This Posting Rated W for whining.
About a month ago I wrote a nasty whiney bit about Bali (most of it wrong or untrue, I should just delete it!). Of course by the end I came to love Bali and would gladly return for an extended stay. That gives me hope, since a week into our NZ trip I'm just about ready to start my "I hate New Zealand" club.
I don't really hate it, of course. But it's been a bit challenging. It's really rather expensive here. Really. Not just compared to Bali or Thailand. Compared to home. We've spent more on lodging this first week than the whole 6 weeks prior. And we're not talking fancy places. I'm talking painted cinderblock and fake wood paneling with one space heater for heat.
On the possitive side, every single motel has a kitchenette, for some reason, and that is handy. This morning we made scrambled eggs and toast. This is important since resturaunt meals are so freaking expensive. Entres seem to range from $14 to $24, drinks $3 to $5. On the other hand the portions tend to be very generous and most of the food we've had very good quality, very yummy. We've begun sharing the entres and it's usually plenty. There is what they call 'cafe culture' here. I guess that means every town has a number of nice little cafes with good food and cofee drinks. Here in Nelson there are really groovy ones, some all vegetarian. It's nice, reminds us of home a bit.
New Zealanders seem to eat a lot of 'pies'. These are little round baked things filled with different stuff, usually meat and veges, good for a quick meal. Basically all the baked stuff here is made with bleached white flour and lots of dairy. The kids love it, but I wonder how the NZ folk aren't totally constipated. Maybe they are.
The motels give you a little carton of milk when you check in--for your tea or cofee. A nice touch. Unfortunaely, check out time is always 10am, which has added a little stress to our journey. It's been nice though, having real towels and a shower that doesn't flood the whole bathroom.
Our room here in Nelson is actually a little one bedroom apartment up in a 1920's house on a hill overlooking the town. We can see the bay off in the distance. It's pretty nice. We're staying there for 3 nights while we look around. Nice to stay put for a bit.
Looking back.....around the time we got to Wellington we ran into a storm. It was a big one that dumped snow all over the South Island mountains. It seemed to usher in Winter two months early. That's what everyone was saying, much to our dismay.
We'll never forget coming around a bend and suddenly there's the bay and the waves were 6 to 10 meters high, a sick grey green color and smashing against the rock embankment sending wild spray up onto the motorway. It was scary. We found out later that one of the ferries had engine trouble out in the storm and sent out distress signals. It had to be towed in 3 hours late. I'm so glad we weren't out in that.
And it was damned cold. We had bought 'warm' clothes the first day up in Auckland, but they were way inadequate. Turns out that Wellington is basically exposed to antarctica. That's the reason the Cook straits, between the North and South islands, is considered the most treacherous passage in the world. Ack.
Another thing that's inexplicably expensive here is clothing. We had these fantasies of getting wool sweaters (jumpers) here...you know, NZ wool, sheep capital of the world, etc... That's do-able if you have $250 to $300 to fork over. Which is what a pair of jeans cost in some of the corporate stores that line every downtown area (Krista finally found some for $30 and $40 in a more discount place). The prices make no sense at all! We went back to The Warehouse (NZ's sole emporium of cheap Chinese made stuff) and got hats and scarves and more layers.
The next morning we trudged down the hill to the big museum in Wellington, Te Papa. We had an hour and a half before our own crossing and the museum came highly recommended (by a nice gal from Santa Barbara we stopped for directions the night before). It was, in fact, really great and we could have spent 5 hours there. And unlike pretty much everything else in this country, it's actually free! We mostly hung out in the Natural History floor, admiring weird NZ species and big bugs, whale skeletons, stuffed animals, rocks and such. We saw Maori artifacts, etc....
Back in Rotorua we had seen fantastic geysers and mud pots but had also had a "cultural experience" (that's what they kept calling it) with Maori in a meeting house--a concert actually, lots of very loud singing, chest pounding (the men), poi swinging and a fighting stick demonstration. It was pretty cool I guess. But around that time I was getting serious ear problems--a little parting gift from Bali, on our last day, just hours before our flight actually, playing in the surf with Eden I got some Indian Ocean water in my ear. For the last five days my left ear has been totally blocked up. I can't really hear out of it and going up and down the mountains has been a bit painful. Actually, when the kids are bickering or whining for something, I feel kind of grateful I can't hear them.
The Maori tend to be big, loud and boisterous (in my rather limited experience--I'm thinking of the supermarkets and The Warehouse, not just the 'cultural experience'). The concert was so loud that I couldn't really hear at all.
The Maori are also very beautiful and interesting looking. I have to be careful not to stare! They are different, in some hard to define way, from other indigenous peoples I've admired.
