Over the Southern Alps to the Dylan Zone

When I was a kid, my mother had a red plastic tomato with a green stem cap to dispense ketchup. I had forgotten all about it until we saw one in a restaurant here. I was delighted to find one for sale at Silver Fern Foods in the town of Franz Josef Glacier, and I had to have it. Now I have to figure out how to get it in my luggage, which was overweight when we left Tucson, and has also acquired the inevitable rocks.

November 20 we made the long drive back up the west coast and turned inland to cross over to the east coast via Arthur’s Pass. It was a beautiful drive through a wide river valley that became narrower and greener as it wound up the mountains into the little town of Arthur’s Pass. A noisy Kea was the first creature to welcome us. There’s not much here but a general store, information center, three restaurants and a few backpacker lodges. They all play Bob Dylan, all the time. We stayed two nights at the Mountain House, paying NZ$70 for a room with a queen and twin, and shared bathroom. Steve got up in the middle of the night and went into the kitchen, where every vintage of Dylan enhanced his night owlery.

We hiked up to the Devil’s Punch Bowl, and got a close up view of an impressive 131 metre waterfall high up in the cool forest. Birdsong filled the air. Then we walked the Bridal Veil Track, which Steve considered a waste of time because we didn’t get very close to the fall, we had to walk along the power lines and road for much of the hike, and we ended up at the road, so we had to double back. The walk wasn’t a total waste, because a bold Kea flew right over Steve’s head and hung around while we took things out of our packs. He patiently posed for several photos, but when he saw that he wasn’t going to get a chance to steal any food or destroy anything, he eventually left.

Steve suggested we should try the Otira Track, which is above the bush line, so I thought it would be windy and barren. I wasn’t keen on it, but went along anyway. It turned out to be spectacular alpine tundra, which I had never seen before. Steve says it’s like Sierra Nevada. We rocked hopped across several streams that had bushes of Mount Cook Lilies next to them. We can't get used to the clear turquise water everywhere.Snow covered the mountain peaks, and somewhere up the river valley out of sight was a glacier. The highlight was sighting a Rock Wren, a new life bird. The tiny New Zealand variety is egg shaped, with hardly any tail at all. His back is olive and his lower belly is mustard yeloow. His pink legs and feet are way longer than they should be for his diminutive size, and as we approached, he did vigorous deep knee bends, probably in an attempt to scare us away from his nest. We were enchanted by his bravery, and gave him a wide berth. In the winter, he stays in snowy crevasses eating berries and insects. He is capable of going into a torper when necessary. He is an uncommon endemic, so we were particularly happy to meet him.

We spent so long in Westland, we have run out of time to do all that we wanted to do. The trip feels like life in microcosm. Every decision made involves letting go of an opportunity. We had hoped to see our Tucson friends Sonya and Andrew, who now live in Christchurch, as well as Amy and Ming, relatives of clients of mine, who own a hostel in Christchurch, but we have to be far away in Te Anau in a week. We decided we had better start down the east coast so we don’t have to make another marathon drive.

I think I have spent more time agonizing over where to go and what to see on this trip than I usually spend on buying a house or changing jobs. The decisions about how to spend this vacation seem so important, because we don’t expect we will ever get back here again. We want to try to make every day count, as we should when we’re at home. Steve says we need to remember that we are in New Zealand now, and enjoy it, and not let the inconveniences and disappointments let us forget what an adventure this is today. When we get home, it will seem like a dream, so we need to be fully aware of how precious each day is. It would be great if we could carry this awareness of the value of every day back to our Tucson life.

The End of the Road

Westland is how I imagined New Zealand would be. A variety of huge exotic trees cling to slopes that rise from the ocean at a 70 degree angle. Snow capped mountains. Not much logging or sheep. Wild and unpredictable. We decided to go as far down the west coast as we could. Tonight (November 18) we are almost at the end of the road. It feels like the end of the world. We are staying in the Haast Beach Holiday Park, a campground and backpacker in Okuru. We can hear the ocean beyond the dunes. We decided to spring for a motel room. It’s NZ$90 for an ensuite room with a double and two twins, plus a living room and kitchen. It’s actually pretty rustic, but it has everything we need to feel comfortable and we are quite content.

My first night in Okuru was less than restful. Apparently the bed sheets were washed in soap powder that didn't dissolve. The result was an irritating bed full of soap that got rolled into balls as I tossed and turned. In the morning, I told the housekeeper the bed was full of soap pills, and I asked to have the sheets changed. She was outraged. "PEE-yulls?!?" She changed the sheets, but I know she muttered to her companion about my crazy claim of medications in my bed.

Fortunately, Steve was polite and charming to the housekeepers, as he is to everyone, so our hosts were left a net neutral impression of the Yanks.

We had dinner in Haast Junction at a weird place called the Hard Antler. It’s a bar and restaurant, and there are mounted animal heads in the bar and televisions showing a game show in the restaurant. Still, because we are sort of enchanted by the remoteness and simplicity of the place, we had one of those moments when we were really aware our luck and felt grateful. Our friend Alona can tell us how to say it in Italian: “It is sweet to do nothing”. La Dolce Far Niente.

Jackson Bay is at the south end of the road in Westland. We walked through the forest to the beach to look for penguins, but it was cold and raining. The only species besides us dumb enough to be out in that weather was a lone Oyster Catcher, and it was agitated, so we were probably near its nest, or it would have been hunkered down with the rest of the sensible wildlife.

We went to the Craypot to get something to eat. This is a tiny building like a caboose on a raised platform with eight cramped little booths. You enter through the kitchen. The only person on staff was the hostess/waitress/cook/bus person/dishwasher/cashier/tourist information person. I had gone in earlier when it was packed, not realizing she was dealing with about 24 customers by herself, and I asked where the trail head was. When we went back for food after our unsuccessful penguin hunt, the empty diner was in a shambles, and she was talking on the phone and trying to recover from the lunch rush. I started busing tables, and eventually she got the dishes done in the sink and gave some more tourist information to a caller, and finally was able to take our order. We have noticed that even the most modest restaurants in tourist towns serve gourmet food, but off the beaten track, fish and chips feature prominently on every menu. We were way off the beaten path, and reluctantly ate these grease bombs. We had to admit, though, it tasted pretty good.

Steve asked this multitalented waitress, etc., if there was any season we could visit and not encounter so much rain. She said it could rain any day of the year. Turns out, the weather is as versatile as she is. She said we could and probably would experience every season on any particular day. Sure enough, by the time we finished lunch, the sun was shining.

Back at the place we were staying, Steve had talked with Brian, the owner’s son, about fossicking (rock hounding). Brian told him where to look for big jade boulders on Jackson River, so we went several miles up a dirt road, fording a few streams I didn't think we should be crossing in our Corolla, in search of jade. Whenever I found a likely prospect, Steve would politely examine it and tell me that although it was really pretty, it was only serpentine. He smashed a lot of rocks to get past the weathered outer surface, and collected some stuff that might be jade, but we’ll have to take it home to find out. I was counting on his bag to be underweight so the two of ours would average under 50 pounds, but it looks like I’ll have to come up with another strategy.

