New Zealand day 21

One last look at part of Queenstown

            As we fly north toward Auckland on Air New Zealand Flight 620, our trip is nearing an end; and it’s time to reflect and pen a few observations about the country and life in it.  You will surely be impressed by the erudition, perception, and sagacity of the thoughts below, and you have our permission to preserve them for future generations.  But if you are pressed for time, you may skip to the section marked “later”, and find out what we will be doing our last afternoon and night in this beautiful country.

• The universal currency in New Zealand is plastic; everyone charges everything.  Even the soft drink machines take credit cards—as well as dollar and two-dollar coins, which are all the rage nearly everywhere but America.  No one here complains about carrying change in their pockets.

• On the subject of complaining, apparently it is not allowed here.  We never heard any of it during our three-week visit (except, of course, for those rare occasions when we managed to engage the locals in the subject of political leadership).   Also, we never observed any pushing, shoving, breaking in lines, or the other kinds of rude behavior that we have experienced so often in our travels.  This may be a result of the fact that many of the vacationers here are natives of the country; there is a lot for them to see here.  Everyone is friendly and helpful.  Also cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent.  Scouting could well have originated here instead of the U.K.

• Nice, clean public restrooms can be found in every city here.  Occasionally a one dollar coin is required for their use, but generally they are free.  If you cannot afford a dollar to assist you in a personal emergency, you are never too far from a McDonald’s, Burger King, KFC, or Subway.

• Possums here have lots more hair than their American cousins—enough that possum fur purses and other possum skin items are sold widely.  But just like our possums (and armadillos), they have suicidal tendencies, particularly along the highways.  The results of these tendencies can be seen everywhere, essentially because buzzards either have not yet found their way to New Zealand or have been hunted to extinction for their food value.

• The air here is clean.  The horizons along the coast are crisp, straight lines.  If you think crisp is a strange word to use, take a look at the horizon next time you visit the beach or fly in an airplane.  Actually, try to take a look the horizon; on most days you cannot see it.  While we're on the subject, everything here is clean.  They recycle like crazy, and you almost never see litter on the roads or anywhere else.  Perhaps related to this fact—and the lack of carping-- is the pride of the people in their country.  In America, we ask foreigners where they have traveled, or where they are going next; we might suggest a special place to visit.  Here, they want to know how you like New Zealand.  When you tell them you love it, they quickly agree and are anxious to tell you why.  Kind of makes you want to resolve to be more positive about the great country where you live.

• On the subject of 4.5 degrees of separation (formerly 6 degrees):  our tour bus driver on the Milford Sound trip once drove through Camden County, Georgia when he came over on a temporary job.   You may recall the British couple at our dinner table in Paihia who had spent the night in the Riverview Hotel and visited Cumberland Island in Camden County.  A New Hampshire resident named Charlie, staying at our B&B in Te Anau, wore a tee shirt with the words “Vernon Malone’s” on the front.  He and his wife had spent time on Elbow Cay in the Bahamas at about the same time we were there with our children; and we have eaten quite a few of Vernon’s delicious coconut pies from his store there.  Vernon’s goddaughter, Alex Kearns, lives in St. Marys.  It really is a small world.

• The pronunciation of the letters “a” and “e” is severely restricted here, the letter “i” having taken their place.  It takes a while to understand what they are saying.  When you visit, here are a few examples to better prepare you:  “might” means “mate”, as in the phrase “g’day, might”.  A “disc” is a desk;  a “bid” is a bed.  “Oi sigh” means “I say”.  You get it.  By the way, Henry Higgins’ slam on Americans’ use of the English language in My Fair Lady turns out to have been grossly unfair.  He should not have limited his comment to Americans . . .

•They don’t have a problem with immigration in New Zealand.  You can move here only if you have a job waiting or if you bring along a big bankroll—say, $1 million U.S.  Migrant workers are used, primarily to pick the grapes; but they are brought in from French Polynesia and other places, paid a small wage which is ten times what they make at home, and sent back.  There is no need for a conventional border wall; theirs was provided for free, and consists of a thousand miles of ocean between the land and anyone harboring thoughts of sneaking in.

• Outside the cities, there’s not much problem with locks.  They just don’t bother to lock the doors in their homes, and at most of the B&B’s where we stayed, we didn’t get a key to the room or the front door.  There was never a wall safe or other way to secure valuables, because they are automatically secure.  Theft is simply unthinkable.

• Several attempts have been made over the years to improve the lot of the residents by bringing in other creatures.  Rabbits, for example.  Someone thought it would be great to introduce these mammals to provide a source of food, and it worked for a while.  But the saying about multiplying like rabbits may have originated here, because soon the farm crops were disappearing like crazy and the rabbits were overrunning the place.  To control them, a relative of the weasel which killed and ate rabbits like crazy was brought in.  But these new creatures found the flightless local birds, having never had any natural predators, were much easier to catch—not to mention much tastier.  So now the New Zealanders are trying to trap and eliminate the weasels and eat more rabbit.  Meantime, many of the native birds are facing extinction.  Sometime it really doesn’t pay to fool with Mother Nature.

            Enough wisdom for one day.  Besides, our plane is landing.

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Much later . . .

            To celebrate my 67^th birthday, we drove out to a couple of beaches in Auckland and looked for shells and sea glass.  We also stopped by a little shop where I had a small cup of Ferrero Rocher ice cream, based on what Tricia says is a candy by the same name.  It could have used a little improvement.  But it isn’t actually my birthday.  Today is Tuesday, which is actually Monday where you are.  My birthday will occur tomorrow, Wednesday—or maybe the day after tomorrow, which will be yesterday by then in the USA.  Or will that make it two days after tomorrow?  It’s all very confusing, particularly after a wonderful birthday meal this evening in The French Café, one of Auckland’s finest.  A real surprise awaited us there; on the table Tricia had reserved we found an envelope that had been mailed from the Bay of Islands to the restaurant, addressed to me for delivery on February 26. Inside was a birthday card from Paul and Barbara, our hosts at their B&B our first three nights in country.  That they would take the time to send that card to a person they will probably never see again tells you pretty much all you need to know about New Zealanders.

            We leave Auckland tomorrow—Wednesday—at one in the afternoon.  After landing in Sydney (see days 1, 2, and 3 for why we are going through Sydney), we leave there at 3:20 in the afternoon.  We land in Los Angeles at 9:50 Wednesday morning, and after a flight to Chicago, finally arrive in Jacksonville around 11:00 p.m.  That’s if we make it through customs and recheck our baggage in L.A. during our 50-minute layover there.  In any case, this is our last report for a while; we have no plans at the moment for faraway travel.  Of course, that could change if free tickets to some exotic overseas destination pop up.  You never know . . .

            By the way, if you need a slightly used guidebook to New Zealand or a great map of the country, give us a call; we have one of each to give away to the next lucky traveler.

Charlie & Tricia

©2013