Massive update, part III (on the way to Wellington)

Part I-Part II

We spent one more night in Auckland before heading south.
Before coming to New Zealand,Kirstenn and I weren't sure where we wanted to end up, but the choice came down to Auckland or Wellington, the two largest cities. Auckland was big. Wellington had some familiarity going for it - one of Kirsten's friends from college had the same working holiday visa we do, and was going to be in Wellington. We also had (not really) family in Wellington - my uncle's first cousin, once removed, lives there.
It didn't take too much convincing to head to Wellington - everyone we talked to in Auckland described their city as "crap" and said Wellington was a more fun town. So the next question was how to get there - we knew we wanted to stop in Rangitoto National Park (about halfway between Auckland and Wellington, which are at the north and south ends of the north island) for a day of skiing. A day, because more would probably sap too much of our cash reserves.
A bus was the first choice, but it turned out taking a bus would be as much as renting a car, so we got a car. After returning from Paihia, we spent another night in Auckland. The hostel had a stay four nights, get one night free deal, which worked for us, because we'd been there four nights before heading north. However, the free night was only good for a dorm-style room - four bunk beds for eight people.
No problem. At least not until the eighth member of the room walked in at 4 a.m. and promptly began urinating in the doorway. My memories of the event are a little foggy. I believe he denied the urination, despite all evidence to the contrary, and was then not-so-kindly asked to leave. At any rate, I got some sleep.
One other aspect of the dorm room was picking up a third for the trip to Wellington - a British girl was heading to Wellington, and offered to pick up some of the petrol cost for the trip down. Works for us.

The trip was uneventful, except for my crash-course (thankfully without any actual crashes) in driving on the wrong side of the road. On the map, we were staying on State Highway 1 most of the way, which on paper appears to correspond with an American interstate. It doesn't.
Hwy. 1 was a several-lane divided highway for about 15 miles outside of Auckland, when it turned into a winding, two-lane road through the country side. It had the same speed limit either way: 100 km/hour, or 60 mph. Also known as: much slower than I usually drive. But I managed.
It was another sunny day, and the three of us pulled off the road a number of times to check out the scenery. It's one of the nicest features of New Zealand's roads - about the time you say to yourself, 'Man, that's a nice view,' they have asmalll turnout or picnic area for you to stop and look at it.

We pulled into National Park village just before sunset, in time to catch a view of the mountains, most of which were featured in The Lord of the Rings as part of Mordor.
Our hostel featured a huge fireplace, in front of which we spent most of the evening. Waking up the next day, the day we were to ski, it was foggy and raining. I decided to go ahead and ski, because I wasn't going to get another chance, while Kirsten decided to bow out and go hiking around the area with the British girl.
It looked like I'd made the wrong decision when I got to the slope - there was almost no snow at the bottom, and what was there was wet. Not slushy, wet. It made for a tough first few runs, not being able to see getting soaked while battling a crowd making their way down the only really usable run.
The ski areas on Mount Ruapehu don't have any trees and the runs aren't particularly well-marked, but they're basically the areas between the rocks. The whole thing's a volcano, which erupted about a decade ago. I'm sure it would have been spectacular to look at, if I could have seen it.
At any rate, the afternoon worked out much better, once I realized how to get to the top of the mountain, and then the back of the top of the mountain. I still couldn't see, but the snow was much better, and most of the time there wasn't anyone else on the mountain. It made for an adventure, trying to pick my way down with less than 50 feet of visibility. One time I almost ran into the base of the chairlift, because I knew it was there, but couldn't see it.

The next day, of course, the clouds lifted, the sun shone, and all was fine, although we were once again in the car. We headed to Wellington, where my uncle's-cousin-once-removed had graciously given us a place to stay based on two e-mails of contact.
Three days later, we'd found an apartment. Kirsten quickly followed that up by landing a couple of temp assignments, bringing in money to pay rent. We've had a little bit of time to explore the city, although we probably haven't been out and about enough.

We'll see what happens from here.

Part I-•Part II

Massive update, part II (up North)

