Home .... for now

On our last afternoon in Canada we took the ferry back to the mainland. This time we could see the surroundings. It is a beautiful trip in its own right especially with the sea as smooth as a mirror. It takes about 1.5 hours past wooded islands, gliding anti-climactically into a rather grotty harbour.

After the turmoil of US security, Vancouver is about as security conscious as Bristol Bus Station. I think they may be making a point to their big brother. We set off on another tedious flight, our last for sometime hopefully. I watched "Terminator 3 - This time it's impersonally boring" while Eleanor, always the intellectual, chose "Bridget Jones - Beyond The Edge of Boredom". Looking out the window we saw alternately clouds and snow. Sometimes you couldn't tell which was which. We wore our BA socks, wrapped our BA blankets around us, covered our eyes with BA masks and waited for it all to end.

Which eventually it did, and now we are home - for a few days at least.

I hope you've enjoyed the blog, quite a lot of people have said they did (sorry the method for posting comments is so obscure). I won't be blogging in France or Italy - you can go there as easily as I can and you can see it for yourself. I've enjoyed writing a blog: it helps you frame your thoughts about what you are experiencing. Adding the pictures is the hard bit (thanks to Jim Gilligan for early advice). A picture is not only worth a thousand words, it takes as long to add to a blog as the words do to write. I suppose I can add to my CV, "Familiar with Paint, IrvanView, AC View, Adobe Paintshop, Impact and 20 other image editors, but only to reduce JPEG file sizes".

Several people have asked, "What do you remember most about the holiday?". Well, Australia, New Zealand and Vancouver Island are all beautiful in their own ways. Glaciers, mountains, islands, waterfalls, the Pacific Ocean, whales, dolphins, sealions, bald eagles ... all that stuff is fantastic but the bits we remember most are where we stopped for a few days and experienced how people live.

One explaination for why people read novels is that in them we encounter people we can identify with or recognise from our own lives. They have experiences which are similar to those we, or people we know, might have or have had. They show us, in fact, that life is everywhere similar because we face similar issues but different because people deal with it in different ways.

The most enjoyable parts of the holiday, for both of us, have being seeing how life can be different, and since the people we met are like us, that we could change our lives as well. Maybe we won't ever live on Waiheke or Vancouver Island, in Russell or Sydney but we could ... and maybe we will.

One group of people we met deserve a special mention. Judith, Ultan, Aislinn, Peter (and Sally, though she wasn't there!), Rosie, Colin, Jane and Mark, thank you all for your hospitality and for answering all our silly tourist questions!

Now, I must finish packing the van. Ferera, Bologna, Ravenna and Fiorenze are waiting. If you want to keep in touch we will be checking our emails.

Oh Islands in the Sun

After three days in Napier we returned to Auckland, spotting in almost every village en route ziggurats, fountains, streamlines and the like. Actually some towns seemed more decorated than Napier but NZ just isn't big enough for two art deco towns. Auckland was once again no more than a jumping off point but this time a much smaller jump was needed.

Waiheke is an island about 20 minutes ferry ride from the centre of Auckland. It is large enough to have several small villages but I doubt if the population is much over 1000. Having tried old NZ and art deco NZ, Waiheke is, as bumper stickers there attest, "So far behind it's ahead".

Friends of ours, Colin and Rosie, have a house a couple of kilometres from Oneroa, the largest village. Like many of the houses on the island it has views over the ocean and, in this case, over an inlet as well. Because of the island's shape it must be difficult to find a house there which doesn't have views at least of the bush covered hills, probably of the sea somewhere, maybe the sea on both sides and in some cases as far as the mainland and the lights of Auckland as well.

View from Rosie & Colin's house

School playground!

At the top of Waiheke

Sunset at the beach

The house is currently being done up and during our time there it was being held up on three steel pit props. Changing houses seems to be endemic to Waiheke in both senses: modifying what you've got and getting a new house. The first sense often involves the sort of work that makes me want to hide - a wall down here, new decking added there, how about an extra storey? The second sense seems to be more of a pastime. Every year a large number of homes and businesses are put up for sale not because their owers particularly want to move but just to see if they get an offer. And if you get a good offer you can make an offer on somewhere else and the cycle continues.

We met one couple, Rob and Sue, who are just buying a new house, their fourth on the island. The new house is very run down. Even the estate agent seems to be struggling to sound positive and manages only something like "I truly believe that it would be possible for an energetic developer to make something of this property". Rob is 70 and sees this as an interesting project. I am impressed, but having seen what he has made of the previous two of their houses, I think he will turn it into more than the estate agent expects.

Generally Waiheke is a mixture of hippyish types, some 'original' inhabitants I guess, artists of various sorts, holiday makers and all the supporting infra structure that an island needs. Though it is small, most of your needs can be met on the island - though like a lot of places you can buy patchouli oil more easily than a pound of potatos.

There is no piped water supply so everyone stores rainwater in big garden tanks and recycles what water they can. Due to a drought this summer some people are getting low and having to buy water. The water company is very New Zealand-ish with the owner telling the local paper "Some people are offering us extra for a quicker delivery but they just have to take their turn with everyone else." Some key concepts of capitalism have yet to catch on here. On the other hand there does seem to be a three level pricing system for some things: cheapest if you are a Kiwi living on the island, next a foreign resident, finally holiday makers.

