more pics

They are overdue, I suppose - photos from our trip around the North Island in April and early May:


A tunnel at the beginning of a long side trip we took on a gravel road through the mountins off the "Forgotten Road Highway" heading east from Mt. Taranaki. The one-lane tunnel is nicknamed "The Hobbit Hole."


Shells on a northern beach.


Our friend Andrew and the beach where he put us up.


The lighthouse at Cape Reinga, top of the North Island.


The tip of New Zealand.



I'm the one facedown after trying to sled down a giant sand dune on the 90-mile beach, a long beach (but not actually 90 miles long) running down the west coast of the northern tip of New Zealand. As you'll see later, the beach also serves as a highway with it's hard-packed sand.


This is the start of New Zealand's State Highway 1, the main artery of the country. For the first 20 kilometers, it's a gravel road.


Someone who tried to use the 90-mile beach as a road and didn't quite make it all the way. Supposedly this car had only been on the beach for about six weeks. However, every day buses go up and down the beach (this photo was taken from a bus window). The secret is to know the tide times and not get caught in the water.


Tane Mahuta, the largest Kauri tree in New Zealand. It's similar in size to the California Redwoods, although not quite as tall.


The Auckland skyline at dusk.

Cathedral Cove.

Me at Cathedral Cove, on the east side of the Coromandel Peninsula on the North Island. This was our last day of the road trip. The beach, one that we'd seen many times before in tourism photos without realizing where it was, is secluded at the end of a 45-minute walk. That day was warm - people were wearing swimsuits and bikinis. Two days later we were in Wellington, where we couldn't go out without coats.

a new point

We're gone from North to South. Left Wellington, packed even more stuff into the car, got on the ferry, and drove most of the way down the east coast of the South Island, stopping in Dunedin.
Dunedin seems a nice enough place - it's New Zealand's version of a college town. About 100,000 population along with 20,000 Otago University students. We haven't had a chance to see if those students actually give the town any life; since arriving on Tuesday we've mostly been holed up in bed trying to shake colds which have plagued us for a week now. We're also doing a bit of cleaning in exchange for free beds at a hostel. That's the reason we ended up in Dunedin: we didn't have any real idea on where to go, and this was where we found free accommodation.
What I can tell, however, is it's an interesting city visually. It was founded by Scottish settlers in the 1800s, and there are plenty of big, imposing, European stone buildings around town. It's also built on shoreline hills - Dunedin claims the world's steepest street (which I haven't seen yet). And outside of town is the large Otago peninsula, home to the world's only mainland Albatross colony (if you consider New Zealand a mainland) as well as two kinds of penguin, one the world's rarest, sea lions, seals, and all sorts of other things to look at.
It's not the first time we've passed through this town. Dunedin is actually where we spent Christmas. Five months ago, the town was cold, grey, and our car broke down. Now it's cold but sunny, and our car is working so far.
(knock on wood)

talking about Wellington

Now that I've left Wellington, I figure I may as well tell you a little about the city I spent more than half a year in.
This is a story I wrote intending to sell to a paper, but haven't yet:

