Back of Bourke: Tales from Down Under: New Zealand

Yes, I realize I've been slacking a considerable deal on updating this thing. That's not to say I haven't been doing anything, but it's been harder to find the several hours to set aside recently that it takes me to write each of these loaves of literary goodness. So, there should be a few of these in the next week or so, is all I'm saying.

First up on the list, is my recent trip to New Zealand. Let me save you a bit of time and show you this:

Look closely. A little more. Got it?

There ya go. You've officially seen New Zealand. All of it. I've just saved you a $1000 flight.

I kid, of course - you should still go check it out. I want to go back soon to see the rest of it. Apparently they have some pretty good skiing on the southern island during the winter. But this really does sum up the vast majority of what I saw there. Green. Hills. Rain. Sheep.

Speaking of sheep, here's a fun fact about New Zealand. The population of the entire country is around 4 million people. There are some 50 million sheep in New Zealand. Think about that. That's enough for everyone to have at least 10 sheep as pets. Sadly, they didn't buy that when I attempted to sneak one off.

At any rate, I was going over to Auckland (New Zealand's largest city) to work for a couple of days, and then took an additional 3 days off to explore the area a bit.

Upon arriving to my office building (which was a massive complex right on the harbor) I went inside to make my way up to the 27th floor to meet the Auckland office folks. Walking through the foyer, I came to a bay of elevators (maybe 8-10 of them). Looking around, I couldn't really see a 'call elevator' button anywhere. Fortunately, a ding snapped me out of my confusion as a nearby elevator door opened. I wandered over to the car, and stepped inside. Turning around, this is what I saw:

If you look carefully, you'll see that there
are only 4 buttons. This does not bode

well in a building with over 30 stories.

My state of initial confusion lasted just long enough for the doors to close and for the elevator to shoot skyward. Along the door frame was a small LED display, on which a few numbers glowed brightly. 7, 12, 15, 23. Finally starting to make some sense of the whole thing, I waited on the elevator. Sure enough, it stopped at the 23rd floor, and I stepped out with high hopes of finding a stairwell or elevator instructions, or even a rope ladder. That would have worked too.

Fortunately, a young woman came along shortly before I began to grow a beard and started talking to sporting equipment, and I took the opportunity to ask her how to get up a few more floors. Once explained, it was quite cool, actually. There are these keypads on all floors, and once you enter the floor you would like, it calls a particular elevator and takes you there. All in all, it was rather efficient (presumably to make up for the time lost by people new to the device).

Feeling slightly stupid, I went up a few floors and met the folks in the office. It's a real shame they couldn't have gotten a location with a better view (I say this facetiously, of course - the office overlooks the harbor and the bay).

The view of the city from the office. The

tall Space Needle-esque building is the

Sky Tower. Also, due to the weather and,

I believe, the window tinting, it looks like

an aerial view of the city from The Matrix.

After a day of work, I walked a couple of blocks back to the Hilton (which was also right on the harbor and pretty nice). Auckland, as you may or may not know, is nicknamed the 'City of Sails,' and for good reason. Being that it is mainly a port city (I saw some massive ships while I was there), a lot of people keep their boats there.

Boats on the harbor.

The harbor by sunset.

After the sun set, the moon shone brightly

over the harbor's waters.

At this point I must interject with a couple of rather odd sightings. First, on my way back to the hotel, I stumbled across this:

Yep, that's my name on a car. And a

Transformers Decepticon logo. On a car.

They must have known I was coming.

Then, a couple of days later while driving, I found this:

Me. Again. On a car dealership. I think they

wanted me to stay, or something. Or perhaps

Carson is a national hero. Or maybe it's just a

popular name in New Zealand. Or perhaps I'm

just a bit obsessive. Yeah, that sounds about

right.

Anyway - not too much else to share there. The fun stuff started a couple of days later when I had a few things planned.