Part I-Part III

Taking advantage of a free bus trip to Paihia, we headed to the Bay of Islands for a weekend. The area is a common tourist destination, and there is no shortage of ways to spend your money in exchange for a new experience or different scenery. On the bus ride up, we were given the opportunity to sign up for a few. We settled on an afternoon sea kayak trip (with a free bike rental thrown in) and swimming with the dolphins the next morning, followed by taking advantage of the free bikes.
We arrived in Piahia at about noon Saturday and would be leaving at 4 p.m. Sunday. Those two partial days were the source of most of the memorable moments of our time in New Zealand so far.
The sea kayak excursion was enjoyable - we were in a group of about 10 people on the guided tour, which paddled around several of the volcanic islands: small, steep chunks of rock covered in trees. On the trip were an American girl and English guy that joined us later in the hostel bar to watch the All Blacks play Australia for the Tri-Nations title.
The hostel bar was packed. There were a few backpackers (us) but the majority of the crowd seemed to be locals, or at least Kiwis working in Piahia's tourist industry. The crowd wasn't as loud as I'd expected. They were all watching the game, but watching intently, rather than yelling at the action in the manner of most sporting crowds I've been a part of.
I, having no knowledge at all about the rugby, picked up some knowledge of the game while watching it, and more afterward when I asked questions to try and piece together why things happened the way they did. (There's apparently no blocking in rugby, although you can do just about anything to someone with the ball).
The 7 a.m. wakeup call for the dolphins came way too early, and there was still far too much chill in the air, but we headed out to the boat just the same. It was a brand-new experience for me, both the actual swimming and doing it so close to these large, fast and powerful animals. After some time in the water, the boat took us to an island with a small cafe and hot showers, along with a number of odd-looking birds.

In the afternoon we rode the bikes a few kilometers up the road from Piahia, to the grounds where the Treaty of Waitangi was signed. The treaty was between the European colonizers and the native Maori, and has been a source of contention since.


The grounds were beautiful, however. There was a large Maori canoe on display, carved to the celebration of (I think) the 100th anniversary of the treaty. The colonial governor's house and its lawn (above), where the treaty was actually signed, have been restored and now serve as a museum about the treaty and the history of the area.
All weekend, the weather was beautiful. Sunny, warm, a faint breeze, blue sky, blue water. The weather help up most of our early time in New Zealand - at least until I tried to go skiing.

Part I-Part III

Massive update, part I (Auckland)

Part II-Part III

It's hard to say what my first impression was when we first landed in Auckland Aug. 30, at just before 5 a.m. local time, other than fatigue. Broken sleep on an airplane, even during a 12-hour flight, just doesn't cut it. Thankfully we were able to navigate our way to the hostel, despite some confusion about where to pick up our pre-arranged bus passes, and when we got to the hostel sometime before 7 a.m. they gave us a room, allowing us to add a few hours to our sleep total and check out Auckland as not-quite-stark-raving lunatics.
Auckland is an odd city. Our hostel was right in the heart of Queen Street, the city's main commercial strip, and the first-day impressions of Auckland tended to be of a bustling, vibrant city. Every block on Queen Street is packed with businesses, the sidewalks are full, and high-rise buildings line the street. It appears to be a city much larger than its 1.2 million people.
However, after walking around Queen Street and its environs a few times, you realize that's really all there is, at least for someone without a car. The bustle is confined, more or less, to a half-mile long, three-block wide strip, and there doesn't seem to be a ton of nightlife. Even a trip up to K Road, which is supposed to be one of the hip nightlife districts, showed little other than a few overpriced bars far apart from each other.
That's not to say we didn't have fun in Auckland. But the city is more than twice as large as any other city in New Zealand - you'd think it'd be the place to be. Instead, even the locals we ran into said Auckland wasn't exactly a happening place, certainly not as much as you'd expect.
It was good to spend four or five days there, though. We took a free city tour given by one of the backpacker tour companies - there are at least two companies that have bus routes around the country, and try to gain business with free Auckland tours. The tour guide had fun with the four-hour trip, and it got us to places around Auckland we certainly wouldn't have seen otherwise, such as Mount Eden, an inactive volcano providing a panoramic view of the city (and the volcanic cone).
There wasn't much else of note done in Auckland - a couple nights at the backpackers' bar downstairs, and a couple nights of looking for cheaper places, and then learning the $5 beers at the backpacker bar were cheap. One night, still not quite on a normalized sleep cycle, we simply headed up the street to see Batman Begins which I had missed in its theater run in the States.

Before we left the U.S. we'd booked a package deal at our hostel. I'm not sure it ended up being a good deal, but it did give us free transportation to the Bay of Islands, a trip we certainly wouldn't have done otherwise, and one that turned out to be the best part of our opening week.

Part II-Part III

more photos of the U.S. trip

a few photos from a whirlwind tour of the States

Between Aug. 1 and Aug. 24, I drove almost exactly 4,000 miles - from Hattiesburg, Miss., to Missouri, to Denver, to Montana, to Oregon (via Seattle).

I didn't have time to put much up about the trip while it was happening, and now it might be a little late to recreate some of my thoughts while we were driving around. But one thing a road trip of that magnitude will reveal (besides the fact it's surprisingly tiring to sit in a car all day) is the sheer magnitude of so much around the country. It's especially revealing when you come to a place like New Zealand. My month-long trip across part of the U.S. was long enough to drive north to south along both islands of New Zealand and back again - and then back down to the south. (Although here they don't have the beauty of a nation-wide, four-lane, limited-access highway system).

