrete tank, about 12 feet wide. At Punga Lodge, the tank is above ground, ugly, cracked and covered with moss. In newer houses, the tank is buried, which decreases evaporation and keeps the water cooler. People are worried about drought, because even in a good year, by the December dry season, water must be trucked in.

Our Punga Lodge hostess, Dyan, is funny and talkative. Rarely do ten minutes pass without her mentioning how much she loves chocolate. Her favorites are macadamia brittle from Northland on the North Island, followed by Reese's Cups, which are not sold in New Zealand, so her American guests sometimes send them to her or her pilot husband will buy them when he's overseas. I know Reese's Cup are pretty low brow, but I adore them too.

In addition to his main job as janitor of the lodge, Dyan's husband Rob is a pilot with New Zealand Air, and has sometimes carried his guests' bags all the way to the airport when he is flying to LA. He will be piloting the flight to LA 24 hours after ours.

I have found the ubiqitous sheep of New Zealand disgusting, in part because they are eating the country, and largely because of their filthy back sides. Dyan told us that the dirty wool from their butts is used to make carpets. The dried poop on their butts is called dags. It rattles when the sheep are forced to run. From this image comes the Kiwi expression for "hurry up": rattle your dags.


December 3 we took a walk on Oneroa beach and Steve found an arch in a mudstone and calcite outcrop. He presented it to me as a gift. We collected many shells on the beach, that like our cat Sunbeam, were orange and stripey. So of course in our minds, Oneroa Beach is now Sunbeam Beach. There were also lavender and peach striped shells.

We studied tidal pools for a few hours. We found transparent insects and little wee hermit crabs carrying shells 1/4" wide. Everything was in motion in the pools. The ocean water was as clear as drinking water.

The word paradise is frequently heard in conversations with the locals. The cinema shows art films like Young at Heart, The Band's Visit, The Duchess. People donated sofas and bring in pizza and Indian food. The friendly owner of the Indian restaurant told us with all that spicy food being consumed, the theatre smelled bad, but everyone was happy.

The community center has an art gallery where we were able to see the work of island artists. I bought some cards depicting a Tui and a Bell Bird painted by a local. We also peeked into the theater, where dancers were preparing for an evening performance. A Maori man and his wife who would be in the performance talked with us and gave me a hongi, the Maori nose touch greeting. Unlike the Eskimo greeting, the noses aren't rubbed, just touched.

December 4 we went to Palm Beach. At the west end of the beach, beyond some massive rocks, is New Zealand's first designated nude beach. The beach is wide and sandy and lots of shade can be found under the palms, Christmas trees and peach trees. Most of the people were our age and older, although there were some clothed mothers and children. Guess which side of the rocks we were on? This was the first and only time we got in the ocean during our trip. We saved some money and avoided crowds by coming at the Spring shoulder season, but I think next time we should come in Summer and get some use out of my prescription snorkel mask that I bought for this trip at the last minute.

Our last day in New Zealand was an odyssey starting with a walk to the bus stop, the bus ride to the ferry, the ferry ride back to Auckland, bus ride back to the airport, the non stop flight to LA during which we gained back the day we had lost on the trip west, another flight to Tucson, and home again.

The Customs Building in Auckland
Steve thinks there are other places in the world we ought to see, but I would be content to make every vacation a trip to New Zealand, to revisit our favourite spots and to explore what we missed.

Queenstown

We drove back to Te Anau and were graciously welcomed at Shakespeare Lodge, a lovely home in a residential neighborhood at the edge of town. We had a frilly B & B queen ensuite room with breakfast included. Unfortunately, we didn't get to see the fancy linen and crystal breakfast room, as we barely managed to get ourselves out the door under the disapproving glare of the manager. So cheerful fourteen hours earlier, he was not amused to discover that we find the challenge of mobilizing before check out time to sometimes be an insurmountable imposition on our vacation bliss.

We set a new check-in time record, arriving at Hippo Lodge in Queenstown by 2:00 PM. We were so proud of ourselves. Here we had a queen ensuite with a kitchenette for NZ$85. November 29 and 30 were to be our last days in New Zealand, so we wanted to be comfortable and have plenty of room to organize all the clothing, rocks and souvenirs that had been rolling around in our car's boot for five weeks.


