Everything Else New Zealand

By the time I’ve posted this I will have arrived in India, six weeks behind on New Zealand posting.  Because six weeks is a lot of time to cover, and because none of you want to read 6 weeks worth of minutia, this post will be relatively scant on detail, but high on anecdotes that (hopefully) allow all of you to get at feeling for what’s been going on. I’m simply going to cover the last few weeks with brief descriptions of the geographic locations I was at and then cap it all of with a, “Top 10 Plays of New Zealand”, that should bring together the good, the bad, and the just plan ridiculous of NZ. Hopefully it’s amusing.

Christchurch (Sept. 15-20): Timbo, Maggie and Fey dropped me off at Salvation Army and I volunteered at the food distribution center for 2 days, met some cool kids from World Vision who brought me out with them for a couple days. This was easily my favorite/ the most interesting part of Christchurch, and possibly NZ. Along with a lady researcher, we went door-to-door in the most effected areas of Christchurch, delivering two trucks full of care packages and aid information. The extent of the damage was mind-blowing; in some places there were fissures 3 feet high splitting houses clear in two, and other places had only foundations and walls cradling the stories or roofs that used to be above them.  Perks included an abundant supply of chocolate and a free Big Mac (my first ever) that the researcher lady bought me in exchange for an interview. At night I had some great times with some cool Brits, Joe and Rhiann, who are going to be ski instructors in Whistler next season, and a rough and tumble roller derby girl, Marrissa, who taught us all how we should drink a bag of wine and how to use a street cone as a stripper’s pole. ‘Nuff said.

En Route to Queenstown (Sept. 20-22): I hitched up to Cragieburn, one of New Zealands archaic club fields, and met up with Mike and some of his co-workers from Coronet Peak. I couldn’t get a hold of them via cell phone, so I called the lodge they were staying at and the guy who picked up responded: “Oh, you mean those kids that I had to tow up here cause got their campervan stuck in a ditch”. Needless to say, I met up with them the next day and we swapped stories. The skiing was great, but the “lifts” was brutal. We got fresh tracks cause the mountain had just reopened after a week of storms, but I had a bruise the size of an apple for a couple weeks from the nut-cracker system. Nut-crackers are the vestiges of New Zealand’s old school lift system installed by local farmers way back in the day; a rope tow like mechanism conveys a skier or boarder up a run via a rickety cable threaded through a series of pullies and a metal clamp attached to ones waist by a 6 inch long rope. Each rider gets yanked up the slope, no more than six inches away from the whiring pullies, fearing that their fingers, limbs or buttocks will get smashed into some part of the apparatus.  

            The next day we went back to Round Hill (see day 1) and rode NZ’s longest nut cracker to some more fresh tracks. As Mike aptley pointed out, it was as close to heliskiing as you can get without a helicopter.

Queenstown (Sept. 24-Oct. 10): I skied a lot. I only missed 2 days during this period and the snow was good- not great- with a lot of springy, blue bird days. I crashed at Mike’s place with his 7 room mates and, after being told they didn’t want money, I paid my rent with a huge Mexican feast. It was really, really nice to scratch that culinary itch. Joe and Rhian made it down  for a few days and we taught each other local drinking games by night and went skiing and lugging (more like go-carting on a downhill course without an engine) by day. QT’s highlights, however, had to be doing a backflip off of the bag jumps at the Remarks and pond skimming on the last day at Coronet Peak. The backflip was dedicated to Mr. Chris Langel of Berkeley California.

Queenstown to Mt. Hutt (Oct. 10-15): We took advantage of various “relocation deals”, and got a car for about $17 a day and missioned up to Mt. Hutt in search of more snow. We alternated nights between a $50 tent named, “Lue-tent-tent Dan”, in honor of his equally handicapped and camo-clad namesake from Forrest Gump, a hostel, and the front seats. We met up with Cody and Megan from Queenstown and had 4 extremely sunny days, leaving Hutt with smiles and some of the best goggle tans of our lives.

