South Island

Day Thirteen: Crossing Over

The ferry crossing was very calm and organized and also surprisingly short. It only took three hours to cross the Tasman Sea which separates the two islands. When we got over onto the other side we picked up our baggage and a new car, blue this time, and headed off towards Blenheim, wine capital of the district of Marlborough, New Zealand fine wine.

The weather as has become usual was gray with no sun. It’s been like this the whole time, but New Zealanders claim that their summer isn’t usually like this. I am inclined to agree with them, simply because they seem concerned for our welfare whenever we stop to explore. It’s certainly disappointing that the weather hasn’t been nicer, but on the other hand it’s definitely warmer and greener than where we came from.

Wine tasting doesn’t require good weather though. So we set off on a crash party tour of some wineries. We were worried at first that we’d have to stop early for fear of falling down drunk – but the wineries all featured spittoons where you could pour the rest of your drink in. Professional wine tasters don’t swallow at all, but we couldn’t go that far.

This part of the South Island is covered in a golden green grass which in the damp make the hills look desolate but in the sun probably makes them glow. We passed by these hills for quite some time, making our way to Kaikoura, our destination. We hit the coast and a seemingly endless and deserted black sand beach which turned to rocky shores, bull kelp, and seals. Seals zonked out on rocks and between rocks, they were all contentedly asleep like dogs after a meal. They were tons of them once you knew what to look for. To the uneducated eye they appeared like part of the rock or the bull kelp, a good defense against orcas who eat them.

Day Fourteen: Whales, sunshine

The yellow ball of endless delight graced us today, but the seacoast was fogged in anyway. Our chances of whale spotting were not very good. Nonetheless the group took us out anyway. I had taken Dramamine the day before for the ferry ride and it had wiped me out, so I split the difference and only imbibed in half the dosage. Out we went on a catamaran, capable of traveling at 35 knots- almost 50 kmh or 30 mph. This is pretty fast for a boat. I don’t get seasick on a moving boat no matter how rough the sea. It’s the stopped boat and the calm sea that does me in.

We spotted our whale first try, a sperm whale, capable of diving up to 3 kilometers in the ocean to feed on giant squid, which he would swallow whole. No other mammal in the world is capable of surviving the pressure or the lack of oxygen. He lounged on the surface for a while, then began his long descent, waving his tail at us in farewell. He’d be gone for 1 to 2 hours. The boat took us to find another whale. They use the relatively passive method of an amplified microphone rather than fish finders or sonic devices to locate whales. Whales navigate by echo-location, and any type of sonic device could screw them up, making them think up is down, west is east, in short become disoriented, queasy, perhaps they would drown.

I certainly sympathized since I was becoming disoriented myself. There was no horizon to speak of in the fog, my last defense against motion-sickness, and at last I lost the battle over the side. No other whales were to be had on the surface, though we encountered many birds including the huge wandering albatross- a seagull, only ten times bigger.

By the time we got to shore I was exhausted and still queasy, so despite the sunny day I had to nap. A four hour nap it was, and then we went out again to explore the seal colonies.

Earlier the tide had been in and the limestone shelf covered by water, the seals sunning themselves on outcrops close to shore, now the water and the seals with it had moved out off of the limestone shelf, and the people moved in. Understandably, though stories of being able to walk right up to the seals abounded, the seals would rather not be disturbed by tourist or humans in general, and had chosen instead to be content with rocks we couldn’t get to. We contented ourselves with tide pools instead, bothering other animals – craps, small crayfish, sea-stars. The shelf we stood on was perfect material for fossil making, and I kept glancing down, hopeful to sea an ancient shell as well as the occupied ones in the water. No such luck.

While driving back we finally had a chance to come close to a seal. Two of them, lone brown spots on slightly less brown rocks, allowed us to get within 15 feet of them. They didn’t move much but they had their eye on us. As sure as I was that I could outrun even the most aggressive of seals on land, I didn’t want to test the theory. Big dogs is what they look like, but they are wild and free and are not commanded by nature to let man pet them. Fair enough.

