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ventaThis was mostly written on the train on Friday, and has been patched up in short bursts since. It's very long - medals will be awarded to those who manage to wade through it - and even then I've missed huge amounts out...
So... left the UK at the end of January, and flew out to New Zealand. It took me four flights and about 36 hours to get to Wellington (that's what you get for buying cheap tickets from STA :), thus more than doubling the number of planes I'd been on in my life, then Felix met me at the airport and drove me across the city to his family's home.
I spent the first day or so there recovering from a long flight, then went off by myself for a whistlestop tour of the South Island.
Almost exactly 72 hours to see as much of the South Island as possible. Felix had done a bit of homework down the tourist information office, and had planned me a route out... I went and booked the tickets: a ferry, two long distance buses, two long train journeys and two night's hotel accommodation. It cost me just over 170 quid; I dread to think what it would cost to do the same sort of thing in the UK.
So, the ferry took me from Wellington (in south of the North Island) to Picton (north of the South). I'd noticed as soon as I got to NZ (and had a couple of hours to kill in Auckland airport) that they have the strange quality of light which I usually associate with the Mediterranean - very clear, and all the colours look very bright. So travelling through the Marlborough Sounds to reach Picton was a slightly dazzling experience in the sunlight... the water very blue, and the trees covering the hills and fjords very green. There were dolphins playing round the boat, and a small, portable rainbow which the sun picked out of the spray up from the bows.
Picton provided me with entertainment, until my train left, in the form of a little museum dedicated to the Edwin Fox, the 9th oldest ship in the world. I wandered round the exhibition, then out onto the deck of the ship (which is in the process of being preserved).. which was when something stuck me. I was entirely unsupervised, wandering round something which constitutes a national treasure. There were no signs telling me not to touch, no ropes keeping me from clambering about, and no attendants keeping an eye on me. I could, if I so wished, probably carve my name in the timber before anyone caught me - but nobody else had done so... This is something which repeatedly struck me in NZ: it seems to be a country which trusts its inhabitants not to be stupid...
The Tranz-Scenic train to Christchurch left on time (maybe the NZ policy of making you 'check-in' for a train ride, 15 minutes in advance, isn't so stupid after all). The train was rather elderly rolling stock, with slam-doors. Travelling from one coach to another was a major undertaking involving four doors, some hard core jolting, and an extremely flimsy barrier between you and the fast-moving world outside. The train lurched, swayed, and appeared to have no concept of a smooth stop. On the other hand, it was clean, spacious, nicely fitted out and comfortable. It had that most archaic of concepts, a luggage van, meaning that everyone's baggage was taken care of and out of the way (in fact, people coming off the Picton ferry had their luggage transferred for them). The staff were friendly, served cheap food that tasted like food, and the train ran the whole way to time. My 5 1/2 hour journey cost me $57 (somewhat under 20 quid). Who the hell am I to criticise?
The trains and, as I discovered later, the intercity buses, are aimed entirely towards tourists - any NZ resident who wants to get anywhere will either drive, or fly. One of the train staff provides little bits of commentary on the area, and at the end of the train there is an open-sided viewing carriage. There are notices instructing you not to lean out of it, and to supervise children, but other than that people are allowed to wander about in a carriage which you could quite conceivably fall out of... again with the not assuming everyone is stupid.
So, from the comfort of my seat, and occasionally the extreme windiness of an open sided car in a fast moving train, I watched fantastic scenery whizz by. Particularly at the Picton end, the landscape seems to change very fast. I think it's because I'm used to hills and so on being in the distance... so when you see a hill, it's in view for a while. These hills are up close, and are gone before you can blink, replaced by other hills, forests, rivers and, sometimes, sheep.
I looked happily out at the scenery for my 5 1/2 hours - I couldn't understand the huge numbers of passengers who spent the time asleep, or noses buried in books. To be fair, the last hour or so across the Canterbury Plains to Christchurch was pretty flat, arable and dull, but the rest veered from good to breathtaking. (I am shortly to become Bonusprint's bestest friend when I send off my huge number of films for developing. Modulo an assortment of camera problems, and me being out of practice, there should be photos eventually.)
One thing that a photo won't convey, I don't think, is the way the railway runs next to the road. I don't mean 15 yards away, or on an embankment, I mean next to the road. Sometimes there was a small picket fence there, sometimes not, and none of the many level crossings seemed to be gated. Again, an assumption that people possess a bit of commonsense about these things...
