"Rain Jackets. That would have been a good idea."

After breakfast on the Octagon in Dunedin (and after starting this blog) we began our journey to Milford Sound. The trip is best described by pictures, and we had about 8 hours in the car, so we had plenty of time to take a lot… I think the count is over 1000 pictures in New Zealand so far. So, we’ve decided to post a picture tour of the landscapes of New Zealand—your virtual road trip, minus a few hours of left-handed driving. Nevertheless, there were some notable things worth mentioning here, before you start clicking through the pictures.

Just outside of Dunedin, we saw sheep. And more sheep. And more sheep. It’s incredible how many sheep are eating New Zealand. I’m somewhat worried that the blanket of sheep will start contributing to global warming. One of the first roads we toured was between the towns of Clinton and Gore. Apparently the irony was not lost on the Kiwi’s, because they have renamed the road the “Presidential Highway”. We drove on, through the fields and fields of sheep (did I mention there are sheep here?), which eventually turned into hills upon hills of sheep. Slowly, these changed to mountains upon mountains of sheep, and finally to an enormous lake in the town of Te Anau. I’m not sure if there are aquatic sheep living in the lake, but I’m pretty sure there must be. Next, we turned onto the road to Milford Sound. About 25 minutes into this leg of the trip, we saw a sign that said, “No Petrol in Milford Sound.” That meant that this 5 hour round trip would have to be made on one tank, and our remaining 3 gallons or so probably wouldn’t cut it. So, backward for half an hour it was, and then we tried again. This road was mountains all the way.

The views in Te Anau were absolutely fantastic—probably the best we would ever see in our lives. And then, they were trumped by what we saw next. And then again around the next corner. Progressively better scenery was balanced by a progressively curvier road. At last we reached a tunnel into the side of a mountain, a mile or two long, with no lights whatsoever, and with heavy fog and heavy rain inside (try to figure that one out!). Oh, yeah—and it was one lane. I’m still not sure what to do if you see another pair of headlights in the tunnel. This spat us out into a land from the movies. We kept expecting to see a velociraptor jump at our car, or King Kong sitting on top of one of the many mist-topped mountains. There are waterfalls everywhere, fed by an environment that gets an average of 7 meters of rain per year—over 1 meter this year already, and it’s only the third week! Water comes down in every form possible, all at the same time—rain, clouds, mist, waterfalls, and streams. The road, ever curvier and steeper still, was frequently reduced to one lane and covered in mist-fog (I am sure the Brits have a precise word for this… maybe “miog” or “foist”?), with speed limit set to 100 kph, though surely any faster than about 20 would land you in a deep ravine. Probably with velociraptors. We were in awe of the brave souls who drive this way at a time when they actually need to heed the warning signs, “Slippery when frosty”.

We stayed in a hostel that was built for rain, complete with covered walkways, hot chocolate, and a “drying room”—basically a sauna with ropes strung everywhere so you can hang your wet clothes. (This morning the drying room was dry and nearly empty—this afternoon it was packed with clothes and smelled like wet feet. Almost overpoweringly so. We had to leave in a hurry before we passed out.)

The highlight of this adventure was a boat tour of the Sound, which is actually a fiord. (This is a salt-water-body, carved out by glaciers whereas a sound is something made by a river.) But, there is so much rain here (182 days per year), that there is actually a permanent freshwater layer, between 2 and 8 meters deep, floating on top of the saltwater. On the return trip, the boat dropped us off at the underwater observatory, where you can go 8 meters down to view the wildlife. For many reasons, this fiord replicates deep (100 meter) seawater conditions, but in much shallower water (8 meters). This allowed us to view deep water fish without special diving equipment, including black coral (which is actually white—the reason it’s called black coral is that as soon as you remove it from the water dies and turns black), starfish, sea anemones, and a number of really ugly fish. After drying out, we decided to brave the rain to go on a hike to “The Chasm”. On the way we ran into two absolutely drenched Brits, one of whom said (in the nonchalant way that only Brits can manage), “Rain jackets. That would have been a good idea.” We thought he was just referring to the rain, but comprehension dawned when we heard the raw power of ridiculous quantities of water rushing beneath us. And soaking our clothes. Karen was particularly disappointed to discover that her well-traveled waterproof jacket was no longer waterproof—she returned 5 layers of drenched, but the views were worth it. Unfortunately our photos can’t possibly do it justice, but have a look anyway!

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a Blanket of Wool

Today we left our great B&B in Christchurch (amid boisterous behests by the every other patron to change our itinerary this way, or that way) and hit the road for Dunedin (as in, “after dinner, we’ll be done eadin’”).

On the way, we learned to drive in New Zealand. Among the great road signs were “merge like a zip”, a tree and a bench (picnic area), a choo-choo train, and a picture that clearly meant, “drive crazy when wet”. By the way, if we haven’t mentioned this before, New Zealanders have a great sense of humor—and hospitality. We have developed a new mantra, “Just ask, and New Zealand will provide.” For example, the first time we started feeling a little bit weary behind the wheel, someone said, “I could use some coffee.” Just then, around the next bend, we saw a sign: “Driver Reviver: free coffee, 2 km.” Yes, New Zealand is that cool—free coffee on the highway!