Did I mention that the entire town of Rotorua stunk like sulpher? The kids hated it!
After Rotorua we drove South down route 5 and ended up in Hastings, a little agricultural town. The drive looked very much like Northern California, rolling grassy hills with stands of trees. We drove through lots of boring little towns that seem to have been built in the early 60's. Boxy little houses, very dull architecturally. The countryside is mainly gorgeous, but it looked so familiar to us I think we were struggling not to feel a bit disappointed. I felt like I'd spent $10,000 to visit Crescent City.
Before Hastings, we stopped in a small city or big town called Napier. It's famous for it's art deco architecture. The whole town had been destroyed in a huge earthquake back in the early '30s and rebuilt with style. We were practically salivating to see something even remotely interesting architecturally. It was okay, I guess. Except that some genius had installed huge 10 foot wide awnings in front of every building in town, making it rather difficult to take in the art deco-ness of the place. Jeez.
We stopped in Napier for lunch and got spooked. Every single store and cafe was closed and it was only 3:30 in the afternoon. We hadn't realized it was a Saturday and that everthing closed at 1pm. On Sunday nothing is open. We left hungry and finally found an Indian place open in Hastings. The kids were less than thrilled.
From Hastings we drove about 4 hours to Wellington. More Northern California landscape, only devoid of people! Kind of weird. Up in the hills and mountains the landscape changed to Oregon, lots of tree farms, 'forests' and clear cuts. I found this somewhat depressing. I wasn't really expecting clear cuts in NZ. Silly me. It only got worse. On our ferry ride through the Sounds into Picton on the South Island there were many many clear cuts, and yesterday on the road over to Nelson we saw thousands of logs floating in the water next to an huge freighter awaiting transport to where? Maybe Japan? I can't believe the Kiwis use all that timber for their own folk. It was depressing.
We had planned to stay in Wellington for a few days. It looked like a pretty little city in the guide books, and I suppose it is. San Francisco's twin they say, though much much smaller. But it was so damn cold we got out! We drove our car onto the big ol' ferry and sat down to watch movies on the big screen. I actually stood out on the rear deck in flying snow/rain to watch Wellington slip away behind. It was worth freezing for.
Once we were out of the bay the huge ferry began to pitch and roll in the 3 meter waves! Very alarming!! It's a 3 hour passage and much of it was rough (to me anyway). I spent as much time as I could stand out on deck. The ice cold wind roaring up from Antarctica made my ear ache like hell! But I was rewarded by the sight of 4 or 5 dolphins racing along the waves. At one point they all breached the water together, sailing right out of a huge wave near the ship! We cheered them on, me and a big NZ fellow named Nick I met there.
Nick is a big tall blond fellow, studying journalism up in Auckland. He didn't realize that Bush actually lost the election and that the US government had been stolen. I set him straight. People can't understand why the American people re-elected such a loser. It's my job, I reckon, to point out that they didn't.
The sail through the Marlbourough Sounds was dramatic, and aside from the sad clear cuts, very beautiful. We stayed the night in tiny Picton and the next morning headed over to Nelson, on an intensely winding road. So far I've only almost killed us once this whole time, and that was yesterday passing a logging truck, Bali style. Not bad for my first week driving.
Today it's mostly sunny and fairly warm. Krista and I left the kids in the room to watch TV and strolled about Nelson, gasping at the shocking prices and then found a little hippy shop selling more reasonably priced imported stuff from Nepal and India and Indonesia. The hippy stuff was great! Makes me proud to be from the birthplace of it all. I've taken to telling folks we're from 'around San Francisco', instead of saying we're from California, or god forbid, the US. I think the US has a pretty bad reputation here. Surprise surprise. But everyone loves San Francisco.
I'm not sure what our next move will be. We haven't had much luck finding a good house to rent for a week here. We may move on to Takaka in a few days, to check out the true Hippy/Organic/Green center of NZ. It may even be warm enough there to be on the beach and do a little sea kayaking.
I'd really like to spend a week or two in one place before heading south to sightsee. We were so cold we were actually thinking of giving up on it and heading up to the northernmost corner of NZ to hunker down until we could get the hell out of here. The sun has brought us a bit more courage, and hopefully we will venture south and see the fjords and some penguins and the pretty city of Christchurch and all.
Anyhow, at this point I'm suspending work on my 'I hate New Zealand' club. There are many good and admirable things here to enjoy and admire (like the really fast internet connections, for example). I'm sure we'll get used to our finances draining away, or maybe we'll even figure out some sort of alternative. I'll keep you posted.
love
Rob
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