the great affair

blogger, you've been good to me...

2010-01-01T18:30:00.001-08:00

To the scores of readers I have no doubt I've accumulated since posting on this site (ha...), I'd like to announce I'm making a switch over to Wordpress, which offers me a bit more flexibility and freedom in the design of my site. From now on, you can check out any new posts at the following address:

www.candaceroserardon.wordpress.com

See ya there!

a christmas of logistics.

2009-12-30T19:12:00.000-08:00

“Christmas in New Zealand is less about snow and sleigh bells and more about sun, sand and barbecues in the backyard.” – NZhistory.net.nz

It was to be my first summer Christmas. That was about all I knew of how the day would look not even a week before “the show” or “the big dance,” as they call it in Elf. Christmas may be the biggest commercial holiday, even the biggest economic stimulus for many countries as Wikipedia says, but for me and this year in New Zealand, I wanted to let the day take on a shape of its own, instead of racing to fill it with my own plans. My cynical brother would most likely say this was due only to having no plans to begin with, but all I knew was I wanted to be wearing flip-flops (or jandals, in Kiwi-speak) when I sat down to Christmas dinner.

I’d made the decision to stay in New Zealand over the holidays sometime back in July, a decision which makes it pretty awkward to hear songs like “I’ll be home for Christmas” and even more difficult to “break the news” to your family. But after talking with several of my friends, it came down to the fact that at least once in your life, you need a summer Christmas – and in what better form than a Kiwi Christmas? Most of all, I was simply just curious – what does Christmas look like without the possibility of snow and the roaring log fires and the hot chocolate?

I didn’t know where I’d spend it, though – while in Christchurch, I thought I’d return there; in Queenstown, I told everyone I’d come back for a few weeks over the holidays. If you can’t notice a pattern, I was only slightly influenced by where I was at the current moment. But ultimately, I chose neither – some might say I chose the option that made the least amount of sense: starting over in a new city only four weeks before Christmas. It was such an area of concern for people, as well – “But what are you going to do for Christmas?” became the resounding question. In a way, though, it was a challenge. How fast could I build a life in Wellington and find myself a home for Christmas day?

It certainly hadn’t felt like Christmas in the weeks leading up to it. I didn’t have to take part in the mad rush of getting all my shopping done, having bought and wrapped all my presents back in October to avoid exorbitant express shipping rates. And because I was staying out of the shops, I was inadvertently dodging most of the barrage of commercialism that so often accompanies Christmas. I wasn’t forced to endure Christmas music, tacky decorations, and seasonal specials. My world stayed fairly balanced in its Technicolor spectrum, the frequency of reds and greens remaining at relatively normal levels.

Indeed, the chief reminder in my life that it was the Christmas season was the number of offices that chose to have their work Christmas parties at my restaurant. There, they’d swap Secret Santa gifts and break open their crackers, wearing the paper crowns for about ten minutes until the novelty wore off and they’d fall crumpled to the floor where they’d lay with all the other rubbish from the crackers until the group left and we could swoop in to deal with the aftermath.

Another sign Christmas was on its way was the row of pohutukawa trees in full bloom outside the restaurant. In all my ignorance, I hadn’t realized the full extent of the red bloom’s significance. All I knew was the flower could be seen on anything from shopping bags from the gift shop of Te Papa Museum of New Zealand to the posters that hung in the front windows of banks wishing everyone a Merry Christmas. It wasn’t until talking with a customer one day about if and when summer would arrive in Wellington that she said while pointing to the trees outside, “Well, the Maori say if the pohutukawa flower early, it’ll be a good summer.” Now I had a name for them, a name that led me to a story on a New Zealand history website that gave me the final piece of the puzzle – the pohutukawa is actually considered New Zealand’s Christmas tree. No wonder their importance!

It’s a connection that extends back to the 1800s, when early writers spoke of the crimson flowers as “antipodean holly” – antipodean meaning “to refer to the land on the opposite side of the world compared to the speaker” – which, when you think about it, couldn’t be more fitting of a word for the perspective I myself am writing from.

From the Pohutukawa trees, I went on to read of the history of Christmas in New Zealand itself, the first recorded Christmas dinner being that which Abel Tasman and his crew held on board their ships in 1642. In 1769, James Cook again celebrated from the decks of his ship, the Endeavor, with a “goose pye” prepared from gannets. But it wasn’t until 1814 that the first proper Christmas service was led (and by proper, I mean only one actually held on New Zealand soil) by Samuel Marsden at Oihi Bay in the Bay of Islands. Kiwi Christmas traditions have come a long way since then, but I found the more I read and researched, the more disconnected I felt from the day itself and how I’d hoped it would look.

* * *

$16.50

That was how much I’d estimated Christmas of 2009 to cost me. Shortly after I arrived in Wellington, the church I began attending with my flatmates offered those without a place to go for Christmas to spend it with one of their families. This seemed like a perfect option and I left that first Sunday happy to have finally gotten Christmas sorted. After beginning work at Vercelli’s and getting to know my English friend Aimee, we’d also talked about getting together later on in the day, perhaps heading to the beach – weather permitting, of course.

But a couple weeks before Christmas, I met an American at the restaurant, a man named Tim who, while originally from Chicago, had lived in New Zealand with his family for the past seven years. Tim said he and his wife Teri were having people over for a barbecue on Christmas Day – some English friends, some Kiwi friends – and he invited me to join his family. I liked the idea of it, the concept of an international mix, everyone coming together. I liked it so much, in fact, that I decided to take him up on his offer and forego other plans.

A few days later, I was serving yet another large group at Vercelli’s, this one in celebration of a young woman’s graduation from university. I’d gotten a good sort of banter going with the graduate’s father, a Sri Lankan man named Patrick, when he asked if he could get my number. He said he had a “lovely American couple” he wanted me to meet, so I didn’t see why not.

And so it seemed the day was set. As Tim and Teri were hosting a late lunch in the afternoon, I decided I’d spend Christmas morning Skyping home with family before a quick trip to the beach at Oriental Bay, a twenty-minute walk from my flat. That night, I hoped to meet up with Aimee or even Javier from work, homeless travelers sticking together. But two nights before Christmas, I had a voicemail waiting for me when I finished work. It was from Patrick and although it took me a few seconds to remember exactly who he was, it clicked just as I listened to an invitation to his house for Christmas brunch so I could meet this ever-acclaimed “lovely American couple.”

Turns out, it was going to be quite the Christmas of logistics. I spent Christmas Eve on the Metlink website, sorting out which bus and train lines I needed – and more importantly, just when exactly they would be running. To get to Patrick’s flat in Berhampore, I’d need two different buses, one costing me $3, the other $1.50. I’d then need another $3 to go from Patrick’s to the train station, from where I’d catch a train out to the Hutt Valley to Tim’s house. The train was $4.50 each way, so I estimated in total needing the aforementioned $16.50. I counted it out in small change from my restaurant tips, bought two bottles of champagne to give to each family, and fell asleep with visions of sugarplums dancing in my head.

I awoke Christmas morning to a blue sky and couldn’t have been happier. I was dead and determined to have as close to a summer Christmas as possible. In my jandals and sundress (okay, and sweater…), I waited at the bus stop…and waited…and waited, until finally a bus arrived. “Here, have a pen,” the driver says, handing me a red pen with a Santa bobble head attached to the end and “GOWELLINGTON” written on the side. I was glad to see someone in the Christmas spirit at least.

But because my first bus had arrived so late, I got to the second bus stop only to see I’d missed the one I needed and would have to wait a good twenty minutes, making me over half an hour late when I only had an hour to spend at Patrick’s in the first place. Although I debated whether or not it was worth the trip, I knew I couldn’t pass up the opportunity. A taxi drove by and I made a rash decision. “398 Sydney Street,” I said quickly before I could regret veering from my public-transport schedule.

Wouldn’t you know it, though, I was the first guest to arrive. I sat with two of Patrick’s sisters in their lounge as his brother, sister-in-law, and daughter walked into the room. Each time, Patrick would say, “You remember Candace, don’t you? She was our waitress at Vercelli’s for Laura’s graduation.” I loved watching their bemused faces as they racked their brains, trying to place me. I, on the other hand, felt almost like a Victorian servant allowed a chance to mingle with the family.

