March 2 - Auckland
9:30 pm
Spent a busy day moving into the hostel (free shuttle from airport, free beer in the 7th floor bar - haven't been yet), wandering the streets of Auckland, and figuring out our plans for the next week or so. AKL is a really easy city to wander around in, and there are a ton of young folks here. Backpacker central! Shikha is worn out from all the walking, and I'm about ready to hit the sack too. Hard to believe we landed here just 12 hours ago.
Highlights of the zoo - very close giraffes, very playful monkeys (one youngster reminded me of Jonathan L. Seagull, disobeying monkey customs by playing in the water and actually swimming laps. He then climbed up to the top of the cage and jumped in! Then two or three times he'd be playing in the pool and all of a sudden spring towards the side of the cage and get people wet!) and one who was trying like mad to get at some tasty vegetation he could just barely reach. I felt like helping him. Also a roo, camels, meerkats, lazy hippos, lazier wallabies and many more.
Then to the War Memorial Museum. Great Maori collection including a giant war canoe (the last one built), many totem pole-like figures and a big wooden building that was given by a Maori chief to his kid as a wedding present.
Shikha's becoming a cider connoisseur. Had St. Andrew's (good) at the Tapas bar, and Harvest (too sweet) at Shakespeare brewery.
Later...
Well, we didn't get picked up by the ferry, but their rep showed up, apologized because the boat was full, took us back to AKL, and offered a free trip to Devonport that evening. So we went back and had a very nice dinner - I had a T-bone steak with a very peppery sauce - complete with wine, dessert (Shikha's first pavlova!) and coffee.
March 7 - Waitomo
In the tent for the first time, enjoying a respite from the rain.
We're in Waitomo now, having survived Black Water Rafting. Had a fun trip here with a couple of poms, then an amazing experience - getting dressed in wet suits, practicing the 'eel position' in the mud, jumping into the river for practice, taking the 1 km hike to the real cave, then clambering amongst the rocks for a while, into the water, past the three foot long eel (!) (swimming around the corner to meet us (!)), and off a 15 foot jump. Then, with lights off (we had miner's helmets), silently floating by the light of hundreds of glow worms. Afterwards, a hot shower and hotter coffee and soup. A very unusual experience - well worth it.
We're cooking dinner tonight, with wine from the nearby bottle shop.
March 10 - Rotorua
Too busy to write for a few days. We went to Rotorua on the 8th and went to a hangi (Maori feast) in the evening. It was very well-done; made the ceremony seem very authentic, spiritual, and meaningful, and the international visitors (Scotland, Oz, USA, England, Italy, and a few others) added to the welcoming atmosphere.
The hangi is a traditional feast cooked in a big hole in the earth on river rocks, heated with native wood till they're white hot, then food and covering sheets, topped with earth. The ceremony was a traditional challenge / welcome in which the local tribe met us at the gate, accepted the peace offering we made, then led us into their meeting house
where there was some speechmaking (including spontaneous greetings and thanks from reps of each of the various countries) and hongis (touching of the noses in friendship). This was followed by a concert, including demonstrations of weapons and war dances, and audience participation, of which Shikha has pictures. 'nuff said. Then the unveiling of the hangi, followed by the feast. Pretty good food, including beef, pork, chicken, veges (sic), and N.Z. stuffing that was recognizable although very different from the American version (and very good).
Then, on the 9th, we spent the day with Carey's Capers on a full day tour of the sights and smells of Rotorua. Some great mud holes (including one that spat on Shikha!) and lots of pictures. The highlight of the day, though, was walking up the 65 steps to the Inferno Crater, a beautiful blue pool surrounded by high cliffs and lush vegetation (and a pH of 2.3!), and being treated to a short version of a haka (war dance) by Eddie (Eruera), our guide. Very moving, intimidating, and beautiful, especially in the setting and with the echoes. The Maori culture is certainly very visible around here, and although it is commercialized to a certain extent, this also increases people's awareness, understanding, and appreciation.
The hangi we attended was Maori-run, and on this tour we had a Maori guide, which added a lot to it. Eddie knew a tremendous amount about all of the plants we saw, and the old (and current, although not as much) uses for them. It's too bad that much of this knowledge has been and is being lost, worldwide.