I was met in Christchurch by a friend of Felix' family, who'd agreed to put me up for the night. There seems to be much more of a culture of this in NZ; a phone call asking you to put up someone you've never met is not at all out of the way, and will probably meet with a 'yes, of course', as far as I can tell. Julie and Bob were lovely... took me for a quick tour round their bit of Christchurch, gave me a nice meal, and let me play in their swimming pool - splashing about in a pool, surrounded by plants and trees, looking up at the stars is a very nice experience, and I've added 'small pool' to the list of things my ideal house will have when I'm rich and famous.
The following day I caught the Tranz-Alpine train to Greymouth. This goes over Arthur's Pass in the Southern Alps, and provided me with views that entirely outshone the previous day's. It was the same train company as the Tranz-Scenic, and again had someone providing commentary... and this guy clearly enjoyed doing so. The previous day's, though interesting, had occasionally sounded like he'd swallowed a Pears Cyclopedia - I think he even used the phrase "principal exports" more than once. The Tranz-Alpine guy was chatty, entertaining, and an absolute mine of information geographical, geological, historical...
If you ever go to NZ, take this train ride. It's a few hours of some of the most spectacular mountain scenery you'll ever see, interspersed with deep gorges and rivers, milky blue with glacial meltwater.
The thing that constantly amazed me about the country was how much space there seemed to be. NZ (counting both islands) is larger than Britain, but its population is less than half that of London. Beyond the remnants of 19th century mining operations, and the occasional small settlement, there was nothing but miles and miles of geography...
I arrived at Greymouth with only time to hop onto the intercity bus to Franz Josef. Sadly, the thing I remember most about the bus trip is the incredibly annoying German I sat next to. Though his spoken English was good, he appeared either very bad at understanding it, or unwilling to admit that he was very deaf (I wasn't sure which; possibly both). My attempts to converse in German met with complete incomprehension... I rapidly gave up, demoralised. However, he was mostly irritating because he grumbled the whole way. His first remark had been to complain that the train journey had been boring, and that there had been nothing to look at. When asked what he would have liked to have looked at, he said "something interesting". While I'm happy to believe some people don't like looking at big mountains, varied forests and steep ravines with waterfalls, the guy was booked on a scenic tour... it's hard to guess what he was expecting.
Franz Josef is a cheerful little town, which I found hard to take seriously. While in NZ, I never quite got over my aversion to wooden buildings - to me, coloured wooden houses look like toys, or at best film sets. The town's main claim to fame is that it is next to a glacier, so I booked myself onto a little minibus to go up and have a look at it.
By the time the minibus left, the weather was cold, grey and raining, and I was the only person stupid enough to want to go glacier spotting at 7 at night. I got dropped off at the start of the footpath (the company very sensibly lends out waterproofs), trotted up the path to the valley, and it promptly stopped raining and brightened up considerably. An elderly couple passed me on the path, and then I had the huge, dramatic, glacial valley to myself. The floor of the valley is shale, with a fast-running foamy blue-grey river. There are steep rock walls all round, some of them furry with dense trees, the odd waterfall or two, and, at the end of the valley, a huge glacier snaking up into the hills. Again, I hope there will be photos...
The public footpath doesn't go right up to the glacier, and sadly the foot of it is a little disappointing, being rather grimy. There are paths you can follow to get closer (the minibus driver had told me the rope I shouldn't cross, where to find the ladders I shouldn't climb, and that the tour companies who use the ladders wouldn't be there to prevent me)... however, since I was in an isolated valley, some miles from the town, out of mobile range and completely by myself, I decided discretion might be the better part of valour.
The last day's journey was down the west coast to Queenstown, through an area which is mostly temperate rainforest. True to form, it rained most of the time, and is extremely full of trees. Given what passes for a forest in the UK, I wasn't really ready for the enormous area full of nothing but trees... packed very closely together, all shades of green. Although relatively little NZ forest now is native bush, there's still enough to make it look unfamiliar. Huge punga and ferns everywhere, and the ubiquitous cabbage tree (an unlikely looking explosion of palm leaves on a thin stalk), give an exotic touch even to a bunch of workaday pine trees.
The journey also involved the Haast Pass back over the Southern Alps... then into the Lakes District. Again, the lakes are huge, and very blue. Everything about the journey seemed slightly unreal, simply because the colours, and the little toy houses, didn't look very convincing... Despite that, though, there was some familiarity. Being mostly glacial, the landscape is actually quite similar to the UK's Lake District, only on steroids. It also shares the wonderful changeability of light over the hillsides which I love about the Lake District here.
I also started to notice the effects of letting a large country, full of geography, be discovered by a few European settlers with little imagination. The rives and lakes mostly retain their Maori names, which sound much more sensible (until you get them translated, when they instantly become extremely mundane). However... once they'd run out of explorers to name things after, and used up the names of their wives, children, dogs and tennis partners, they moved on to words. Mt Aspiring and Mt Constitution aren't too bad. The Remarkables is a bit of a silly name for a mountain range, though. And by the time you've got to Mt Awful and Mt Dreadful, you really start to feel they were clutching at straws...