WELLINGTON, NEW ZEALAND -- This is a small city, by the measure of nearly any country in the world.
But Wellington has an atmosphere, culture and nightlife that belie it’s size.
New Zealand’s capital boasts only 150,000 people, and barely 400,000 people in the region. The country’s second-largest urban center and capital looks and feels bigger. It is this character, Wellington’s ability to at once feel larger and smaller than it truly is, that the compact city’s residents often extoll.
On the one hand, Wellingtonians constantly have options in theater, live music, restaurants, cafes and live music. New Zealand’s capital is also it’s cultural capital.
It’s the home of theater companies, art-house cinemas, live music venues, art galleries and the country’s national museum. There are concerts, ranging from local punks bands to the national symphony, every night of the week. The town hosts the country’s International Arts Festival and has a smaller film or music festival seemingly every other weekend throughout the year.
Peter Jackson has given Wellington some international attention as the home base for the director of King Kong and the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Tourists can stroll the pedestrian mall of Cuba Street and its independent, funky shops and cafes, or the upscale shops of downtown’s Lambton Quay. The nightlife options are just as broad, with people heading to Cuba and Courtenay Place for the various clubs and pubs on offer. The city also has a extensive public transportation system allowing people to get wherever they need to go.
On the other hand, Wellingtonians often talk about just how small the city is in social terms. Walking around the city or going to a show you’re likely to run into someone you know.
Just having a car breakdown can be occasion for a reunion. Nor Jimenez, who has lived in Wellington for 25 years, walked along the city’s waterfront recently instead of driving. He said he ran into friends -- some who he hadn’t seen in years -- every few blocks.
---
Wellington sits at the southern end of New Zealand’s North Island. It is the departure point for the ferries which cross the Cook Straight, taking people, cars and freight to the South Island.
It occupies a small, curving strip of land resembling a wide, double-barbed fishhook. The downtown sits on the northern, inside curve of the fishhook, looking out at the sheltered bay and harbor. The residential neighborhoods and suburbs cover the rest of the hook, hemmed in by the waters of Cook Straight to the south, and the narrow waterway which forms the link between the straight and harbor to the east.
Like San Francisco, the land rapidly rises up out of the water. The city center is wedged into a narrow space between waterfront and the hills. Much of the land the skyline rests on was reclaimed from the bay.
A little further out, the residential neighborhoods have used the hillsides and hilltops.
“When I explain Wellington to people, I say it’s like a giant stood with one foot in Evans Bay and one foot in Cook Strait and sprinkled Monopoly houses on the hills,” says Kit O’Connor.
O’Connor grew up in Gisborne, further up the west side of the North Island. She now lives in Wellington, working with the national museum, Te Papa. From her home, she looks out on the sea, with one of Wellington’s ubiquitous hills rising up behind.
Long, steep hills ring most of the city’s downtown, often capped with low-slung buildings. However, the hills haven’t simply been developed with a carpet of buildings set in concrete. Instead, the eye is drawn to individual homes and buildings, separated by thick bands of wild greenery.
Houses co-exist with the trees, leaving the impression the buildings have sprouted up like the rest of the vegetation.
“They just hover on top,” says O’Connor.
But even in the central city, prime hill-top real estate has been left largely undeveloped. Wellington’s town belt, a series of hilltop parks criss-crossed by walking paths, stretches south from the harbor and downtown across the thin strip of land to the open sea.
Back downtown, nearly every block sports at least one restaurant, bar or cafe. Wellington likes to brag it has more cafes per capita than just about anywhere, and it may be true.
Most of the cafes, as well as the bars and other food and drink venues, are on Cuba Street and Courtenay Place.
Cuba is the home of more live music venues and independent-minded shops. It’s the home of the black-clad-and-pierced crowd. Courtenay Place is home to more dance clubs, chain restaurants and is populated more by the professional, dress-shirt-and-slacks crowd, although the crowds and character overlap between the two areas.
On either street you’ll find crowds in the coffee shops and cafes during the day, hanging out at coffee hotspots such as Fidel’s on Cuba or Expressoholic on Courtenay. By night, the streets are home to the crowds heading to or from the city’s nightspots.
For those more active during the day, Wellington has Te Papa, the country’s national museum, a cable car running from the downtown business district to an extensive botanic garden and a waterfront ready for a stroll.
Balancing the city’s charms is its weather.
Natives tend to say on a nice day Wellington can compete with any city in the world. The problem is the relative rarity of nice days.
Ocean winds stopped by the islands of New Zealand squeeze through Cook Straight, keeping Wellington well-ventilated. The town’s nickname is Windy Welly, and most days it lives up to the nickname. The town’s geography keeps temperatures cooler than the surrounding areas, and it also seems to be more prone to cloudy days than other New Zealand towns.
---
New Zealanders seem to regard Auckland, the country’s largest city, something like Americans regard L.A. It’s a big, sprawling city. It’s hard to get around, hard to meet people.
Wellington, then, becomes the closest thing New Zealand has to San Francisco. A city built on hills around a bay, boasting a vibrant cafe and nightlife scene, compact downtown and easy-to-navigate public transport system.
I was discussing the difference between the two major New Zealand cities with Jim, a tourist from Santa Barbara stopping in Wellington for a couple of nights on his way to the South Island. We were at the Matterhorn, one of Wellington’s many bars catering to the trendy, 25-to-35 professional crowd.
A bartender overheard us. He had worked in Auckland for several years and decided to move to Wellington.
“Wellington is just more open, more friendly,” he said. “It’s easy to talk to people here.”
And once you talk with them, you’re likely to run into them all over the city.

big kiwi

I'm a sucker for roadside tourist traps. This is, obviously, a big Kiwifruit. You can even walk up stairs inside and look out a small window (it's about four or five stories, and you look out on, well, nothing in particular).

when it's cold outside, I got the month of May

Wellington is once again living up to its reputation as a good city with bad weather. After a month of traveling around the North in generally good weather - warm and sunny more often than not - we have been getting a dose of winter here. Rain, wind and cold. Not the crisp cold of snow and ice, but the skin-chilling cold of air hovering just above the freezing point.
And for some reason, New Zealanders have decided they don't like easy methods of heating houses. Central heating is nearly unknown here. Even efforts to warm up with portable heaters are mostly useless - most people have radiant heaters without any fan to spread the air. This results mostly in warming the inch of so of air nearest the heater, and nothing else.