Queenstown is the number one adventure tourism destination in the world. Skydive, river raft, parasail, bungee jump, speed boats, ski, Lord of the Rings tours. We didn't do any of that. Hippo Lodge is up a steep hill half a mile from town, so going into town to eat some meals and buy things made of possum fur was enough adventure for us. We did take the gondola to 1,500 feet above town and watch the lights come on in the village next to a huge lake.

We got to the Queenstown airport bright and early and turned in our trusty rented car. Steve eschews rolling luggage, and put a back pack on his back, a day pack on his chest, and carried rocks and stuff in the food bag I had bought so long ago in the New Market neighborhood of Auckland.


We learned our Air New Zealand flight to Auckland was cancelled, and we would have to go on a later flight. This was not good, because we only had about two hours in Auckland to get our luggage, change terminals, and get on an Air Tahiti Nui flight to Tahiti.

I changed US$400 for 285 Euros, which we would need in Tahiti, except when we would need Polynesian Francs, or something like that. The currency exchange booth had a sign saying they would not buy currency from Brazil, Argentina, Pakistan or Iceland. We assume that the accident of birth in the U.S. makes us immune to economic disasters and devaluation of our mighty dollar, but that confidence has been shaken recently.

Air New Zealand tried hard to get us on the flight to Tahiti. They put our luggage on top so it could be transferred quickly. They called Air Tahiti Nui to tell them when they expected us to get to Auckland, and how much our luggage weighed. We arrived in Auckland 30 minutes before our international flight, and managed to get our luggage, take a bus to another terminal, and dash to the Air Tahiti desk 20 minutes before departure. The plane was still on the ground, but the desk staff was preparing to go off duty, because they didn't have another flight for three more days. They wouldn't let us on the plane. They told us to go talk with American Airlines, through which we had booked the international flights using frequent flier miles. American Airlines said they could get us to Los Angeles on a flight that evening, but it would cost us $300 to change our flight. We were sick of traveling at this point, and resigned to missing the four night layover we'd planned in Tahiti, but Steve said he was not ready to get on a trans-Pacific flight that day. We booked a flight to LA for the next day, and went to an airport restaurant to figure out where to stay our last sad night in New Zealand.

I changed our briefly held Euros back to New Zealand and U.S. dollars. I bought a few phone cards in a vain attempt to find one that worked so I could cancel the Tahiti arrangements and look for a place to stay in Auckland. I ended up using my cell phone to dial direct. It worked great, but I thought I would be paying $2 per minute for the convenience. When I got home, I found I was never billed a minute for my cell phone use in New Zealand. That saved hundreds of dollars.

We got sadder and more burnt out. Steve decided while I looked for a place to stay in Auckland (unfortunately, Lantana Lodge was filled), he would go try to negotiate with Air New Zealand. It was their fault we weren't going to Tahiti. He figured they should compensate us.

Their customer service rep was wonderful. He listened to our tale of woe, and to our surprise, was able to verify that we had reservations on the Air Tahiti flight that we missed. He took responsibility for our inability to catch that flight. Apparently the plane we should have taken from Queenstown had mechanical problems. He offered several options. The next direct flight from Auckland to Tahiti on any airline left three days hence. No thank you. He offered to get us to Tahiti via Hawai'i. No. How about the Cook Islands? Did we want to see the Cook Islands? We briefly considered, but decided, no, we just wanted to go home. Verifying our complaint and proposing solutions had taken the rep over an hour at this point, and I whispered to Steve to just tell the rep we would take $300 to compensate us for having to change our flight with American Airlines, and I would be satisfied. Steve wanted to just wait and see how far the rep was willing to go. I went to make more calls.