I flew back up to Wellington, to spend some time there, and to be in the Geiringer family production of Alice in Wonderland.
Fundamentally, as a capital city, Wellington is not very convincing. It has a tiny little CBD, with about six high rise buildings, and then five minutes out of the centre it stops even pretending. The houses, mostly one storey wooden buildings, are arranged haphazardly up the hill sides, spread out generously and with large gardens. Again, it's obvious that they've got so much more space to play with than we have. Apparently, the strange arrangement of houses is because the first settlers designed in advance a beautiful, straightforward grid system for the town. When the land they were to build on turned out not to be flat, they displayed proper Victorian pioneering spirit and went ahead anyway, simply 'dropping' the grid onto the extremely un-flat landscape.
However, the hills, trees, and bays do make it a very beautiful place. Some things - like the cinema Peter Jackson recently bought to save it from ruin, which was showing the Two Towers, and has an enormous (~20ft) Gollum's head on its balcony - remind you that it many ways it's LOTRland at the moment.
Te Papa, the national museum of NZ is in Wellington, and is one of those places I could happily spend about a week looking at stuff. Only spent a morning there, mostly looking at the NZ-secific exhibits, but I was incredibly impressed with it. If you're going to Wellington, mark down at least a day for this place (it's free).
However, most of my time in Wellington went into Alice. I knew it was going to be happening (and had deliberately timed my visit to hit it), but hadn't really expected a production of such magnitude. 'Family puts on play in back garden' is really not a good description. Cast of around forty puts on five performances, for around a 100 people a time...
From when I first arrived (a week before the play), and while I was away in the South Island, the rather large house was full of people, about 14 hours a day, making costumes, building sets, painting scenery, rehearsing... The front door was permanently open, and there was a sort of perpetual running buffet in the kitchen as people came and went; talking, arguing over props, randomly learning lines...
Anyone standing still for more than a few minutes got a job. Despite pleading complete artistic incapability, I ended up painting scenery. I helped the chap building the sets (a full-on hardboard house, among other things, for the White Rabbit) - and having seen him wielding drills and screwdrivers - was kind of surprised to find he was a neurosurgeon. I built an outsize cardboard pepper pot (for the Cook), made a giant invitation and envelope for the Queen's invite to play croquet, and recorded sound effects on to tape. I sewed some of the bits of costume, and made endless pots of tea and coffee. I even, at the eleventh hour, when someone suddenly realised it hadn't been done, designed and built a complicated pulley system, with two curtains and 45m black string, to make the Cheshire cat appear and disappear.
Sometimes I even did a bit of rehearsing. You see, I discovered that Felix' comment that I was playing Alice wasn't entirely untrue. In order to make Alice change size, she was played by five different people, the largest Alice being Felix (he's 6'6"), and the smallest being a seven year old girl. I was the "real" Alice, who falls down a rabbit hole, and then wakes up at the end... a very small part, which could easily be learnt in two days, but unfortunately didn't give me the opportunity to say "unlike other Alices I speak with an English accent".
Photos were certainly taken, though not by me. I hope to get hold of a few... If nothing else, for the Gryphon's and Mock Turtle's costumes, which were pure genius.
After that, Felix and I rented a car, and spent nearly a week driving up the North Island to Auckland. The highlights of this, for me, were all related to the fact that the central north island is a thermal region.
This manifests itself in various ways - volcanoes, hot springs, bubbling mud, smoking craters in the ground, geysers... and they're all beautiful. Someone had lent us a house in Owhanga (pronounced 'Ofonga'), which is a tiny villagelet in the middle of nowhere, about in the middle of the North Island. Amazing thing no. 1: stars. There are no big cities in the centre of the North Island, so no concentrations of light. So, literally millions of stars. Bizarrely this makes star gazing rather hard - here I find it easy to pick out the Plough; it's the bunch of stars on a black background. There, looking at the place I expected it to be, there were so many stars I couldn't find the thing. However, I have now seen the Southern Cross. And Orion, upside down.
We went to nearby Takaanu to play in the hot pools there, and I must admit to being a little disappointed - they only let you bathe in the water after they've piped it away, tamed it, and pumped it into dull little concrete boxes. The actual hot pools round Takaanu are beautiful, in a weird and alien sort of way. Imagine small lakes, many of which are bubbling, all in greys, greens and blues. Lots of twisted, gnarled trees grow round them, mostly in shades of silvery grey, and the absence of wildlife tends to make them eerily quiet. The ethereal aspect would be complete were it not for the earthy slurps and gurgles of the sucking mud. The downside, sadly, is the perpetual and overpowering stench of sulphur which hangs over everything.
