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!

Penguins_and_PolarBears_3