New Zealand: It doesn't get much better than this

 

Flag of New Zealand features the Union Jack and the Southern Cross

New Zealand's North & South Islands

OK, New Zealand isn’t perfect but it’s damn close. During my eight days in this South Pacific jewel in late July 2012, I only saw a small part of the North Island. What I did see and experience led me to the following generalizations:

 

The “Kiwis” (New Zealanders) are very friendly, very polite, and very helpful without being pushy or condescending. Consider the time I was filling the tank of my rental car for the first time and it was early morning. There was no attendant near the pumps and no place to insert a credit card. I went into the convenience store at the station where the clerk was busy selling customers their morning tea and coffee. “Just a minute. I’ll come out to help you,” he explained. So I walked out to wait by my car and another customer followed me out. “Do you understand how this works?” he said in typical casual, friendly Kiwi drawl. “They don’t have a concierge (attendant) at the pumps until after 10AM. It’s self-serve if you want to do it yourself rather than wait for the bloke to come out and do it for you. Here’s how it works…” (etc., etc.) So I filled her up and when I went in to pay the attendant, he apologized for being tied up with other customers. Kind of a nice way to start the day, I’d say.

Even the immigration and airport security people are nice. When I handed the immigration guy my passport and entry card upon arrival from Fiji, he smiled and said something like, “Oh you’re here for a conference. Well enjoy your stay,” as he stamped a three-month visitor visa in my passport. I guess he also asked me how long I was planning to stay in New Zealand but there were no hassles or probing questions. When I later told my new Kiwi friend, David (more about him later), about this pleasant experience he noted that US immigration officers are the nastiest he’s encountered. His comment reminded me of my arrival at Kennedy International from Pakistan back in ’89. The immigration guy asked where I was coming from, I told him Pakistan, and he asked where else I’d been on my trip. When I told him only a stopover in Turkey, he shot back with, “Man, you’ve been to all the big drug producing countries, haven’t you? So how much dope did you bring back?”

 

I saw no road rage during my three days of driving in New Zealand even when I screwed up a couple times (wrong side of the road stuff). I should add that I did get honked at a couple times when I didn’t have a clue what I was doing wrong. Oh well.

The Kiwis also seem rather sane politically. They have universal health care and no one seems to be screaming about laws against owning assault rifles.

There is a serious commitment to environmental protection. I saw very little litter either along highways or in cities. According to my other new Kiwi friend, Pete, they are working toward elimination of all landfill waste. What they can’t recycle, reuse, or compost, they will incinerate. That sounds great but I wonder about resulting carbon emissions and particulate matter going into the atmosphere, as well as thermal pollution. I suspect they are working on that.

They have a long history of fair treatment of the indigenous (Maori) people who make up about 15% of the population. My other new Kiwi friend, Pete, pointed out that New Zealanders generally take pride in their multicultural society in which both English and Maori are official languages.

 

They have a relatively international outlook. I was told that about 80% of Kiwis have passports while only about 20% of US citizens do. Admittedly, part of the reason is the relatively small size of the country (about the same area as the state of Colorado) so it’s easy to get island fever after a few years there. It’s customary and encouraged for young Kiwis to spend a year or more travelling and working abroad after graduating from the university.

New Zealand’s largest city, Auckland, must have one of the world’s most beautiful settings for a city. It is located on a narrow isthmus with numerous bays and inlets creating a scalloped outline. The Pacific Ocean is to the east and the Tasman Sea (the part of the Pacific between Australia and New Zealand) is to the west. Dozens of small extinct volcanic cones are scattered around the city which has an English feel but with much better weather. Temperatures rarely go below freezing or above the low 80s F (27-28^oC). 

View of downtown Auckland and harbour from Mt. Eden

Outside Auckland (about the size of metropolitan Denver), Wellington (the capital city), and Christchurch (the largest city on the South Island), population densities are relatively low. Although the country is known for its sheep and dairy farms, there are numerous large areas set aside as national parks, forest preserves, and other protected government lands. I recall one long stretch of highway in a rural, mostly forested, part of the South Island where I met only about three cars during an hour of driving.

Deserted highway on North Island

Volcanic activity over millions of years has created a rugged landscape of awesome natural beauty in parts of the North Island which apparently pales by comparison with even more dramatic South Island scenery.

 

New Zealand does have a few downsides. The winters can be Seattle-style rainy and dreary. The closest neighbor of any size is Australia, a 2½ hour flight to the west. Splendid isolation may have its advantages but other than driving up or down the length of the two islands (more than 1000 miles), there’s nowhere to go if you want a change of scenery. And if you do drive, be prepared to pay twice as much for gasoline as we do in the US. There is an excellent multi-lane freeway through Auckland but it peters out to a two and three lane road about 50 miles south of the city even though traffic is fairly heavy on this particular highway. There are few trains, especially this time of year. On the other hand, there are plenty of flights between both large and small cities and the buses are cheap and reliable. Finally, forget trying to immigrate to New Zealand unless you arrive with at least a million bucks.