There are lots of foreigners on the island, our friends are British, their next door neighbour is French (the French community numbers about 30), Rob who I mentioned earlier is part of the largish Dutch community, we came across several Germans (there are about 40-50) and lots of others. New Zealanders include wealthy ones who commute every day to Auckland and every other strata as far as we could see. It is an exceptionally friendly mixed community with a small cinema, farmers' market, etc, etc.

I think we rather shocked Rosie and Colin by being so lazy. When they came to NZ they cycled from Invercargill to Auckland. Just hearing that made us want to lay down and rest. However we walked a bit, Eleanor swam, I helped Colin take rubbish to the tip, we helped cook supper, slept and read and three days floated by.

Having got over my initial distrust of winery restaurants, we had lunch at the local one. I don't know much about the wine but the view was stunning. The restaurant was built like a nest, jutting out from a cliff top, with fabulous sea views in three directions.

You may be surprised, if you have read the rest of the blog, but I can't think of anything else to say.  Some people have noted that my writing is often driven by the minor irritations and oddities of life. I don't remember there being any on Waiheke. Actually there was one fairly major annoyance - we had to leave after only three days and take the ferry back to Auckland for the long and frustrating penultimate journey of our trip.

Colin and Rosie gave us a ride to the ferry pier in an old van that island friends had lent them, from there we looked sadly over the stern of the boat until we reached Auckland harbour, from where on it got worse.

Good bye Waiheke

The bus to the airport was OK though traffic was very slow. The slowness didn't matter since our flight was delayed by over 90 minutes. Eventually we did take off for a 13 hour over-night flight which was as uncomfortable as any masochist could hope for. And of course we missed our connection in LA.

What has happened to the US? They aren't even friendly these days. The security precautions mean that you fill in lots of forms, answering questions like "Are you a terrorist or saboteur?", "Are you carrying any substance which may not be taken into the USA?", "Have you been on any farm/prairie/pasture prior to you arrival". By the time I'd written down my name and address, date of birth, contact address and signature three times and answered 50 inane questions, the temptation to go back and revise my answer to "Are you planning the violent overthrow of the goverment of the USA?" was becoming overwhelming. But, I consoled myself, it probably doesn't need my help if they have so much bureaucracy.

It's even worse when you land. Even if you are just changing planes you have to collect your luggage, go through customs then come back in again to check it in all over again. At which point all luggage gets x-rayed and the security guard seems convinced that the combination of a digital camera battery charger, mobile phone, pocket backgammon set and several dirty pairs of socks are a threat to mainland security (he may be right about the socks). Then back the way you came for more x-rays, searching, more checks and assorted bits of paper stapled into passports. No question it's making work for lots of people but whether it's doing anything much for security I doubt.

Various people are collecting for charity around the airport, though the announcements about not giving money which come over the tannoy suggest they may not be genuine (I think that's what "Don't give money to solicitors" means). The main targets seem to be helping needy children overseas and homeless/disabled war veterans. Eleanor hurries me away as I prepare to suggest that a change of foreign policy might reduce both problems.

Alaskan Airlines which flies (eventually) to Vancouver is a return to the friendly corny folksy cutesy US of days gone by. The Captain says "If any of you folks looks out of them left hand windows you'll sure see a durn purtty sunset. Sure makes you feel glad to be alive", and the steward announces "We've some of them darned form things that all those bureacratic city slickers are so keen for everyone to be filling in. But don't you worry none, I'm here to help." (The accent sounds more mid-western than Alaskan.)

It is raining in Vancouver - what bliss! - we catch the ferry to the Island and are picked up by our friend Mark. He and Jane came here from Edinburgh an bought a house by the ocean. It is dark so we have little idea of exactly what to expect the next morning. On waking we find the Pacific about 30 yards from the window. The sun is shining and we can sit out on the decking enjoying the view across the bay with the snow covered Olympic Mountains of Washington State in the distance.

Vancouver Island is nearly in step with England's climate at the moment. There are daffodils beside the roads, lambs in the fields and flowering currant bushes in the woods. Proper gardeners have already mowed their lawns at least once. The temperature is a bit warmer than the UK (but quite a lot colder than NZ). For the first time in nine weeks I need a thin fleece over my shirt. One day it rains and I wear a water proof jacket as well. Good acclimatisation
for our return.

And again we are in a beautiful house in beautiful countryside. The garden is full of flowers and plants from yucca to hyacinths and a short walk along a log strewn beach takes us to a path into the woods. I associate Canada with pine woods but here there is every sort of tree. Perhaps fortunately we didn't see any of the more exotic wildlife though such as bears and cougars. We hoped to see orca in the bay but were unlucky though on our last day, as we sat on the deck eating lunch a bald eagle swooped over us, circled the bay and returned.
Not far away, is one of the top 10 hotels in the world according to some survey. Sooke Harbour House serves us an appropriately splendid dinner in relaxed surroundings. The next day we bump into the one of the waiters in town. He comes over to say "Hello" and congratulate me on my choice of wine! Should I tell him I only chose it because it was grown on the island?