The Glaciers

Monday, November 17 we went to Franz Josef Glacier. It was cold and rainy and the viewing wasn’t so good. We took a walk to Peter’s Pond on a gravel path through rainforest that arched only about ten feet above our heads. Apart from being cold and wet and unable to get postcardy photos, it was nice. It’s pretty astonishing to see a glacier in a rainforest, almost at sea level. Without a guide, we aren’t supposed to go closer than 400 metres to the glacier. Steve of course went over the barrier and down into the braided stream bed to get a little closer, but he didn’t go all the way to the glacier.

We were suited up in our polypro, our waterproof boots, raincoats and rain pants and we were whining about how our raincoats were leaking. All my traveler’s cheques and passport got soaked. So we were amazed at how often we saw people happily strolling in the cold rain hatless, in shorts and flip flops. I guess desert life has made our blood reptilian.

The best part about Franz Josef was our first sighting of some Keas, the world’s only alpine parrot. They are fabulous, mostly olive green with red under their wings and on their rumps. They were flying around calling “Kea!” and looking for trouble. They are notoriously playful and mischievous, and will tear open back packs and tents and grab food out of the hands of unsuspecting tourists. We have seen photos of them in the snow. We also saw a Tomtit, which I would have called a Pied (birder talk for black and white) Butterball.

As we were driving away from Franz Josef, we encountered a road crew that had one lane cleared of a landslide that had covered both lanes of the road sometime in the two hours since we drove over that spot on our way to the glacier.

I was getting pretty miserable about the weather, so we went back to town. This caused the sun to come out, so we decided to go 20 km down the road to the less famous Fox Glacier. I’m sure the sunny weather had something to do with it, but we immediately declared Fox to be way better than Franz Josef. For one thing, the access to Fox is from its side, so you can drive a lot closer to it. The Fox River drains out from under the Glacier into a wide, gravelly valley with steep walls and impressive rock falls. Fox has lots of blue ice visible on its terminus. We rock hopped across a few streams to get closer to it, but when we reached a stream that required wading, Steve went on by himself. He just had to touch the glacier. I watched from about a quarter mile away as he stood under the overhang. The reason people aren’t supposed to approach the glacier without a guide is that the glacier is constantly calving, dropping tons of ice and rocks. Under the glacier is the wrong place to be. Steve was about to take a photo of a stream inside the glacier when a boulder dropped next to him. He took the hint and left without his photo. [Addendum: a month after we were at Fox, I read in the Wellington Post that an Aussie tourist was squashed when Fox Glacier calved on him. His cap was found in the river that drains the glacier. As summer advances, the authorities expect the river will eventually release his body.]

Tuesday we went to Lake Matheson outside of the town of Fox Glacier. It was cloudy, so I knew we wouldn’t be able to replicate the famous photo of Mount Hood reflected in the Lake, but I wanted to see the lake anyway, so Steve went along with it. We got close to a flock of impressively large and colorful New Zealand Pigeons, and saw a Pukeko (Purple Swamp Hen) strolling in a field. The big score was an eel, about two feet long, swimming around and under a deck built over the lake. I have never seen a wild eel, which the Maori call tuna. The eel sort of creeped us out, because it moved so slowly and dreamily.

Around the Glacier Towns

A company here called Wicked Campers or something like that rents campers the size of our Eurovan. Each camper has a unique and randy paint job. I imagine there are many people who rented these things and were mighty embarrassed or outraged by the messages they had to carry around the country with them. These are some of the milder examples: “Congratulations on your one millionth fart” and another that said “If you are born again, do you have two belly buttons?” Some are truly X rated. Today I saw one I almost thought I could live with: “You can start me up; start me up, I’ll never stop.” My favorite Rolling Stones song! But that line was followed by the one that Ed Sullivan wouldn’t let Mick sing on his show.

Every wine menu we see here has the Chardonnay from the Church Road vineyard we visited.

Most hotels and restaurants leave their doors and windows open all the time, even when it’s 60 degrees F or less outside. We were in the Full of Beans restaurant in Franz Josef yesterday and a customer closed the door because not only was it about 50 degrees out, but it was windy and raining. The manager immediately went open and propped the door open with a huge assertive wedge. Other than that, it’s our favorite restaurant in town.

Westland

November 15 we started down the west coast of the South Island to the area the Kiwis call Westland. Parts of it look like Big Sur in California. We walked on the Truman Track through beach forest and then flax plants to the Tasman Sea, where we found some nephrite jade rocks on the beach. The Maori call this stone greenstone, and made weapons and tools out of it.

Continuing south on SH6, we stopped at Pancake Rocks in Punakaiki for a few hours to marvel at these wonderful thin bedded limestone outcrops on the shore line. The signs claim that the origin of these formations mystifies geologists. The cliffs are grey, and alternating layers of mudstone and limestone resulted in differential weathering, so in the places where the mudstone has eroded, the side of the rock makes a convex curve inward. The result looks like an enormous stack of pancakes. But that explanation is apparently not satisfactory to some people, so they have cooked up the idea of stylobedding, which supposedly means when the limestone was in solution under compression, the layers of mudstone precipitated out. My family geologist never heard of this, and we think it sounds fishy. We were able to walk on the outcrops and see the ocean flow under a natural arch into soccer field-sized opening that becomes a blow hole at high tide. I got one shot where you can see the spray from the crashing ocean waves makes a rainbow. I heard the booming waves before I saw them, and I thought it was an earthquake. No such luck. Yet.

Lots of White Fronted Terns were gliding around, arguing with each other and nesting on the sea stacks close to shore, and further out was a colony of Spotted Shags, another life list bird.


Down the coast past Greymouth to the little town of Hokitika, where we stayed November 15 in the Birdsong backpacker. Two bunks, shared bath, NZ$70. Not a great value, but the owner Neil is a jolly fellow. His wife has painted a different native bird on the wall of each room, and cards with her paintings are available. It’s sort of a naïve style, pretty nice. Just down the road is a narrow dell where we walked with our torches in the dark after dinner to see glowworms. They are fly larvae that live on the steep walls of a creek drainage. They glow with a blue green light to attract food and look like stars. Very pretty.

Steve is losing weight and I am gaining. Getting from place to place and finding lodging doesn’t leave him as much time as he would like for eating. I however, eat a lot faster than he does, so I spend at least an hour a day waiting for him to finish. Often after about 20 minutes or so of watching him eat, I decide to order something chocolate to occupy myself while I wait.

So far our search for delicious chocolate desserts has been a failure, but we keep trying. We can't understand this, because most of the rest of the time the meals are fabulous and artfully presented. Steve says only the Italians, Germans, French and Americans (in the U.S) know what to do with chocolate.

On SH6, we saw Penguin Crossing signs like the Weka Crossing signs, but so far, no real Penguins.

I found one of Sunbeam’s hairs on my slacks today. It’s been a while since that happened, but it delights us to have a bit of her here with us.

Hokitika is on the tour bus route, and there are plenty of ways to spend money here. We went to a jade factory and saw some beautiful jewelry. We also went in a gold store that had gold nuggets. The local nuggets are smooth from being tumbled in streams. Nuggets from Fiordland are rougher, with more character. We really fancied a gold in quartz matrix specimen from the Nelson area.