Finally, though, the American couple walked through the door, and I don’t think anyone could have missed their arrival. In true tacky-American style, Kathy had on wide-legged red pants, a green cardigan sweater, and – the pièce de résistance – a white turtleneck with a colorful pattern of Christmas trees, jingle bells and presents repeated all over it. Mein gott! was all I could think. “And check these out,” she says, pulling up her pants to show off the Santa design on her socks. “I’ve had this shirt for about twenty years, but it only comes out once a year.” Her clarifying comment at the end only mildly restored my faith in her fashion sense. Her husband Mike wasn’t dressed quite as loudly, but had a voice to make up for it. “I’m wearing these shorts in the vain hope it will get warm enough, but the merino sweater is more practical.”

Old friends of the family, Mike and Cathy were busy catching up with everyone in the room until Patrick came over and said to them, “Candace is the lonely American I invited over today. She’s the waitress I was telling you both about.” “Well why didn’t you say something earlier!” Cathy exclaims all of a sudden. “I hadn’t even made the connection. Well Patrick certainly fell in love with you,” she says and I let out a little nervous laughter. We were able to chat for a few minutes, as I learned they’ve lived in New Zealand for over fifteen years now, until it was time for lunch.

Growing up, Christmas lunch always looked a lot like Thanksgiving in my house – a turkey, potatoes, veggies, carrot cake, etc. And even though last year was spent in the French Alps on my snow trip with the Kiwis, the barbecue we had wasn’t anything too outside the unexpected. This year, however, certainly took a hard left turn at normal. The Sri Lankan meal featured spicy lamb curry and rice that had been baked in coconut milk. As if having a summer Christmas wasn’t different enough!

From Patrick’s, I caught a bus back to the train station where I was pleased to learn all trains running on Christmas were free, more than making up for the eight dollars I’d spent on the taxi that morning. I settled into a seat on the train, pleased with my little Christmas adventure and happy to finally have the chance to see some of the suburbs surrounding Wellington. Lower and Upper Hutt are two well-known areas I’d heard of, but yet to visit. Tim was waiting for me as I walked out of the train station, sporting a teal-colored Hawaiian print shirt. Looks like Mike wasn’t the only one holding out for warm weather.

The afternoon was a quiet one. While Tim had made it sound like a large get-together, I myself made the total group count come to only nine people: Tim, his wife and two sons; Tim’s mother, visiting for the first time from Illinois; and two of Teri’s colleagues, Jill, from England, and Nikki, a Kiwi, and Nikki’s mother, Mary. Nikki, as one of the only Kiwis present, was officially put in charge of the barbecue, firing up chicken kebabs, sausages, and asparagus. Mary had equally done her Kiwi-part by preparing a delicious pavlova cake adorned with fresh strawberries. Finally, I was starting to see some of the advantages of Christmas in the Southern Hemisphere. But as amazing as the pavlova was, nothing got me more excited to see Tim’s mother bring out a Tupperware filled with chocolate chip cookies baked like only Americans know how to bake.

When we weren’t eating, we filled the afternoon with round after round of ping pong and darts, a little friendly competition in the air. As I went to say goodbye to everyone in order to catch a train back into central Wellington, I thanked Tim and Teri again, probably for the fifth time that day, for having me over. “Of course,” Tim says, “No one should have to be alone on Christmas.” It wasn’t the first time he’d said that, and all I wanted to say was, I wasn’t going to be alone! But I figured you’ve got to pick your battles, and defending my honor (and social life) wasn’t one worth fighting over on such a holiday.

After I got home from the full day of running around, I got on Skype again with my brother. As I told him about my day and how I was feeling slightly off, just a little out of sorts, he asked what was on the agenda for the rest of the night. I mentioned potential plans with friends from the restaurant or if those didn’t pan out, a movie perhaps, and as we said goodbye, he said almost flippantly, “Finish strong, sis.” You gotta love him.

* * *

$15.50

That’s what I spent in the end on Christmas transport, a dollar less than I’d expected. I smiled as I thought about it, how well it represented my Christmas as a whole. I hadn’t gone into the day expecting a Christmas like home. It was, after all, not my first one away from my family. I’d survived last year, and I fully expected to make it through this day without too strong a dose of nostalgia. But then again, it wasn’t the summer Christmas I’d been hoping for either. Friends in warmer areas of the country talked of going to the beach, and I think that’s what I’d envisioned. Things didn’t quite add up like I’d expected. I was hoping for more synergy, whereby the whole would be greater than sum of its the parts, whereby I could piece together a Christmas that was as good as home, just different. As grateful as I was for the kindness of strangers to welcome me into their homes on such a personal day, I look forward to spending next year’s with my family…and maybe seeing who we can open our doors to.

But in the end, I'm used to Christmas being quite the sedentary holiday, with extended family always coming to our house. Maybe the very effort of coordinating bus routes and train lines, travelling to new sections of the city and the suburbs, made this Christmas of logistics one to remember...

playing with fire.

2009-12-29T03:22:00.000-08:00

It was the end of a bad day at work. It doesn’t matter what got me to that point – a boss, a customer, the sales, or lack thereof. What matters is that I was upset and only slightly at the end of my patience and sanity.

The night, though, finally drew to a close and I began the walk home, following the waterfront and listening to the darkened waves as they lapped against the shore. To my left was Lambton Harbour, to my right was Frank Kitts Park, where during December the Telecom Tree stood seven stories high, lit by 37,000 lights with the possibility of 16 million different color combinations.

As I tried to let the layers of frustration fall away, something caught my eye – what seemed to be two orbs of fire spinning in the distance. With the tree disassembled, the park was yet again a dark, blank canvas against which the fire danced alone. My first thought was a juggler – the unicycling world championships are currently taking place in Wellington, so I had no idea what other circus-themed pursuits would cross my path – but as I ascended a set of stairs from water-level to street-level, I realized it was a fire twirler.

A woman stood in the middle of an empty expanse of grass, spinning a metal staff that was lit at both ends. She was talking to a man as she spun the staff in circles and figure eights, effortlessly exchanging hands. I quietly took a seat on a bench not far from them, not the first to do so. On a bench next to mine sat a boy of about four years old with whom I assumed to be his mother and grandmother. Although they were seated, the boy was perched on his mother’s shoulders, his arms around her neck.

The man the fire twirler was talking to then picked up a staff and asked if he could light his from hers. I had figured he was a beginner, there for a lesson, but soon he took up another staff. He walked a little ways off and stood with the two staffs crossed behind his back to form an X, the flames backlighting him like some adventure hero from a comic book.

“That looks really cool,” the woman says. He brings the staffs in front of him and I watch, mesmerized, as he twists them in impossible ways, impossibly fast. Never once do I hear a clink of metal from the staffs hitting each other. Occasionally, though, he does drop one, setting a small patch of grass on fire, but he quickly stamps it out with his foot. Once, he even sets fire to part of his sleeve, but that doesn’t seem to alarm him either as it’s quickly blown out. After a few seconds of the double-spinning, he then pauses, bringing the staffs above his head, forming yet another X. He places one foot in front of the other, arching his back and extending his arms into the night sky, the ends of the cross blazing. He’s no longer a cartoon superman but Vulcan, or perhaps Homer’s Hephaestus – minus the lameness, of course – an ancient god of fire, bending metal to his will.

“How does he do that?” The boys asks, as the man loops the staffs under his legs like an NBA pro with a basketball. I wonder the same.

At the same time, the woman has laid down her staff and picked up poi, a pair of chains with handles on one end and a wick on the other. She lights them and begins to create wide, fiery circles. I wish for my camera, to be able to leave the shutter open and watch how the long exposure allows designs to dance across the image. She swings the poi around her, over her head, so fast you can no longer distinguish between the two separate chains.

I think of the phrase “poetry in motion” and decide that this moment will forever come to mind when I hear those words again. A cop walks through the park and I send up a silent prayer that there isn’t some ordinance to prohibit this moment.

“Can we go have drinks now?” The little boy says. I remind myself I am theoretically eavesdropping and should thus refrain from laughing aloud with the two women.

“What kind of drink?” The grandmother says with a laugh.

“What would you like? A nice glass of sauvignon?” The mother asks.

“Yeah, for you! I’ll buy you a little bottle of wine.”