Canadians are one of the most friendly nations in the world, where else would a waiter remember who they had served, let alone come over and talk to them? NZ maybe? Reading the paper you get a sense of a world very different from that of their neighbours over the border. Trudeau called it "Sleeping with an elephant".

Volcanos, Earthquakes and Lunch

Russell was so restful that we decided to stay a few days in another town but a very different one. If Russell is old New Zealand and Auckland is new New Zealand then art deco Napier is somewhere between the two. We drove back south via Auckland. The north island has Auckland as its hub while the south island is spread around the coasts. In one way its the same thing - the island is so thin at Auckland that it is on both coasts.

Driving down we were very aware of the differences between the north here and the south island. Mountains have been replaced by interfolded hills and valleys. The land has a much more managed look but is at the same time more exotic by being closer to the equator. The bush is thick with palms, giant ferns and native trees, especially the rata which is still in flower here and covered with scarlet foliage.

We noticed a site offering 'used houses for sale', not sure if it was a takeaway service! We also passed ...

which I remember from our last visit to NZ. Then it looked very naff, now it is a 'sheep theme park' and looks quite slick. I found myself wondering if sheep could visit and what are the 101 things you can do with a sheep ? (If you have any unusual suggestions please keep them to yourself.) The only thing missing was what seems to be becoming a standard for tourist sites, a giant model made out of corrugated iron.

Corrugated iron roofs are standard here, they are noisy when it rains but a local told me it is a comforting sound and Kiwis feel bereft when in England because they can't hear the rain on the roof. The second use of 'corrie' is to make giant statues. I mentioned the Invercargill elephant weeks back, we also saw a cinema with King Kong holding Fay Wray in his fist and assorted others including one town with dogs, cats, kiwi, etc. Fortunately I can't remember where the town is or what it's called. Even they seemed to have realised it was just silly and had given up. But why no giant sheep at Sheep World? One our last visit we'd also passed Kiwi Fruit World, an obvious choice for corrugated iron, but there was no sign of it so perhaps it's defunct. Well, can you think of anything exciting to do with a kiwi fruit? (No, I don't want to know, life is too short.)

We spent a night in Hamilton, a pleasant, leafy university town on the Waikato river about which I can think of little to say. We ate in an Turkish restaurant called the 'Saharan Tent'. OK, Turkey isn't actually in the Sahara but what's being a couple of thousand miles out when you are on the other side of the world? Like confusing Australia and NZ and who'd complain about that? Maybe Hamilton University doesn't have a Geography Department.

Next day we passed Lake Taupo near the centre of the north island and the most volcanic part of NZ. The lake is the crater of an enormous extinct volcano. The mountains near it look like proper volcanos, as a child would draw them, truncated cones with deep channels running down them (missing only the fire and smoke fortunately). In prehistoric times an erruption here covered the whole island with ash and extinguished all life, about 2000 years ago a more minor disturbance affected the skies over China and was even detectable in Europe. But it's extinct now. Just say that with a clear loud voice and everyone will believe you. "It is extinct". Don't worry, no problem. Except for a couple of acres of bush which have started bubbling with boiling mud and spurting steam and hydrogen sulphide into the air. That can be turned into a tourist attraction.

We did visit "The Craters of the Moon" as the site is called.

This isn't mist - it's a mixture of steam and hydrogen sulphide!

The Kiwi Space Programme is obviously not very far advanced so I'll just point out that on the moon a) there is no volcanic activity, b) there is no water and so no steam, c) it is cold not hot. And there are no blackberry bushes as far as I know. But really I'd like to have a word not with astronauts but the company who thought of using thermal power to generate electricity at Taupo. They extracted water for cooling, lowering the water table and causing the Craters of the Moon to appear. Is it really sensible to mess with what is potentially the world's most violent volcano? Oh, it's extinct, no problem then ....

After volcanos, Napier is an earthquake place. A lot of it was under the sea until a 'quake in the 1930s. Afterwards it was mostly rebuilt in art deco style.
 

This could be seen as a big style statement by NZ but bear in mind that art deco is cheap and more earthquake proof than most alternatives. It's based on a reinforced concrete frame so there are no great blocks of stone or concrete to fall off in small quakes. We did the official tour which lasted nearly two hours. If I never see another sunburst, fountain, ziggurat, streamline or naked woman flying through the air trailing yards of chiffon, at least I have a good reservoir of memory to fall back on. Actually at one point I hid for a few minutes and bought a biscuit before rejoining the tour. I got a very stern look from the tour guide. Napier has (by coincidence) a very stylish beach. There is no sand, just every size of pebble, all in the same shade of grey. Minimalist but classy.

Napier is really two towns, we stayed at the north end on Scinde Island. It is no longer an island, in fact the earthquake was the making of Napier, quite literally because the land adjacent to Scinde Island rose about a metre making it possible for the town to expand. The house we stayed in was pre-earthquake but like most on the Island is wooden; wooden houses tend to have enough 'give' to resist the shock waves.
Being on the edge of the hill and surrounded by trees it wasn't easy to photograph but here is the view from our window at least


The name 'Scinde' is the NZ version of 'Sind' (the Indian province) taken by Lord Napier. The marine parade has an arch with a quote from the man "Courage is the thing. When courage goes, everything goes". As a tourist - and especially after the tour - I'm inclined to substitute 'legs' for 'courage'. But I like the quote, much more down to earth and what you expect of a soldier. Lord Napier is much more famous for his message to the Foreign Office after taking Sind. He send one word "Peccavi" confident that everyone there would immediately recognise the Latin for "I have sinned". Do soldiers still make puns in Latin?