A watercolorist named Fiona Carruthers was minding a gallery where some of her paintings were for sale. I bought two cards depicting palm trees. The original paintings are in a show in Darfield, on the road between Arthur’s Pass and Christchurch. If we go that way, perhaps I will check at the gallery and see whether I want to buy the originals. They spoke to me because they are the colors I used in decorating our second home in the desert.

Hokitika is next to the ocean, and we thought of having brekkie at a picnic table by the beach, but it was too windy and damp, so we ate in a restaurant and then went to Sweet Alice’s Fudge Kitchen because she offered free fudge samples. They were making waffle cones next to the marble slab where the ice cream is mixed with fruit. The thin batter was poured onto the waffle iron, a soft round waffle is cooked, and then wrapped around a cone. I had never seen that done before. They said they started making their own because so many of the commercial cones were broken in transit. They make soft serve frozen yoghurt to order with fresh fruit, so Steve got a kiwi yoghurt. Yum.

Now we are in the town of Frans Josef Glacier (pronounced GLAY-see-er). We paid for two nights (November 16 and 17) at the Top 10 Holiday Park, which is mostly a campground for the ubiquitous travelers in caravans, as they call the small RVs. We have an ensuite room for NZ$99. I thought that because we would be inside waiting for the rain to stop, we might as well have somewhere comfortable.

It rains 15 feet a year here, so we really shouldn’t be surprised that it’s raining now. We brought rain pants and waterproof coats and I bought a pair of waterproof hiking boots in expectation that we would spend a lot of time outside in the rain, but we haven’t needed any of that stuff yet, and now that we do, we are sort of bummed. We are further bummed by learning today that climbing on the Frans Josef or the nearby Fox Glaciers is not recommended for people within a year of having knee surgery. My surgery was two months ago, so that counts me out. The ability to take steps up to two feet high is required, and while I may be able to go up okay, I’m pretty sure going down will be a problem. I have done okay hiking so far, but there have been a few days when I wondered whether I would be able to walk the day after a hike.

Steve says we put off our trip to New Zealand just a little too long. We had always thought of hiking in this country as something we should do while we’re still in halfway decent condition, and leave the easy museum visits in Europe for our old age. But old age snuck up on me when I wasn’t looking.

Across Cook Strait

We are sad that we had to put our cat Sunbeam in a kennel while we’re here. Until we did our laundry a few days ago, we occasionally were delighted to find one of her hairs on our clothing. Fortunately, our friend Chris visits Sunbeam in jail and takes tuna to her. We are delighted whenever we see a Sunbeam appliance here. So far we have seen a toaster, electric kettle and bed heating mats. At home, I discovered I have had a Sunbeam hair dryer for years. Chris assures us that Sunbeam is heiress to the toaster and hair dryer fortune, so we are pleased to see so many of her company’s products in use.

It is disappointing to see so much of the country clear cut. Sometimes the land is left naked, much is converted to grazing, and some is planted with the same, dark green, conical conifer, which I think is Douglas Fir, a pine from the U.S. The beautiful biodiversity of the mountainsides is marred by these monoculture scars of light green grass and patches of homogeneous trees. We keep paraphrasing W’s inane description of terrorists: “They Hate Treedom”.

November 12 we had to get up way too early to get to the wharf by 7:30 AM for the ferry to the South Island. The three hour passage across Cook Strait was smooth and sunny. We saw a few flotillas of Australasian Gannets (a life bird) and Shearwaters, although I’m not sure which of the 13 species of Shearwaters it was.


From the ferry in Queen Charlotte Sound, on the way to Picton on the South Island.
Last winter, one of the ferries got caught in a bad storm. In addition to passengers and cars, the ferry transports trains (tandem trailer trucks). The sea was so rough, one of the trains fell over and squashed a few cars. The ferry had to hide behind an island for hours, and the whole ordeal took eight hours.


At Te Papa museum in Wellington, we were able to go below ground to look at the base isolators, said to “put the brakes on earthquakes”. Because the museum is located on a major fault and contains national treasures, it was designed to move independent of the ground in an earthquake, which will reduce the chance of that the museum would collapse. The base isolators are piers made of rubber and steel layers. The Kiwi innovation is the lead cylinders inside the piers, which improves the flexibility of the isolators.

In the museum, we saw a dog skin cloak, worn only by the highest Moari chieftains. We saw a movie about the dedication of the museum in which the Anglo politicians were also wearing what appeared to be dog skin cloaks.

In an Indian restaurant, the menu said we could request our meal seasoned mild, medium, Kiwi hot, Indian hot or English hot. I asked what was the difference in the heat. The waiter said Kiwi hot is 6, Indian hot is 7 and English hot is 9. I said I was surprised the English would want such spicy food, because their food is typically bland. He said the English drink so much, they can’t taste their food. I got the feeling he was sick of explaining this.

November 12 and 13 we stayed at Accents on the Park in Nelson. This backpacker is two blocks from downtown in a Victorian house. Across the street is a cathedral in a big shady park. In addition to huge trees, the park has octopus agave and a red flowering century plant. We paid NZ$92 for a queen ensuite with a refrigerator. We had to pay an additional $NZ3 per day to hire a space in the car park.

Nelson is a pleasant town with good places to eat. I especially liked Lambretta’s, a bar and restaurant where I got a potato and kumara (sweet potato) roesti (pancake) with pan fried fish and a rocket (spring green) salad with capsicum (bell peppers). Some cool vintage Lambretta scooters are on the sidewalk and inside.

We were close to Tasman Bay and went for a long walk at sunset on Tahunanui Beach. We met a young couple walking their red bull terrier. They volunteered that they knew that pit bulls have a bad reputation in the States, but said it was completely unjustified. They were optimistic about Obama’s election, but this was the second time someone told us they hoped he wasn’t killed by skin heads or the KKK. It always makes me sad when people tell us about the racist or ugly parts of our country.

Lambretta’s is next door to Possibilities, the now age (sic) bookstore. Above Possibilities is the environmental engineering firm Golder Associates. We thought of going in and dropping the names of people we know at Golder in the States, and see if we could get work as field techs, but decided we really don’t want to work if we can avoid it.

Golder Associates in Nelson
Across the street from Golder is Falafel Gourmet, where we had a delicious Israeli version of falafel. The thick pita bread was really delicious, having been brushed with oil and lightly toasted with sesame seeds and some sort of finely chopped herbs, maybe dill.

The northwest part of the South Island is said to be the sunniest part of the country, and so far it has also been the warmest. The weather was beautiful for our drive up to Abel Tasman Park, where we tramped in the forest high above the Tasman Sea, then went down to Appletree Bay to eat lunch on the golden sand.


The birds were very tame. We almost stepped on a California Quail and a Silvereye (life bid) on the track and got within six feet of a Tui eating the flowers on a flax plant. A Fantail flittered just above us in a tree, and a Chaffinch wanted to be fed on the beach. We also saw Canada Geese (a first for the New Zealand list) swimming around. A Black Back Gull nested on driftwood on the beach. A pair of Pied Stilts seemed to be building a nest. One of them rapidly tossed leafy mud clots over his shoulder while the other quickly patted them into place.

We can tell when we encounter someone on the track who is from a country where traffic drives on the right side of the road. Kiwis and Aussies walk on the left side of the track, and the rest of us end up in a dance as we trying to get past them on the right.