As we ambled round the pools, peering through the steam, Felix pointed out a 'Keep to the Path' sign, and said that I should really, really keep to the path. Being me, I asked why. At that point, a section of ground not far from the path collapsed, spraying boiling mud over the area, and rendering an answer rather unnecessary. All available evidence for the next few days pointed to this: thermal regions are unstable. Very unstable. Mess with them at your peril - the mud is apparently easily hot enough to take off your feet.
Our real purpose behind staying in Owhanga was to be able to walk the Tongariro Crossing. This is a 17km walk up one side of the Tongariro volcano, across its top, round the Red Crater, down past the Blue Lake and the Emerald Lakes, and through the bush down the other side. Despite having heard the route described like this, I was still unprepared for just how colourful the walk would be. After all, volcanoes are big grey things, aren't they ? Everyone knows that.
Apparently not. Tongariro, and its taller sub-volcano Ngauruhoe, were amazing. Tongariro is a rather gently rounded sort of hill, mostly covered in scrubby greenery, but topped with an enormous crater - rightly called Red. It's a dark, brick red with deep scars, which belch smoke, and white crusts of minerals. The lakes are also satisfactorily jewel coloured, the Blue Lake containing friendly and drinkable water, the Emerald Lakes being full of a rather toxic algae. Above the Blue Lake where we stopped for lunch, I managed to pick up, within easy reach of where I was sitting, four pieces of pumice stone, one each in red, yellow, blue and green.
Ngauruhoe - or as it's better know these days when it's got its make-up on, Mount Doom - towers above the walk, and provides more unexpected colour. Ngauruhoe is a comical, conical, child's-drawing of a volcano, and is indeed big and grey. However, all around the crater it is streaked with brilliant reds, yellows, browns and whites from deposited minerals. It is possible also to climb up to the crater, and we had hoped to do it, but, sadly, lack of exercise since last August and the unaccustomed heat nearly finished me off... Felix had to carry my bag part of the way as it was, and there was no way I could have managed an extra 3 hours hard climbing. However, as the villain croaks at the end of all the best action, I'll get you next time, Ngauruhoe. Just see if I don't.
Exploring the Craters of the Moon (a field full of hot springs and volcanic mud), then the park in Rotorua (a one-stop shop for geothermal activity of all kinds, including geysers) only made me more impressed with the place. Again, unexpected colours as minerals, lichens and plants crowd onto burnt and smoking craters. The stalactites, and glass-like steps, which form around geysers provide perfect models for fantasy novel covers; yet again, I hope there will be photos.
We spent the next couple of days driving casually north(ish), up to and round the Coromandel peninsula, stopping off to peer at museums, lakes, waterfalls, and wildlife as the humour took us. The Coromandel seems quite hilly, even by NZ standards, and we arrived there at the right time to see ranges of blue-grey hills silhouetted against the sunset, almost like a stylised portrait of themselves. Here, as everywhere, I was astounded by how clean everything was - the old adage about being able to see to the bottom of every stream is true... and the whole country is staggeringly litter-free.
My last day in NZ was spent in Auckland, which is probably the closest thing I saw to a convincing city. Sitting above the city on One Tree Hill (currently None Tree Hill, after someone attacked the tree with a chainsaw, in the name of Maori Sovereignty), although I could see tall buildings, the overwhelming impression was still trees and space.
I've been worried about getting repetitive in my comments; the trouble is that the whole country is beautiful, and in an enormous variety of ways. I have many, many good things to say about it, and would encourage anyone to go there for a holiday...
It's a friendly country. In many ways it appears startlingly unsophisticated, provincial, almost... I've found this hard to explain to people, and hard to justify, but it was what repeatedly struck me. It's as if it's decided not to go along the same route as Britain, and has benefited; it's stayed itself, and a lot of the things I'd regard as bad about progress are absent... few big cities, hardly any motorways, no culture of "we can't do that, someone might sue us". Yet in other ways it's very advanced - forward thinking environmental policies, and plans for conservation. I noticed a sign up marking the celebration of the centenary of Womens' Suffrage - in 1993. NZ women could vote from 1893... pretty revolutionary, for its time. I think it might just have its priorities right :)
So... left the UK at the end of January, and flew out to New Zealand. It took me four flights and about 36 hours to get to Wellington (that's what you get for buying cheap tickets from STA :), thus more than doubling the number of planes I'd been on in my life, then Felix met me at the airport and drove me across the city to his family's home.
I spent the first day or so there recovering from a long flight, then went off by myself for a whistlestop tour of the South Island.
