All I wanted to do was go to sleep. I even skipped dinner to just go to sleep. But although the clock read 8:37 it wasn't dark out yet and so I just got into the clean, warm, bunkless hotel bed and watched TV for the first time in 5 weeks while I waited and waited and waited for the sun to call it quits for the night. It was 10:30 before darkness arrived and I fell asleep.
Christchurch New Zealand is at a southern latitude of 43 degrees. To put this in perspective, Chrischurch is the same distance from the south pole as Toronto, Canada is from the north pole. Therefore, they get quite long days in summer and short ones in winter. And the temperatures, at about an average of 67 in the daytime and 48 at night, were much colder than I'd been accustomed to over the past 4 months.
I'd flown from Sydney to Christchurch with Dennis on November 21st. We found Huiwon at our hotel, completing the reunioin of our trio on yet another continent. (Huiwon, Dennis and I traveled in Peru together in August of 2007). This time we'd be touring with Contiki, a company whose tours are geared towards 18-35 year olds and are most well-known for their party-filled tours of Europe. Since Contiki was created by a New Zealander (more commonly referred to as a Kiwi), we'd been reassured by STA Travel in New York that Contiki tours of New Zealand differed from their tours of Europe in that they tended to be more scenic based, attract a crowd a bit older than 18 and involved the kind of partying that did not include dancing on tables. Turns out that last part was not entirely true.
Our group consisted of 43 travelers; 9 guys, 34 girls, 2 couples on their honeymoons, 25 Australians, a dating German pilot and stewardess, several miners, an explosives engineer, a Kiwi tour guide, an Aussie bus driver and one super annoying Canadian jerk.
At 350,000 people, Christchurch is the largest city on New Zealand's southern island. The southern island is home to 1 million of New Zealand's 4 million human residents who are far outnumbered by the 60 million resident sheep. While the majority of the southern island of NZ is rural, mountainous, astonishingly scenic and ruled by sheep; Christchurch is a small city with a sprawling suburb similiar to others around the world -- except that it is filled with people who think that the number that comes after 5 is sex.
The New Zealand accent is quite similiar to the Australian accent in terms of their mutual boycott on pronouncing the letter "r". But there is one major difference. Kiwis pronounce their short "i" like a short "e" and vice versa. So "Do you have a tint?" means "Do you have a tent?" and "He's weaying a rid shet" means "He's wearing a red shirt".
After departing Christchurch we began the first of our many long bus journeys. Except for two days in Queenstown and two days in Wellington, every day included between 5 and 8 hours spent on the bus. The route usual took us through the mountains which meant every morning there was a mad dash for the coveted front seats (i.e. seats with a reduced chance of bus sickness). The remaining 85% of us were just left bopping around in the back with an occassional sick bag.
We traveled south from Christchurch to Milford Sound, which isn't really a sound but a fjord. A fjord is a body of water created by a melting glacier. We arrived and boarded a boat that would house us for the night out on the sound. Around 7:30pm, which is still very much the middle of the daytime in southern NZ, we had the option of taking out a kayak on the sound. It was raining quite hard but how many times do you get to kayak in a lake made of glacier ice, in the rain, surrounded by tiny penguins and mountains with waterfalls at a time of day that the large majority of humans equate with darkness or near darkness. So obviously we kayaked away. And obviously I beat Dennis by a whole kayak length in a race back to the boat. Obviously.
(I know, Dennis, I know. You hate me.)
After our night on the boat, the next stop was Queenstown, known as the adventure capital of the world. Queenstown was just a farming village until 20 years ago when AJ Hackett invented bungy jumping and set up the first bungy jump there. Queenstown still only has a few thousand residents but attracts over 1 million tourists each year who come for activities from skydiving, to canyon swinging, to white water rafting, to riverbording (going down the rapids with nothing but a wetsuit, a helmet and a small boggieboard), to jet boating, to even just checking out Lord of the Rings filming locations.
Two days before our arrival in Queenstown we were asked to choose from a list of activites available in Queenstown so that spots could be reserved for us during our limited time in town. After a great deal of debate and peer pressure both inside and outside my own head, in a moment of bravery/stupidity, I signed myself up for a skydive. And then I immediately proceeded to go into major introvert mode as I ignored everyone and turned my brain insideout trying to figure out why I would do such a thing and what percent chance there was that I would puke on my tandem diver while falling to the earth.
By the time we arrived in Queenstown I was angry that anyone had ever even invented skydiving and was at such a loss as to how to get out of it that I curled up in the fetal position on the bed and whined in a way that led Huiwon to comment, "I have never seen you like this before." To which I responded, "I'VE never seen me like this before."
But by the morning I had expended all my fearful energy and adrenaline, and resigned myself to the fact that there was no way out. If it was to be my day to go, then so be it. (Of course for the price of $300 I could have gotten out by simply not showing up and abandoning the money I'd paid. But I guess I wasn't so afraid that I was willing to, in essence, PAY $300 to keep my feet on the ground.)