Today for a change of pace, we decided to go on a raft down a seven meter (over 22 feet) waterfall - the highest commercially rafted waterfall in the world! A short but very pretty section of river, and after the big drop (and a few smaller (3 m) above), Shikha "surfed". She was sitting down backwards in the front of the raft, and we pushed it upstream a bit so the water was cascading over and around her. Lots of water! Tonight we board the 11:20 pm bus to Wellington, arriving at 7 am. Then off to South Island and Abel Tasman.
March 12 - Wellington
Spent yesterday in Wellington - the Capital City / Little San Francisco / the Windy City. But hit it on a pretty nice day with no wind. I had seen a brochure about the International Festival of the Arts while in Auckland, and one performance in particular (well, a few others too, including a huge performance of Berlioz' Requiem, Henry VIII, Madame Butterfly, etc. but they were already finished) sounded neat, although I figured there would be no chance of seeing it: the world premiere of a New Zealand opera, Bitter Calm, about the daughter of a Pakeha who falls in love with their Maori farmhand, Matiu, scorning a Pakeha, Charles Bull, who ultimately kills her, blaming Matiu for the murder, which ignites an already volatile racial tension, ending in a standoff between the Maoris and Pakeha, a bitter calm. Showing two days only... Anyway, there were a few seats left, and we saw it. Very "modern", but well done and including a few nice touches, like Maori supertitles, rain on the stage, and some black & white films clips in the background, with one fantastic scene where Matiu confronts Bull while the murder plays in the background. Bitter Calm was sandwiched between two other memorable events - dinner and Stalker...
For dinner we went to a New Orleans cuisine restaurant, Flanagans. Shikha had a blackened groper (sic) with a roasted red pepper hollandaise sauce; I had a rack of lamb with a Creole mustard crust in a shallot zinfandel reduction sauce. For appetizer (entree (sic)) we had a prawn & andouille cheese cake with a green onion coulis. All this with a glass of Bayou beer for me, a Mississippi Mudslide (Baileys & Kahlua w/ chocolate shavings) for Shikha, and a bottle of Riesling for both of us, and for dessert we shared a chocolate praline terrine with a raspberry sauce, washed down with a bottomless cup of coffee and a cappuccino. Top it off with a very friendly and funny waitress ("Disastrous!" as she crumpled up the bill that had a mistake on it) and it was a great prelude to the opera. (Although we needed about another 15 minutes so I could have had the requisite third cup of coffee).
If the prelude was reasonably traditional and the main act was modern, the finale was definitely postmodern! Stalker was pretty obviously a part of the fringe festival accompanying the Festival of the Arts. As we were walking home after Bitter Calm we ran into a crowd of people and a sign saying "Stalker - next performance: 10:30 pm". It was just about 10:30, so we decided to stop and take a look. Loud postnuclear-sounding (whatever that is) music started playing, and an eight foot tall alien-looking guy with pogo stick / crutch appendages started climbing slowly, steadily but jerkily up a 15 foot metal tripod structure. He remained still and silent at the top for about ten minutes while the music / sounds blared. Meanwhile, after about five minutes, three other spider-like alien humans started making their way towards the structure in the same erratic, slow-motion manner. It took them maybe ten minutes to get there as they moved deliberately yet chaotically, falling down and climbing awkwardly back up using their poles as arms, legs, seats, batons, and weapons. The three creatures were pulling another one on a little wagon. She seemed like a prisoner of war, and was being beaten periodically (symbolically, at least) by the others. The loosely choreographed dance continued for an hour, as the five creatures climbed around the structure with their strange jerky movements, eventually climbing to the very top, sliding slowly back down, and then undressing themselves and each other to little more than underwear and stilts, continuing their ritual, making vomiting gestures to the audience, and finally, removing their stilts. Don't ask me what it all meant...
Then, the morning of the 12th, caught the 8 am ferry to Picton on the South Island. We were seen off by a school of a few dozen frolicking dolphins, and greeted as we arrived by thousands and thousands of jellyfish. The distance between the two islands isn't that great (we could see land at all times), but Picton is actually quite far inland and much of the three hour crossing time was in navigating the waterways of Marlborough Sounds.
On to the South Island