Driving across the states we ran into monster thunderstorms (we drove through the same front three times between Columbia and Denver, and each time hit blinding rain for about 20 minutes), the plains of Kansas (I could have done without seeing those again) as well as Wyoming, Montana, Washington and Oregon, mountains all around, and friends and family I'm glad I got a chance to talk to before leaving the country.


I drove Glacier's Going-to-the-Sun road for the first time in what I figure was about a decade, and got to introduce someone new to the park.
















We had to decide the route to get from Missoula to almost Portland one day, and decided to take a few extra miles to stop in Seattle at sunset, which was the perfect choice.











And I got to mark two milestones off at once in the second-to-last stop: not only did I knock off another state by setting foot in Oregon for the first time, I also completed the travesty of visiting all three of my siblings at their college (not an easy feat, considering the three locales were New Orleans, Boston and Corvallis, Ore.).

An inaugural trip to Portland determined I liked the city as much as I thought I would, from the massive bookstore to the underground bar some acquaintances-of-a-friend took us.



















We saw sea lions in Oregon and again in California just south of Carmel. We walked on a wind-blown beach in Oregon and then a golden, sun-warmed beach in California. Sunsets from the top of a mountain in Montana and overlooking the sound in Seattle. Saw Bob Saget at a comedy club, Mount St. Helens vent steam into the clouds and capped it all off with a perfect sunny day watching baseball by the bay in San Francisco.

Thankfully, by the end of the trip we had traded in the car for air travel. Then we jumped all-in for the air travel, and traded in late summer for late winter.

it's something, anyway

I finally saw part of Monday Night Football, caught on the TV screens of a department store.
It just happened to be Tuesday afternoon at the time.

my TV wasteland

My flat (apartment) has a TV, but no cable or satellite - we're restricted to the over-the-air channels. There are five of them we should be able to get, but in reality we only pick up two.
One thing this means is I haven't seen a single college or NFL football game this year. This is quite a difference, considering the past four years I've made a living watching college football, and long before I was paid for it I watched as much as possible. I have to say I don't miss it, but that's mostly because I'm not reminded that it even exists - there is no coverage of any American sports here, although there were about 20 pages of rugby coverage in the paper this weekend. I am on a quest over the next few weeks to find a bar to watch the baseball playoffs - I know they're carried here, I just don't know which establishments will feel a need to switch it on.

The other consequence of only having broadcast TV is that my roommates watch some horrible TV. Every night there's a local show called Shortland Street, which is a prime-time soap opera. The only thing I've ever seen to compare it too was a short-lived show on MTV (I don't remember the name, and I'm only hoping it was short-lived. For all I know it's still going on, but I only saw it a few times late at night when I was in college).
Every time I accidentally came across the MTV show I was convinced it was a sketch parodying a soap opera, because the plot and production were that bad. I kept watching, waiting for the joke, until I gradually realized there wasn't a joke - MTV actually expected people to watch this, and I'm sure some people did.
Shortland Street gives me that feeling every night.

maybe more updates

We've settled, for now, in Wellington, New Zealand's capital, right at the southern tip of the North Island and one of the three major cities in the country along with Auckland and Christchurch.
Originally, we were split on whether to start by settling in Auckland or Wellington. Then everyone we met from Auckland kept telling us their city was shite, and they'd rather be in Wellington.
Based on my rather brief time in each city, the breakdown seems to be like this: Auckland is the big city. Wellington is the cool city.
The closest analogue in the states I can think of is L.A. and San Francisco - just think of Auckland as a 1:10 scale model of L.A., and Wellington as a 1/10 scale model of San Francisco. Wellington, at least, looks a little like San Francisco - nestled into the hills against a bay. Auckland is spread out, but still seemed better than L.A.
At any rate, now we're actually spending more than a day in a row in one spot, I'm more likely to have regular Internet access, and access with my laptop, so more regular updates could be at hand.
No promises.

driving on the wrong side

Rented a car today and drove 350 kilometers or so from Auckland to
Tongariro National Park, where we plan to ski tomorrow.
After the alien experience of breathing underwater, when all 27 years
of my life experience have led me to believe that's a bad thing, I went
right into the alien experience of driving on the wrong side, fighting
13 years of driving experience and the subsequent learned reflexes.
The hardest things: turning right and ending up in the left lane. Also,
when turning right out of a turning lane, I kept trying to look behind
me instead of in front of me for oncoming traffic. When you're in the
middle of two lanes, the traffic should be coming from behind your
right shoulder, not in front.
Also, when cars come around a mountain curve to my left, it really
looks like they're coming head-on at me, because you can't see they're
in the far lane.
Made it, though.