Apart from the earthquake and the art deco, Napier has Seahorse World and Opossum World. The seahorses are bred for export to China - need I say more of what happens to them there? Opossum World sells items made from possum fur (often blended with merino wool). Apart from being the only place in NZ to call possums by their scientific name 'oppossum', the shop's other claim to fame is the most tacky displays and tableaus. One shows the life cycle of the possum made with stuffed possums and pickled baby possums (like kangeroos, possums are born very undeveloped and have to climb to their mother's pouch where they grow). If you are interested in embryos floating in formaldehyde and badly stuffed animals this may be the place for you but before buying any possum skin do check out the tableau which shows a man doing the skinning. Remember, sheep only have to be sheared.

One other thing Napier has is wine. It is part of the Hawkes Bay area and there are lots of wineries (which I thought looked less regimented than those in Marlborough). We had lunch at 'The Mission' sitting under big umbrellas on a lawn overlooking the vinyards. The Swiss waiter discussed each dish with us and suggested an appropriate wine for each. He firmly distinguished between my fish choice and Eleanor's. One would need a more intense sauvignon blanc but perhaps a chardonnay for the other (chardonnays had been over exposed but a local oaked variety ...). He was happy to suggest several alternatives to accompany ostrich fillet, pointing out the New Zealand preference for the softer Merlots might seem a bit insipid to Europeans. I like eating like this, an expert to tell you what to eat and drink and wine by the glass so you can each have a different one for each course. It took the rest of the day to recover. And I take back what I wrote in an earlier blog about posh restaurants at wineries. I think they are great. A week earlier and we could have seen Rod Stewart at this one so we had the added pleasure of missing yet another rendition of "I am sailing" and "Maggie".

In the taxi, the driver told me his nephew had trained as a chef but had given it up after being quite successful for a couple of years. The lad hadn't realized till he started the job that he wouldn't get weekends off! Now he worked as a labourer in the vinyard and enjoyed it much more: outside, real work and free at weekends - a proper New Zealand job.

Deep New Zealand

Errors and Corrections Section

In an earlier blog I pondered why, if Dunedin is the New Edinburgh, they didn't call it that. Well they did. Dunedin is Gaelic for Edinburgh. Eleanor, with her superior knowledge of NZ history pointed this out to me.

And a Kiwi (a person, not the odd little bird) tells me NZ wine is another example of NZ's "No. 8 'll fix it" not a nasty foreign invasion. I should learn to love it. As a test we are going for lunch at winery tomorrow.

Back to the plot

We spent just one day in Auckland, just long enough to hire a car and go for a bus ride. When we are away we often get on a bus, more or less at random, just to see where it goes and what life is like away from the tourism.

This time, as we admired the suburbs of Auckland, we noticed something going on in a little park and got off to explore. It turned out to be Auckland-Asian Day and the park was filled with stalls representing all aspects of Asian culture. As we arrived a beautiful Chinese woman wearing a long dress made of what looked like baco-foil was playing Katachurian's Sabre Dance at very high speed on an accordian. You don't get more traditional than that!

Later there was Tai Chi, stilt walkers dressed as exotic surreal insects, dancing, Chinese paper cutting and I can't remember what else. And all along the park were little stalls selling assorted national dishes. Most of the servers seemed to be young teenagers with mothers and granmothers doing the cooking at the back. We had a complete meal of Chinese, Thai, Malaysian, Vietnamese goodies.

Next day off up north to Bay of Islands. This was one of the first Maori landing places, then Captain Cook came and a few years later a whaling station was set up at Russell where we stayed. This is real old fasioned New Zealand heartland. Once it was even the capital of NZ with a population of several hundreds. It has risen now to about 1000 people but the rest of the country has left it behind a bit and it is a tranquil backwater.

Russell is to right Ahead is Mahauwhi Bay	A busy day on the Strand
The Strand from the sea	Paihia seen from Russell

On the otherside of the bay is Paihia which is a real tourist trap from which a ferry trip to Russell is popular. Most of the tourists however arrive at the little jetty, walk down to the strand (a lane of about 1/4 mile, fringed with shady old trees) and get a bit of shock when that realise that's all there is. OK there are two more streets with a few shops, mostly for tourists (though it does meet my criteria for a real town by having a hardware shop) and there are several cafes but you could visit every tourist attraction in under an hour. Which most people do and then leave.

We did the reverse: we stayed a week in Russell and took the ferry to Paihia. After 1/2 hour I wanted to go back, which we did.

We spent one night in a very upmarket B&B run by a retired business man and his wife, Rodney and Adele. The bedroom alone was bigger than some house and we also had the run of the lounge (about three times as big), the sun room, .... At 6pm we were offered G+T and sat and chatted in the evening sun. It was fascinating to meet an old school Kiwi, a racist (as he cheerfully admitted), totally Anglophile, indignant at the all the wrongs of the country (due to the socialists and bleeding heart liberals), and furious at the 'running down' of NZ's armed forces.