We haven’t figured out why this would be the case, but the moon seems to be upside down here. In the northern hemisphere, the moon waxes from right to left, but here it waxes left to right. [Our rock scientist friend Tom tells us this is because, being Down Under, we were looking at it upside down].

The copper ten cent piece is the smallest denomination. The stores use the Swedish rounding method. If the price ends in 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5, the price is rounded down. If the price ends in 6, 7, 8 or 9, the price is rounded up. I imagine people in the U.S. would accept this about as well as they did the metric system. Kiwis managed to join almost everyone else in the world in going metric 10 or 15 years ago, but we occasionally see old interpretive signs that give elevations in feet.

Thankfully, the Kiwis pay their employees enough so that we are not expected to tip. The Goods and Service Tax (GST) is 12.5%, but hotel rates are quoted with the GST included. Food is not taxed, but other things are.

November 14 we drove from Nelson to Westport on the west coast. It was a boring town, so we continued a few kilometres south to a four room hostel called Beaconstone, set on 120 reclaimed acres with a distant view of the ocean. This place was built eight years ago by a woman from California named Nancy and her Kiwi husband Grae. It has a very mellow feeling. We have a king bed and shared bath for NZ$75. It has composting toilets and solar power, which we are asked to conserve, so we are updating our journals tonight at the Jack’s Gasthof restaurant down the hill.

Beaconstone is almost completely free of utility bills. Rain water is collected from the roof and pumped up to a holding tank on the hill using solar power. Water in the pipes set in the concrete floor is heated by the wood stove, keeping the floors warm. Gas is used to run the refrigerator and cook top, and will heat the water if the sun doesn't come out for a couple days.

We misunderstood Nancy and thought we were supposed to use the outdoor showers and composting loos. It was cold out there, and we only took sponge baths in the outdoor sinks, fighting off nasty little sand flies. This experience was enough to convince us that no matter how lovely the setting, we would not spend another night here. Only after we had packed up and made plans to move south did Nancy say she hoped were were taking our "bird baths" in the outdoor sink out of choice. We realized that we could have used the indoor loo, sink and shower next to our room.

The exchange rate continues to improve. Now it’s NZ$1 = US$0.57. The price of petrol has dropped to NZ$1.54 per litre. Multiply by US$ 0.57 and multiply that by 3.85 litres per US gallon to get the price: US$3.35 per gallon. Last summer when the exchange rate was NZ$1 to US$0.57, it was about NZ$2/litre or US$5.88/gallon. Of course, the whole world thinks it's absurd the way we drive Yank Tanks and whine about the cost of petrol.

When Steve cashed some traveler’s cheques, he got some larger note denominations. The NZ$50 note is purple and orange and has Sir Apirana Ngata on the front. He was an early twentieth century Maori lawyer who served in Parliament and promoted Maori language and culture. On the back of the note is the Kokako, a large grey finch. On the North Island, he has blue wattles and his wattles are orange on the South Island. He makes a very loud rich mournful organ-like note. Unfortunately, we missed our chance to hear him sing at dawn on Tiritiri Matangi, one of the few places that stands between him and extinction. I hope we are able to go back there and camp on our next trip so we can hear the morning song.

The NZ$100 note is pink and orange and has the Mohua or Yellowhead, a rare native bird like a sparrow. If we are lucky, we may see him in Fiordland. On the front of the note is Lord Rutherford of Nelson, an atomic scientist.

Each denomination is a different size, which is thoughtful for people with impaired vision.

The green kiwi fruit is especially tasty here at its source. We tried the golden kiwi, which has a hairless skin that doesn’t need to be peeled. It’s good, but not worth twice the price of green kiwis.

On the drive to Westport, we encountered some white-haired Australian pensioners, the first people we’ve met who aren’t thrilled by Obama’s election. Mr. Aussie asked me what I thought Obama was going to do for America. I said for starts, he will end the war, which will save us lots of money, and help get the economy back on track. Steve said the war was based on the false claims that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and that Saddam Hussein was involved with Al Qaeda. Mr. Aussie didn’t seem to think those claims had been proven false. He asked what we thought of New Zealand and I said we had been told the South Island is much different from the North Island, but so far we still see lots of logging trucks and grazing livestock. Mr. Aussie said logging and grazing are the backbone of New Zealand, and the Greenies want to replace the grazing with vineyards. I said maybe wine is more profitable than wool, but he said the Greenies wanted to stop the grazing because they claim it causes pollution.

Eventually we reached the edge of the Kahuranga National Park and followed the Buller River through its deep granite valley which is so steep that it is unmolested by loggers and sheep.

Next to the road outside of Westport, we saw a sign like the signs in the U.S. warning of cattle or deer on the road, but this had a silhouette of a running chicken bird and warned us about Wekas. Soon enough, one of these flightless brown fowl ran across the road in front of us. Another bird for the life list.

Wasilla Hillbillies Looting Neiman Marcus from Coast to Coast

We have said that phrase about a dozen times since we first read it Wellington's The Dominion Post yesterday, and we crack up every time. Now that the threat of a Palin presidency has passed, at least for the next four years, we and the Kiwis are enjoying watching the McCain campaign blame Palin for driving the Republican party off a cliff. Well, at least they can't blame the Democrats for giving Palin the keys to the car (or the RNC credit card).

On the way to Wellington, we stopped at Waikanae Beach, where we saw White Fronted Terns, another lifer.

We're in Wellington, the capital city. Our first impression of Wellington was not good. We got off Route 1 on The Terrace, high above the city. We saw people lugging themselves up the steep hills from the attractions by the harbour, a mile away. We started checking out backpacker lodges recommended by Rough Guide. They were unbelievably depressing flea bags. The city seems even more oppressive because there are no car emissions checks and mufflers are optional. We even checked out the Youth Hostel, said to be the pick of the backpackers. NZ$88 for a room on the fifth floor containing only two twin beds. No closet, no nightstand. Shared bath, of course.

We finally bit the bullet and ended up at Apollo Lodge, just two blocks from downtown on a quiet cul de sac. NZ$135 for two bedrooms, kitchen and bath. Plus off street parking, which was not available at the flea bags. Well, we could have bought an on street parking permit, which, like at the U of A, is really just a hunting permit. We're happy. In room internet for NZ$15 per day, too. It's only vacation money, right?

When we checked into the Apollo, the manager was on holiday. We tried to get the minder to reduce the rate, but she said she couldn’t because it wasn’t her motel. She asked us “Normal or trim?” It wasn’t a choice I was prepared to make at the moment, but Steve noticed that she had her hand on the refrigerator door, and deduced that she wanted to know what kind of milk we wanted for our in-room coffee.

There are lots of places to eat on Courtenay, and after dinner we walked around the City Centre, where there is a lot of large scale sculpture. We especially liked a huge metal fern ball suspended above the plaza. Downtown, the architecture is more interesting and the city seems more welcoming.