Day Fifteen: Driving Again

We started off again to cloudy weather though the clouds were high. We stopped for lunch at a small café with a petrol station, and the place was packed. Tourism has picked up in the last ten years, far faster than facilities can keep up with, and it was evident here—the gas pump lines ferocious, the bathroom waste baskets overflowing with used paper towels, the food counter barely able to keep up with demand. It’s a beautiful place and part of its beauty is its wildness, you can’t-get-there-from-here-edness, but that is changing, will have to change, in order to preserve the resources, to keep the tourists coming, to be viable for the next generation of New Zealanders.

We’re getting keener on the accent here though our hostess this morning, rattling on about local politics, at one point said that “that particular viewpoint is quite reefishing.” Keen on what kind of fishing she meant, I asked her to repeat what she’d just said – it turned out that she meant “refreshing”. What is odd is that although everyone around us can tell we’re not from here they can’t place us right away. One Australian placed us in Ireland. He was disappointed to learn that we were from the U.S. On the subject of the election both Europeans and Kiwis get cagey until they learn what side we’re on. No foreigner we’ve met so far has been sorry to hear that we voted for the opposition, and the conversation following is always enlightening. Some people on holiday from Britain informed us that they had read the 9/11 report cover to cover, and also followed the U.S. election quite closely. I ashamedly asked how their election system worked, and it turns out that although 95% of the British population disapproves of Tony Blair, he is in power because the majority party is the Labour Party and they follow line and step with their hallowed leader. The British people then have an excuse for Tony Baloney, while we Americans can lay the blame solely on ourselves for electing to a second term the stupidest man and the most evil administration we’ve had in the office for years. Enough on that.

We ran into another traffic jam today, this one of cows. Loud cows. Maybe fifty of them, noisy, grumpy, annoyed with the sudden immovable blue object they were forced to go around, inspecting the tires as maybe good for lunch.

We passed by many rivers, most of them blue. A hot pool stop was right on the road so we took advantage—10 dollars each for the outdoor rock pools. The smell of sulfur invited me right in and we spent a pleasurable 20 minutes soaking in the soft and smelly water. Right behind us though was a busload of tourists, so we made our getaway and headed on.

The mountains are suddenly forested, and we fantasized that perhaps the logging and the plantations stopped when they finally realized that they were losing native forest and a beautiful landscape, but no, our host tells us that the reason no plantations exist is simply because it is too wet down here. Wet indeed – it’s been raining constantly on us while at the same time blue sky exists on the horizon, tantalizingly out of reach. It’s all podocarp forests down here, what they call pine, red, black, brown white, also known as rimu, matai, kahikatia, totara. There are others. We will be climbing the Franz Josef Glacier tomorrow, and afterwards Lionel is hoping to visit old growth podocarps. If we’re lucky, our host will come with us—coincidentally (or perhaps not, since Lionel did plan this trip after all) he worked for the DoC as a forest ecologist for many years.

Day Sixteen: Because We Can

The glacier lies within a valley and convenient on top of a fault line, which makes it unique in several ways. Even though the glacier continues to grind down the rock, the mountains themselves are growing, and therefore the system has reached a compromise. Secondly the glacier is only 250 meters above sea level, which makes it accessible and also contributes to its high rate of movement. It can move up to one meter a day.

So after being properly suited up, we approached the edge of what looked like a giant pile of dirty snow and began the long hike up. Our guide, Nicky, had a pick axe and began to crack at the ice every few feet, either creating new ice steps or re-carving old ones, melting constantly under our feet. We were wearing ice talons so our feet would grip nicely on the ice, but the way was still treacherous, and wet – cold water was washing over our feet. In no time at all we’d climbed impossibly high, standing on meters and meters of hard glacial ice. At times it was white and flaky like snow, other times it was hard, smooth, and blue, other times it was dirty with silt and stones stuck in it, sometimes it was all of these. We could fill our water bottles with glacial melt from runoff dripping down through channels or out of nowhere through holes in the walls. On either side of the glacier was the steep valley, stone cliffs.