Almost exactly 72 hours to see as much of the South Island as possible. Felix had done a bit of homework down the tourist information office, and had planned me a route out... I went and booked the tickets: a ferry, two long distance buses, two long train journeys and two night's hotel accommodation. It cost me just over 170 quid; I dread to think what it would cost to do the same sort of thing in the UK.
So, the ferry took me from Wellington (in south of the North Island) to Picton (north of the South). I'd noticed as soon as I got to NZ (and had a couple of hours to kill in Auckland airport) that they have the strange quality of light which I usually associate with the Mediterranean - very clear, and all the colours look very bright. So travelling through the Marlborough Sounds to reach Picton was a slightly dazzling experience in the sunlight... the water very blue, and the trees covering the hills and fjords very green. There were dolphins playing round the boat, and a small, portable rainbow which the sun picked out of the spray up from the bows.
Picton provided me with entertainment, until my train left, in the form of a little museum dedicated to the Edwin Fox, the 9th oldest ship in the world. I wandered round the exhibition, then out onto the deck of the ship (which is in the process of being preserved).. which was when something stuck me. I was entirely unsupervised, wandering round something which constitutes a national treasure. There were no signs telling me not to touch, no ropes keeping me from clambering about, and no attendants keeping an eye on me. I could, if I so wished, probably carve my name in the timber before anyone caught me - but nobody else had done so... This is something which repeatedly struck me in NZ: it seems to be a country which trusts its inhabitants not to be stupid...
The Tranz-Scenic train to Christchurch left on time (maybe the NZ policy of making you 'check-in' for a train ride, 15 minutes in advance, isn't so stupid after all). The train was rather elderly rolling stock, with slam-doors. Travelling from one coach to another was a major undertaking involving four doors, some hard core jolting, and an extremely flimsy barrier between you and the fast-moving world outside. The train lurched, swayed, and appeared to have no concept of a smooth stop. On the other hand, it was clean, spacious, nicely fitted out and comfortable. It had that most archaic of concepts, a luggage van, meaning that everyone's baggage was taken care of and out of the way (in fact, people coming off the Picton ferry had their luggage transferred for them). The staff were friendly, served cheap food that tasted like food, and the train ran the whole way to time. My 5 1/2 hour journey cost me $57 (somewhat under 20 quid). Who the hell am I to criticise?
The trains and, as I discovered later, the intercity buses, are aimed entirely towards tourists - any NZ resident who wants to get anywhere will either drive, or fly. One of the train staff provides little bits of commentary on the area, and at the end of the train there is an open-sided viewing carriage. There are notices instructing you not to lean out of it, and to supervise children, but other than that people are allowed to wander about in a carriage which you could quite conceivably fall out of... again with the not assuming everyone is stupid.
So, from the comfort of my seat, and occasionally the extreme windiness of an open sided car in a fast moving train, I watched fantastic scenery whizz by. Particularly at the Picton end, the landscape seems to change very fast. I think it's because I'm used to hills and so on being in the distance... so when you see a hill, it's in view for a while. These hills are up close, and are gone before you can blink, replaced by other hills, forests, rivers and, sometimes, sheep.
I looked happily out at the scenery for my 5 1/2 hours - I couldn't understand the huge numbers of passengers who spent the time asleep, or noses buried in books. To be fair, the last hour or so across the Canterbury Plains to Christchurch was pretty flat, arable and dull, but the rest veered from good to breathtaking. (I am shortly to become Bonusprint's bestest friend when I send off my huge number of films for developing. Modulo an assortment of camera problems, and me being out of practice, there should be photos eventually.)
One thing that a photo won't convey, I don't think, is the way the railway runs next to the road. I don't mean 15 yards away, or on an embankment, I mean next to the road. Sometimes there was a small picket fence there, sometimes not, and none of the many level crossings seemed to be gated. Again, an assumption that people possess a bit of commonsense about these things...
I was met in Christchurch by a friend of Felix' family, who'd agreed to put me up for the night. There seems to be much more of a culture of this in NZ; a phone call asking you to put up someone you've never met is not at all out of the way, and will probably meet with a 'yes, of course', as far as I can tell. Julie and Bob were lovely... took me for a quick tour round their bit of Christchurch, gave me a nice meal, and let me play in their swimming pool - splashing about in a pool, surrounded by plants and trees, looking up at the stars is a very nice experience, and I've added 'small pool' to the list of things my ideal house will have when I'm rich and famous.