Tuesday we went to Te Papa, the national museum. They had lots of interactive exhibits about the treaty between the English settlers and the Maori (a dishonest deal, that), the geology, plants and animals, the changes humans have wrought on the landscape and art. We also took a bus out to Kaori Wildlife Refuge on the edge of the city, because the Rough Guide said it was open to 8:00 PM, which it wasn't. This isn't the first time the Rough Guide led us astray. The manager at the backpacker in Palmerstown North said someone who said he was from the Rough Guide asked if he could stay there for free in exchange for a possible listing in the book. The manager agreed, and said this guy was awful. Drunk all the time, threw up on the carpet, your basic nightmare. If he really was from the Rough Guide, I guess that would explain why some of the information in it is useless.

Anyway, we walked along the edge of the Refuge for a while, deciding not to spend NZ$60 for a night tour and the chance to hear and maybe see a Kiwi bird. We went on night tours in Australia and Costa Rica and decided they are just too invasive, and we need to leave the animals alone and let them go about their night time business without us shining flashlights on them. The Refuge has a patented fence around it, designed to keep out predators and non-native mammals who might try to dig under it or climb over it. The trees have been cut down for 10 feet on either side of the fence to keep critters form entering the Refuge by jumping in from an outside tree. Of course, they can't keep the flying beasts out, so it is not as pristine an environment at Tiritiri Matangi island, but the bird song was much more abundant inside the fence than outside. We should have gotten there earlier. It looks lovely, as does the Botanical Garden which we glimpsed from the bus.

Moving South

Tonight (November 9) we are staying in Palmerstown North. It is half way between Napier and Wellington, the capitol of New Zealand and the southernmost city on the North Island. On Wednesday, we will take the ferry for the three hour ride across Cook Strait to the South Island.

It seems that even cactus will grow here. We saw some big prickly pears and agaves in people's yards today.

We found a nice backpacker lodge here called Civello. We have a quiet apartment with kitchenette, private bath, queen bed and a twin bed in another room for NZ$79. The best part is the free internet. I had gotten spoilt at the first few places we stayed where I had free wireless internet, so I could use my laptop. Then we encountered the more typical situation: I need to pay NZ$2 for 20 minutes on someone else's computer. Now I am able to upload the journal I have been keeping on my laptop to my blog using my laptop.

Today we went on a self guided tour of the Art Deco architecture of Napier. This town was demolished by an earthquake and subsequent fire in 1931, the height of Art Deco architecture, and the city decided to rebuild in that style. Miami Beach is often considered the Art Deco capital of the world, but I have seen Miami Beach, and Napier is way better. It's on Hawke's Bay, with a long, gravelly grey beach. The backpacker lodge where we stayed is on Marine Parade, the boulevard facing the ocean next to a long park. I want to move here and give tours of the fabulous buildings. I at least want to come back some February to attend the Art Deco festival.

Opossums are a huge menace here, and they destroy an enormous amount of vegetation. Like most introduced species, they have no predators, and the only way to control them is to kill them. An opossum industry had sprung up to try to make something positive out of all this death and destruction. Today we went to Opossum World in Napier. I skipped all the taxidermied possum displays that Steve said explained the whole possum problem. I was captivated by all the clothing that has been made out of possum fur. It is as soft as cashmere, and much warmer. It's mixed with merino (sheep) wool, because the possum hairs are too short to make yarn by themselves. I bought a purple knit possum/merino hat, and Steve bought a cranberry red one. Are we styling now! We have been promised that it won't stink like a wet dog when it gets wet.

We made a quick stop in Taradale for wine tasting at the Church Road vineyard. We tasted three whites and one red for free, and found we could live without any of them. The Rough Guide said if we were lucky, we would be offered the vineyard's reserve Chardonnay. I said I liked their regular Chardonnay, so we were given a sample of the reserve for free. It was nicer, but not nice enough to part us from our money

The New Zealand election was yesterday. No one seems to care. There are seven parties represented in Parliament. Green and Maori are two of the parties. The Labour party (similar to citizen-oriented Democrats) has been in power for nine years, and the country wanted change, so now they have the National party (business-oriented, like the Republicans). Many people had told us they weren't going to vote, and no one seems very optimistic that things will change. Sounds like the U.S. in 2000.

Without exception, when people hear our accents, they say something positive about Obama's election. One man told us today the whole world breathed a sigh of relief. A man from Turkey said he is very impressed that we have a black president, and it shows that the U.S. really is the land of opportunity. Overnight, the world seems to like us again. We just hope Obama can do half of all the urgent tasks ahead of him. What a mess he inherited.

Greetings from Gondwanaland

On to the spic and span little resort town of Taupo, next to the gigantic Lake Taupo. We spent November 6 at the Tiki Lodge, where we had a queen ensuite with four extra bunk beds for NZ$75. We would have stayed, but we had to check out because a Frisbee tournament was taking over the hostel the next day. We moved the Silver Fern, which is only three years old, and copied from the design of the Tiki Lodge, but it’s actually nicer, with a kitchen and dining room over looking the lake. We had a king ensuite with a twin bed for NZ$80. It was supposed to be NZ$99, but we said that was too much, so the manager made a deal with us.

Lake Taupo is a volcanic caldera created 1,800 years ago, the result of the most violent eruption on Earth in the last 5,000 years. Across the lake are three gorgeous snow covered volcanoes. One of these, Ruapehu, ruined the 1995 and 1996 skiing seasons by spewing black ash for months.

A store manager told us about the Tangiwai Disaster that occurred on Christmas Eve, 1953. Her mother was working in Wellington and had a reservation to take a train to Hamilton to see her family. At the train station, she was told that there were three spaces on an earlier train, and she was offered a seat, which she took. That night, a volcano erupted, and the lahar (mud flow) washed out a train bridge along the route. The train her mother was originally scheduled to take went off the bridge into the Whangaehu River. Over 100 people died.

Back when he was a newly minted geologist, Steve did geothermal exploration in the western U.S. He read about the geothermal activity at Rotorua and the geothermal power plant at Wairakei. He never thought he’d actually see these places. We hoped we would be able to take a tour of the power plant, which was described as self promoting and open daily in our Rough Guide, but unfortunately it was closed to the public a few years ago and will be replaced by a more modern plant soon. There will be a rare public tour on November 15, in honor of the plant’s fiftieth anniversary. We think it was the second or third geothermal power plant in the world, after Iceland and/or Italy.

Twice we have gotten on the wrong road, and not recognized it until we had gone more than a half hour in the wrong direction. This is pretty easy to do here, because if you don’t notice the sign for the route you want as you circle the roundabout in a counter clock wise direction in bewilderment and fear of being hit, and you start off the wrong road, there won’t be any more route signs to confirm or deny that you have chosen the right route. The only place the routes are marked are at roundabouts, and the only way to figure out that you have gotten on the wrong road is to study the names of the towns on the map along your route and compare them to the names of the towns you go through, and if they don’t match up, eventually you have to admit that you screwed up, turn around, and go back.

For this reason, we had to drive almost all the way back to Rotorua to visit a must see attraction, Wai-O-Tapu Geothermal Wonderland. It was definitely worth the trip. The Champagne Pool is on the cover of the Rough Guide to New Zealand, and its green and orange shore is gorgeous. Tiny champagne-like bubbles break the surface of the pool with a fizzing sound. Steam covers the lake, so one has to be patient and wait for a breeze to blow the steam away in order to get a good photo. A variety of mineral deposits give each bubbling pool its own colorful character.