I asked a group of natives why they hate central heating, and got a vague answer involving macho posturing and suppressed masochism.
More fun was the response I got when I mentioned I hadn't seen a single dwelling with central heating, including our brand-new apartment building.
"There's central heating in Kelburn (a Wellington suburb)," one said.
"Parts of Thorndon," another added.
A few other areas of the city were mentioned, as were urban legend-type sightings: "My aunt's neighbor has central heating."
A comfortable indoor temperature, at least among the poor 20-something crowd in Wellington, inspires tales which sound like sailors swapping stories of mermaids a few hundred years back.
They didn't have central heating then, either, I suppose.

Off the road

We were traveling in a car and could have been self-sufficient.
We had a mattress in the back, suitable for sleeping (after the cargo
had been redistributed to the front seats and the back seats folded
down). We had a camp stove and food. We had enough water. If we
wanted to expend some extra energy, we had a tent.
There was no real need to pay for a place to stay. And yet, we did.
Most of the nights we didn't stay with friends we paid for a camp
spot at a hostel or in a "Holiday Park" - private campgrounds with
facilities.
There were the showers, and hot water, a nice luxury when you're on
the road. There were the full kitchens.
But the real problem with just pulling over and staying in the car
was the end of daylight savings.
The weather was fine for our vacation. Sun most days, often warm
enough to make just hanging out on the beach a viable option. We were
in the presence of bikinis even on the last few days of our North
Island trip.
However, fall is definitely here and the sun has decided it doesn't
have to work a full shift any more. Even the nice days end around
5:30 p.m. That's a little early to just call it a night.
So we paid for the lights. Electricity, which meant a few hours
reading (or even some TV, at the larger grounds).
Yet another reason the summer is the ideal time for a road trip.

One of the most important things to know about New Zealand is this: you can't sue.
It's not quite as cut-and-dried as that, but it is true the country essentially outlawed personal injury lawsuits. Instead, the government pays all medical bills in the case of any accident.
This is important, especially for the tourists. Not because I care one way or the other about my ability to file a lawsuit. Because it means operators can offer crazy experiences without having to worry about crazy insurance premiums or lawsuits.
Case in point: over three days in Rotorua, I rolled down a large hill inside a plastic ball filled with water; drove a sprint car around a tiny concrete track, and rode down a white-water river with only a piece of hard plastic the size of a boogie board for protection and flotation.

Zorbing - rolling down the hill in a rubber ball - is a surreal experience. My ball was clouded milky white, so I couldn't see what was happening. I wasn't the only one in the ball, either - my friend Paul was also enclosed, as well as a few gallons of warm water. Once the ball started rolling, we just ended up sprawling on the floor, watching the sides zip around as the ball rolled down the hill.
Sledging - whitewater rafting without a raft - is a tiring experience. Actually going through the whitewater and rapids is the easiest bit. The tiring part is trying to kick against the current to get to the side of the river or steer along.
Driving the sprint car - a souped-up roll cage on tires - was also tiring, mostly due to the lack of power steering. It was also slightly disappointing, since my best lap time was 12.98 seconds, behind the 12.6 seconds Paul managed and well behind the 11.05 course record (it was on the upper end of the day's best runs though, and at least I cracked 13). More fun was having the power to drift around the corners, hearing the tires squeal. It might not lead to the best time, but it is more fun.

Since arriving in New Zealand I've swam with dolphins, jumped out of a plane, tubed down a stream inside a glow-worm cave, zorbed, sledged, driven a sprint car, kayaked in a fiord during a downpour, kayaked in the Bay of Islands during a perfect day of sunshine, skied on a volcano, sledded down sand dunes.
Next up on the list: a bungy jump.

Pukeko

stepping out
Originally uploaded by anek dotal.

Birds are the main attraction here - the only attraction, really, when it comes to wildlife. Starting with the Kiwi, New Zealand has a plethora of birds you're not going to find anywhere else and the country is understandably proud of them.
Of of the more common, but odd-looking, birds is the Pukeko, or swamp hen.
The Pukeko is easily recognizable by it's bright purple or blue breast and unique body proportions. The body is about the size of a chicken, but the legs are stretched so that it appears to be walking on stilts, and its feet seem to belong to a much larger bird.
You can often catch glimpses of Pukeko on the side of rural roads, although they are generally shy birds. Apparently they are considered a game bird and can be hunted, but I haven't seen Pukeko on any menu since I've been here. I'll keep looking.

(The plural form of Pukeko, by the way, is "Pukeko." No 's' at the end.)