And then, like that, both fire dancers blow out their fire and walk towards their pile of bags and equipment. I sit for a few more moments, waiting to see if they’ll re-light their staffs and poi and resume their spinning, but they make no move to do so. I realize the magic has been extinguished with the fire, the moment barely lasting five minutes, and I am suddenly nothing more than an intruder, someone suspended in the middle of two conversations. I stand up and continue the walk home.

As I walked, I thought of an essay by Simon Winchester, titled “Ascension in the Moonlight.” Having just come from Antarctica, Winchester writes of an unexpected stay on Ascension Island, a volcanic island in the South Atlantic. Finding himself suddenly anxious to get home, he arranges to be dropped off on Ascension in order to catch an RAF flight back to London. For the short time he’s on the island, he’s hosted by the Anglican vicar, Paul Wilson, and his wife, Angela. That night, only a couple hours before Winchester is due to catch his flight, the Wilson’s take him to the beach to watch a host of Brazilian sea turtles lay their eggs – coincidentally witnessing a total lunar eclipse and a comet at the same time. Of this moment Winchester writes:

“And it was in that instant I realized something: that in this astonishing grand conjunction – of new friendship, of tropical warmth, of strawberries and cream and cool white wine, of white sand and sea swimming, and of Brazilian turtles, an eclipse of the moon and the rising of a comet – was perhaps the greatest wealth of experience that any one individual could ever know in one moment. I was at that instant blessed beyond belief, beyond all understanding.”

And so on the shore of Lambton Harbour, I myself grew immensely grateful for my own conjunction of sorts, perhaps not as grand as Winchester’s but one poignant on a personal level nonetheless. For in this year of getting to know New Zealand, so much is planned – from the cities I live in to the places I visit, from the activities I take part in to the festivals I attend. I plot writing schedules in my planner, keeping track of which blog needs to be posted by when and setting monthly quotas for myself if only to feel like I’m writing with some sort of consistency. I see myself worrying about finding work, only to grow tired with my jobs a few weeks after starting, as if I’ve lost perspective, as if I’ve forgotten to fix my gaze on the bigger picture.

So to unexpectedly stumble across two fire twirlers in the darkness of a still summer night – in a city where wind and warmth rarely go hand in hand – took on its own depth of meaning for me. The walk home wasn’t too long after all.

N.A.F.P.

2009-12-28T14:20:00.000-08:00

“It is enough to have to eat,” Marcello was saying late on Tuesday night. It was the end of a long day in a string of long days in the heart of the Christmas season. Being a higher-end Italian restaurant in the CBD (Central Business District) of Wellington with many of the tallest office buildings in walking distance, Vercelli’s often played host to group after group of work Christmas parties, even putting up with the chorus of pops that resound after everyone breaks their Christmas crackers, as if a dozen guns went off at once.

But on that particular Tuesday evening, Marcello and I were waiting on one final table to decide they were done for the evening. There always seems to be that one table, doesn’t there, who fail to note the entire restaurant emptied out half an hour ago and they are the only remaining souls standing between us and our beds. Having long ago finished our closing tasks, tables wiped and reset, cutlery replenished, floors swept, we stood around the till up front and talked – rather, I listened as Marcello talked, of what’s really important in life. Food.

It’d been a disheartening first couple of days in Wellington, at least when it came to the job search. I loved my new flat, I loved the city itself, I just wanted employment. When I arrived, I’d brought with me a couple of contacts (what I thought were hopeful) – my friend Adam in Christchurch had worked for radio stations in Wellington a few years back and told me he had the name of a woman who could give me some promo work. The temp agency I worked for in Christchurch has an office in the capital and I hoped I could get a name of someone to contact from the manager I knew. Even Braden in Queenstown told me the owner of Wattie’s knew of a bar in Wellington where I could most likely find work.

Then, the night before Elise and I boarded the ferry in Picton, I visited a well-known New Zealand backpacker’s website and while there wasn’t much listed under Wellington besides a call for dancers with a “vibrant personality” at the Mermaid Gentlemen’s Club (no thank you!), I did see an advert for a housekeeper/general reception-help at a seemingly-charming guesthouse not far from my flat. I sent off an email, only to get a call from them a few hours later, asking me to come in and interview the next day. Talk about efficient.

Thus I arrived in Wellington on the hopeful side, arrived with my arsenal of contacts and my housekeeping interview. While the thought of essentially being a maid cracked me up, I also found it perfect in theory – I wanted to do something different for my last few months in New Zealand and I’d certainly found it. It all sounded too much like Barbara Ehrenreich in Nickel and Dimed not to get me excited about it.

But the interview was nowhere near a success in my mind. In person, the guesthouse itself seemed outdated, not charming. I would use the word ‘vintage’ only not to imply fashionably out of fashion, but just seriously in need of an update – the perfect candidate for a makeover show on TV. After the tour, I sat down with John, the owner, and instead of an interview, what I got was a two-part lecture. The first half focused on how he fills his days – buying Chinese porcelain on online auction websites. The second covered his opinions on American tourists, how they come to New Zealand thinking they’re better than everyone else, and how he proceeds to take advantage of their arrogant ignorance. Well, it may be needless to say, but I didn’t leave the guesthouse particularly excited by the possibility of working there. John said he’d call; I felt like saying, don’t bother.

So I made phone calls, sent out texts and emails, to “my people” on the South Island…and heard nothing. It was incredibly frustrating, because I knew I was just another CV in the pile for all the temp agencies I applied to – I knew I needed the edge of having a name. But, just as I learned with the weather and the lack of seasonal work in Nelson, you can’t change what’s out of your control. I would just have to move on and find something else.

So, like I said, I decided to go the temp agency route. Many of the office-oriented roles were advertised as paying $18-20 an hour – a near fortune compared to Queenstown standards. But I was quickly told I didn’t have enough experience, two years as a PA being the requirement. Apparently having a university degree and six months experience isn’t enough for them; apparently experience is just a number on paper. I suppose, though, that’s just the way they have to do things. And even when I wasn’t immediately rejected from more hospitality-oriented agencies, I was told I wouldn’t hear from them for a week or two. Yikes.

Finally, I looked through the list of restaurants and numbers I’d written down and saw one I hadn’t contacted yet – Vercelli’s. I’d found them on TradeMe, a popular New Zealand classifieds-website, but couldn’t remember why I’d decided not to call. So I did – and kicked myself for not doing it earlier. The process couldn’t have been easier – I called, I was asked to drop by with my CV, I showed up for my trial the next day, and by the second night, was working my first official shift. Just like that, I had a job…and without a single connection to help me out. I was pretty chuffed – it was the first job I’d gotten in New Zealand on my own.

The funny thing about Vercelli’s, though, is that they make you work split shifts. My Mexican restaurant in Christchurch was only open in the evening so it wasn’t something I had to deal with, but as a restaurant open for both lunch and dinner, Vercelli’s requires most servers to work both shifts. That means you start at either 10am or noon, work the lunch shift, have a break in the afternoon, start back at five or six, work the dinner shift, and finish up somewhere in the vicinity of ten or eleven at night. While not so weird of a concept, what it meant for me was that it eliminated the possibility of having a second job. After my time in Queenstown, having two jobs – and their paychecks – was something I had gotten used to. Would I be able to save enough from just one job?

But after talking to several temp agencies, it became clear I had secured the right job for the season in which I was working. One hospitality temp agent told me he could give me steady work for a couple weeks, but that after Christmas, it would slow down dramatically as work holiday functions were over. A temp agent I spoke with about reception work told me the same thing – that most offices would be shutting down until the end of January. While I had envisioned my primary job in Wellington being in an office – it is the capital, after all – it looked like that wasn’t going to be the case. But with both agents saying, “Don’t give up your job at Vercelli’s,” it gave me a little more peace about the work I had found. It paid well, it could give me fifty to sixty hours a week, and being in hospitality, it would keep me busy over the holiday season.

There wasn’t much I didn’t love about Vercelli’s at first. The location alone is worth showing up for every day – situated on Customhouse Quay, it is prime waterfront real estate, with the ceiling-to-floor, wall-to-wall glass windows looking out onto Lambton Harbor, right where the interislander ferries pull in from their journey across Cook Strait. On sunny days, we open up the three glass doors, so it’s as if we’re practically working outside. If I’m serving an outdoors table and the sun is particularly strong, I always joke with the customers, telling them to take especially long with their orders so I can maximize my time in the sun.