Up the road from Wai-O-Tapu is a pond that has hot bubbling mud. The mud is spit into the air with an amusing "ppppt!"

I added the White Backed Magpie and the Fantail to my life list.

The reason for all the earthquakes, geysers, volcanoes and geothermal activity is said to be that two plates collide at the North Island. The Pacific Plate is subducting below the Indian-Australian Plate, if you believe in that sort of thing.


Off the road between Rotorua and Taupo on the Waikato River is the amazing Huka Falls. Huka means foam in Maori. The river is suddenly funneled into a narrow channel, and the power of the falls is as impressive as its stunning clear turquoise color. We are starting to notice that New Zealand rivers and ocean water have a very beautiful and distinctive swimming pool color, and the water is invariably free of sediment.

When we were taking turns minding our laundry, we watched television in our room. I was shocked to see bits of a documentary called The Road to Hell, about the influence Christian fundamentalists have had on the Bush administration and its policies regarding gay rights, abortion and pornography. The view of the documentary is that the extremists on the right have created a climate of intolerance, hatred and violence. We don’t watch TV, so I don’t know if this sort of thing gets aired in the US, but I have to doubt it.

Steve reported seeing a cartoon called Lil’ Bush that was sort of in the style of The Simpsons and very irreverently portrayed Bush as a bungling idiot who was under the thumb of the King of Saudi Arabia. Maybe this sort of stuff is on TV in the U.S., but we sure haven’t ever seen anything like it. (Update: when we got home, we discovered Lil' Bush is produced in the U.S. by Comedy Central). I can’t imagine that any U.S. companies would risk the wrath of the Bush administration by sponsoring a program like this. It was amazing to us that Kiwis are so aware of our government and so contemptuous of it.

We see ads for Tui beer on many of the bars here. We figured it must be the working man’s beer, and it would taste like Bud, but we felt it was our duty as tourists to check it out. It turns out it’s a lager, and darker and tastier than we expected. The bartender told us Tui is the beer of the North Island, so we did a taste test and also got a draft of the South Island favorite, Speight’s Old Dark Five Malt Ale. We liked the Speight’s (pronounced Spate’s) even better.

November 8 we stayed at the Waterfront Lodge in Napier, a coastal town on the east side of the North Island. Our room is a small one with twin beds and bath shared with 13 other rooms for NZ$65. It’s my least favorite accommodation so far, but we had already checked three other hostels and I was ready to give it a rest. I wish we could have stayed at the lovely Criterion Art Deco in the Art Deco district. It has the most amazing two story ceiling Art Deco lobby, but it was full.

We noticed today that there are no commercial billboards in New Zealand. What a refreshing change to be spared the visual affront and spiritual assault of crass commercialism. However, there are plenty of government sponsored billboards that constantly nag us to slow down, take a nap and don't drink and drive.

Change is Coming to the United States

The Kiwis say it’s too cold for this time of year. We think it’s great. High 60s to low 70s, with very little rain during the day. When it has rained during the day, it is only for a few minutes, and it’s often more like a mist. We came prepared for torrential rain. Perhaps that is still ahead of us on the South Island.

Unfortunately, Steve has had a cold since our third day here. I am doing okay, and so far my knee, back, jaw and dizzy head have not given me problems.

The cigarette packs have very graphic warnings on them. “Cigarettes are poisonous” is illustrated with the bottom of a foot with a tag on the toe. “Smoking causes cancer” and “Smoking causes blindness” have hideous photos of afflicted smokers. I guess they don’t have anyone like Phillip Morris here to reign in the surgeon general. Smoking is not allowed inside buildings, though. Also, those who roll their own can buy a bag of filters.

The Kiwis are so pleasant and polite, it is a surprise to find that many of them drive like they are in Central America. Speeding along one-and-a-half lane mountain roads with no shoulder, they pass on blind curves and leave us in a cloud of dust. I suppose some of the maniacs are foreigners, but it probably the Kiwis who have adopted another Latino custom: the home made roadside crosses and flowers to memorialize where a loved one's soul left his body unexpectedly. In Spanish, they are called descansos.

Kiwis dress very stylishly. We have not encountered anyone from the U.S. The tourists seem to be from New Zealand, Australia, and of course the intrepid Germans are everywhere. Whenever I see an overweight person and I think I have spotted an American, she opens her mouth and turns out to be a Kiwi. This doesn’t happen often, but I am sort of surprised to see any overweight people here, because in previous travels, the locals were reliably trim. McDonald’s and KFC have made their way here, so that may account for the weight problem.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, November 4 and 5, we stayed at the Funky Green Voyager in Rotorua. This backpacker lodge was not crowded, so they let us have a big room with seven twin beds and a double, along with the bath room that would normally be for nine people, all to ourselves for NZ$59. It was very simple and clean. The manager was the first person we encountered who talked like us. He was from Vancouver, and had just finished three months of work and will start touring the country next week. He wanted to know what we thought of the presidential election, and we were amused by the Obama/Biden bumper sticker on his file cabinet.

Rotorua is a nice old town next to a huge circular lake. The most elegant building in town is now a museum, but it was one of the world’s original health spas in the early twentieth century, and got New Zealand on the map as a tourist destination. People came not only to bathe in the hot mineral springs, but to receive bizarre treatments like electrified baths.

We visited Whakarewarewa, a living thermal village that has been occupied by Maori since 1350. Today 26 families live in neat and trim wooden houses along the narrow streets that wind over hills between hot pools and fumaroles (geothermal steam vents) in the ground. A Maori woman showed us around the village, and demonstrated the art of hangi, or cooking in thermal pools. Food is tied in a muslin bag and lowered into the water, which is around boiling temperature. It takes a few minutes to cook fish and veges and several minutes for chicken. She also showed us the bathing pools, through which water flows until about 3 PM, when the flow is diverted so the pools can cool. When the tourists leave at 5 PM, the resident families all come to the pools to bathe together. The pools are cleaned every night, and made available for bathing in the morning before the tourists arrive again. I thought the water felt pleasantly silky. Steve said it was greasy. It was very clear. There are no bathing or cooking facilities in the homes, which look like normal homes from the outside.


We could see a geyser erupting to about twenty feet high, about 300 feet away. The height of the geyser varies with atmospheric pressure, but it is spouting continuously. The water level in one of the pools fluctuates with atmospheric pressure, and the Maori can use it to predict changes in the weather.

The guide told us bitterly that the pools used to be larger than they are now, but hotels diverted some of the hot water to heat their rooms. She also said the geyser we could see used to be part of their village, but the government put a fence between the village and the geyser, and now only people who pay a lot more to visit Te Puia, the government’s museum, can get close to the geyser.

The Maori at Whakarewarewa have been guiding tourists through their village for over a century, but the wooden fences to keep the guests away from the geothermal dangers have only recently been built.

When the Maori die, they are washed in a special pool, wrapped, and put into a tree for two years to decompose. They are then buried in vaults above the ground. It wouldn’t be possible to bury them below ground in this village because steam and water are encountered at shallow depth. Exhaust pipes have been installed in some of the vaults to release the steam.

We were able to identify the Welcome Swallow here.