My old friend Hugh (from my days in Botswana in 1986-87) put me in touch with a Kiwi school teacher he’d known years ago in Namibia. Hugh’s friend David was now back in Auckland. We exchanged a few emails and he offered to pick me up at the Auckland airport and show me some of the city. After a 3-hour flight from Fiji, David and his partner, Sonya (an artist currently working on sculptures which she lights with fiber optics), drove me to the top of Mount Eden, one of those local volcanoes I mentioned earlier. There I had a magnificent view of most of the city and the adjacent sea. Back at their apartment in an old section of the city, we talked away the afternoon and discussed my travel options within the country after my upcoming conference. David checked the weather on line and gave me the good news. It was going to be rainy for the next couple days while I was inside at my conference. However, once the conference was over, I should have a couple days of good weather before I headed off to Sydney, Australia. We went out for a big Thai dinner followed by the Auckland Film Festival where we saw The Wall, a strange sci fi/psychological drama which was well worth the price of the ticket.

After the film, David and Sonya deposited me at my old and modest but clean hotel located a couple blocks from Auckland’s Sky Center tower which houses the city’s only casino. I’d chosen the hotel not for its proximity to the casino but for its location near the bus station where I caught a bus bound for Hamilton the following morning. Hamilton was a rather unexciting small city but proved to be a good venue for the conference because it was close to a new highway construction project which we visited on the third day of the conference. The conference planners must have had a direct line to the weather god. It started raining when I arrived on Sunday, rained all day Monday and Tuesday when we were inside at the conference, then cleared on Wednesday, the day of the field trip to the highway construction sites.

             Auckland’s Sky Centre Tower

View from the window of my room in Hamilton

where it pissed rain for two days during my conference.

It appeared that David’s forecast for cool, dry, sunny weather on Thursday and Friday was going to hold so I made reservations for two nights at a backpacker hotel in the small town of Turangi near Tongariro National Park, reserved a car for three days, and made plans to hike part of the Tongariro Alpine Crossing rated as one of New Zealand’s best walks.

 

Ian, the proprietor of the Samurai Lodge where I stayed in Turangi was a disheveled character who provided plenty of good advice, an electric heater for my chilly room, and even a bottle of a good New Zealand beer for 2 bucks.

 

On the cold, sunny Thursday morning, I put on just about all the clothes I had with me and drove 35 minutes to the southern end of the trail. In a normal year, I would have been hiking in snow most of the way according to Ian who moaned about not being able to use his ski pass at a local area this year because they had rain instead of the usual snow. The entire trail was 19.5km (about 12 miles) from the south to north end. You needed to do a shuttle to do the entire trip one way so I decided to hike to a lake just beyond the trail high point then back again to the south parking lot. I busted butt to get to the high point and was making good time until I hit treacherous ice on the final steep stretch. Wet snow had mostly melted, then refroze leaving the volcanic rubble with a nasty slippery coating. Having neither crampons nor hiking poles I opted to turn back rather than break a leg (too early in my trip for that shit). Nevertheless, my 10-mile round trip was spectacular. Rather than wax poetic about the details, I’ll let the following photos speak for the beauty of the place.

One of the few people I met on my hike took this photo of me with
Mt. Ngauruhoe (2291M – about 7000ft) in the background.

Morning mists over South Crater

Trail above South Crater to

high point. Shinny stuff is ice.

After 10 more minutes of

slippery footing, I turned around.

Soda Springs were one of the numerous bonuses on this hike

The next morning, I drove north to the Rotarua area which is one of the three areas in the world with geysers (Yellowstone and Iceland are the other two). I got there too late to see the big geyser do its once-a-day eruption but spent a couple hours photographing numerous colorful geothermal features. Unlike the Tongariro Crossing which was practically deserted, this area was loaded with tourists and a bit of a let-down as a result.

Wai-O-Tapu Thermal Wonderland south of Rotarua

After returning my vehicle to the agency at the Hamilton airport, I caught the bus back to Auckland where I was met by Pete, an administrator at a local technical college. My erosion control colleague, Julie Etra, had known Pete when they were grad students at Colorado State University and she put me in touch with him. Once again, I encountered a great guy with whom I hit it off very quickly. I spent the night at his condo, and the next morning, Pete took me to look at a stream restoration project I’d wanted to see in a northern Auckland suburb. He then generously gave me the use of his computer, telephone, and scanner for the afternoon while he attended a birthday party. And after dinner, Pete drove me out to my motel at the Auckland airport to get some sleep before my 6:05AM flight to Sydney, Australia.

The hospitable people, fantastic scenery, interesting conference, and cooperative weather made for a first-rate time in New Zealand. When can I go back?!