On our trip with us were two Israeli men. Nice men, they could not for the life of them remember how to put on their ice talons. We had to remove them for the siltier areas, and each time we would wait while they put them on wrong. Perhaps the problem was language, but I think it was more likely that they’d never seen ice before in their lives.

We passed through narrow crevasses of blue ice towering high above our heads, squeezed through small openings and passed over endless guide-made stairs, over metal bridges laid across the deeper dangerous crevasses, over and up and down until we’d reached an area where the glacier had belched up its insides. The coverage was silt and stones and huge rocks, and it was hard to tell that we were on a glacier at all for the moment, though it went on endlesslessly in front of us.

Glaciation, though the process makes sense in a vague and mind boggling way, can’t be expressed without seeing it in action – here the river was entirely glacier created, the valley as well. Huge boulders were trapped here and there in the ice and it was clear that eventually they would either be ground up into smaller pieces or carried miles away from where they began. The silt on top was being rolled down and in and out, flowing with the glacier but also being periodically swallowed by the ice as it melts and refreezes over itself. The definition of a glacier is deceptively simple. That is any system which receives more snowfall then it can melt in a year. This snow packs down with the weight of the snow on top of it, and thus becomes compressed and very very hard. Here at Franz Josef the reaction to a year’s snowfall takes about seven years, they receive about 40 meters of snow on average. This is an extremely active glacier as glaciers go. Currently it is advancing but over a century it has retreated. Global warming? Yes. Due to humans? They won’t say. The last big advance of this glacier was in 1890’s, the Little Ice Age.

We passed over the silted area and continued on to the second ice fall. Fewer guide made steps and no guide ropes awaited us here, at one point we crossed an area narrower than our feet, a cliff of ice ascending above us and a sheer drop below us. Nicky did it though, and she did it confidently, so we took deep breaths and followed suit. They don’t call it adventure tourism for no reason. We do it because we can. At the end of height of the trip, the Israeli’s took out their flag and posed. We’d conquered this mountain, and we’d be the only ones to do so. Tomorrow, or the next day our path will change, perhaps become impassable, perhaps the whole pass would slide down into itself and reform the glacier. It’s moving underneath our feet; we’re surfing a big glacial wave.

The trip down took less than an hour, and as all good trips go, the experience has already faded into dream. Did we really climb a glacier? We have the pictures to prove it. Also glacial melt water and some rocks. They’re glacier rocks. No, really.

Day Seventeen: Trek to Queenstown

After some meandering about (touring the glacier front once more, visiting a few shops, glancing at Fox Glacier (the same type) and eating lunch, we began to meander towards Queenstown. The landscape was all podocarp forest, where it hadn’t been deforested for cows and sheep and timber. We briefly touched the sea for a time and then headed back inland, then back out to sea. New Zealand does not have straight roads. We stopped at a beach which was half sand and half pebbles, and spotted one dolphin surfing the waves. They come close to shore to feed on the stirred up supply. Hector’s dolphins, endemic to New Zealand, are less than a meter in length, thus the smallest dolphin on earth. We moved on towards Haast and its pass, a World Heritage site, though the sign implied that the highway itself, not the pass, was the subject of the designation. The roads are certainly unique, but I wouldn’t call them heritage material. I’d call them windy and hilly but nothing else. To their credit the NZ-ers tend to allow the landscape to show them the road, rather than our method of blasting and filling our way across a landscape—the result being that the land opens itself up to us instead of being pillaged, there are no high carved walls of sliced rock blocking our views, there are places left untouched even with the passage of vehicles every day. We also drive slower, which means there more to see; as long as you’re not the driver.