And the food – oh, the food. At Wattie’s, we could eat any of the pizzas that were leftover at the end of the night. But that was just it – they were leftover, often having sat under the pizza warmer for a good two hours. Not exactly, shall we say, fine dining. At my restaurant in Christchurch, there was a staff menu, but even a burrito still cost around six bucks – nowhere near cheap enough for me to make a habit of eating there every day. Which is a shame, really, because I never got to really know the menu. When customers would ask what my favorite dish was, they were largely given a made-up answer – I’d tell them, based off seeing and running the food out 24/7, my favorite dish would most likely be the fajitas or the chicken enchiladas. I have no doubt they could read right through my lack of genuine enthusiasm.

Never have I worked at a restaurant where the staff are fed…for free…and the food is nothing short of amazing. And it’s prepared by the same chefs who spend all day cooking for every customer. Chicken risotto, spaghetti carbonera, penne alla arrabiata, rigatoni portofino – and those are just the pasta dishes, the veritable tip of the iceberg, not including the pizzas. And we essentially have free rein of the menu. Initially, I’d sort of kept my choices simple, assuming that they’d want staff to pick easy, inexpensive dishes, and while we certainly aren’t given steaks, we are encouraged to experiment and explore. After my third time of asking for linguini lupara – an especially delicious dish featuring spicy Italian sausage – Marcello asked, “Why, Candy? Why you always choose lupara? I make you rigatoni amatrciana, it’s my favorite.” If you insist, Marcello…

And after our meal is finished, we can usually ask for a freshly made coffee from the bar – I’ve gotten pretty used to having a steaming moccachino every afternoon. Nothing like sitting down in the sun after a manic lunch shift with a gourmet Italian dish and coffee. It almost makes the crazy split-shift schedule worth it…almost. Because there’s definitely no way I’d be able to make anything remotely as appetizing to bring with me on my break. What I love most, though, about being fed on the job is that the chefs actually seem to want to cook for us. You’d think after cooking for an entire restaurant for about four hours straight, they’d have had enough, but without fail, right before we’re due to go on break, they come out of the kitchen and ask what we’d like. They take pride in what they make, as you can tell from the way their eyes go straight to your plate once you’ve finished and are carrying it back to the kitchen. They want to see an empty plate. It is, of course, not that hard to do my part – I make sure they always see what they’re looking for.

And what I’ve found is that by slowly sampling my way through our menu, I’ve actually gotten to know what we have to offer. When customers ask for recommendations, I’m able to give them – honestly, which is a welcome change. And on the other side of the coin, if someone orders the spaghetti bolognese, for instance, I know first-hand I’ve had better spag-bol and I usually try to lead them elsewhere. If someone asks if the pizzas are of a shareable size, I say, “If you’re hungry, you can definitely take on one by yourself – and I speak from personal experience.” It’s a nice change.

But, as fantastic as the free food has been, what intrigued me most at first was the management of Vercelli’s. The menu describes it as a “family-owned restaurant,” and they aren’t lying. The two main chefs are brothers, Marcello and Bruno. Their sister, Leila, helps out in the kitchen, and their wives, Teresa and Bianca, do a bit of everything on the floor – taking orders, running food, making coffees. Leila’s daughter, Adriana, works in the bar, and Marcello and Bruno’s cousin, Geovanni, is the pizza and dessert chef. But it doesn’t end there – Vercelli’s is actually a chain with about ten different restaurants all over the country. There are four in Auckland alone, and the first one was started there in 1980 by Marcello’s uncle. They all began working in the Auckland ones until coming to Wellington five months ago to open a new branch. It took me a while to realize just how connected they all were to each other – just when I thought I had it all figured out, I’d find myself exclaiming, “Wait – she’s your mother?!”

The whole family is originally from Macedonia, a country of about two million people directly north of Greece. I didn’t know much about this relatively new republic until starting at Vercelli’s, but Marcello filled me in on how the country came into existence as one of the successor states from the former Yugoslavia in 1991. While most of Marcello’s immediate family has permanently moved to New Zealand, I talked to Bruno’s wife, Bianca, one day about Macedonia. “Do you miss it?” I asked her. “Of course,” she said without a second’s hesitation, “It’s home.” And just like the entire Brazilian community at Premier Taste in Queenstown spoke in Portuguese, the Macedonian contingency at Vercelli’s speak only in Macedonian to each other, often leaving us wondering what’s being said. I haven’t picked up much, but I did learn “fallah” is thanks, and I love hearing them laugh every time I choose to use it.

But, even with the sea views and the Italian dishes and learning about yet another country, the honeymoon was soon over. One week in and we were right in the thick of the holiday season – when it wasn’t unusual to have several large groups in at once, parties of ten, fifteen, twenty, all at the same time, all the time. It also wasn’t unusual to spend a solid twelve hours without leaving the restaurant once. And while the idea of working with a family was one I enjoyed at first, I soon realized there was a difference between working with a family and working with your family. In Queenstown, I had a family. Every night I walked into Wattie’s, Braden greeted me with a “Hey gorgeous” and a kiss on the cheek. I went to work feeling like I was a part of something. I was thanked every night for my hard work and made to feel like I was valued. Things weren’t that easy at Vercelli’s – working with a flesh-and-blood family opened up everything that comes with such – the frustrations, the emotions, the stress.

When Marcello and Teresa announced to everyone they were expecting a child, we were all thrilled for them, as you would be. When I congratulated Teresa myself, she smiled. “Marcello and me, we be married for three and a half year, and no baby yet.” This was obviously a big deal for them. None of the Macedonians could stop smiling, least of all sixteen-year old Adriana, who was quite literally beaming from the bar, an irrepressible smile on her face. But then, not even a month later, after a particularly hectic lunch service, Marcello left abruptly. I assumed it was normal sibling bickering between him and Bruno, until their sister Leila rushed by towards the toilets in tears, Adriana behind her, saying quietly, “No baby, no baby.” We never quite got the full story, but one can only assume a miscarriage. Being in such close contact with a family means me and the other servers often find ourselves with one foot through doors into private worlds; we’re privy to their personal lives in a way that often makes us feel uncomfortable and I think in such a situation, it becomes difficult to discern between what is personal and what is business.

The job also hasn’t opened up the social circle I was somewhat hoping for. A social life was just another perk of the job at Wattie’s – not only were all my colleagues young backpackers like myself, eager for a new friend, but everyone was always making plans for their nights off. There was no escaping their texts, as well, when plans were made – which, granted, could be frustrating when all you want is a night in, but at least there was always something going on. Vercelli’s has been a bit different – while I’ve gotten to know one English girl well, there isn’t an infinite possibility of social pursuits. And, as a friend from home pointed out, because we’re perceived to offer quite a fine dining experience, we usually miss the backpacker crowd. If anyone young does come, they’re usually with their parents or on a date – not the ideal situation to get to know someone. And definitely no cute boys – even the fact that every server is female aside, it’s not like a fancy Italian restaurant is really the venue of choice for a guys’ night out.

But while my horizon of romantic interests has diminished considerably since leaving Queenstown, a new, slightly more intriguing circle has opened up – the world of networking. If the fact that Vercelli’s is fine dining has lessened my chances of meeting my next date, who it has brought me into contact with are incredibly accomplished people. What’s more, as much as I enjoy talking with them, they seem to get a kick out of their young American waitress as well. My little black book of travel – typically used to store the numbers of potential landlords and employers – is growing fatter by the second from the number of business cards I’m given every day. CEOs, university professors, television announcers, rugby players, government officials, artists – I’m forever amazed at the caliber of people I’m fortunate enough to rub shoulders with every day. I love connecting with them, getting a little banter going, telling them how I’ll be getting my master’s next year and hearing about their lives and travels.

Moreover, I’m amazed by their kindness, by their willingness to hand over their card and telling me to stay in touch. So far, I’ve been invited to stay at homes in Australia, offered a caravan to borrow in northern Scotland, and asked to come work for a travel agency in Wellington. I told the last group they had no idea how much they were tempting me. With each new person I meet, with each new card I tuck away in my apron pocket, its like watching a web grow – watching the way in which I grow across the world and my connections grow with me. Vercelli’s is certainly a job of connections, and that’s something I didn’t expect.