A few minutes later, Steve came over to where I was guarding our excessive luggage and trying to find a place to stay that wouldn't be too depressing. He happily announced the fruits of his negotiations: Air New Zealand would put us up at a hotel in downtown Auckland, pay for our cab into town and back (NZ$72 each way), buy us dinner, breakfast and lunch, let us stay in the hotel until 4:00 PM when it would be time to go back to the airport, and they would put us on an Air New Zealand flight to LA. All because they cancelled a shuttle flight from Queenstown to Auckland. We were happy again. Needless to say we love, love, love Air New Zealand.

They put us up at the Crowne Plaza, by far the fanciest accommodations of the trip. The food was wonderful. I'm my mother's daughter, and made sure I got my money's worth out of the breakfast and lunch buffets, even though they didn't cost us anything. This is lunch: beetroot with tangerine salad, salmon, asparagus, dolmades, dried tomatoes with green lipped mussels, kumara salad, fruit, mince pie, pecan pie, and warm Christmas pudding with hard sauce, just like our Aussie friend Chris Eastoe makes each year.

Milford Sound

After long delays due to money changing and grocery shopping, we finally started the two hour drive to Milford Sound in the late afternoon. Hiking and boating used to be the only ways to get there. In fact, that's how had we planned to get there -- hiking the Milford Track, said by some to be the most beautiful hike in the world. We were going to stay in upscale lodges with meals prepared for us. All we would have had to carry would have been our day packs with lunch and rain gear. This sounded much more appealing than backpacking and staying in leaky, cold dormitories. But my knee surgery forced me to admit that a five day hike over mountains and glaciers was not what I should be doing this year, so I had to cancel, losing my deposit. The road to Milford Sound was started in 1929 as an unemployment relief program. Workers used shovels and wheelbarrows. The 1.2 km Homer Tunnel was started in 1935. Worked continued on the tunnel until 1948, then stopped until 1952. The road finally opened in 1953. It slopes downhill in a 1 in 10 gradient. Traffic lights stop cars in one direction for 15 minutes at a time, so they can go through the narrow tunnel in one direction from 9 AM to 6 PM. The rest of the time, traffic is two ways. We’re glad we got through just before 6. While waiting for our turn to go through the tunnel, we were entertained by very tame Keas that land on car roofs as soon as a door is opened. They attempt to tear out the door gaskets, and are very agile about escaping slamming car doors. They also pose for photos. I didn't see anyone feeding them, although they must score often enough to make panhandling a viable occupation for them. South of the tunnel, the road to Milford Sound follows the a wide river bed of the MacKay River, filled with white, pink, lavender and purple lupins. Behind them were snow capped peaks. We were in a hurry to get to Milford Sound, and although we both wanted pictures, neither of us said anything about stopping until about 15 minutes later. We hoped we would come back by them in the daylight, and we did. We went to three locations and I took dozens of photos trying to get the exposure right. Here are the best ones. We will need to try again someday, and get there when the sun is higher. A tour bus guide told us the lupins are an introduced species, and like so many of the exotic plants and animals, have run amok. We don’t know whether that is considered a problem. Another introduced plant that dominates the landscape on both islands is the gorse bush, a yellow flowering bush that can get to be six feet tall or more. It provides welcome visual relief from the endless sheep, sheep, sheep, but it crowds out native plants that are more useful to the native animals. In some places, people apply poison to the gorse, but we read about a gentleman who loved the land and encouraged people to plant saplings of native trees among the gorse. The gorse shaded the young trees until they were big enough to survive on their own, at which point they shaded the gorse and killed it. A wise man, that. Accomodations at Milford Sound are limited. Mitre Peak Lodge is where