Haast Pass got into steep cliffs and snow capped jagged mountains, with a blue blue river running down through the pebbled valley. Blue is not a color I associate with rivers, but the glacial till mixes it up that way—they are all blue, or gray when muddy. The day was beautiful, no rain or fog anywhere, and the world sparkled at us. We drove through miles of this. This was no postage stamp of a park with one feature preserved untouched and the rest given to alpine ski resorts and high rise hotels. This entire area had no people, no houses, nothing but itself, and the road, which in itself invited very little stopping, being narrow with no shoulder. Every once in a while we’d find a pull over to survey the surroundings and sample the sun. I dug out my polarized glasses to seek out trout in the blue water, but had no luck here. The blue water was murky and fast, the sun reflected off the top and obscured whatever lay beneath.

Just past the top of the pass was a 20 minute hike to a place called Blue Pools. The podocarp had given way abruptly to beech, and we walked through prime beech forest down to the river. A suspension bridge hung over the river and we crossed it, swinging in the wind and with the weight of our crossing. The pools were certainly blue. A crystal clear chlorine blue, but this was natural, and also held trout. Huge, beautiful brown trout, swirling in the eddies of the pool, ignoring the angler who was standing almost on top of them trying to fool them into biting. Fish can see a long way. There would be no fish for him today. Three, four, five of them I saw, and going back, one in the rapids below the suspension bridge. I am going fishing in a few days time, and though I can successfully tame the fishing bug in favor of more productive things, I have it now.

After Haast the beech abruptly ended and the desert alpine plants, called tussock land, began. Steep hills of nothing but yellow green short grass punctuated by stiff clumps of spiky leaf spread everywhere. We passed through one settlement of people where they had planted lupine – maybe tired of nothing but yellow-green landscape, and then nothing. We hadn’t passed through this before and it was nearing the end of our journey, the whole thing took on an alien tinge. The sun was below the tall hills and we were cast in shadow. We must be on another planet because this is too odd, too desolate, too quiet. We finally burst out of this to get a view of distant Queenstown though, a reassuring sight. Down below was farmland, looking like a toy train set, miniature grass and roads and trees, minus the train.

So here we are. This is our final stop except for Te Anau, where we will spend the day kayaking Doubtful Sound. I am writing this on the morning of Day Eighteen. We’re in a resort town and there is the constant sound of people; a garbage truck, traffic on the road behind me, a dog barking, occasional talking. There is also a great estuary in front of me, and though it is a beautiful day in the middle of this resort town, there are no boats out in the bay. None at all. There was one fishing boat a little earlier. There are just not enough people here to spoil this place for everybody. Not yet. And so it seems they can have their resort and eat it too.

Day Eighteen: Queenstown Adrenaline

If you’ve dreamt about it, you can do it in Queenstown. Also you can do things you probably never dreamt of. You can sky dive or take a jet boat tour on the lake. You can bungy jump ( New Zealand and Queenstown in particular claim to have invented the sport. As far I’m concerned they can keep it). You can paddle boat on bizarre Tonka Toy beasts with huge wheels as flotation. You can ride a hydroplane or paraglide and whatnot. Lionel and I ourselves are starting a new adventure tourism exploit: Bungy Fishing. You dive from a great height with a net in your hand and your feet securely fasten to the big elastic. Then you plunge into the water and quickly scoop up fish. Then you bounce back up to the deck of the high skyline gourmet restaurant, and our award winning chef will cook your hard earned catch up for you. T-shirt slogans would read “I scooped the big one in Queenstown.”

Fortunately you can do tamer things like walk along the boardwalk and watch street performers, or pay two dollars to enter an underwater observatory to see the trout. Trout (rainbow, brown), eel and scaup ducks stick close to this side of the wharf in great numbers. Not because the lake is chock full of fish, though I believe it is, but because humans will pay a dollar to feed them. These are huge, beautiful fish. Those anglers among us who watch our prey through glass long to go above and cast a line. The smarter ones of us know that these fish will never take – not as long as the humans pay to feed the fish. But they are beautiful to watch and we can all dream of fish and lures for later.

For the second day in a row the sun was shining. We browsed and wandered quite a long while, then finally headed back to our rental house to pack up—again. This time we were going to Te Anau to kayak Doubtful Sound. The Sound was two hours away and we had to check in at 7:30, so we had decided to book one night away.