However, after all that energy spent on fear, in the end mother nature gave me an out when the jump was cancelled due to rain. Huiwon and Dennis were able to reschedule for the next day but I was scheduled to do an all day river trip and did not have any timeslots left for skydiving. This meant I got to keep my feet on the ground for free.
Ruth's bungy jumpThe river trip turned out to be a canoeing trip through the mountains and although its not as exciting to describe as plummeting to the earth would have been, it was an enjoyable day with scenery like you've only seen in movies like Lord of the Rings. Literally. I mean you really saw it in Lord of the Rings.
However, as soon as I saw Huiwon and Dennis after their skydive, that weird little itch to jump out of a plane was back again. And so it's back on the list. Why I can't be happy without torturing myself with constant physical and mental challenges I've yet to figure out.
While in Queenstown Huiwon and I also managed to find some time to visit the Kiwi Exhibit. The kiwi is a the national bird of New Zealand as this is the only place in the world that it lives. It is a flightless bird about the size of a chicken but it's eggs are about 6 times the size of a chicken's eggs. The kiwi lays the largest egg in relationship to its body size of any egg laying creature in the world. It also looks quite strange because it has 2 legs but no wings, arms, or front leg type appendages.
Before the arrival of Europeans in New Zealand the Maori people, who came from the Polynesian Islands had been living there for between 700 and 2000 years. This is not all that long considering the 50,000 years the aboriginees are believed to have been in Australia. Before Europeans, New Zealand was a place completely without mammals or even marsupials. There were only birds and reptiles for millions of years. Since there were no preditors these natives creatures had not developed any fear instincts. So when Europeans brought cats, rats, ferrets and stoats many of these bird species were wiped out very quickly. Could natural selection have been anymore obvious for Darwin when he sailed up in the Beagle?
The kea is one bird that is still holding strong in New Zealand. The bird is believed to be as intelligent as a 3 year old human.
By now it was nearly Thanksgiving. But as we all (should) know, there is no Thanksgiving in New Zealand. That also means no turkey. The only meals available to us that particular night were a vegetable pie or bangers and mash. I opted for the latter to at least work some mashed potatoes into my Thanksgiving.
The daytime hours of Thanksgiving day were spent at Fox Glacier. A few days before we arrived, a storm wiped out the trail that is normally used to hike up to the glacier. Since that route for visiting the glacier was no longer an option, our only chance was now to take a helicopter up to see it. I hadn't planned to travel up this way for fear my pesky knees wouldn't be able to make the icy journey back down from the glacier. We boarded the helicopter in groups of 6 and flew for 6 minutes. The helicopter dropped us off on the ice and we were ushered to a low area where we had to crouch down while the helicopter left to get the next of our 8 groups. Each time the helicopter returned we crouched and waited in the wind for it to leave again. We strapped cramps to our boots and in groups of 12 followed our guide around the strange land of ice. We crossed over deep crevices, under ice bridges and even through an ice tunnel, while all the time the ice was dripping and melting. Since it was summertime, this is to be expected. However, Fox Glacier is melting more rapidly in the summer than it is accumulating in the winter and it is expected to be completely gone within the next 10 years.
Our final stop was Wellington on the southern coast of the north island. Wellington is the windy city of New Zealand. There are on average 170 days of winds over 60 kph each year (about 40 mph).
After some final Contiki-style party time and some karaoke in Wellington, Huiwon, Dennis and I officially departed the Contiki tour. Others on the bus had paid for a 16-day tour that continued north through to Auckland and the Bay of Isles. Huiwon and Dennis would fly to Auckland and spend a few days there but I choose to skip Auckland and return to Australia.
I can confirm that New Zealand is just as breathtaking as you've heard. 2 weeks after my return to Australia I was back with the volunteer program and two Korean guys I was working with asked me why I never took any pictures of the Murray River in Victoria and it's surrounding landscapes. I showed them my pictures of New Zealand and explained that I just didn't find the Murray River picture worthy having just come from New Zealand. They oohed and aahhed over my pictures as only someone raised in an Asian country can do. And they agreed that the Murray wasn't worthy in the eyes of my camera.
Unfortunately I spent the majority of my time in New Zealand fighting some germ that had taken up residence in my sinuses. Coupled with a regular dose of bus sickness, I was left feeling pretty crappy. As a result I feel as though I didn't appreciate most of the sights and adventures of New Zealand for their full greatness. Although the Contiki tour was well run and is a great way for people who don't have a lot of time to see more in a short period of time, since I was coming from a slower sort of travel style, I couldn't help but feel a bit rushed. So just maybe I'll have to go back there some day. Did I hear Americans can get a working holiday visa in New Zealand?
View pictures at:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=51205&l=7da77&id=802088251
and
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=54289&l=d5e67&id=802088251