trekkers on the Milford Track stay after finishing their hike at Milford Sound. If there are any empty rooms, as there were when we were there, non-hikers can stay for NZ$200 for a queen room with breakfast and a view of the sound. A twin room on the back of the hotel is NZ$150. Non-hikers can not make reservations. Rooms are only made available to the public on the day of guest's visit. November 27 we stayed at Milford Sound Lodge (NZ$245), or more accurately at one of the chalets by the river. Our chalet is a pre-fab building sheathed in corrugated metal and wood siding. The approach is not impressive, being dominated by the water heater and gas tank. Inside: wow. What a luxurious interior. King size bed, sofa, dining table, kitchen, deep tub, heated floors, towel warming bars. One whole wall of the chalet is a window opening to a deck facing the clear turquoise water of Cleddau River, rushing by only 10 metres away. Across the river is a rock cliff. Steve said it was better than the Ahwanee at Yosemite. A sound is a river basin, but Milford "Sound" is actually a fiord, scoured out by glaciers. We walked down to the fiord to see what we could see. The tide was out and we walked out onto a muddy, reedy peninsula to take some pictures of a water fall. The guide books recommend we pray for rain on our visit to Milford Sound so we can see the spectacular and numerous waterfalls, but we were quite satisfied with the fine weather and the one water fall we could see from shore. I think it was Bowen Falls, the largest of the 1,000 falls in the fiord, and the source of the water and power for the buildings at the head of the fiord. This would have been day four of five if we had hiked the Milford Track as planned. I think we would have avoided the rain that can make the trek unpleasant, with hard-won views obscured by clouds. The Blue Duck Restaurant is the only place to eat at Milford Sound, and it didn't sound good, so our Thanksgiving dinner was to have been omelets with salmon, but we were too tired to make that, so we heated some vegetable bean soup. We enjoyed the first decent bread we found in this country, Dovedale Grain Chia. We also had tasty cheese, the Kiwi name for cheddar, tomatoes, red capsicums and Speights Old Dark beer. We could hear and watch the river through our open door and the view made us feel elite. The next morning we saw where the budget travelers stay. The rustic dorms have small dark rooms with only beds. Guests follow covered porches to the bathrooms, kitchen and the unpleasant common area. The doubles were NZ$80 and all were reserved. We drove to the dock at the head of the fiord and boarded the Milford Mariner with about 30 other people for our cruise. The peninsula where we had stood the night before was under water. The fiord is a fascinating ecosystem. Eight metres of rain fall annually. Forty metres of fresh water is on top of the salt water from the ocean. Four hundred metres below the salt water is a region too dark to support life. The boat idled 10 metres away from a cliff rising 700 metres above the water. The captain said there were 250 metres of water below us. Fur seals were hunted almost to extinction in the 1880s, but we some some lounging on the rocks. We also saw Fiordland Crested Penguins, some of the rarest sea birds in the world. They seem to be interested in the boat, and obligingly hop from rock to rock. Stirling Falls is the one reliable waterfall in Milford Sound, even on a sunny day such as we enjoyed. The captain pulled close so we could find out why the fall is known as the Boat Washer. Trees cling to the walls of the fiord, growing almost parallel to them. Only 25% of the trees are actually rooted in soil or rock crevasses. The rest are rooted to each other. When the tree mass becomes too heavy to support itself, a tree avalanche is the result. Steve has frequently remarked on the similarities between New Zealand and his beloved California. In Fiordland, he keeps exclaiming "Look at the relief!", geologist-speak for breathtakingly high steep slopes. He is at a loss to name a mountain range on the Left Coast that can match what we see here. Over the past few days I have heard what I thought were gunshots, which seems strange in a national forest. I finally figured out the sounds are from rock falls.