As cool as meeting the owner of a fruit farm in Hawke’s Bay is, though, what I’ve been most grateful for at Vercelli’s is feeling like the job has given me my life back. No more 4am finishes, no more walking home as the morning paper is being delivered. I feel like myself again and what I love even more has been having time to read and write again. I never joined the library in Queenstown because they charged a $40 bond fee for anyone who had lived in town for less than six months (obviously a product of the number of tourists who pass through). But I was able to sign up in Wellington no questions asked and was soon back to reading a book or two a week, checking out well-known and respected travel writers whose work I aspire to emulate. And the writing schedule itself has regained some sense of normalcy, not just once a week on my one full day off. I’m able to get some done every day in Wellington; writing’s back to being a part of my routine, not a luxury, and I know that can only mean good things for this project.

So it’s those kinds of things I have to keep in mind on days when I’m growing restless with the job, feeling low, like I just can’t take it anymore. My English friend, Aimee, is a big help. So is Javier, the Argentinean dish boy who’s patient enough to let me practice my Spanish with him. He makes me laugh and laughter goes a long way when you’re stressed. I went back in the kitchen one night, my arms filled with dishes, and he just looks at me from his post at the sink. “This is one of the major moments of my life. In my dreams of Argentina, I dreamt of this,” he says to me in Spanish, spreading his arms out over the miniature skyline that’s been built from stack after stack of dirty dishes. His sarcasm – el sarcasmo – keeps me going. That, and a small piece of wisdom I got from a customer one day. When I brought a gentleman his steak, he hadn’t realized it came with a creamy brandy-pepper sauce. I apologized profusely – as I always do – and offered to bring him a new one. “No, no, no, don’t worry about it. N.A.F.P.” Slightly confused, I asked him to explain. “Not a flipping problem.”

Great attitude, eh? So from now on, when things are out of hand or out of my control, I find myself repeating it, often enunciating each letter slowly, like the anger management technique of taking a deep breath and counting to ten.

N.A.F.P. N.A.F.P.

N. A. F. P.

squanto, stuffing, and smuggler's rum.

2009-12-26T04:00:00.000-08:00

As with many holidays abroad, I was tempted to let this year’s Thanksgiving pass unnoticed, just another day of the week. I also thought about buying some sort of pre-roasted chicken from the supermarket, a box of stuffing mix, and cooking a faux-Thanksgiving dinner for my new flatmates in Wellington. I was, after all, new to the city come the last week in November, so it could have potentially been a good way to get to know the flat. But that was it precisely – I was new and I wanted to celebrate Thanksgiving, if I celebrated it at all, with people who at least knew who Squanto was.

So I went where I usually go when in search of, well, anything – Google. Every aspect of the summer I spent in Boston was determined by the world’s largest search engine (incidentally, did you know their annual revenue exceeds $22 billion?) – my internship, my apartment, my church, even daytrips outside the city. “How did you hear about/find us?” I was asked by a number of people. “Google,” I would promptly reply. This year, though, I remembered how the Thanksgiving service I attended in London had been put on by the American Expat Society. I figured there must be something similar here, some New Zealand equivalent to the organization that I could connect with.

Well…there was, amazingly enough, the American Women’s Network in New Zealand. They were hosting a Thanksgiving dinner with a menu that I just couldn’t pass up:

Turkey and gravy

Mashed potatoes and stuffing

Creamed spinach with fried onions

Green bean casserole

Sweet potato casserole

White cheddar macaroni and cheese

Cranberry sauce

Tossed salad and bread rolls

Potluck dessert

Even my frugal self didn’t mind paying the non-member’s price of $35 for such a line-up of Thanksgiving dinner all-stars. It was exactly what I wanted – a taste of familiarity served in an adventure, spending my favorite holiday with strangers. Just what would the evening hold?

I didn’t want to be too on-time, certainly not early – nothing like a new girl showing up early to scream desperate. I left my flat at what I considered to be a little late – and as the stop I needed was at the end of the line, I figured I’d definitely be running behind schedule by the time I arrived. But wouldn’t you know it, the bus dropped me off at 5:29pm, the dinner scheduled for 5:30pm. So I took my time walking the three minutes from the bus stop to the Pines, a function hall set at the edge of a cliff with an incredible view of Houghton Bay. The sun was just beginning to dip a little, the dark blue waves dancing in the buttery, dusky light. It may have been different but it was definitely the most beautiful setting in which I’ve ever spent Thanksgiving.

I walked into the Pines center only to find myself one of about five people there, including the president of the group who was checking everyone in and, more importantly, taking their payment. I was directed to table #1, which I assumed would prove to be a prime spot come time to line up and go through the buffet. I wasn’t alone for long before a slightly overweight man with a Kiwi accent sat down. He was, of course, not who I was exactly expecting to meet first at an American Women’s Network function (being neither American nor female). I wasn’t sure if I was being rude or nosy or just stating the obvious when I asked him, “So, uh, what brings you here, Ross?” Apparently he knew Zelicia, the president, and she invited him along.

When the next two guys sat down, one of whom was saying, “This doesn’t feel like Thanksgiving at all. I’m wearing short sleeves and there’s no football on TV,” I was pleased to see this time they were mildly attractive and younger-looking Americans. I began to think that maybe the night wouldn’t be too bad after all. I hadn’t known what to expect, but I don’t think “fun” had really been on the list. The general sort of questions were asked, state of origin, length of time in New Zealand, job, etc. When I asked the two new guys what they did, they answered, “We work for Weta.” I, in all my inglorious ignorance, wasn’t sure if this was short for something, some kind of code, or just a mysterious government organization, but from the way another woman looked at me, I should’ve known instantly. “Lord of the Rings?” she says with an implied ‘duh.’ As it turns out, Weta is Weta Digital, the visual effects production company who can claim none other than Peter Jackson as one of its founders.

Alex and Frank both work for Weta and I was immediately intrigued. Their specialty is lighting and they’d just finished up work on Avatar. When I asked what else they’d been involved in, the lists they both rattled off were the coolest resumes I’d ever heard. While mine lists nothing but your usual retail and hospitality posts, their work experiences come from the movies they’ve worked on. My CV says restaurant, supermarket, bar…Theirs says Madagascar, Harry Potter, and The Day After Tomorrow. You as jealous as I was?

As the conversation went on, though, we realized several tables had already started filing through the buffet line. So much for table #1 going first. “What if they don’t replenish the buffet?” Alex worries aloud, growing concerned. “We’re not in America, you know.” A woman at our table tells us Zelicia had to give the staff at the Pines most of the recipes as they’d never heard of many of the dishes. It became clear the quality of the food might be another area of concern. We obviously wouldn’t be having our momma’s cooking this year. And just when our stomachs were on the verge of collapse, our time in the line arrived – as if ordered according to some Biblical “first-shall-be-last” principle, table #1 was the last to go up. This wouldn’t have been an issue, save that there was no stuffing left by the time I went through. I tried not to let it ruin my day and stocked up instead on dark turkey meat and more cold macaroni and cheese.

Frank finished first and as we marveled at how fast his plate had disappeared, Alex says, “He’s loud, jolly, and he eats a lot – he’s the perfect American.” Zelicia finally sat down with us as well, everyone finally checked in and in place. She didn’t look too happy, though. “They’ve run out of turkey,” she says. She may be from Virginia, but she had the look and demeanor of a native New Yorker. “I told them 80 adults and there’s only 72 of us. I don’t get it.”

“Well…did you tell them we’re American?” Alex asks, my hero of the day, because it’s lines like his that make the night for me. It’s lines like his – making fun of the very things we love most about our collective homeland – that I think I knew subconsciously why I wanted to be around other Americans on Thanksgiving, not my Kiwi flatmates or any other randoms. It’s one thing to spend Christmas with friends from other places, but Thanksgiving – being such a culture-specific holiday – should be spent with Americans. That being said, my mother spent Thanksgiving this year in Bangkok with an American family we’re old friends with, who in turn invited twenty or so friends to dinner from all over the world. I suppose I myself was just in need of a good ‘ole dose of Americana – of playing up the stereotypes and putting away a serious amount of turkey.

After the dinner had finished, Alex and Frank invited me over to their place for a few drinks from where we picked up their South African housemate Brian, also a Weta nerd, and headed into town. We ended up in a place called Motel, one of those bars you have to know exists in order to go there. It’s tucked away on an alley that shoots off a side street off Courteney Place, the main street where bars are located. Only a small square sign reading “Motel” hangs above the doorway – not out of your league, just out of the way. We sat around a circular leather booth, sipping vodka martinis and smuggler’s rum concoctions, and munching on popcorn – yes, popcorn, which the bar serves free by the bowl-full – and I thought o myself, this is the last place I expected to end up on Thanksgiving, a reason enough alone to celebrate the day and give thanks for all the crazy new places this year has taken me.