We drove along the east coast of the country, which seems to be the sheep capital of the world—it’s literally covered in a blanket of wool (except that about half the sheep are naked these days). We think we saw some of the little blue penguins in the wild near Oamaru—we didn’t really feel like spending money to be sure, but we snapped some photos so you can decide. On the way from Oamaru to Dunedin we passed some crazy spherical boulders that had fallen into the ocean, so we took some photos there, too.

This evening we checked into our hostel. When we arrived, this scrawny pasty-faced guy in his early 20s with scraggly long dark hair answered and said immediately “we’re full.” Well then! Fortunately we had a reservation. So we forced him to stick around and check us in, opened the door to our shared room by jiggling the key for about 5 minutes, dropped our things and followed the guy on his begrudgingly-given tour. Not such a great hostel, but later in the evening we were pleased to meet our roommate (we had reserved a triple, but ended up in a quad) who is 34 (more than 4 years older than the oldest of us) and who has just moved to New Zealand from Vancouver, Canada to basically hit the restart button on her life—she’s beginning a new undergraduate degree in fine arts, with a specialty in painting. It’s nice to know that people older than us are restarting, so even if we royally mess up our physics careers there’s still hope!

At dinnertime we walked around town. The center is called the Octagon (obviously due to it’s 8-sided shape). Dunedin is the Gaelic name for Edinburgh, and the town was founded by Scotsmen who picked this location because it’s the same latitude as Edinburgh. They decided to recreate Edinburgh, but properly this time. So their roads are straight throughout the downtown area. This is basically the only interesting fact about the town as far as we could tell.

We found a Japanese place to eat (the sushi here is incredibly cheap) and went back to the hostel happy that we had decided to only spend one night here. Not only is the hostel only so-so, but the town is completely dead. We hear it’s a student town, and since no students are here there’s nothing going on. And by “nothing going on”, what they really mean is “there’s absolutely no one in town”.

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Remembering our Roots

Since yesterday was an easy day, we woke up this morning invigorated and refreshed. Or at least T.A. did, since he went to sleep at 4 and woke up at 7. That’s PM and AM respectively. (We knew he was better when he began looking for a toilet instead of asking for water.) After our standard huge breakfast of tea, orange juice, toast, eggs, bacon, sausage, tomatoes, yogurt, fresh fruit and cereal, and after carefully avoiding the marmite we tried yesterday, we drove our car (with freshly pumped up tyres [sic]) to the Antarctic Centre [sic]. At the centre, we paid 48 bucks a head to don a thin jacket and shoe covers and go into a refrigerated room with snow and have cold air blown at us until the temperature was 17 degrees F, with 25 kph winds to simulate an Antarctic storm. Did I mention that we paid to pretend that we were standing outside in shorts in Chicago in the winter? Did I also mention that we stood in line behind about 50 native New Zealanders who all wanted to experience the “extreme cold”? They also had a little blue penguin exhibit. The Little Blue Penguins are native to New Zealand and are the smallest species of penguins (seen so far, there could be really, really small ones living right under our noses). We watched the penguins quizzically for a little while before we realized what made this a very “special” exhibit: this was a collection of crippled, disabled or blind penguins unable to survive in the wild. Why go to see strong and healthy penguins hunting in the ocean for free when you can pay to see the handicapped ones in a tank. But at least when we figured this out it explained why half the penguins were swimming in circles. Take Half Pint, for example. He was missing most of a wing due to a boating accident (he wasn’t at fault, as is usually the case). He swam in nice, tight circles… and that was it. Bright Eyes had to wear special boots because she was being raised in captivity and hadn’t bothered to learn to swim for her food. She just walked to the fish bucket at feeding time, and in all this walking she was starting to develop foot problems. To help her calluses she had special blue boots made. Anyway, we watched the feeding of these half blind, disabled penguins swimming around in circles and the overall effect was actually pretty macabre. But we did learn a bit in the end: fortunately we overheard a somewhat exasperated father explaining to his little daughter, “Of course they don’t sound like monkeys, they’re penguins!” Good thing we cleared that one up. Only as we left the exhibit did we realize this was apropos a question in a little display, but even still this little girl was clearly not the sharpest knife in the drawer. Later on we met her brother as he was answering a question posed on a white board: “Why do you want to visit Antarctica?” His reply was, “to see penguins and polar bears, bro!” (Bro is the Kiwi equivalent of dude/mate/eh/man/etc…) We caught the poor father hanging his head in shame and muttering, “What a disgrace!” In hindsight we’ve realized that this museum was definitely worth the money.

Later today we went to a historical museum nearer to the center of Christchurch—this one was free and we can’t complain. We learned that the earliest settlers to New Zealand arrived in 1000AD—they were the Maori. When they arrived, they were pleased to discover large birds (think ostriches) called moas which would walk right up to them in a friendly fashion—clearly there was a severe lack of large predators in this country prior to the arrival of humans. It must have been like arriving in a country full of walking turkey dinners…within two centuries the moa were extinct. We also learned that Scott (the famous British Antarctic explorer who lost the race to the South Pole by one month to the Norwegian Amundsen, and who died 97 km from his home base on the return) decided Manchurian ponies were more useful for polar exploration than sled dogs. A clear case for natural selection, I think.