Tucson Paheka Annoying Hoteliers from Coast to Coast

Paheka is the Maori word for non-Maori. It is not usually intended to be derogatory. It's supposed to mean "foreign" although it can also mean "flea" or "pest".

This far south, the sun stays up really late. We can still read 12 point type outdoors by the dimming light at 9:30 PM. So we’re often out hiking or doing stuff until the sun goes down, then we realize that the restaurants have been closed for an hour, and the backpacker receptionists locked up shop two hours ago. So we show up at our destinations after dark, depriving the managers of much needed rest. We keep hoping to find a place that doesn’t have a 10:00 AM check out time, but it hasn’t happened yet. This further cramps our style as well as that of the manager, who is always very eager to get the sheets off our bed and into the laundry at the stroke of 10.

Blat is the Kiwi word for driving fast. Considering how much blatting is going on here, it’s surprising we don’t see more accidents. We did see the aftermath of two rather spectacular ones. A garbage truck missed a turn going down a mountain road, and sailed off the road, over a ravine, and landed shiny side up about 100 meters from the road. On another mountain road, a tandem logging train lost its load of tree trunks on an outside curve. They tore away the guard rail and tumbled far down the hill. When we got there, chains were being lowered down the hill to haul the lumber back up. Oops.

We rarely see one of the gaudy orange, navy and white police cars. We do see signs at every car park warning us to “Lock it or Lose It”. Sometimes the signs give more details on the dangers of leaving stuff exposed in the car. We usually comply, but crime doesn’t appear to be a big problem here.

We also don’t see any evidence of homelessness. It is really a relief to walk around touristy places and not be accosted by panhandlers. We wonder how the Kiwis are able to provide social services, health care and good roads with a much smaller budget than the U.S. has. I guess it goes to show what can be accomplished when money isn’t wasted on pointless wars.

Most of the tourists are Kiwis and Aussies. We finally have started to see some U.S. Americans now that we are on the South Island. One shop keeper told us she thought the U.S. workers must have the longest vacations in the world, and was shocked to find we have the shortest. When a Yank only gets two weeks off per year, I guess it makes sense to concentrate on the razzle dazzle glaciers and fiords of the South Island. Lord of the Rings fans have flocked here to see the movie sets near Queenstown. I have read that many of the sets have been digitally enhanced and it takes a lot of imagination to see what is shown in the movies.

People in the tourism industry are very worried about the U.S. economy, and many people have asked us when we think it might turn around. They tell us that since the financial industry upheaval in September, they are receiving booking cancellations, and tourists are only booking one month out instead of a year in advance.

There’s something to be said for letting the world vote in the U.S. elections, given that what happens in the U.S. has a profound effect on the rest of the world. If the world voted, we would probably have a better informed electorate and a better quality of government.

We rolled into Te Anau just before dark, of course, but Bob at Bob and Maxine’s Backpacker took it in stride and cheerfully showed us around the kitchen and to our room, a twin ensuite for NZ$75. Bob is especially proud of his wood pile stacked four feet high all around his buildings. The firewood was made from several types of trees he felled himself and split with a hydraulic splitter. Steve is pretty proud of his own wood pile, and though he had to admit it pales next to Bob’s, he was very impressed.

The exchange rate is shifting in the Kiwis’ favour. NZ$1 = US$0.564.

Thanksgiving lunch was eaten under an umbrella on the sunny sidewalk outside The Fat Duck in Te Anau. Baked sole and rice. We always read the wine menus, and I don’t think they ever have anything but Kiwi wine. We passed on the Sauvignon Blanc Mount Difficulty Roaring Meg (from Central Otago) described as follows: “Displays tropical fruit flavours intermingled with cut grass and dried hay.” I believe this is the wine of choice for New Zealand’s many sheep.

Te Anau (tey-AH-now) is sort of a strange, new, concrete and stucco town next to the enormous lake that shares its name. It seems to lack soul and character. All the shops and restaurants are along two blocks of the main street. A park is next to the lake along with some boats to take tourists to the glow worm caves. A Mitre 10 Solutions, a big box home repair store, is one block away from the main street. Beautiful tree covered, snow capped mountains surround the town. There’s no recent sign of the ubiquitous logging.

Catlins Coast

We finally got around to leaving Oamaru and headed for the Catlins Coast. On the way, we stopped to see the Moeraki Boulders. These round rocks, up to six feet in diameter, look like they were dropped from the sky onto the beach.

They are actually calcite concretions that formed under water in the grey smectite mudstone. The process by which they formed is similar to the way a pearl is made. The concretions could have started as a piece of bone or wood. Eventually the mudstone around them eroded away, and the boulders rolled down to the beach. We could see more of them still trapped in the terrace above the beach. Concretions are not rare, but such huge and spherical concretions are quite stunning. There used to be many more, but any that were small enough to be hauled away are long gone.

We also collected a bunch of wonderful little snail shells. They were less than ½” in diameter, and the center spirals were opalescent. The outer spirals were mostly black with a sort of stained glass mosaic. We’ll add them to our sand collection that we display in bowls.