Is it possible to be sceneried out? Again the rolling plains gave way to sharp jagged mountains, the lake was untouched by boat or beach house or people in general, sheep were more prevalent than people, sleepy towns passed by in a blink of an eye. Te Anau, another town kept alive solely by tourism, is a compact bustle of accommodation, restaurants and internet access, but just beyond it is country side. It seems so easy here to get away, a few seconds out of any town centre and you are no longer in urbania or even suburbania, but in the wilderness with a road running through it. Perhaps it is only made possible because most of New Zealand is owned by the Crown, or perhaps there just aren’t enough NZers to matter, or maybe they’ve figured something out. Somehow the development within these towns though says otherwise. If they weren’t so hemmed in they’d be sprawling out like ants all over the sides of the steepest mountains. Perhaps someday they’ll burst the banks anyway, but hopefully they’ll lie sleepily content in their small, adrenaline packed communities.

Day Nineteen: Less people, more fun.

Belaboring a point—people are a nuisance. So when there are no people, no evidence of humans anywhere except those immediately surrounding you (in this case, twelve human souls running waves on a motorboat on Lake Manopouri on our way to kayak Doubtful Sound) you are able to appreciate the earth for what it is; just earth, not plots of land to be tilled, not spots for trophy homes, not development opportunities or real estate options. It’s just land, doing its thing, being its own kind of human. You can be on this illusion for a long time, as long as it takes to cross Lake Manopouri, about 14 kilometers of it, until you reach the hydropower plant at the outlet. This lake is still natural, its surroundings still wild, but it’s still being managed, deliberately careful this time, but managed nonetheless, by humans.

The road to Doubtful Sound, which can only be gotten to in the manner we just did, was built to bring in the equipment for the hydropower plant. It’s a good solid road but it is also narrow, unpaved and windy, so the 22 kilometers it takes to get to the sound take another hour. The highest point is 600 some meters. Doubtful Sound is actually not a Sound but a Fiord, a piece of land carved out by glaciers melting into the sea. It is brackish sea water, fairly deep, with steep rocky inclines on either side reaching high up into the sky. We still weren’t quite to the kayaks yet, we had to get on yet another boat. This boat would take us a fair ways out before launching us from there. Any other way would take two or three days, and it was only a day trip. Finally we were suited up—swim suits, polypropylene shirts, wet suits, paddle jacket, spray skirt—and launched. They were double kayaks, with the back seat controlling the rudder. Since Mom had never kayaked before and neither had Leoni, a woman from Holland, Lionel and I split up to take the back seats (and the brunt of the paddling).

Not too long after we were launched we saw our first wildlife of the day. Dead eel. The wildlife sightings could only get better after that.

I spotted what looked at first to be a dolphin’s dorsal fin (bottlenosed dolphins apparently venture this far into the fiord after good fish), but turned out to be a seal. At first it seemed he was merely swimming, but it turned out he was doing some serious fishing. He’d swim on his back for a while, eyes under to spot the fish, circle about, then dive under. Soon after this a spray of small fish would litter the water, surprisingly many of them, startled by the seal. He did this about six or seven times, oblivious to us or the boats, coming so close he was in danger of hitting his head on one of them. We finally saw him catch one fish and then he dove under and disappeared.

The waves grew choppy for a while as we crossed over to an arm of the fiord, then was at our backs and we could, if we did it right, surf the waves. With the wind pushing us along there was hardly any need to paddle. Soon the wind left us entirely and we were back in the calm clear water. We paddled close to the rock cliffs, under tree branches, over fallen trees. We took in another seal, this one slightly perturbed that we were staring at him while he was trying to sleep. We paddled down a fresh water stream a ways and saw the fresh water floating on top of the salt, a few centimeters deep. We spent the day immersed in the water, the cliffs, the sky.