We got on really well, especially when I asked him what he thought of a proposal to change the NZ flag to show a Maori emblem. I think a fair summary of his views would be he wasn't in favour. I will censor the rest in case any socialists, bleeding-heart liberals or fuzzy brained do-gooders are reading this.

This is their house. I think the sign may be ironic! They've just spent 11 years sailing the world in their yacht, flying back every six months or so to check that NZ hadn't fallen to the Communists.


We moved down market to a flat in Mahauwhi Bay (ten minutes walk from the real Russell but good enough for whingeing poms). After all our dashing around the country it was very relaxing to sit on our veranda and watch the sun going down, stroll into town in the morning to buy croissant (the bakery stayed open each morning till it has sold everything then it shut, usually about 11am) and just loll about.

View from the flat. Mahauwhi bay just through trees

There was a small beach which, on one exceptional day, had over 10 people on it but mostly the picnic tables out numbered the visitors. Most people said "Hello", and surprisingly many were British.

We did the tourist bit at Russell but managed to stretch it from an hour to several days. The church (first Anglican Church in NZ) was briefly attacked by Maoris (you can still see the musket holes). In one part of the graveyard was the grave of the Captain of HMS Hazard which was involved in the fighting (by mistake) while the few crew who died were buried in a very different part. Even dead people knew their place in those days. If you slip across the road to the cafe between the various excitements ("I've found a musket hole", "Good. Let's go for a coffee") you can make a visit last hours!

There was also a Catholic mission (first in NZ again) - where you can play croquet on the lawn if you know the right people - and the most desirable police house (also the first of course) in New Zealand. Given the crime rate is small enough to need a microscope to see it and probably the culprits are fairly obvious in such a tiny place, being PC in Russell would have its attractions.

But what do the rest of the locals do for a living? We asked our landlady, Jane, who described her portfolio of jobs, some paid some not (but maybe will be one day). Both she and her husband Geoff do about a dozen different things a week.

Letting out holiday homes is good source of income. Tourists will pay a premium to stay in an old house so Jane and Geoff bought an old house in Auckland and had it moved to Russell. This is a standard activity in NZ. A team of carpenters removes the roof of a house, saws it into sections and transports them to a new site where the whole thing is re-errected. In this case it was sufficient to cut the house in half and put each half on a low loader. Since land in Auckland is in great demand, having moved the house you sell the land it stood on and have an authentic 19^th Century house to let. Not authentic 19^th Century Russell of course.

Jane has a cat called Nipper who reminds me of house moving, or at least the re-construction phase. Nipper was run over and put back together again by a graduate of the Victor Frankenstein School of Vetinary Science. All the bits are there and they work. Nipper seems quite happy but she lacks the grace and elegance you expect of a cat: either in appearance or movement. If you stroke her, she purrs happily but what you feel are lumps, bumps and rather worrying gaps. I'm terrified of encountering a beating heart just below the surface and at the wrong end. Her companion Bart is physically fit but blind. He looks at you with scarey eyes but sees nothing. He sat quite happily staring a post from a distance of about three inches for an hour one day. Then he got up and bumped into it. One thing Bart has got sussed, if you call him he makes his way very carefully to where ge gets fed. All you need to know really.

We are now fully rested. We have done Russell. Even the estate agents. You may, rightly, guess that Russell isn't the cheapest place to live. But maybe they need a new policeman? An elegant, white, colonial style, house overlooking the ocean, goes with the job. Must be prepared to deal with occasional litter louts and up to three or four cars an hour on Main St during rush hour.

Here's the Police House. In case you can't read the sign on the door, I think it says "Please do not disturb".



Dream on.

And so to Christchurch

North west of Nelson you can drive along the edge of Marlborough/Picton(?) Sound. It must be one of the most beatiful drives in the world. Perhaps because of our couple of days breathing traffic fumes in Nelson, being jostled by crowds and shopping in a supermarket my weariness with beautiful countryside was gone. Perhaps you can see why.


Someone suggested I sound a bit cynical about NZ which isn't true. I think NZ is wonderful. We watched a TV program last night about New Zealanders buying homes abroad and our reaction was "Why bother?". Nothing we say seemed as good as what we've seen here. And apart from driving through it we've also looked in estate agents' windows. You can buy a virgin plot or a house very cheaply compared to Bristol prices. However it is a bit like drinking only champagne sometimes. There is a competition in one of the papers to find the best view that anyone has from their work place. As you can imagine some are amazing but one just showed a scruffy yard with rusting tractors and junk. Sometimes water is a necessary change to champagne.

Before I get all gushy about NZ, and after drooling all the way along the road from Nelson, we encountered a useful corrective. I sort of imagined, naive fool that I am, that the Marlborough wine region would be full of cosy little vinyards, hugging the hillside, where wine lovers would buy a few acres and live the dream of creating the perfect wine. In fact it is a soul-less place. It's flat with (though there are mountains in the far distance) and full of big, professional, identical square blocks of vinyards (sorry 'wineries'). Each one has a carefully designed logo to make them look modern. There are three sorts of logo: a) give it a Maori name with some vaguely ethnic looking design, b) make it look classic and elegant (Domaine George-Michel) c) try to suggest NZ beauty (Cloudy Bay). The logos are all different but somehow the same spirit comes through all of them.