***I’d like to give a shout out to Emily Rusca. We toasted said nice beers to you. ***

Mt. Hutt to Auckland (Oct. 15-16): We celebrated Mike’s 22^nd birthday by buying a nice sixpack, driving a few hundred km,  and taking a 3 hour ferry ride. We drank the beers after the driving. This whole period was spent in Sub-Ways, the Lue-tent-tent, the car and- yea, that’s about it.

Auckland (Oct. 17-19): This city is pretty boring. It’s got a cool, semi-hip, super chill vibe, but there isn’t much to do. During this initial pit stop, we got a lot of internet time in, saw Inception on IMAX, saw Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps, and found the one and only good Mexican restaurant in New Zealand. We went every day.

Northland Road Trip (Oct. 19- 21): We looked at a map and decided that it would really be cool to go as far North as we could so we rented another discount car and drove up the northern peninsula, cooking dinner by sunset on the beaches of the West Coast and watching sunrise where the Pacific Ocean and Tasman Sea meet, before camping out for a couple days. We posted up at some white sand beach I spent a day and a half reading “Three Cups of Tea”, researching India, hiking and basically relaxing. It was a tough life.

Coromandal Peninsula (Oct. 22-24): Easily one of our coolest experiences of NZ. Upon showing up to the Coromandal’s Hot Beaches, a stretch of beach where all you have to do is dig to have a (very) hot pool, I inquired at the local café as to a place where we could park our campervan for the night. The owner responded that there were no free places for miles, but, after chatting for a bit, a really, really, nice American named Cherie invited us to set up the Lue-tent-tent in her back yard. Little did we know that Cherie lived in a mansion on 15 acres of land overlooking one of the most stunning beaches either Mike or I had ever seen. Cherie, her husband Steve and daughters Ariela and Stephanie turned out to be some of the nicest people on earth- anywhere. Steve, a hippie turned Buddhist yuppie who wakes up at sunrise every morning to meditate, had obviously done something right to end up with that house and family.

            When we weren’t chilling hard-core with the Steve et all, we explored the beaches. We spent a day jumping off cliffs and exploring the caverns of Cathedral Cove and then a day at New Chums beach which had been rated a top 10 beach in the world. Not to slight New Chums, but Mike and I thought CC was the better of the two. The day we left I woke up at 6 and drove down to the beach to watch sunrise. The Coromandal never failed to impress, and I ended up watching dolphins frolic - if that is what dolphins do when they play – two meters from the beach and a watercolor sunrise.

Tongario Alpine Crossing, AKA Mt. Doom (Oct. 24-25): After Coromandal we set out for what Fodors calls, “the world’s greatest 1 day hike”, but most Lord of the Rings (LOTR) aficionados call Mt. Doom.  We begin the hike around 6:45 and sleepily meandered through the marshes of Middle Earth and into the heart of Mordor in clothes that made all 5 other hikers on the trail do a double take. Mike rocked long socks with gym shorts and his stock red white and blue beanie, while I donned hiking boots, boardshorts and my finest button down tourist shirt. It didn’t matter though, cause we booked it through 20 km of Mordoor’s harshest wind, snow and sun. Luckily we ended up hitching a ride all the way back to our car, some 30 km away from the trailend, even though we decided to through caution to the wind in the morning.

Yes, I made a lot of LOTR references. Get over it.

Tongario to Auckland (Oct. 25): We camped in a random park between the two places and befriended a slightly crazy, but very nice, Mauri lady named Mete. She gave us sausages and steak and told us a few of her amazing, and often disconcerting, stories. In one story she told us how her son was conceived in California, but “luckily born completely normal” on a cruise ship after she spent weeks “partying, smoking and drankin”- this was all in front of her now 5 year old son. The rest of her yarns included accidentally ending up in Kosovo during the Balkan Wars, flying over the burning oil fields of Irag circa the first Gulf War, and a theory about how the Southern Hemisphere (including Texas) is genetically more inclined to be bigitous. All the stories were punctuated every minute or so as she explained the different matting calls of the Kiwi bird and taught us basic Mauri phrases. After spending a night talking to Mete, I don’t think New Zealand would have been complete without her.

Auckland (Oct. 26-28): See Auckland, 17-19. We had PB&Js and Mexican every day.