The following day I caught the Tranz-Alpine train to Greymouth. This goes over Arthur's Pass in the Southern Alps, and provided me with views that entirely outshone the previous day's. It was the same train company as the Tranz-Scenic, and again had someone providing commentary... and this guy clearly enjoyed doing so. The previous day's, though interesting, had occasionally sounded like he'd swallowed a Pears Cyclopedia - I think he even used the phrase "principal exports" more than once. The Tranz-Alpine guy was chatty, entertaining, and an absolute mine of information geographical, geological, historical...
If you ever go to NZ, take this train ride. It's a few hours of some of the most spectacular mountain scenery you'll ever see, interspersed with deep gorges and rivers, milky blue with glacial meltwater.
The thing that constantly amazed me about the country was how much space there seemed to be. NZ (counting both islands) is larger than Britain, but its population is less than half that of London. Beyond the remnants of 19th century mining operations, and the occasional small settlement, there was nothing but miles and miles of geography...
I arrived at Greymouth with only time to hop onto the intercity bus to Franz Josef. Sadly, the thing I remember most about the bus trip is the incredibly annoying German I sat next to. Though his spoken English was good, he appeared either very bad at understanding it, or unwilling to admit that he was very deaf (I wasn't sure which; possibly both). My attempts to converse in German met with complete incomprehension... I rapidly gave up, demoralised. However, he was mostly irritating because he grumbled the whole way. His first remark had been to complain that the train journey had been boring, and that there had been nothing to look at. When asked what he would have liked to have looked at, he said "something interesting". While I'm happy to believe some people don't like looking at big mountains, varied forests and steep ravines with waterfalls, the guy was booked on a scenic tour... it's hard to guess what he was expecting.
Franz Josef is a cheerful little town, which I found hard to take seriously. While in NZ, I never quite got over my aversion to wooden buildings - to me, coloured wooden houses look like toys, or at best film sets. The town's main claim to fame is that it is next to a glacier, so I booked myself onto a little minibus to go up and have a look at it.
By the time the minibus left, the weather was cold, grey and raining, and I was the only person stupid enough to want to go glacier spotting at 7 at night. I got dropped off at the start of the footpath (the company very sensibly lends out waterproofs), trotted up the path to the valley, and it promptly stopped raining and brightened up considerably. An elderly couple passed me on the path, and then I had the huge, dramatic, glacial valley to myself. The floor of the valley is shale, with a fast-running foamy blue-grey river. There are steep rock walls all round, some of them furry with dense trees, the odd waterfall or two, and, at the end of the valley, a huge glacier snaking up into the hills. Again, I hope there will be photos...
The public footpath doesn't go right up to the glacier, and sadly the foot of it is a little disappointing, being rather grimy. There are paths you can follow to get closer (the minibus driver had told me the rope I shouldn't cross, where to find the ladders I shouldn't climb, and that the tour companies who use the ladders wouldn't be there to prevent me)... however, since I was in an isolated valley, some miles from the town, out of mobile range and completely by myself, I decided discretion might be the better part of valour.
The last day's journey was down the west coast to Queenstown, through an area which is mostly temperate rainforest. True to form, it rained most of the time, and is extremely full of trees. Given what passes for a forest in the UK, I wasn't really ready for the enormous area full of nothing but trees... packed very closely together, all shades of green. Although relatively little NZ forest now is native bush, there's still enough to make it look unfamiliar. Huge punga and ferns everywhere, and the ubiquitous cabbage tree (an unlikely looking explosion of palm leaves on a thin stalk), give an exotic touch even to a bunch of workaday pine trees.
The journey also involved the Haast Pass back over the Southern Alps... then into the Lakes District. Again, the lakes are huge, and very blue. Everything about the journey seemed slightly unreal, simply because the colours, and the little toy houses, didn't look very convincing... Despite that, though, there was some familiarity. Being mostly glacial, the landscape is actually quite similar to the UK's Lake District, only on steroids. It also shares the wonderful changeability of light over the hillsides which I love about the Lake District here.
I also started to notice the effects of letting a large country, full of geography, be discovered by a few European settlers with little imagination. The rives and lakes mostly retain their Maori names, which sound much more sensible (until you get them translated, when they instantly become extremely mundane). However... once they'd run out of explorers to name things after, and used up the names of their wives, children, dogs and tennis partners, they moved on to words. Mt Aspiring and Mt Constitution aren't too bad. The Remarkables is a bit of a silly name for a mountain range, though. And by the time you've got to Mt Awful and Mt Dreadful, you really start to feel they were clutching at straws...
I flew back up to Wellington, to spend some time there, and to be in the Geiringer family production of Alice in Wonderland.