First things first, I had to move to a different hotel. I had picked one called the Langham, which apparently is one of the 100 best hotels in the world. Upon arrival, I was inclined to agree. It was all dark woods and polished brass and beautiful tiles. I got up to my room, and collapsed on the largest bed in the world. I say it was the largest bed in the world, because it had 12 pillows on it. For those of you who don't know, I love pillows, and generally sleep on my bed with 2 body pillows and 2 regular pillows. And now this place was giving me twelve.

Granted, many of the pillows were purely decorative

and just ended up in a pile on the floor, but it was

still a very nice touch.

Knowing that I had a limited amount of time in the country, I wanted to make the most of it and soon headed back outside to explore. Later in the afternoon, I had one of my first touristy events planned - a whale and dolphin-watching cruise. But that was still several hours away, so I began to wander the streets of Auckland.

It really is a pretty cool city. Even moreso than Sydney, it looks like a big city but doesn't feel like it. It has its fair share of massive buildings, and with a population of 1.3 million people, for all intents and purposes should have been quite crowded. But it wasn't. I don't deny that part of this might have been a result of the fact that I was wandering around at 10:30 am on a workday, but that's beside the point.

Just one side of a neat statue I found during my

wanderings.

I walked by their main theatre building, which had a recently-opened showing of Phantom of the Opera. I made a mental note to go back that evening if I got back in time (I didn't, sadly). At one point, I walked by a rather unique cafe.

The cafe was called Lenin - I was a bit perplexed.

Communism apparently makes for an

enjoyable dining atmosphere. But it gets better.

Is it just me, or does their logo look suspiciously

like the hammer and sickle? Brilliant.

I wandered around a bit more, and eventually made my way to the Sky Tower. I didn't actually go up in it, but was perfectly content admiring it from ground-level.

Note to self: to make gobs of cash, Step 1:

build something really tall. Step 2: crazies

will pay heaps of money to jump off of it.

Step 3: profit.

I kid you not - it was nearly $200 to strap yourself into a suit, get clipped to some wires, and then descend very rapidly from the top to the bottom. The only place I could think of where you can foolishly lose money faster was in Vegas.

By this point, I had gotten the general gist of the city, and it was time to make my way to the boat for my cruise. I made my way back to the harbor, checked in, and hopped on.

The boat was a pretty good size, and there were only about 10 people or so aboard. We received our safety briefing from the captain and tour operator, and we were on our way. Our mission: to find some whales and dolphins for me to pet. Ok, so they disagreed with that last bit, but perhaps they should have stated that in the first place. I bregrudginly stowed my saddle for the remainder of the day.

The bay itself was stunning. The sun was shining, the waters were reasonably calm, the sea gods on our side, and we made sail for Tortuga - er, the bay. Why, what do you think I said? And no, I didn't watch Pirates of the Caribbean recently.

ARRRRRR...we there yet?

The water was bright green, we were told, as

a result of the high plant life content.

As I mentioned, the weather was gorgeous,

shortly before we drove STRAIGHT INTO
THE MAELSTROM TO CLASH SWORDS

WITH DAVY JONES FOR-...excuse me.

I don't know what came over me.

Auckland has a rather breathtaking skyline.

As we cruised along, we passed Rangitoto Island.

Rangitoto is actually a large volcano, and is a rather

iconic part of the bay.

The cruise itself was quite enjoyable, and because the whales and dolphins don't actually stay in one place with a big floating 'Over Here' sign, we were having to track them down. So, we had to follow the birds. The birds essentially meant fish, which, in turn, meant dolphins. Eventually, we came across two different kinda of dolphins: the bottlenose dolphin and the common dolphin. Quite a few of them actually. Normally they can travel in pods made up of hundreds of dolphins - we only saw about a dozen of them, though. Still, it was quite cool watching them swim around.

One of our many visitors, just before it dove back

down to the BRINY GREEN DEPTHS, NEVER

TO-...ok, I'm done. Promise.

As the cruise drew to a close, we had not, sadly, seen any whales. As a result, we were all given a free pass to go on the cruise again. Sweet.