We stopped for dinner in Dunedin, one of the largest cities, which was founded by Scots and has beautiful Gothic Revival architecture. The train station was superb.


Dunedin (dun-E-din) was originally called New Edinborough, but that was criticized as being unoriginal, so the name was changed to the Gaelic version.

We got to Nugget View Motel in Kaka Point after 10 PM. The long suffering hotelier let us in. Steve asked whether he liked his work. He said it would be nice to get a break once in a while. This was a very nice place to spend the nights of November 24 and 25. We had a queen size bed, a kitchenette, sofa, bathroom with a towel warming rack, and a sliding door going out to the deck facing the ocean a block down the hill. It shouldn’t be too much to ask, but this is one of the few places where we had a shelves for our stuff in the bathroom, and the sink was large enough that we didn’t get water on the floor every time we used it. NZ$120.


Most of the roads are way better here than they are in the states. Due to the low volume of traffic, most of the bridges in rural areas are one way. As you approach, you might see a sign that says “Give Way”. This means traffic coming toward you has the right of way.


November 25 we headed out in the rain to Nugget Point. From the lighthouse on a cliff high above the ocean, we looked down on sea stacks made of some sort of bedded sedimentary rock that got tilted vertically. They looked looked like gold nuggets to someone. Out on the rocks, we could see elephant seals with their big round heads. It’s rare to see these guys on the coast. Most of them live on islands.


Brown rubbery bull seaweed twenty feet long waved around in the channels between the “nuggets”, looking like enormous multi-armed creatures. New Zealand fur seals, identified by their pointed noses, playfully rolled around in the water.

We hiked to the wide, three-tiered Purakaunui Falls, said to be one of the most photographed falls in the country. We dutifully added our photos to the infinite supply.

On the road to Owatea, we saw some Spur Winged Plovers. These birds have yellow masks that look like they are made of plastic. They could be one and the same bird as the Yellow Masked Plovers we saw in Australia eight years ago. We have always been fascinated by these birds, and wonder what they look like under their masks.

Kiwis call people like me who keep lists of the birds they see listers, tickers or twitchers. Some of these folks want bird names to be standardized, because they think it is cheating to count the Silver Gull in Australia and the Red Billed Gull in New Zealand, when they are really the same bird. I prefer to make up my own rules about twitching, so I count a bird on my list if it is the first time I have seen it in this country.


We took a walk on Tautuka Beach, which may be the most southern point we reached on our journey. 46 degrees and 36 minutes South. Seems like we're at the bottom of the world, but we're only half way! We got hailed on during our walk. Later we drove by a pond and I thought I saw some Spoonbills. It was raining and getting dark, but I got Steve to turn around so I could take a look. Sure enough, they were Royal Spoonbills. Huge, fabulous white birds with long, flat, black bills with spoons at the end. We’ve seen Roseate Spoonbills in Florida, but even their pinkness was no match for the amazing bills on these guys.

The town of Owaka is the only place with a grocery store. We stopped at the gas station and saw two beautiful vintage Indian motorcycles. A woman at the station proudly told us that the owner of the motorcycles was in the movie The Fastest Indian.

Oamaru

Another marathon drive, south along the east coast this time, across boring farm land on a perfectly straight road, brought us to Oamaru (pronounced OH-ma-roo) on Sunday night, November 23. We stayed at Swaggers Backpacker (see the entry for Waltzing Matilda for a definition of Swagger) with the house mum, Agra, who lives in this crowded little Victorian house with her teenage son and transient folk from all over the world. She has a blackboard identifying the occupants of the rooms, and although we hadn’t committed to staying there before we left in search of penguins, when we returned, we saw she had written “Americans – Arizona” in the space for our room. We had a double and twin in a tiny room with shared bath for NZ$60. We climbed out the bedroom window to the fire escape, and could see the ocean about five blocks down the hill across the roofs of the houses, businesses and warehouses.