We were the only kayaks out on this fiord, and we saw only two other boats. No houses or hotels or camp grounds broke the landscape. Milford Sound, another fiord, is the commercial tourist destination. Buses and buses we saw going the other way, tons of buses. We were going to visit Milford but I’m glad we didn’t. Leave Milford to the people who like people in their sound. I’ll take the hard to get to, the small crowd, the no toilet or Starbucks version. Every time.

Day Twenty: Blustery Day

We all got up at 6:00 am to watch Aileen fish. Everyone decided to tag along on the fishing expedition today, so we trundled ourselves out to Stu Tripney’s car. He is originally from Scotland, married a New Zealander, and has been here ever since. He kept up a lively string of conversation all the way. Despite the two days of beautiful calm weather, a front was beginning to move in, and he warned us the wind would be too powerful to cast in. He was aiming to find a sheltered area. He told us about his adventures in employment, including gold mine tours and more recently, Lord of the Rings tours. That one didn’t last too long because, the “Ringons, we called them; they knew Gandalf’s shoe size and what he had for lunch between shoots. I just couldn’t go that far.” He’d ask for tours with no Ringons, but sometimes they were hard to spot until it was too late.

We found the river soon after, and I was itching to fish, but the bad news was that snow melt had made the river a silty cloudy blue. Too cloudy to spot fish, and since we were spot fishing, that was paramount. The second spot proved no better, and so the fishing expedition was called off.

Suddenly free for the day, we wandered Queenstown a bit, doing the last minute tourist things we had to do, taking in the bustling summer’s day, bought food to have a home cooked meal a little later on. We were relishing an early night in with food which didn’t come with a check. Lionel and I then took off to find the road to the base of the Remarkables’ ski area.

The road was gravel, steep and narrow, and we were soon soaring high above Queenstown on an alpine track with the wind (definitely too strong to cast in) whipping about us. The Remarkables themselves are just that; peaked, black, steep, and beautiful. They do get snow in the winter which is why Queenstown can claim to be a ski resort, though according to Stu they must airbrush the rocks out of the photos. It rarely snows below in the valley, though this year they got more than normal snow fall—a fact that helped muddy the water for my earlier expedition. It also makes real estate here a hot commodity.

We came back down from the heights and had our dinner, relaxed and enjoyed our second to last night by watching a taped rugby match. We tried to figure out the rules but as far as we could tell it was basically organized chaos with occasional headlocking mash sessions. I’m not even sure who won the game (test matches, rather) in the end.

Day Twenty One: Born to Fish.

Luckily I had booked Stu Tripney for two days and not just one. Today was still windy but not as severe, so we headed out towards Glenorchy, which coincidentally was the area that both my mother and Lionel would travel in today. Lionel to the Routeburn trail to take in old growth beech, Mom to a Dart River tour. I to brown trout.

Trout (rainbows and browns) were introduced to New Zealand 150 years ago, and they took the to climate. Supposedly there were few native fish, the whitebait (known as the native trout) and eel among them. Now with strict conservation the browns and rainbows are wild as they come. Browns are notoriously hard to catch, and I was up for a challenge, having successfully conquered the Newfoundland Atlantic Salmon. We would be spot fishing which means exactly that—spotting a fish and fishing to him. Otherwise known as stalking.

By the time we got there the wind had already picked up. We were fishing a small spring creek which ran to the Reese River and the water was crystal clear. Dark in places and bright blue in others, with moss and bulbous limestone beds. Spotting fish is an art form. First you might look for the shadow created by the fish. Then you try to determine if the fish you spot is moving, or if its really a rockfish. If its moving, then you try to find out if he’s feeding. A feeding fish will actively move about, rising up sometimes to nose the surface or even crest it, or side to side. These fish have incredibly good eyesight, and they are very easily spooked. We watched one fish follow a dragonfly flying a meter above the river’s surface. In such clear water, though the fish were clearly there for the taking, they would often spot you before you spotted them. A clearly defined fish was most likely a spooked fish—so you’d go for the ill defined shadows.