We were surprised to see the Maori influence is so strong in daily life. Signs welcome us with Ora Kia and Haere Ra instead of hello and good bye. In parks, the Maori name of plants and animals is given along with the English, and the whole explanation is often translated into Maori as well. In Wellington and Taupo, the storm drains and manholes have beautiful Maori designs on them. More of the place names on the North Island are Maori than English. Perhaps this is because the English acknowledged in 1840 that they had stolen the Maoris' land. It was certainly stolen, but the white man’s remorse occurred here about 100 years before it crossed the minds of any one in power in the US or Australia.

Like paper money everywhere, New Zealand bills are much more colorful and imaginative than U.S. greenbacks. The five dollar bill is green and orange and has Sir Edmund Hillary on the front and the Hoiho (Maori name for the yellow-eyed penguin) on the back. There are two clear plastic inserts on the bill. One is a beautiful silver fern.

On the front of the blue ten dollar bill is Kate Sheppard, New Zealand's most famous suffragette. The Whio, or Blue Duck, is on the back.

The green twenty dollar bill depicts the Queen Mum and a Karaearea, the New Zealand Falcon.


We got back to Rotorua around 6 PM on November 5 (it was 10 PM in California on November 4) and found a news station on the car radio that seemed to be saying that Obama had 284 electoral votes. We didn’t allow ourselves to believe this, because the last two presidential elections were so crooked. We parked next to Lake Rotorua, and as we watched the sun approach the horizon, we heard McCain’s concession speech. I cried with relief. We jumped out of the car because a beautiful rainbow had just dropped one end of itself into the lake. It seemed like a good omen for new era of hope, peace, prosperity, justice and civility.

We walked along the side of the lake, and came across two Black Swans on the shore with their two fluffy grey signets. We named them Barack, Michelle, Malia and Sacha. Other birds spotted on our walk were the Chaffinch, New Zealand Scaup and Feral Goose.

It’s said that you will smell Rotorua before you see it, because the hydrogen sulfide gases steaming out of the ground give the air a rotten egg smell. The smell is not constant, and I’m not sure it smells like rotten eggs, either, because I have never smelled a rotten egg. The smell they put in natural gas is supposed to smell like rotten eggs, and Rotorua doesn’t smell like natural gas.

We were delighted to find white pumice rocks on the shore of the lake that were so full of holes, they floated. We also found lots of steaming fumaroles and bubbling pools. A friend of Steve’s once took a tape recorder instead of a camera with her to Europe, and made an audio record of her vacation instead of a visual one. We wished we had a tape recorder to capture the gurgling and belching of the Earth. The magical bird chorus at Tiritiri Matangi would have been a great audio souvenir, too.

We read that the acidic gases in the lake destroy the web on the feet of the gulls that live here. We wondered what the gases were doing to our cameras, but it was hard to keep them in their cases.

We were surprised to find that big cases of real fire works are sold in the grocery stores here. Many private fireworks exploded throughout the night in honor of Obama’s election.

The U.S. ambassador to New Zealand was appointed by Bush, but there was big party celebrating Obama’s election at the U.S. embassy in Wellington. We heard the ambassador announce as they waited for election returns that CNN was on the big television at the front, and Fox News was back there in the corner. The comment about Fox generated scoffs. Even here, people recognize that Faux News is a joke.

Obama’s election was front page news here for days. People seem to be jubilant that the Bush era is over and they are especially impressed that our country has "overcome its sorry history of slavery and civil rights abuses” as the Wellington Dominion Post said, to elect a black president.

New Zealand’s economy is also in bad shape, and they need the U.S. to recover so they can recover. The papers speculate that McCain would have been more liberal on international trade than Obama, yet Kiwis seem to think Obama will be better for New Zealand overall. This is only the second time I have heard anything about the candidates’ positions on international trade. The first time was in a mass email forwarded to me a month ago by a client from Mexico, whose Latino friends were sharing the somewhat alarming news that they thought McCain would be a better choice for people who care about Latin American. Of course, in the U.S., the media had us so worked up about lipstick on pigs and palling with terrorists, that we would never consider how our election affects and concerns the rest of the world.

Being the big hot pool fan that he is, Steve went to the Polynesian Spa in Rotorua for two hours of soaks in various types of mineral pools. I went to the St. Faith Anglican Church, built to convert the Maori in the lakeside village of Ohinemutu to Christianity. It has a rather amazing depiction of Jesus wearing a feather cape etched onto a glass window, bigger than life. The window is positioned so Jesus appears to be walking on Lake Rotorua.


The pews and columns have Maori carvings of faces with eyes made of paua shells, which are iridescent, like abalone. The walls are plants dyed and woven by the Maori into beautiful latticework patterns called tukutuku.


Nearby is the Tamatelapua Meeting House, built by the Maori in their tradional style with elaborately carved beams. All this is in a living Maori village of concrete block houses next to the lake.

Rotorua is my favorite town so far. It has a winning combination of geothermal wonders, Maori culture, elegant old buildings and good food.

All the food on this trip has been exceptionally good and creative. Asians are about 10% of the Kiwi population, although most of them seem to be in Auckland. They have brought great Indian, Thai, Turkish and other cuisines to the country. Even familiar dishes here are done with innovation. I like the dried apricots slivers and green pumpkin seeds on top of cream cheese frosting on carrot cake better than the usual orange food-colored frosting carrot.

Our favorite new fast food is Burger Fuel. They use their frying oil to fuel their delivery trucks. Their food wrappers are made from paper from sustainable trees. I love their V6-Vege: Chickpea, pumpkin, cashew and ginger pattie with cucumber, mango, yoghurt and "salad" (one leaf of lettuce) in a spinach wrap. I want to open the first Burger Fuel in the U.S., but I think they are already in Florida, Texas, New York and California.

Bells and Whistles, Toots, Hoots and Caws

The morning we arrived in Auckland, and during most of the daylight hours we were near our hostel, we heard a bird that made three loud clear chords that sounded like a ceramic flute, followed by an assertive caw. We never did figure out what it was, but we smiled every time we heard the contrast of its beautiful and awful calls. We saw it once at the top of a tree, and it looked like a black bird or myna in silhouette.

The only new bird spotted in Auckland was the Blackbird, the kind with an orange bill, imported from Europe. Other birds seen in abundance were the Myna, House Sparrow and Starling.

Our Tucson friend Mary hooked us up with her friend Rachel. They worked together in San Francisco, and Rachel moved to Auckland six years ago. Rachel took us to dinner at a nice restaurant, along with two of her Kiwi friends.

As soon as we sat down, one of her friends demanded to know what is wrong with Americans. She wanted to know how Bush could get elected twice, and now we were considering this John McCain person. I told her it wasn’t our fault, and I had worked myself into a tizzy about the election for the past month, and didn’t want to think about it until Wednesday. She wanted us to know that the whole world is concerned about what is going on in the US. I said I was aware of that, and I’m sorry for the trouble our government has caused, but I really had nothing to do with it. After the requisite discussion of real estate and the stock market, we could finally move onto to more pleasant topics.

Saturday November 1 we took a ferry for the 80 minute ride from Auckland to an island wildlife refuge called Tiritiri Watangi.The first people to inhabit New Zealand, the Maori (pronounced Maw-ree) arrived only 700 years ago. Between the Maori, and the European settlers who came after them, and the non-native plants and animals these people introduced, by the twentieth century, this island had been stripped almost bare of trees and native wildlife.