One of the three big attractions in Oamaru is a few pair of extremely rare Yellow Eyed Penguins. I think there are only 700 pairs of these harassed birds. Dogs and people are their biggest problems. Steve says they look like Sparky with his wrap around sun glasses in the Tom Tomorrow cartoon. We drove out Bushy Beach Road around 8:30 PM just before sun set, walked along a wooden path 200 feet above the orange sand beach, and found a pair of Yellow Eyes grooming each other just 20 feet off the path. Penguins are very shy, so it is surprising that they went about their business with a dozen tourists taking pictures from the other side of the railed walkway. Even more amazing is the climb they made through thick bush to get from the ocean up to their nest.

Oamaru’s second claim to fame is the colony of Little Blue Penguins, which at one foot tall, are the world’s smallest penguins. We paid our NZ$20 each and were admitted to a fenced area that used to be the limestone quarry on the rocky beach at the edge of town. We sat in the covered grandstand along with about a hundred other people and waited for the Little Blues to return to their nests under the cover of darkness after a day of fishing in the ocean. While we waited, a guide told us the Little Blues swim 25 km per day in search of food and dive between 1,000 and 1,500 times. Per day! He claimed they only sleep for a few minutes at a time, and are usually awake. They are unable to see the sodium lights that illuminate the rocky beach and the grassy terrace where some of them live, but they could see and would be frightened by camera flashes, so anyone who uses a camera would be asked to leave.

Finally, at 9:12 PM, the first raft of fifty penguins was swept onto the rocky shore by the waves. The guide says the birds are very tough, and in the five years he has been giving this talk, he has never seen an injured bird, even when rough seas hurl them onto the rocks. Seeing them land was the highlight of the trip for me. They pull themselves up on their feet, then stand around looking at each other for a while. Although they live in colonies, no one is in charge. They bend over like old men and wait for someone else to make a move. Eventually one of them gets brave enough, or gets shoved to the front, and the temporary leader jumps to the next rock and starts climbing across the boulders, using his webbed feet and flippers to slowly work his way up to the terrace. Sometimes they jump and miss their mark, and slip back down, but they get up and continue clamboring to their nests. It’s absolutely adorable to the humans, but I am also struck by how hard their life is, and how they are anything but cartoons, but very real creatures with unbelievable challenges.

It is breeding season, and until the chicks are about eight weeks old, one of the parents stays with the chicks during the day while the other goes out to sea to fish. After eight weeks, both parents go to sea, so the number of penguins returning each night varies. We were there on a very good night, and got to see over 150 penguins arrive over the course of an hour in about six rafts.

We were even more lucky to see two fuzzy brown chicks about six weeks old and nine inches tall standing around hungrily waiting for their parents to return. I was getting worried about them, because most of the adults seemed to have returned. The chicks went into a neighbor's rocky nest to look for help, but were promptly evicted. I asked the guide whether any of the other adults would take care of them if something happened to their parents, and he said no, they would die. As he was saying that, the parent returned and the chicks noisily chased him around, demanding that the parent regurgitate fish into their mouths. The guide said we can see why the harried parent was in no hurry to return.

Not all the penguins choose to live in the fenced area, and many wander the streets of Oamaru, going under buildings and screaming and growling all night. We could hear the wee birds from our room, five blocks up the hill. It was wonderful.


Monday November 24 we had breakfast in Oamuru public gardens among beautiful exotic trees and flowers, magpies, mallards and birdsong in the trees. Then we were off to inspect Oamaru’s third wonder: Oamaru Stone. Most of the commercial buildings and many homes are made of locally quarried stone, which the locals claim is soft and easily carved when fresh out of the ground, but it supposedly becomes hard after exposure to the air. It looks to us like limestone, which is a beautiful if odd building material for such a wet place. It seems to deteriorate where the fancy column capitols and pediment dentils are exposed to roof leaks, just like regular limestone. But it does make for a very elegant little town.

We changed some more money, and the exchange rate has again slid in our favour: NZ$1 to US$0.543.

We had lunch at the wonderful Whiskey Tea House in a grain and wood warehouse built of Oamaru Stone in 1882 next to the harbour. The ceilings were twenty feet tall, there were gigantic timbers holding everything up, and the dining room was illuminated by huge arched windows. Steve had salmon caught this morning, and I had vegetarian lasagna with spinach and a big pumpkin layer. Delicious. The Kiwis sure know their way around pumpkins and kumara.