Fundamentally, as a capital city, Wellington is not very convincing. It has a tiny little CBD, with about six high rise buildings, and then five minutes out of the centre it stops even pretending. The houses, mostly one storey wooden buildings, are arranged haphazardly up the hill sides, spread out generously and with large gardens. Again, it's obvious that they've got so much more space to play with than we have. Apparently, the strange arrangement of houses is because the first settlers designed in advance a beautiful, straightforward grid system for the town. When the land they were to build on turned out not to be flat, they displayed proper Victorian pioneering spirit and went ahead anyway, simply 'dropping' the grid onto the extremely un-flat landscape.
However, the hills, trees, and bays do make it a very beautiful place. Some things - like the cinema Peter Jackson recently bought to save it from ruin, which was showing the Two Towers, and has an enormous (~20ft) Gollum's head on its balcony - remind you that it many ways it's LOTRland at the moment.
Te Papa, the national museum of NZ is in Wellington, and is one of those places I could happily spend about a week looking at stuff. Only spent a morning there, mostly looking at the NZ-secific exhibits, but I was incredibly impressed with it. If you're going to Wellington, mark down at least a day for this place (it's free).
However, most of my time in Wellington went into Alice. I knew it was going to be happening (and had deliberately timed my visit to hit it), but hadn't really expected a production of such magnitude. 'Family puts on play in back garden' is really not a good description. Cast of around forty puts on five performances, for around a 100 people a time...
From when I first arrived (a week before the play), and while I was away in the South Island, the rather large house was full of people, about 14 hours a day, making costumes, building sets, painting scenery, rehearsing... The front door was permanently open, and there was a sort of perpetual running buffet in the kitchen as people came and went; talking, arguing over props, randomly learning lines...
Anyone standing still for more than a few minutes got a job. Despite pleading complete artistic incapability, I ended up painting scenery. I helped the chap building the sets (a full-on hardboard house, among other things, for the White Rabbit) - and having seen him wielding drills and screwdrivers - was kind of surprised to find he was a neurosurgeon. I built an outsize cardboard pepper pot (for the Cook), made a giant invitation and envelope for the Queen's invite to play croquet, and recorded sound effects on to tape. I sewed some of the bits of costume, and made endless pots of tea and coffee. I even, at the eleventh hour, when someone suddenly realised it hadn't been done, designed and built a complicated pulley system, with two curtains and 45m black string, to make the Cheshire cat appear and disappear.
Sometimes I even did a bit of rehearsing. You see, I discovered that Felix' comment that I was playing Alice wasn't entirely untrue. In order to make Alice change size, she was played by five different people, the largest Alice being Felix (he's 6'6"), and the smallest being a seven year old girl. I was the "real" Alice, who falls down a rabbit hole, and then wakes up at the end... a very small part, which could easily be learnt in two days, but unfortunately didn't give me the opportunity to say "unlike other Alices I speak with an English accent".
Photos were certainly taken, though not by me. I hope to get hold of a few... If nothing else, for the Gryphon's and Mock Turtle's costumes, which were pure genius.
After that, Felix and I rented a car, and spent nearly a week driving up the North Island to Auckland. The highlights of this, for me, were all related to the fact that the central north island is a thermal region.
This manifests itself in various ways - volcanoes, hot springs, bubbling mud, smoking craters in the ground, geysers... and they're all beautiful. Someone had lent us a house in Owhanga (pronounced 'Ofonga'), which is a tiny villagelet in the middle of nowhere, about in the middle of the North Island. Amazing thing no. 1: stars. There are no big cities in the centre of the North Island, so no concentrations of light. So, literally millions of stars. Bizarrely this makes star gazing rather hard - here I find it easy to pick out the Plough; it's the bunch of stars on a black background. There, looking at the place I expected it to be, there were so many stars I couldn't find the thing. However, I have now seen the Southern Cross. And Orion, upside down.
We went to nearby Takaanu to play in the hot pools there, and I must admit to being a little disappointed - they only let you bathe in the water after they've piped it away, tamed it, and pumped it into dull little concrete boxes. The actual hot pools round Takaanu are beautiful, in a weird and alien sort of way. Imagine small lakes, many of which are bubbling, all in greys, greens and blues. Lots of twisted, gnarled trees grow round them, mostly in shades of silvery grey, and the absence of wildlife tends to make them eerily quiet. The ethereal aspect would be complete were it not for the earthy slurps and gurgles of the sucking mud. The downside, sadly, is the perpetual and overpowering stench of sulphur which hangs over everything.
As we ambled round the pools, peering through the steam, Felix pointed out a 'Keep to the Path' sign, and said that I should really, really keep to the path. Being me, I asked why. At that point, a section of ground not far from the path collapsed, spraying boiling mud over the area, and rendering an answer rather unnecessary. All available evidence for the next few days pointed to this: thermal regions are unstable. Very unstable. Mess with them at your peril - the mud is apparently easily hot enough to take off your feet.