As we drove past mile after mile of identical flat fields, each vinyard we realised we had come to a new New Zealand. I'd just learnt a NZ phrase, "Number 8 'll fix it". Number 8 is fencing wire and the saying reflects the traditional strength of the country. You invent, mend, improvise and use what comes to hand. Sometimes whole houses seem to be built with Number 8 and a few old planks. That's old New Zealand. New New Zealand (does New Labour spring, ever so slightly, to mind) is planned, researched, big on image. You don't need Number 8 if you've got good enough PR to make what you do seem different, and you can add on a fancy restaurant (as many have done) which you enter through a shop where you can order a few cases, or you can order as you leave.

Which raises one slight problem. There is a nationwide anti drink-driving campaign with hundreds of different posters (I like the one which shows a foot with an id tag on the toe poking out from under a sheet - slogan "If you drink-drive you might get a ticket"). So come to a restaurant on a winery and don't drink? My guess is that the aim is at the coach loads of Americans doing "the Kiwi experience".

I'm just an old fogey. Never mind (and I do like NZ wine), we won't stay. On to Kaikoura ... but first to camp.

Throughout this trip Eleanor has had a secret sense of shame. This camper van stuff isn't real camping. We should be in the bush, listening to the sea, watching the stars, at one with nature. It is, I freely admit, my fault we haven't done it. I like hot showers, clean toilets, internet access, a box of exchangeable books to root through, a list of what's on at the local cinema. We aren't equiped for real camping but, driving beside the sea we found a camp site which is closer to the ideal. It is almost deserted (I wonder why?), the sea is only a few yards away, it's almost in the bush (or maybe the bush is moving in to the camp). There is electricity but it isn't working (end of season - not worth it). There are showers but not hot and, as a bonus, there is more local fauna in the shower than I've seen in the whole trip. Probably both NZ's venomous spiders, certainly an interesting assortment of mosquitos, sandflies and cockroaches. And you can't shut the doors in the gents so any other nature can just walk right in.

We had quite a good night, pity about the sandflies, and, because we are far away from the civilized world where people might compain, the tiny railway we hadn't noticed can carry rumbly something or other on it's squeaking, rattling rolling stock all night. To balance the scales a bit, we did buy from the camp manager a freshly cooked rock lobster, caught that day by her husband. Nature has its place.

Next day along the coast, stopping now and then to watch the seals, to Kaikoura a pleasant seaside town. To my surprise Eleanor wanted to stay at a modern campsite with a promosing restaurant opposite the entrance and only 5 minutes walk from the town centre. I pointed out there was a more 'natural' alternative with just the sort of shady sites next to a creek which would encourage wildlife.

We took a short flight in a light airplane to look for whales. Kaikoura is at the head of the (underwater) Kaikoura Canyon where, in addition to very deep water, two currents meet making it an ideal breeding ground for plankton and krill and so popular with sperm whale. Especially hoons. Hoons is the NZ word for stroppy teenagers and though, as far as I know, young whales neither play loud music nor sleep all day, they get the label anyway. So we flew over the Kaikoura Canyon with a pilot who seemed more an age to be playing computer games than flying a real planes. We saw one big hoon which did look magnificent. Alas he only appeared late in the trip - no doubt he'd been lounging around in his room playing hip-hop.

Not a very good picture but we were overhead and the vibrations of the plane probably affected it.

Which brings us to the end of the South Island. We spent a couple of days in Christchurch site seeing and then left our campervan at the airport. Off to Auckland.

Och Aye, the Noo and Beyond

Dunedin is big by New Zealand standards.

A population of 100,000, of which about 40,000 are students at the university or polytechnic (they still have polys here, how sweet). It must be a lot quieter during the vacation when half the town, sorry city, leaves for Wherami Flats or Hopeful Gully or wherever.

The local paper had a big article about the university. Harvard, they said, is famous for Law, MIT for Computing, Oxford for English but Otago is famous for the bad behaviour of its students despite being an excellent university, noted for its Dentistry and Sports degrees. Apparently the bad behaviour includes: missing lectures, drinking, smoking illegal substances, not keeping accomodation clean, being noisey late at night and playing loud, so called, music. "Hoon" is the NZ term for people who behave in such an appalling way. "Young" is the word the rest of us use. I fear the author of the article would be appalled to hear that not every Oxford student spends their time reading "The Fairie Queene" and singing madrigals. I'd guess that students have been known to shout in within Harvard's ivy-ed walls as well. Of course it isn't like that in Bristol, UWE students at least would never do such things.

You have to remember that Dunedin calls itself "The New Edinburgh" (why not the new Dunedin?) and the Scots take education seriously. Actually, lots of dentists seem to have trained in Sotland, perhaps because the Scots live on deep fried Mars bars and need more dentists? Anyway, another link with Dunedin.