In 1984 an ambitious reforestation project began. All non-native vegetation was removed, and a quarter million native trees have been planted. Every last cat, rat and opossum was also removed, and visitors to the island now have to bring their food and camping supplies in rat-proof containers. Dirty boots must be cleaned so no invasive seeds are brought to this pristine site.

I got 14 new life birds today: New Zealand Pigeon (huge, with a white chest and blue back), New Zealand Kingfisher, Bellbird, Tui, North Island Robin, Red Crowned Parakeet, Stitchbird, Takahe (flightless and very rare!), North Island Saddleback, Brown Quail, Pukeo, Little Blue Penguin and Variable Oystercatcher.

The Little Blue Penguin was seen very close up and personal in a man made nest of rocks and concrete near the shore. A plastic window is built into the top of the nest, and all we had to do was lift the lid to see the penguin. I would think that would get old in a hurry for the penguin.

We ate our lunch on a bench next to the board walk through the forest. The variety of beautiful birds calls was stunning. We just gazed around with happy eyes and delighted ears.

We had a huge treat on the ferry ride back to Auckland. The captain announced that orcas were swimming directly ahead of the boat. He killed the engine, and no one minded the delay. We easily found the whales, playing about a half mile ahead of us. They showed their black backs and fins as they rose out of the waves and dove back in. Eventually they were beside the ferry, a pod of six, a few hundred feet away. It was very exciting. The captain said he only sees them on the ferry route about three times a year. What an honor.

Sunday November 2, Apex Car Rental picked us up at our hostel and took us to get our car in downtown Auckland. We got a 2006 Corolla four door sedan with 60,779 km on it for US$30 per day, including the ferry ticket to get us to the South Island. We got an automatic transmission, because we figured we were going to have enough trouble driving on the left side of the road without having to work a manual transmission with our left hands, too.

For three days, we had been preparing for the challenge of driving on the left side of the street by attempting to be pedestrians without getting squished. We never really did get the hang of it. We could easily spot the tourists who were used to driving on the right. We look left, right, up, down, forward and backward before stepping off the kerb, because we really have no idea from which direction the cars may come at us.

I decided to be the first to have a go at Kiwi driving. I got onto a divided street and was immediately thwarted in my attempt to turn right. I pulled into a gas station, and as I was pulling out, I again realized the divided highway would prevent me from reaching my destination. Instead, I was on a freeway within minutes of taking the wheel. I was not ready for this. I was still figuring out the car. I quickly learned and repeatedly forgot that not only is the steering wheel on the right side of the car, but the turn signal is on the right side of the steering wheel, and up means left while down means right. Because the wind shield wiper control is on the left, I usually got the wipers going when I was trying to signal a turn or lane change. It’s frustrating, to say the least.

We headed toward the Coromandel Peninsula, where we were impressed by the sharp mountains and the huge fern trees. It looked like an environment where dinosaurs would feel at home.

We got to Whitianga (pronounced fit-ee-AN-ga) on the east side of the peninsula, and stayed at Turtle Cove, a nice hostel in a residential neighborhood away from town. We had a queen ensuite (private bath room) off the communal kitchen for NZ$66.

Whitianga is on a bay filled with sail boats. It sort of reminded me of a Central American town, with its harsh concrete block and metal buildings.



Monday November 2 we drove to Cathedral Cove and hiked to the beach. The Cathedral is a huge Gothic arch in the rock outcrop by the sandy beach. The ceiling of the cathedral is about 50 feet high, and you can walk through it.

New birds for the New Zealand list were Wild Turkey and Black Backed Gull. For the life list, I got California Quail, Paradise Shelduck, Yellowhammer, Red Billed Gull and Black Billed Gull. We have found the Red Billed to be a noisy bully who will not tolerate the presence of Black Bills, even though they look identical except for their bill and leg colors.



We then drove Route 309 across the peninsula to the west side, stopping to check out a small grove of Kauri trees. These old giants once covered the north island, but white men and their Maori predecessors almost completely wiped them out. They can live to be thousands of years old. The trees we saw were about 600 years old and about eight feet in diameter.



We spent the night at the wonderful Tui Lodge in Coromandel. We had a queen ensuite with a twin bed for NZ$75. The grounds here are green and lovely, and the bird song is a delight. The Lodge is named for a ubiquitous black bird, the Tui. About the size of a robin, he is black with some long iridescent feathers on his back and a couple of curling white feathers protruding from his chest like white bulbs. Some call him the Parson Bird because of this costume.

The town of Coromandel is pretty cute. The businesses are mostly along two blocks of one street, and the buildings are wood clapboard. Some of the side walk is covered like a porch.

Tuesday November 4 we drove down the west coast of Coromandel Peninsula. While the east coast has farms and beaches, the west coast has steep mountains rising from the Firth of Thames. We had a picnic lunch at Waimo Domain, where we saw Mallards and Black Swans floating in the salty water, and Song Thrushes hopping around in the grass.

In the town of Thames, we stopped at a bird hide to watch the birds on the shore. Life birds spotted here: South Island Pied Oystercatcher, Lesser Knot, Eastern Bar Tailed Godwit, Pied Stilt and White Faced Heron. The heron gets his feathers slimy eating all sorts of sea food, so he grooms his feathers with a dry powder pressed from his breast with his bill. He uses his bill to brush the powder on his feathers, and then combs the feathers with his toes.

New Zealand has twelve species of Shags, or Cormorants. We spot our first species, the Little Shag.

E7 is a famous female Bar Tailed Godwit that had a radio transmitter surgically implanted in her here in Thames. She set the record for the longest flight of a tagged bird. I don’t know if it’s still true, but the sign said Godwit migrations could be tracked on www.alaska.usgs.gov. In March one year, E7 flew 17,500 km from the Firth of Thames to China to Alaska, where she probably spent two months breeding. She then took a short cut and made the 11,500 km return trip, arriving back in Thames by September. We’ll try to keep her travels in mind if we are feeling overwhelmed by tourism.

Thames is a little nineteenth century mining town between the Firth and the mountains, with little clapboard houses with corrugated metal roofs. Very cute. We were disappointed that the little mineral museum is only open Wednesday to Sunday from 11 to 3.

Most of the North Island that we have seen has been logged and turned into pasture for sheep, goats, domestic deer, alpaca, horses and many varieties of cows. We have seen the regular black and white cows and the brown and white cows. We have seen a few of the tiger striped cows that can also be found in Globe and Sonoita, Arizona. Some cows look air brushed from their black legs and bellies up to their light brown backs. We saw a field of cows that were black in the front and back, with a wide white band around the middle. We call them barrel cows. Turns out, they are actually Belties. We saw several horses wearing rain coats, but no rain hats.

The way these cows stared at us reminded me of Edouard Manet's Dejeuner sur l'Herbe.

At first I was surprised at how many cows were packed into a small field, until I realized that I had gotten used to the starving cows of the desert, which each seem to need an acre to find enough sustenance. With all the rain here, the cows find plenty to eat and they don’t have to walk far to find it.

Steve asked some people for directions, and recognizing him as a Yank, they asked him who he voted for in the presidential election. After giving the correct answer, he got his directions.