Every Thanksgiving, I’m used to the typical post-gluttony location being passed out on the couch in front of the television, not some swanky downtown cocktail bar. But, I suppose, there’s a first time for everything….

a tale of two cities.

2009-12-24T22:27:00.000-08:00

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…and it was raining as we woke up in Nelson early Sunday morning – our first day of rain since we left Christchurch. We darted across the street from our hostel to Elise’s car, loading up quickly and hitting the road. I’d told Joe, my kayak partner, about the incredible luck Elise and I had been having with the weather thus far – nothing but sunshine all along the way. He’d called us the Sun Queens. “Sun Queens no more,” I tell Elise as the first raindrops hit the windshield. “No, it’s just the South Island crying that we’re leaving,” she says. Of course.

An hour and a half down the road, we arrive in Blenheim. The town is immediately underwhelming, and not just because of the overcast sky. It seems flat and one-dimensional, a simple place of 30,000 people with your usual smattering of shops and supermarkets. Although the I-Site is housed in the former railway station, itself a building bordering on “charming” with an exterior paint job of pastel yellows and greens, there’s not much else about the town to catch your eye. The focus is undoubtedly the wine and vineyards lying outside the city limits. In that way, Blenheim seems to function not as a destination itself, but a launch pad, a place from where to explore the surrounding Marlborough vineyards.

Indeed, Marlborough is often hailed as the top winemaking region in the country, however its history as such is not nearly as extensive as one would expect. For much of the twentieth century, wine was produced only on the North Island, with hardly any vineyards established south of Hawke’s Bay. In fact, even the 1966 Encyclopedia of New Zealand reads, “As recently as the 1960s, government viticulturalists advised that the South Island was unsuitable for growing wine grapes.” Well, this was obviously not the case, to which the number of internationally award-winning wines flowing out of the region today attest. Vineyards cover more than 3,000 hectares (almost 7,500 acres!) of the area, all because one brave Auckland wine company decided to “give it a go” down south in the 1970s. The widely-acclaimed Marlborough Wine Festival held annually in February is just one example of the culture that has grown up around the ever-increasing wine industry.

But in Blenheim, there’s not even a museum to explore, unless you count the Aviation Heritage Museum located two kilometers outside town. Weeks after visiting the town, I learn of the Marlborough Museum, but there was no mention of it in the information center itself. So what does that tell you about the area? If I were the region’s tourism coordinator, I begin to rant to Elise, I wouldn’t waste one second on plans to establish a wine museum in the heart of Blenheim central. Elise and I were interested in learning about the winemaking process itself, but couldn’t afford the wine tours that ranged from $75-$200. They should “bring the wine to the people,” I say – it seemed like an untapped opportunity for the town, in my opinion. Charge five or ten bucks for entry, maybe offer a free glass of wine – which itself could surely be subsidized by the surrounding vineyards.

Blasé Blenheim, I began to call it. It is the town of alliteration, after all, with its Seymour Squares and Pollard Parks. I wouldn’t normally be quite so judgmental of a place, but I was chastised by a good friend after my much-too-positive spin on Invercargill in July. I’d likened my visit to the southern town to a speed-dating session, and decided “Invers” was definitely worth a second date. A few days after posting my entry, however, I received the following email:

“I’m only writing to you to say that Invercargill, if it was a speed date, would be a balding, overweight, accountant. Not a young, successful inner city accountant, but a middle aged accountant who works on his own and struggles his way through life. He’s never had a date in 20 years. He saw the advert in the paper and has come alone, so the only thing he has in his favour is blind hope. Which is sad, as he doesn’t even realise how out of place he is amongst all these younger singles. He has slow, unintelligent and dull, cow’s eyes that would look at you briefly before returning their slow, dull gaze back at the table. His brow line would probably wrinkle to indicate a slow thought processing behind those cow like eyes. He would sweat a lot. Oh, and he would be wearing a plaid suit jacket – which HE thought was fashionable, and still hasn’t realised that it’s not. He would not know what to say, and when you tried to engage him in anything, he would start a sentence, decide it was too boring or not the right thing to say, and stop mid-sentence before returning his awkward gaze to the table. He MIGHT even spill his drink across the table and onto your lap. But he wouldn’t even react quickly to that; his slow cow-like eyes would track the drink across to you, and he might venture to say that he was sorry, before returning his gaze to the table. He wouldn’t have the urgency that can be endearing in many socially awkward people – in this man, there is already that sense of defeat and futility.

THAT IS INVERCARGILL!

You would go on a second date with THAT?”

In my desire to always speak well of New Zealand and its towns of varying sizes and quality, my aforementioned friend brought to my attention the fact that my reporting was beginning to grow a little lacking in the accuracy department. Could I honestly look someone in the eyes, he asked me, and tell them Invercargill was worth a visit? As any true Kiwi would say, fair enough. He was right. So when sparks failed to fly between Blenheim and myself, I just couldn’t write otherwise.

But that doesn’t mean I still can’t look for some redeeming quality in a town, wherever it may be, and where I found it in Blenheim was in the gardens and public spaces. We stopped first at Seymour Square, named in 1857 for Henry Seymour, one half of the land-owning partnership on which the town was founded. At once my spirits lifted. A grey clocktower as a WWI memorial, a fountain as WWII memorial, even a distinct green bench in memory of Princess Diana, complete with beds of poppies of all colors – all in a tidy park layout. It shifted Blenheim from “forgettable” to “okay” in my mind.

We almost gave Pollard Park a pass, but after Ines won a round of rock-paper-scissors to beat our indecision, we went…and were ultimately glad for it. Small towns need unique features, and this park featured a scented cottage garden designed for the visually impaired by a gift from a certain Myrtle Currie. It was an interesting request on Mrs. Currie’s part, one which I could appreciate and remember.

In the park, the rain started up again and we knew it was time to move on to Picton.

We’d barely driven twenty minutes when we came to Picton, which, just as quickly as Blenheim had bored me, rescued the Marlborough region for me. Pulling into town, we parked down by the aquarium along what’s known as the Foreshore, essentially the waterfront district. Therein lay the town’s instant attraction, despite having a population of not even 4,500. Whereas Blenheim is situated amidst acre after acre of rolling vineyard, not a thing to remark upon in its landscape, Picton is a harbor town, tucked among the misty folds of the Marlborough Sounds. It likes to call itself the “gateway to the South Island,” usually known best as the other end of the route by which the ferries carry passengers across the Cook Strait from Wellington.

Making our way to the I-Site in Picton (I’m assuming you’ve noted the pattern here; it’s Elise’s first stop in any new town), I see a miniature railway track and on the “engine” rides a white-haired woman in a bright orange vest, and behind her, parents with three small children tucked between them. It’s the kind of miniature train you often see in shopping malls during the Christmas season, circling around and around in a faux North Pole. As I bring my camera up, the volunteer waves with a big smile – wouldn’t you love that job, too? I walk over to the station, where a white sign reads Picton-by-Sea. Another says, “Train rides 20¢” and “Boat hire 20¢.” The track loops around vaguely in the shape of a kidney bean, encircling a small pond in which you can launch miniature wooden yachts.

The whole complex is run by the Picton Modellers Society, headed by Farquhar Wilson, a man I’m lucky enough to meet. He and two other women – all sporting the fashionable neon vest – are volunteers who open and run the park every Sunday afternoon, weather permitting. It’s been around for forty years, they tell me, although the track has changed significantly. “They tried to get rid of it about ten years back,” Farquhar says, looking up from the model engine he’s tinkering with, “But the town wouldn’t hear of it. I guess it’s here to stay.” There are two racks of yachts, all about a foot high, with minute cloth sails, in different colors and with different numbers painted on their sails. They only ask 20¢ per ride or rental but he says many give much more, enabling them to continue their operations and in turn, give back to the community themselves. “Last Christmas, we gave $3,000 to the Lions Club.”