I went back to my hotel, got changed, happily gulped down the chocolate left on my pillow by the maids (the maid earlier had actually seen me eyeing the truffles on her cart, and told me to grab some. Who am I to refuse?). Having returned a bit to late to make it to see Phantom, I walked across the street to a small restaurant in a brick building that had intrigued me earlier called Number 5.

I will just say this - it was probably one of the top 3 meals, if not the best meal, I've ever had. 2 little appetizer bite-sized thingies (the appropriate term is escaping me at the moment, so we'll go with thingy), garlic prawns and scallops as an entree, grilled harpuka (local whitefish) for the main, and a sort of dessert sampler with creme brulee, biscotti, and guava sorbet. Coupled with 2 glasses of wine, I left feeling wonderfully content.

Heading back to my hotel, I discovered the wonder of New Zealand television, specifically the channel that shows only movies. No, not that channel. This one is free. After watching a couple of movies, I got some rest for the long day ahead of me the following day.

The next day, I had a full day tour planned out. I was picked up from my hotel shortly before 7 am, and was taken to the coach that would be taking everyone around the countryside for the full day. What follows is the account of what happened. *cue dramatic music*

The coach was quite nice, and considering we would be doing well over 6 hours of driving in one day, I was thankful that it was confortable and did not have an odd smell to it.

This was slightly amusing. My house growing up

was on Ormsby Drive. Not exactly the same thing,

but an interesting coincidence, nonetheless.

This was also rather amusing, for several reasons.

First, you will likely recognize that neither of those

flags on the tailgate belong to New Zealand. Second,

these people were driving painfully slowly. I

think our bus actually ate this little car at

one point.

A large metal sheep. Yeah, I don't know either.

And let's not forget the large metal sheepdog

to go with the large metal sheep.

Our first destination was to be the Waitomo Caves, about which I was particularly excited because these caves contain glowworms. Sadly, they don't allow photography inside the actual caves, because apparently bright light causes the worms to rapidly mutate to an enormous size and eat people. Ok, I may have just made that last part up, but I needed a way to justify to myself not being able to take pictures.

Following our guide (who exuded less excitement than a coma patient), we entered the cave, and wandered through the first portion. It paled a bit in comparison to my initial trip to the Jenolan Caves, but it was still cool to see nontheless. After a few minutes of wandering and seeing all of the cave formations that looked like things (the bungee jumping kiwi, for example), we followed our guide (who had only slightly less personality than a can of Spam) to the docks. Yeah, cool, huh? There were docks inside the cave, and we would basically be going through an underground river. The water brings other insects into the cave, and the glowworms secrete a long, sticky thread that captures these other insects. The glowing natural bioluminsence further helps to attract the insects. When the insect flies into the sticky strand, they are reeled in and munched by the worm. Cool stuff.

We hopped into the boat and our guide (who had about as much vigor as the pastrami sandwich I had for lunch last week) pulled us through the caves by a rope. Soon, we were away from the lights of the dock, and shrouded in complete darkness. Up ahead we could see a faint green glow. As we moved closer and closer, I saw one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen. The entire ceiling of the cave was coated in glowing green stars. The light from them was enough to make out the contents of the cave. There were hundreds of thousands of them scattered across the cavern. This person's photo should give you a good idea of what it looked like. The best way I can think to describe it is like being on Pirates of the Caribbean (sorry) and Space Mountain at the same time. And if you're like me, that's something I had on my 'Things To Do Before I Die' list. Consider it done.

After our guide (who is chairperson of the 'I Clearly Hate My Job Society') brought us outside through a separate cave entrance, we jumped back on the bus and left for our next destination - THE AGRODOME.

Yes, THE AGRODOME, where I would

undoubtedly be pitted against forces of nature,

pushing my body to its very limits, as I faced

challenge after challenge against-

DAMMIT.

So, despite the intense-sounding name (reminiscent of the Aggro Crag from Nickelodeon GUTS of days past), this was not to be an extreme venture into testing physical limits. In actuality, it is a fully-operational farm that provides tours and a unique look into one of New Zealand's major industries: agriculture.