It also turns out that New Zealand, friendliest country on earth, has the best tourist information centres [sic] anywhere: they booked our upcoming reservations for us and we didn’t have to do a thing. It’s also true that everyone we tell we’re on vacation here has taken at least an hour to re-plan our itinerary for us. This country is amazing. They might as well just write “stay” as the last thing to do on our newly revised schedules.

This evening we drove out to the beach and up into the hills behind Christchurch where all the gorgeous houses with awesome views are. It was definitely a challenge to navigate the tight switchbacks on the wrong side of the road, but somehow we managed. We took the recommendation of some random friendly strangers to try a pizza place for dinner and had a half-and-half large. It was half chicken-brie-cranberry sauce, half Moroccan lamb with tsatsiki sauce (apparently the two most popular pizzas in the restaurant). We were served, coincidentally, by a guy from Chicago who’d been in NZ for 9 months and also helped re-plan our itinerary yet again. As we sat down in the car we realized that he’d ripped us off by about $15 (NZ). This is when it really sunk in that he was from Chicago. How quickly we forgot!

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on Preparations and Dehydration

Today, we planned our itinerary, bought some groceries, and rented a car. Tim Andeen was apparently dehydrated from all of our sun yesterday. (According to the internet: loss of appetite + tingling limbs + nausea + incessant repetition of “go get me some water or I’ll vomit on your bed” = dehydration.) So, we took a pretty easy day of sleep, food, drink, and learning to drive on the left side of the road.

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of Travel and Live Music

Today was a long day. I woke up at 6:30 am on Friday, and the day is now coming to a close at 9:30 pm on Sunday. Of course, crossing the International Date Line may have had something to do with this, but there was some significant force of will involved, too.

In the morning, I was in Los Angeles, attending some lectures on Plasma Physics. After nearly a whole week of nothing but lectures and food, I was ready for my New Zealand vacation! After lunch, I packed my bag, and walked it about half a mile to catch the shuttle to the airport. After not having correct change for the shuttle, and almost having to pay $20 for the $5 fare, I accidentally told the shuttle driver the wrong airline, so he dropped me off at terminal 6. As soon as I got off, I realized that I needed to find terminal 2, so I dragged my suitcase through the maze of the airport parking garage, and eventually found the terminal where people were speaking with a New Zealand accent. Just as I was finding the line to get my ticket, I ran into my travel companion, Tim Andeen. We were finally off!

Together, we negotiated the various security checkpoints, and realized we still had 4 hours to kill, so we sat down at the bar for some beers. That’s when we met our first real introduction to the hospitality of New Zealand. At the table next to us were two women (probably in their late 30’s) who introduced themselves as “locals” who were also waiting for the same flight. One was from New Zealand, the other Australia. We were chatting about what Tim, Karen and I were going to be doing on our trip, and prompted me to pull out our fairly vague sample itinerary. Still with several hours before our flight, they decided to help us out, and made many additions and changes to our plans. By flight time, we had given them many laughs (especially when Tim asked if Kiwi, an endangered species which is also New Zealand’s national icon, tastes good or not), and they had given us a fully revamped itinerary, complete with a wine list, beer list, souvenir shopping guide, and new appreciation for the New Zealand people.

We boarded the 747 out of LA, and landed in Auckland, New Zealand, about 3 movies, 2 TV shows, and possibly a fraction of a night’s sleep later. Air New Zealand helped us find our way onto the next flight to Christchurch, on the southern New Zealand island.

Karen was waiting for us at the Christchurch airport, and so was a gorgeous New Zealand sunny summer day! As we hailed a taxi, from the wrong side of the road (yes, they drive on the left!), I began to fully realize that it was only 8:30 in the morning here. We had a full day to go!

Thankfully, we had a chance to refresh ourselves at the hotel in the morning, since Karen had already made our room arrangements, and since she had stayed there the previous night. Eventually, I was showered, had fresh clothes, and some tea. Then, the owner of the hotel (maybe bed and breakfast is a better descriptor!) decided to take us on a tour of the town in his old American Studebaker. The tourists and locals were all gawking and waving as we putted around town, taking in the sights and honking a horn that went “Aoooogah”. Our host was really interested in renovating old houses and other buildings (hence how he ended up running this hotel), so we got the full architectural tour.

The rest of the day was a flurry of local activities, with a constant presence of live music almost everywhere we went. We had lunch at the Dux de Lux, saw street performers as we walked through the Sunday market, found some espresso to battle the early stages of jet lag, went Punting down the Avon, explored the botanical gardens, sat down for some wine inside the complex of what used to be the local University, and stayed in our seats for a front row view of a surprise spontaneous gathering of a bagpipe band. After this, we walked the downtown area a bit, and went out for dinner. I tried to take a lot of pictures this afternoon, so hopefully they can share more than my jet-lagged ramblings of an amazing first day in an even more amazing country!

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