A few practice casts and we were off. Stu quickly showed me a technique for cutting into the wind. He would have to point out fish most of the time before I could spot them myself. Polarized glasses help but still the fish can be elusive to the untrained eye.

I was using a strike indicator which has always confused me, so I missed the first two strikes I had. Finally I hooked a small but decent trout, and soon after that found the quick wind lesson combined with the strike indicator lesson worked well to produce a nice 20 inch brown.

After that the wind picked up, and I was getting tired, losing the ability to cast in the wind. I frustrated myself for a while, then finally reverted to my old bad habits. We were at the mouth of the lake with the wind slightly behind me so I got away with my self-taught side arm cast. While stripping in line I caught my third trout of the day, and then suddenly the day was over.

Day Twenty Two: Last Days

A last look out to the harbor and the ducks below, a last drive on the wrong side of the road, a last look at the Remarkables, lingering glances we mean to memorize in their place. Summer has finally arrived in New Zealand, another beautiful sunny day, and we’re leaving. Even as we wait in the lobby of the Queenstown Airport we’re wondering how we got here and why we have to leave; Lionel is scanning the help wanted ads and actually finds a suitable job; a DoC job running the conservation program on Stewart Island. He doesn’t reject the job so much as it rejects him—no way, he assumes, would New Zealanders want ugly Americans coming in to stay. So we get on the plane and head towards Auckland. At the gate there is hardly any security and the atmosphere is relaxed.

We get to Auckland and go through Customs as easily as we went through on the other side, we go through more security, and its then that we realize that we’re going back. There in the International Terminal are wide open gates ready to accept passengers of all types, except for the flights to the U.S. which are cordoned off with high walls and manned security. We have to go through yet another metal detector and X-ray, the third time our bags have been scanned today, and then crowded into a small gate area with no where near enough seats to suit a 747’s capacity. We can’t go get another cappuccino while we wait or use the restrooms without leaving security and having to do it all again, so we wait, but the departure is late because of all the added security. When we get on the plane the first officer informs us that because we are going to the U/S. we are not allowed to congregate for long periods in the aisle. This is the image we put out to the rest of the world; Home of the Brave and the Paranoid.

I never thought it before but perhaps our young country is old before its time, bogged down with history and past decisions we can’t escape from anymore, like the electoral college or the isolationist mentality which shielded us so well when we were younger. We enjoyed New Zealand so much not just because of the scenery or the newness of it all, but because we got the sense that it hadn’t happened yet, that they were still deciding which path they wanted to take while our country has already taken it, for better for worse. They are younger than us by only a few years but it might make the difference. They might be the best country to survive.

Our country is huge and populous and already has a long historic tradition and legend, but we’re also selfish and too large and too far away from everyone else. We can’t distinguish between Australia and New Zealand nor do most of us even have passports—an essential item in any other country in the world. Most of us speak nothing but English. We don’t travel out of the States because we don’t have to, and maybe because we’re scared to, we George’s People. We don’t provide brochures of the Grand Canyon in 42 languages, nor do we cater to international tourists, we turn them away at the border, scared of the information they might bring. Liberty no longer welcomes her sick, her tired and poor, she stands lonely at the mouth of the river guarding ferociously the illusion that we are a gentle, welcoming, free people. But we’re not free. New Zealanders are free. I may never go back. But I’ll always remember there are other places in the world, tucked away near the edges of the earth, which will be themselves for quite sometime, and that I could live there, tucked away on a mountain top, choosing my lifestyle without it choosing me.

The sun will be up in a few hours, and we’ve crossed the International Date Line back into the Saturday we began the day in. We’re sitting with people who speak like we do, but they sound funny still. We’ll be in L.A. before we started in New Zealand, and perhaps by the time we board our next flight to Boston we’ll adjust to the time difference and the surroundings enough to remember that we live on American soil. We’ll be in California for about five hours, a state the size of New Zealand, with four times the amount of people. It comes around again full circle.

tags: classic larc  new zealand  world travelers