I’ve only got $1.50 in my wallet, but I give it all to them to rent a yacht. I drop it in the water and Elise and I laugh as the wind catches its sails and sends it dipping far over to the right. This little park made the town for me – for all I could’ve cared, the rest of Picton could be worse than Blenheim and I would still leave starry-eyed and in love. I’m still such a kid at heart and places like this have such a magic about them to me. It’s that beautiful simplicity childhood is all about – finding joy in the little things, in little wooden yachts that sail around a shallow pond while a miniature locomotive makes it way through the park. “If you like them that much,” Farquhar says as I take a final photo of the yachts, “You can buy one for a hundred bucks.” Don’t tempt me, Farquhar, I just might.

I would’ve happily sailed my yacht all day – or at least until the complex closed – but I could see Elise was getting restless. On to affairs of a more grown-up nature – the Edwin Fox Maritime Museum, home to the world’s 9^th oldest ship. It’s a fact the museum touts but one that I’m wary to blindly believe, although it is yet another distinctive feature of Picton, something to set it apart. Inside the museum, adjacent to the dry dock in which the preserved ship now sits, a woman volunteer behind the desk talks with another man about the difficulty of predicting visitors to the museum. “Friday and Saturday were dead, but today’s been a good day. A real good day.” Unfortunately I didn’t contribute to the good day and pay the ten dollars to board the boat – which you can simply view outside on your own anyways.

The Edwin Fox, the oldest merchant sailing ship still afloat, needs a full-on wardrobe for the number of hats she wore during service. From India to England, from Australia to New Zealand, the history of her service reads like a résumé any ship at the time would be jealous of:

1853 = Built in Calcutta for the East India Company.

1854 = Recruited for service as a troop ship in the Crimean War, with even Florence Nightingale as a reputed passenger.

1856 = Chartered by British government to transport convicts to Australia.

1858 – 1872 = Carried a range of cargoes, including enough pale ale to India to earn the nickname “Booze Barge.”

1873 = Chartered by Shaw Savill Company to carry immigrants to New Zealand, with a total of 751 passengers over four voyages.

1880s = Refitted as a floating freezer hulk to service the burgeoning New Zealand sheep industry, as steam engines began to be developed.

The more I read of her history, the more the Edwin Fox began to remind me of some aging celebrity, a Madonna of sorts, determined not to be made redundant or irrelevant. Ever caught in a series of makeovers, forever changing industries and continents, I marveled at the variety of roles the ship filled and at how long she managed to stay in service. Of course, you couldn’t tell it today, looking at the ship as she rests in peace under a fairly humble structure of mostly corrugated metal, but at one point she had quite the illustrious career.

Not far from the Edwin Fox was the Picton Museum, where a darling old woman (this town seems to be full of them) greets us from the front desk. What begins as a conversation about how they only accept cash – because I don’t have it – turns into talking about a range of things. “I haven’t been to Virginia,” she tells me, “But I have been to Ohio, New York, and Nova Scotia.” She eventually lets us slip by her for a “quick peek” at the museum for free – “But don’t tell anyone I let you,” she whispers. This wasn’t her biggest favor to us, though, as the museum itself betrayed nothing too earth-shattering about the region, but she did pass on a brochure describing the Picton Foreshore Heritage Walk. The walk took us along the waterfront through the park with its classic Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck statues, to bronze plaques commemorating Captain Cook and various others of lesser prominence, and to old façades, railway stations, and war memorials. What there was to see along the way wasn’t any more impressive than what Blenheim has to offer, I just found the presentation of it more appealing. Picton has learned to promote itself, it’s a place you feel confident in visiting. I liked it immensely.

The next day, we boarded the Interislander Ferry, which takes about three and a half hours to cross the Cook Strait. As Elise and I whiled away the time with card games and meat pies from the café, I was reminded of other ferry crossings to Helsinki and Callais, where the boats seem more like multi-level cruise ships than passenger ferries. Within hours, our first glimpse of the North Island appears on the horizon. Although I spent my first weekend in New Zealand in Auckland, seeing the North Shore, Devonport and Piha Beach, my arrival to Wellington still feels like my maiden voyage, the North Island still very much Terra Incognita to me.

In the end, the last day of our trip “was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair…” It was Blenheim and it was Picton, two towns so close on the map, yet so different in personality.

you can't change the weather.

2009-12-23T02:29:00.000-08:00

The day began as usual, with nothing too taxing on the schedule. Having kayaked the Abel Tasman the day before, what remained for Elise and I to see of the national park was the coast itself. We couldn’t devote the whole day to the Abel Tasman Coastal Track, but we wanted to see at least some of it. There were several options before us, one of which included taking a water taxi up the coast and walking the entire way back, but we decided just to do a return loop up from the park’s entrance up to Apple Tree Bay and back.

Most of the track was level ground, thankfully, following the beach and weaving up the coast. As we walked, I found it as if we had stepped through a mirror and were now on the reverse side of an image, looking out on the bays and coastline we’d already kayaked along. While from the kayak, we’d looked from the water towards the tree-lined shore, from the track, we looked out from the forest onto the bays and water. I found the vegetation along the path familiar New Zealand territory, most especially the ferns, with their leaves arching iconically and the new fronds curling into the famous Maori symbol, koru. It didn’t feel like new ground, somewhere I hadn’t been before, which in turn lessened my curiosity to see what awaited us around the next bend.

When we reached Apple Tree Bay, there was a large group of sixty-somethings and their young guides sitting around having lunch. Before moving on, Elise and I sat on a few logs away from their general area and watched as two more couples in their group pulled up in kayaks. “Ahoy, mate!” they all yell out, every one of them holding up their fist in what looks like a “c” in sign language. I don’t quite get it, but one can never tell with large tour groups and the weird bonds they develop over their trip [I speak from experience.]

As we retraced our steps back towards the entrance, I looked out across a bay at what looked much like Tonga Island, well-known home to the seal colony we’d explored the day before. When we got back to the main building of the park, I checked the map only to find we’d seen Adele Island, Tonga being much more northern. In a way, though, it made sense to confuse the two – we found much of the park looked remarkably similar. The same forest, the same beaches and bays, the same minute orchids growing along the path. It affirmed our decision not to hike further. Not that it wasn’t beautiful, by any means – just that the sequence of scenery seemed to repeat itself and we couldn’t imagine there being anything too new or different in the parts we didn’t see. On to Nelson it was, where we planned to spend the night.

On the advice of Joe, our kayak guide-in-training, we took the Old Moutere Highway, a more inland route from Motueka to Nelson. Joe had said there would be farms and vineyards all along our path at which we could stop and enquire about seasonal work – undoubtedly our chief goal of the day. As much as I had been enjoying the week – the new little towns and the new experiences – I was also getting a little antsy, a little anxious, the way I always get when traveling before my next work experience. I’m not good at indefinite travel – I like my plans and our plan for the next week had always been seasonal work in the Marlborough area, which would give my savings account a much-needed, much anticipated boost.

About ten minutes down the highway, we came across an apple and kiwifruit stand run by Morrell Farms. As Elise pulled off the road, a woman walks around the stand with bags of fruit, restocking the baskets. This is looking promising, I tell myself. I get out of the car and ask her about a job. She tells me regretfully they’ve just filled all their positions last week – why does it always seem to work that way? And to worsen matters, she goes on to say she knows of no other farms in the area that are hiring. “Head back into town and go up Riwaka way,” she says, essentially pointing us back to where we’d just come from – can anyone say déjà vu?

I’m not feeling it by this point. Elise, however, seems to be a bit more resilient than I when it comes to setbacks and promptly turns the car around. We stop at a packhouse and are greeted by a ghost town of a factory and an empty office to boot. I go poking around a cherry farm – nothing but a phone number posted on a sign. More vacated offices. Granted, it was Saturday, but I’d hoped to find more activity. At the very heart of the search, I felt like a useless door-to-door salesman, purveyor of plastic tupperware or knives or religion, cold-calling these farms and getting nowhere.

The day before, the owner of our hostel in Marahau had told us to contact PickNZ, a government-sponsored organization that coordinates seasonal work. I called both the Blenheim and Nelson offices, only to hear the same pre-recorded message, “There are no jobs available in this region…please leave your contact details if you’d like to be placed on the waiting list for work beginning in February.” February! More dead-ends.