Anyway, Dunedin likes to think of itself as the epitome of Scottish-New Zealand. So there are lots of sandflies and lots of rain. There is a Burn's Society and the Scottish Social Club has regular nights of reels and such, where, I imagine, middle aged bank managers in kilts feel the blood of Rob Roy and William Wallace beating in their veins for a few exhilarating minutes. The Dunedin Summer Festival included Pipe Bands, Scottish Country Dancing, the New Edinburgh Folk Club. Probably cabers were tossed and "Och Aye" muttered more than once.

There are also shops, a theatre (at which the Beatles once performed, no doubt an event strongly opposed by city elders at the time) and all the trapping of civilisation. We also had the best meal we've had on our holiday to date and so the fierce Calvinism must be abating slightly.

A sign of its superiority is that it is in Otago. The south island is divided into, Northland, Southland, Westland, Otago and Canterbury (around Christchurch). Only big places get a proper name for where they are, the rest just a geographical shorthand.

We stayed two nights (in the rain) and watched albatrosses and glow worms. But I'm going to whizz on because I'm blogging more slowly than I'm travelling.

From Dunedin another cross country drive through mountains and past lakes (all adjectives apply) gets you to Waneka.


Waneka, I'm afraid, brought out the cynic in me. It is a pretty site for a town but it is in the process of being "life-styled". Life-style is big in NZ, it's a word used more often than 'sheep' or 'historic' and that's saying something. Wherever there are views of lakes or mountains (almost everywhere) you are starting to see posters advertising sales of life-style blocks of land. And life-style is getting big in Waneka. Soon the views will be obscured by the life-style houses (which in some cases seems to mean a second home, in others escape to the good life). And these aren't little beach houses, several we saw were over $1,000,000 which is a lot in NZ. One came complete with 'boutique farm', another with 'boutique winery' - "because you deserve it".

'Boutique' is even bigger than 'life-style' and has about three meanings: there are boutique hotels (i.e. each room individually designed etc), boutique breweries (i.e. small and probably producing special beers) and boutique farms and wineries, for which an alternative adjective might be 'expensive toy'. I'm not sure who 'deserves' a boutique winery, nurses? primary school teachers? social workers?, university lecturers? (no, we don't).

From Wanaka, driving up into the mountains around the northern edge of the lake, you reach, eventually, the west coast and the Fox and Franz-Josef glaciers. We looked at Fox


but I was suffering from a bit of mountain/glacier/lake/island/river/waterfall/pass/green pasture/forest overload. I wanted something ordinary so we continued north until we reached our favourite NZ town of Nelson.

Nelson is that rarest of things in NZ, just a reasonably sized town. There is some tourism but it isn't intrusive. There are cafes, coffee shops, art galleries, second-hand book stores. I could imagine living in Nelson, you don't need a life-style (though a hobby might help during the winter evenings). We stayed three nights, the longest we've stayed anywhere in NZ and even as we left spent an hour or two meandering through quiet streets, edged with streams and divided by parks and gardens.

Here's a shot of the ordinary little restaurant where we had a meal, and one of the ordinary view it had as we were leaving.

Things to Look Out For

From Mannipouri we cross the whole country again from west to east (knowing we'll be coming back the other way quite soon). There is a logic to this but I won't bore you with it. Having discussed ways of staying sane on long drives I'll add an extra one. History and Culture, the Kiwis are mad on it.

Every three kilometres or so they are signs to points of historical, cultural or topographical interest. We've been trying to find the most bizarre. You rapidly give up on historical houses, 'historical' here means anything before about 1920. If you follow a notice board saying 'Ancient Homestead' you'll probably find a small house which would be newer than most of us live in. Another popular option is 'Unusual Rock Formation' - can you imagine, just on the basis of random erosion, how many odd looking rocks you get in a country composed mostly of mountains? Bridges are also popular, "you are passing over an historic 100 year old bridge", can be slightly nerve wracking as the division between 'unsafe' and 'historic' seems to blur at times.

Clifden Bridge (guess who they copied)

A whole subcategory are places where white people did unpleasant things to Maoris, Maoris did ditto to white people or Maoris did equally nasty things to each other. Presumably when whites were that unpleasnt to each other there was nobody left to record the fact. Often (to avoid upsetting people?) the sign say 'Historic Plaque' so you can stop and read it rather than just 'Historic Massacre' (where you'd just think, 'Oh, another one" and drive on).

We have three favourite signs. "Windswept Trees" is on section of coastal road with a strong prevailing wind. The "Concrete Horse Trough" sign is on one side of the road and points to the other where there is, guess what? And finally, "Gate" shown as a tourist attraction in the road atlas. You have to go about twenty miles down gravel roads to find out what is historic about it so we didn't bother. Probably missed the high light of the trip.

This one isn't in any of the categories but it still puzzles me


Having resisted several hundred historic homesteads, we succumbed to an historic lighthouse. It seemed a possible place to have lunch though as the road got longer and longer and the gravel worse and worse we began to have our doubts. But "It's not our car", we thought callously. And eventually reached a pretty spot with the required odd shaped rocks stretching into the sea and an old lighthouse. It looked much like lighthouses everywhere else but a bit smaller. Still we went down to the rocky beach to have lunch.