beautiful weekend

Saturday morning we left Auckland on a bus trip a few hours north, to an area called the Bay of Islands (the transportation was part of a package deal from our hostel, so why not use it). Every time I looked around up there, it felt like I was looking at a scene set up for a postcard - too nice to be real. The weather was perfect, the water was calm and dark blue, with a hint of turquoise, and the bay was filled with sailboats and rock formations pushing up out of the water, topped with trees.
Saturday we arrived in Paihia and right away went on a guided sea kyack trip. Saturday night we spent in the hostel bar, along with a few travelers we met on the kyack excursion, watching the All Blacks defeat Australia's rugby team - and by the end, I almost figured out the basic objectives of the game.
Today, we woke up far too early but it was worth it. We took a dolphin tour of the bay - the boat took us, along with 20 other people, out on the water looking for dolphins. We ended up lucky - found a pod of about 10 dolphins in about 20 minutes, and they were active - jumping out of the water, playing next to the boat, the whole bit.
The tour was actually called swimming with dolphins, and we did. Fitted out in wet suits, flippers, a mask and snorkel, getting into the water was an option.
As a kid from a land-locked state, I'd never swam with flippers, a wetsuit, or a mask and snorkel before - much less in the open ocean. The first time in the water, I managed to get a breath full of salt water, and combined with the completely alien experience of breathing in the mask, it felt as though I was struggling for air, and had to depart the water early.
I got another chance, though, and did much better - now a little more used to the whole breathing experience, I could concentrate on being literally inches from the dolphins. I may even have to try that again sometime.

Tonight, we returned to Auckland. I think an early night is in order - tomorrow we're renting a car and trying another alien experience. Driving on the left-hand side of the road.

And, of course, I'm still spending my free time reading the news about New Orleans. I finally got to see some TV footage this weekend - it made the postcard vistas even more unreal.

a world removed

Since arriving in Auckland, I've meant to update this blog, but every time I get online I spend all my time looking at the news reports from the hurricane. I have a love for New Orleans, a more familiar relation with its streets, bars and sights than any other city. I held a fondness for New Orleans even before I got there, and spent just enough time there - one three-month stint, and countless weekends and three- and four-day trips - to have a passing knowledge of a few neighborhoods and a bare understanding of what it might be to be a local.
The past four years, I had been a local of Hattiesburg, Miss., a town that probably hasn't made the national (certainly the international) news in the fashion of New Orleans, Biloxi or the Gulf towns. It doesn't even deserve to mentioned, from what I understand. But in a normal situation, what Hattiesburg is going through would be bad enough. I got a call through to some former co-workers today, the first day they had phone service after the storm. About 20 of them have been sleeping in the newsroom, because there is no power in the rest of the town. There hadn't been running water until today, and it's still under a boil order.
The cell phone towers are knocked out, and travel is near impossible. Trees block most of the roads, and the gas stations don't have power, so no gas. A friend told me some stations came online today, but they limited people to $20 of gas, and ran out in about 20 minutes.
And that's 60 miles inland. The scene is obviously much worse in places that had to contend with the storm surge, and the flooding in New Orleans is near incomprehensible.
An aspect that hasn't been covered, and even I hadn't thought of until I talked to people in Hattiesburg, is that the past few days temperatures have hovered "around 100 degrees," they said. I haven't looked up exact temps, but even if they're 90 or so, with no power, air conditioning or water, that becomes unbearable even in the best of times.
As my former editor said, regarding the looting that appears to be widespread in the affected cities: with the heat and the destruction, "People have just snapped."

Kirsten asked me the other day if I wished I was there covering it. My first response was no. I realize, however, that a big part of me does wish I was there covering it. Despite the craziness of the situation. Despite the fact it means I'd have been sleeping on our newsroom floor the past four days or so, without a shower or decent food.
At least when you're covering a situation like this, you have access to the raw information. You know as much as anyone. You get to see what's going on, talk to people, hear scraps of information long before there's enough real knowledge to put the scraps in the paper.
And when you cover an event like this, it gives you some ability to put yourself outside the disaster. This one is likely much harder in that regard, because everyone covering it was also affected - a friend of mine at the paper currently has a tree in his living room. But going out and trying to find out information, going out and talking to people, means you're not just sitting around worrying, realizing, as someone I talked to put it, "I don't have any idea when we might return to normalcy."

I'm glad I'm in New Zealand. But being here, I do kind of wish I'd gone through Katrina. Gone through it to see just how I'd respond, as a journalist and as someone caught in a disaster few people ever actually experience.

on a lighter note

Even I, who couldn't tell you one thing about rugby, knew the NZ national team was called the All Blacks. They're playing Australia Saturday, and it's a big, big deal here.
But today I was reading the paper, and came across an article about the national basketball team.
The Tall Blacks.