Next door to the Whiskey was another limestone warehouse where the local bicycle club kept their collection of antique bicycles. A man in a nineteenth century vest and bowler hat was helping the tourists ride a bicycle with a front wheel five feet tall, as well as vintage tricycles. More magic.

Banks Peninsula

November 22. My father died three years ago today, after being fascinated and amused by the universe for 97 years. He would have enjoyed hearing about our travels, and would be proud that I am able to make this trip. He is here with me.

Today, we only got a little south of Christchurch, to Banks Peninsula. We went to Akaroa, a cute little seaside town that was settled by a few dozen people from France in the mid-eighteenth century. Eighty-five percent of the houses on the peninsula are baches, or rustic vacation homes. Two volcanoes created the peninsula, and the hilly countryside is a stunning contrast to the flat plain the stretches from the peninsula back to the Southern Alps.


We went to a backpacker hostel on the main street and found they were full. The lovely proprietor called every other backpacker in town, and they were full. We drove out of town to the camp ground to see about a motel room. Full. We learned there were two weddings and a vintage yacht regatta in town that weekend. We went to the Hotel Grand, a place we never would have considered unless the alternative was to sleep in the car. Full. I checked the fine print in the Rough Guide and found the Katawea farm stay about 15 km out of town. I called, and they had a room with a private bath for NZ$120. The owner Judy Thacker told us to take our time, get some dinner, but get there before sundown because the mountain road would be dark.

We ate outside, checked out the harbour, ticked the Pied Shag off our life list, and drove to the top of the island as the sun went down. From there we saw the first fancy sunset of the trip.


When we got to the Thacker farm, Judy showed us around outside by twilight. The fabulous Victorian farm house has been in the family of her husband Kerry for 120 years. They raise sheep and beef on 1,000 acres, including several hundred metres along the ocean at Okains Bay.



When she showed us our room, we realized we were lucky we couldn’t get a place in Akaroa. Furnished with antiques and a fireplace, it looked like a decorative arts museum. Our bath room was about 12’ by 12’ with 14’ ceiling, a clawfoot tub, orange and green marble top on the big old oak vanity, brass fittings and a shower with no walls or curtain. It was palatial.

After we had some tea with Kerry, he and Judy and their sons turned on the television to watch the New Zealand Kiwis play the Australian Kangaroos in the Rugby League world championship game.

We were delighted to see the Kiwis perform a haka before the start of the game. Maoris do the haka, a war dance, intended not only to intimidate their enemies, but to show their respect, and acknowledge that the enemy is a worthy opponent. The Kangaroos stood in a long line across the field with their arms around each other’s shoulders while the Kiwis approached them in a menacing wide legged squat, slapping their thighs, shouting, and touching their own chins with the tips of their tongues. The Kangaroos were respectful, but did not back down, even when the Kiwis got right in their faces.

Everyone is surprised the Kiwis made it to the finals, and no one expected them to win, but two hours later at midnight, the Kiwis were rejoicing over the end of the Kangaroos’ 38 year dynasty.

Rugby League is a different game from Rugby, and at 6 AM the Thackers were assembled again to watch the New Zealand All Blacks upset the Aussie Wilds in the World Cup. This was the first time New Zealand won the World Cup in 98 years.


After a delicious cooked breakfast in the Thacker’s octagonal breakfast room with windows on all the walls and the ceiling, we left to explore the surprisingly good little Colonial and Maori Museum down the road toward Okains Beach. On the beach, I took lots of photos of the peach colored scallop shells, sprung open on the wave patterns in the sand on the shore.


We saw a sheep that had apparently fallen off the cliff at the end of the beach and drowned and got buried by the waves on the beach. Then we heard a bleating above us, and thought it was flying sheep, but it turned out to be a married couple of Paradise Shelducks. The male is black and the female is rusty brown with a white head. They flew into a crevasse in a sea cave, where we heard their babies bleating.

We finally figured out that the hawk we have been seeing is an Australasian Harris Hawk, a big brown fellow with white rump.