We saw these Pukeko in a park in Wanganui. They were trying to eat something in the water, and were looking for a good perch.
They walked along the lilypads, which managed to hold them above the water. As soon as the birds stopped, however, they slowly started to sink. A few seconds later, the Pukeko would hop back up to the lilypads and take a few more steps before stopping, slowly sinking, and repeating the process.
While I was watching, the Pukekos never found much of what they were looking for. They were too busy being constantly surprised by their lack of buoyancy.

a few random thoughts

- It's good to have friends who have houses and spare bedrooms.
About half the nights we spent on the road this past month, we spent staying with people we'd met. Most of the time, these were people we met in Wellington. A few friends had moved to other locales. One of our Wellington friends has relatives who own a house in Russell. He flew up to meet us, and we stayed in campers on the beach, behind his great-aunt's house.
This relationship helped us out twice. When we got to Russell and met the great-aunt, she offered us use of her house in Auckland, which was sitting empty. It was in a terrific location, and we had free accommodation to check out the city.

- Talking with people you don't know who have spare beds can also turn out well. Our most random night came just before Easter. We'd spent the day around Mount Taranaki, and were driving past a small brewery at the end of the day. We stopped, sampled some beer, bought some beer, and started talking with the owner. He ended up offering us a spot for the night in a small cabin on the grounds. A night in the tent avoided.

- Having a car large enough to fit a mattress is invaluable if your alternative is a tent and you stop in a downpour of rain.

- People in New Zealand seem to expect tourists to pull over where they can and sleep in their car (or van or whatever). People in New Zealand have a high tolerance for cheap tourists.

- However, cooking on a camp stove in the middle of the day in a city park still earns you some odd looks.

- Every now and again you need a day when you're not trying to see anything in particular or do anything more than just hang out.

- The first week we were in New Zealand, we took a bus trip from Auckland to the Bay of Islands. At the time, we were amazed by the narrow, winding road.
Seven months later, we drove from Auckland to the Bay of Islands. This time, we were amazed by how wide and relatively straight the road is.

- To give you an idea of New Zealand roads, State Highway 1, the main North-South artery of the country, is unpaved for about 20 miles at its North end.

- I still haven't figured out how, when we're traveling, we meet lots of similar tourists out in the cities. When we were living in Wellington, we ran into almost no tourists out at night.

- Seeing beaches never gets old.

no shirt, no shoes, no problem

The unseen authorities in New Zealand always have a far more relaxed attitude than in the States. Not to mention the people.
Shoes, for example. They are always optional. Not just in the normal places - on the beach, or in the house, or even on the sidewalk. They are very optional there. But even in, say, the supermarket. Shoes are optional. And a fairly significant number of people opt to walk around sans shoes.
I saw this a number of times before it even occurred to me something was different. I mentioned this to a Kiwi friend the other day, and he told me his story:
A few years ago he was working in the US and his shoes fell apart. He drove, barefoot, an hour or two to the nearest town (he was working, I think, for a summer camp) to buy a new pair of shoes. The sporting goods store, however, wouldn't let him in because he didn't have any shoes.
This was a possibility he hadn't considered: needing to possess shoes before purchasing shoes.

what are they trying to say?

warning
Originally uploaded by C Buckley.

This is my favorite road sign in New Zealand. That's all - usually there's no text on the sign. Just the exclamation point. It never fails to amuse me.

end of the tour, for now

No photos yet, but we have finished (for now) our great New Zealand road trip.
We covered just about the entirety of the North Island, going from Wellington up the west coast to Taranaki, then east to Rotorua, north to Whakatane, then further north, past Auckland to the Bay of Islands. A weekend there, and we headed further north, driving until we simply ran out of North ahead of us. Then we turned south, down the 90-mile beach, down to Auckland, east to the Coromandel and back to Whakatane, before making one long last day's push back to Wellington.
We saw lots of beaches, a few mountains, cities and small towns, rolling hills and enormous sand dunes. At times we dived whole-heartedly into the tourist attractions, but most of the time we were living out of our tent and car or staying with friends we've made residing in New Zealand.
Now it's time for a brief break back in Wellington, catching up with friends and catching our breath, before piling back in the car and heading for the South Island. We have no idea what happens after we get off the ferry in the South Island. Hopefully we can find some work and a place to live. And do some skiing.

running away from summer

After a month on the road nearly always bathed in sunshine, we're headed back to Wellington today and it's raining. Probably a good way to get acclimated back into Wellington's weather (and the South Island).
We're finished with our North Island travels, after going as far north as we can, and seeing nearly all the the corners of the island. Pics and travel stories will follow over the next week or so, hopefully.