We got a slight shock when one of the rocks went "Humph" and then kicked sand in the air. Just as well we hadn't sat on it - it was a big bull sealion, sleeping. As we looked around we realised there were others, and indeed two, with a look which clearly said "This neighbourhood is going downhill", pulled themselves out of the sand and headed for the sea. There were five left. The big bull had almost dug himself into the sand, he looked as though he was there for the day. Every so often he'd snort and flip sand over himself with a lazy flipper (sandflies aren't afraid of sealions). The others were smaller and I decided they were a family. Near the bull was a mother and not far from her two small ones lying side by side (the twins). Considerably further off the teenager who wanted to be alone and did nothing and hardly moved the whole time we were there.

Sorry they aren't very photogenic. Mostly they just look like sand and rock.


They seemed to work themselves into the sand by wriggling which worked best for the bull - the twins just wriggled about but nothing happened. On the other hand their sand flipping had the advantage that though they often missed themselves they often managed to spray the other one.

I'd like to report that they barked, clapped their flippers and balanced plastic balls on their snouts but they didn't. They slept and grunted with an air of sleeping off a truly wild night before. Once the bull dragged himself up for a couple of seconds, looked around and, realising it was all just too much, collapsed back in the sand.

Further along the coast was a petrified forest. Voila -

Though it was amazing to see, the thick kelp that grows all along this coast is almost more so. It annoying for fishermen but strangely beautiful when it fills rock crevices with thousands of green, brown and black strands which can be up to twenty feet long and over a foot wide.

After that we forced ourselves to resist odd rocks, strange caves and "New Zealand's Own Niagra Falls" (with cafe). Sometimes you can have just too much excitement.

According to the tourist guide, cafe society has come to Glenfurley (an increase of one in the number of cafes making, well, one) and the Middlemarch Singles' Dance attracts women from as far away as Auckland but Dunedin is the New Edinburgh so we went there.

Another Beautiful Day in Doubtful Sound

If you want to sail in Milford sound it is easy. Book a trip, drive to the harbour and get on a boat. Unfortunately we failed at the first hurdle. For some reason lots of people seem to think February 14th is a good date for romantic trips - it was all booked out as was the rest of the week. So we went to Doubtful Sound which is harder to reach so tough outdoor folk like us go to it.

We set of at about 9am from the quay at Lake Mannipouri. It took about 1/2 hour to cross the lake which is beautiful even by NZ's high standards. I'm not sure my list of geographic features included islands but the lake has lots of them. They are small and thickly covered with local trees (this is deep NZ, not much of your foreign stuff here). Around the lake are thickly forested mountains from which the cloud was just lifting, it cleared by the end of the crossing.


You land at a nameless pier and until 1950 you would have had to set off walking, for a full day if you were fit, through a hail of sandflies along thickly wooded tracks to Deep Cove, a tiny hamlet on Doubtful Sound. Actually Deep Cove is the only hamlet on or near the Sound. Today however life is softer and easier.

A hydro-electric power station was built at the end of lake at the end of the 40's, the water comes from the lake and drives the turbines before running out through a tunnel into Doubtful Sound. It is an incredible feat of engineering: the turbine hall is 1.5km down in solid rock, the run off is 30km, again through solid rock. The whole thing is now remote controlled from hundreds of miles away except for a few maintenance staff (who take a boat ride to and from Mannipouri each day - a big improvement on city commuting!). We descended (by bus) to the turbine room but, to be honest, one turbine looks much like another to me. I'm suitably impressed that they did it in the first place and it is a bit odd to feel that you are that far below ground but I don't think I'd want to work there. Apparently the rock is so solid they they don't notice earthquakes.

The important side effect of the power station is that the electricity company built a road from the station to Deep Cove so now tourists can skip the one day walk and go by bus which we did. Even in a bus you feel quite brave, it's not exactly a three lane highway. It is pretty though.



As we went the driver talked about history, flora, fauna, eartquakes and weather. Even when he was edging around a bus going the other way and we were on the outside with several hundred feet of rock and scrub below us he chatted unperturbed. In due course we did safely reach Deep Cove and we boarded the next boat. It was a beautiful day. To put it in perspective, Deep Cove gets over 250" of rain a year, typically it rains two days out of three which must averages out at about 1" a day when it is raining. We were very lucky.

The boat idled down the sound (which is a fiord by the way, I'm told a 'sound' is a drowned river valley, a fiord a drowned glacial valley). The captain explored side channels, the mountains come down to the water so there would be little chance of getting ashore. There are occasional big scars without trees where earthquakes or storms have dislodged the more precarious vegetation. The sides are several hundred feet high with water cascading down every few hundred yards.

The mouth of the sound is shielded from the force of the sea by a line of rocks where fur seals were basking. Since coming on this trip I've seen a lot of seals and they must be one of the most accomplished animals at just lolling about. After sailing as close as we could we continued down a side channel where we were joined by a pod of
dolphins which jumped and raced the boat.

A few more pics, note the earthquake damage. It was only a couple of days old.



And so, eventually back to Deep Cove, back up through the valley to the lake and then home. We ended our trip by walking along a little track beside the lake listening to the birds until we got back to our camp site. No more earthquakes, but after over eight hours of sun, water, boats, dolphins and seals I doubt if we'd have noticed the tea cups rattling.