Our real purpose behind staying in Owhanga was to be able to walk the Tongariro Crossing. This is a 17km walk up one side of the Tongariro volcano, across its top, round the Red Crater, down past the Blue Lake and the Emerald Lakes, and through the bush down the other side. Despite having heard the route described like this, I was still unprepared for just how colourful the walk would be. After all, volcanoes are big grey things, aren't they ? Everyone knows that.
Apparently not. Tongariro, and its taller sub-volcano Ngauruhoe, were amazing. Tongariro is a rather gently rounded sort of hill, mostly covered in scrubby greenery, but topped with an enormous crater - rightly called Red. It's a dark, brick red with deep scars, which belch smoke, and white crusts of minerals. The lakes are also satisfactorily jewel coloured, the Blue Lake containing friendly and drinkable water, the Emerald Lakes being full of a rather toxic algae. Above the Blue Lake where we stopped for lunch, I managed to pick up, within easy reach of where I was sitting, four pieces of pumice stone, one each in red, yellow, blue and green.
Ngauruhoe - or as it's better know these days when it's got its make-up on, Mount Doom - towers above the walk, and provides more unexpected colour. Ngauruhoe is a comical, conical, child's-drawing of a volcano, and is indeed big and grey. However, all around the crater it is streaked with brilliant reds, yellows, browns and whites from deposited minerals. It is possible also to climb up to the crater, and we had hoped to do it, but, sadly, lack of exercise since last August and the unaccustomed heat nearly finished me off... Felix had to carry my bag part of the way as it was, and there was no way I could have managed an extra 3 hours hard climbing. However, as the villain croaks at the end of all the best action, I'll get you next time, Ngauruhoe. Just see if I don't.
Exploring the Craters of the Moon (a field full of hot springs and volcanic mud), then the park in Rotorua (a one-stop shop for geothermal activity of all kinds, including geysers) only made me more impressed with the place. Again, unexpected colours as minerals, lichens and plants crowd onto burnt and smoking craters. The stalactites, and glass-like steps, which form around geysers provide perfect models for fantasy novel covers; yet again, I hope there will be photos.
We spent the next couple of days driving casually north(ish), up to and round the Coromandel peninsula, stopping off to peer at museums, lakes, waterfalls, and wildlife as the humour took us. The Coromandel seems quite hilly, even by NZ standards, and we arrived there at the right time to see ranges of blue-grey hills silhouetted against the sunset, almost like a stylised portrait of themselves. Here, as everywhere, I was astounded by how clean everything was - the old adage about being able to see to the bottom of every stream is true... and the whole country is staggeringly litter-free.
My last day in NZ was spent in Auckland, which is probably the closest thing I saw to a convincing city. Sitting above the city on One Tree Hill (currently None Tree Hill, after someone attacked the tree with a chainsaw, in the name of Maori Sovereignty), although I could see tall buildings, the overwhelming impression was still trees and space.
I've been worried about getting repetitive in my comments; the trouble is that the whole country is beautiful, and in an enormous variety of ways. I have many, many good things to say about it, and would encourage anyone to go there for a holiday...
It's a friendly country. In many ways it appears startlingly unsophisticated, provincial, almost... I've found this hard to explain to people, and hard to justify, but it was what repeatedly struck me. It's as if it's decided not to go along the same route as Britain, and has benefited; it's stayed itself, and a lot of the things I'd regard as bad about progress are absent... few big cities, hardly any motorways, no culture of "we can't do that, someone might sue us". Yet in other ways it's very advanced - forward thinking environmental policies, and plans for conservation. I noticed a sign up marking the celebration of the centenary of Womens' Suffrage - in 1993. NZ women could vote from 1893... pretty revolutionary, for its time. I think it might just have its priorities right :)
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Re: Stupidity in NZ
Date: 2003-03-01 10:37 am (UTC)Ah, now, you'll note that I didn't say that there were no stupid people in NZ. I said the government (and other such bodies) treated people as if they weren't stupid, which is not the same thing.
In the UK, a person falling out of the train would immediately result in open-sided carriages, trains, and possibly people all being banned. Whereas despite the accidents in NZ, people like me are still allowed to wander about on trains. Of course, there does come a point where safeguards are useful and/or necessary, but my point was that a few people doing stupid things hasn't spoiled it for the rest of us.
While I take your point about the exchange rates, I'm surprised that you think it prevents foreign travel. Wherever I go on holiday in Europe I always run in to hundreds of kiwis (to the extent that I regard them as one of the most travelling of nations). I guess they are mostly students, though, who are all broke regardless of nationality, so it doesn't matter so much :)