We piled into a massive open-air trailer pulled by a tractor, and began our journey.

Our mode of transportation for the next hour.

They have a lot of animals on their farm - not your usual pig, cow, chicken (they had those too, but they went a bit above and beyond with some of the other animals).

For one thing, they had ostriches. Lots of them.

Not entirely sure why. I think I recall them

saying that ostrich meat is actually more like

red meat than, say, white poultry as you

would expect.

We came along halfway through a performance

of Phantom of the Llamopera.

The was the biggest bull I had ever seen. That's

not actually grass and grain he's eating, but rather,

a small country town surrounded by forest.

And of course, an adorable baby sheep. Wet sheep,

as it turns out, have a much higher propensity

to nuzzle you than, say, dry sheep.

After our tour of all the animals, we returned to the main compound for something quite neat, actually - a sheepdog display.

The sheepdog, Riddick, did a fantastic job of herding

the sheep with his eyes. There was no barking, no

biting. He essentially just glared at them and

got them to go through gates, over bridges,

and eventually, into a pen.

When he wasn't actually working, Riddick was a friendly little pup, and I got in several good pets. After the sheepdog demonstration, we walked across the lot to another building, where we would get a sheep-shearing demonstration. The gentleman giving us the demonstration gave us a bit of background on shearing, mainly that the price of wool had dropped since synthetics had become more prominent (from $13/kg to $3.50/kg), and that he needs to shear around 600 sheep a day just to keep his job. After seeing the actual demonstration, it was made quite apparent that this was a massive amount of work.

The sheep looks positively thrilled.

Riddick watched happily from a pile of fluff.

After all of the attractions, I made a visit to the gift shop where they had an old carding machine (~35' long, untangles the wool and eventually spins it into nice spools), and made several purchases to have sent back to my flat, including a large sheepskin rug, as well as a merino wool / opossum fur scarf. A couple of fun facts I learned - first, opossum fur is a really cool fabric. It's light, soft, and has incredible warmth properties. And since opossums have no natural predators in New Zealand, it's plentiful. Second, wool is fire-retardant. It does not burn, only smolders. Lastly, New Zealand has no native animals. Everything in the country was brought there at some point.

Having emerged victorious from the Agrodome, we left for our last major stop for the day, the city of Rotorua. Here, we would see a few things of interest, including a geothermal park, and a Maori (indigenous people of New Zealand) cultural display.

The geothermal park itself was very cool - you could see the steam for a great distance, and the entire city smelled like sulphur (ok, that wasn't so great). We walked with our group over to the area near the geyser and sulphur springs.

The air was thick with the smell of sulphur. Not

terribly pleasant, sadly, but still cool.

One of the few moments the geyser or sulphur

springs weren't blowing a damp mass of sulphur-

scented mist in our direction. Needless to say,

I left a bit damp.

This was the beginning of the Maori cultural

display. You have to be able to prove you are

descended from the Maori to actually be able

to call yourself one.

The show was incredibly high-energy and

entertaining, with some fantastic harmonies.

The guy with the guitar in the back eventually

started playing the ancient Maori cultural

staple "Tears in Heaven."

These Maori students were crafting some

incredible woodwork.

The only reason I really wanted to go to New

Zealand in the first place was to see a kiwi.

What I didn't realize is that they are actually

nocturnal, and it was too dark in the display

to get a proper picture. So, here's a stuffed

one.

And that's the bulk of my trip. I brought a couple bottles of really good wine back with me as well. Good stuff.

The day after I got back, I was crossing the Pyrmont Bridge, and was a bit surprised to see this:

Yep - those are tons of old and new Corvettes

parked right on the bridge. I would have preferred

Ferraris or Lamborghinis, but it was a nice welcome

back present nonetheless.

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Middle Earth, a.k.a. - New Zealand

Sunday, November 16, 2008

New Zealand, or, the Country by Australia That's Kinda Shaped Like Japan

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