Elise and I didn’t know what to do…largely because there was nothing we could do. There was no work. It’s the weather, they say, the grapes haven’t grown fast enough, and as we all know, you can’t fight the weather. Slowly we accepted the change of plans and decided to head to Picton the next day, and from there, to Wellington – a week early. As discouraged as I was – not just about the missed financial bonus, but simply the missed experience itself – I told myself this was yet again just another lesson in the flexibility that is so crucial whilst traveling. I can plan all I want, but in the end, it’s how I deal with changes in those plans that really matters.

We decided to stay in Nelson for the night, rather than driving straight through to Picton, and figured the place we’d stayed before, Shortbread Cottage, would be as good as any. We returned to it, however, only to find a whiteboard sign propped against the door reading, “Very sorry, no vacancies.” Two guys kicking a rugby ball around in the street ask, “What are you girls up to?” While I myself was fully prepared to ignore them, Elise replies, “Looking for a hostel.” You gotta love her honesty. “We have a bed we could rent you for a couple bucks.” I bet you do, buddy. From Shortbread to the Green Monkey – where do they get these names?” – where a sign informs us one dorm bed is available. At the Bug Backpackers, again – no vacancies.

We’re on a serious losing streak and like an army losing battle after battle but still in the war, morale is taking a nose-dive. A man at the Bug offers to call other hostels for us but asks us to tell him which ones. “I’ve called around for people before and end up finding a hostel they don’t even want to stay at. You tell me.” I couldn’t find a more direct way to say it to him – by the time we met him, my standards were out the window. I wanted a bed and I wanted it now.

He made a series of phone calls to other hostels in the area – bad luck after bad luck – until some place called the Paradiso says they’ve got two beds, but in different rooms. I was skeptical about the name – surely, with this many hostels all booked-up, a place truly like paradise wouldn’t have vacancies – but I was beyond caring. “Taken,” I say before I can hardly ask Elise. I felt as desperate as Mary and Joseph on Christmas Eve.

We arrived at Paradiso, however, only to discover a party hostel. It suddenly all makes sense. I remember a friend from my bar in Queenstown telling me, “If you want to party in Nelson, stay at the Paradiso.” How had I forgotten? The hostel itself was nice enough – an old converted villa, a big, well-equipped kitchen, lounge area, and even a sand volleyball court, hammocks and a pool. But the people – oh, the people – were everywhere. What should’ve been a large kitchen felt tiny with groups of people clustered all over. And this mass of bodies just happened to hail from several tour bus companies – which explains the inexplicable influx of people in the town and utter lack of vacancies.

Swinging their bottles of beer and gin around, the party-busers were the antithesis of who I wanted to be around at that moment. Mentally tired from the day of no’s, I wanted quiet; what I got was pulsing music blaring from the speakers. The description of Paradiso in our New Zealand hostel brochure read that it offered free soup every night. As we checked in, the woman handed us each a pack of chicken-flavored instant noodles. I could only laugh and ask myself what I really expected. In the morning, Elise told me she walked into the TV lounge to read only to find people – all still fully dressed in their clothes from the night before – passed out on the couches and floor. I think it’s needless to say we didn’t stick around the next day.

Sometimes, like in Collingwood at the Innlet, you connect with a hostel, actually feel at home, or at least yourself. But sometimes, a hostel is nothing more then a bed to sleep in for the night. And so you pack up in the morning and hold out hope for the next town.

It’s the backpacker’s way, really.

adventure time to kill.

2009-12-19T01:28:00.000-08:00

We woke up in Marahau holding our breath, just as we had before our whale watching and dolphin swimming trips – holding our breath for the sun. Would our long-awaited kayak trip, almost the peak activity planned for our trip around the northern areas of the South Island, get a green light and blue skies? Would the weather put it off? Or even if given the go-ahead, would we spend the day in the rain?

Such questions are vital when you’ve booked such activities in advance and, like us, don’t have an open-ended schedule, an endless amount of time to wait around until the sun comes back again. If a storm hadn’t allowed the whale-watching trip to proceed, we’d have been able to do nothing more than collect our 80% refund and move on, unlike some we’d spoken to who’d been waiting for a week in Kaikoura for good weather.

But – just like in Kaikoura – we had nothing to worry about. When we pulled back the curtains of our hostel dorm, sunlight flooded into the room. We hastened about, loading everything back into Elise’s car. Although we would be staying at the same hostel that night, we were changing rooms – from a twin share to a dorm room – so we essentially had to check out and in all over again that morning. Consequently, we were running a little late…although by late, I mean only too late in order to arrive early enough for Elise’s liking. In the car, Elise says, “I do not like delays.” Confused, I ask, “What’s delayed?” “We,” she says simply. Aah, I see. Despite the “delay,” however, we encountered no problems checking in at the head office of Abel Tasman Kayaks.

We had booked a place on the company’s “Seals and Remote Coasts” daytrip. From the moment I decided to kayak the Abel Tasman – another Kiwi rite of passage for backpackers – I’d been torn over which trip would be the best. Not only are there several kayak companies operating out of Marahau, but each of them offers their own variety of tour options – single day, two or three day, group or freedom rentals, even decisions based on which part of the park you are most interested in exploring. At first I’d been set on a three-day tour, the longest option any company seemed to offer. I wanted the full experience – the kayaking, the hiking, the camping, the sleeping under the Southern Cross…you get it. But as I looked more and more into it, I just couldn’t bring myself to part with the truly exorbitant amount of money the companies asked for. In the end, I followed Elise down the economical route and went daytrip-style.

At the office, there were various groups assembling for the day. Some were larger, ten or twenty people gathered around a row of kayaks on the ground; others seemed to have almost a 1:1, guide-to-customer ratio. A woman leads us to a picnic table with three guys sitting around it. One is our Kiwi guide, Darrell, or “Dazza” as he is affectionately known, whose long, sun-bleached blonde hair and sunscreen-covered white nose immediately stand out against his tanned skin, looking like nothing short of an Aussie beach bum surfer. He’s on the shorter side, but we’d later learn he has a personality to make up for it. He then introduced us to a Londoner named Joe, who was coming along for the ride, so to speak. As a guide-in-training, it was Joe’s last tour shadowing another guide before striking out on his own the following day. As if we’d bought a lotto scratchcard and won a free card, we’d be having a guide and a half for our group. And then there was Eric, the only other paying member in the group, a Dutchman with a voice like Andre the Giant from The Princess Bride and a girth of epic proportions. I grew only slightly concerned about the weight capacity vs. buoyancy of the kayaks.

We were given oversized yellow waterproof windbreakers to wear on the water taxi ride, a yellow life vest, and a choice between a red or yellow fleece vest. I didn’t want to break the trend of buttery goodness, so I went with the latter, piling on golden layer after golden layer. “That’s a fetching color on you,” one group’s guide says from the back of the boat. “Brings out the color of your eyes.” As everyone gives a little forced laugh, he sighs, “Yeah, I’ve been in this job for too long.”

Unlike some tours which consisted of all-day kayaking, our trip began with a water taxi ride from Marahau to Onetahuti Bay, from where we would then launch our kayaks and paddle around the surrounding bays and islands for a few hours before catching a taxi back from Bark Bay. While waiting for our kayaks to arrive on a different water taxi, Darrell leads us on a small hike through the woods to a freshwater pool and waterfall. It’s then that we become fully acquainted with just how experienced a guide we were lucky to have. Not only has he led kayak tours for over twenty years, but before then, he led walking and nature tours, giving him an incredible knowledge base of the area’s flora and fauna. It felt very similar to what it must be like hiking with a Boy Scout – we couldn’t walk two feet without Darrell pointing something out to us – leaves, trees, ferns, flowers, including foxglove and some of the world’s smallest orchids.

Back on the beach, our kayaks finally arrived and though I couldn’t wait to get started, we had a few things to take care of – first of which was mastering the art of the spray skirt. I’d kayaked a few times before, but nothing serious – here it seemed I had begun to tread on more holy ground. I was handed a spraydeck to put on – a kind of waterproof skirt – which I did by pulling it on and hoisting the overall straps over my shoulders. You then sit down in the kayak itself and awkwardly wrestle with the contraption, trying to hook the outer elasticized hem of the skirt – the string is called a Rand – over a rim that runs around your cockpit, the idea of this obviously being to trap any water from coming into the actual kayak. I’m fighting a losing battle when Joe comes over and offers to help. “If there’s a hell and I’m going there, it will involve these,” he says, and I laugh in agreement.

We practice what to do in the event of a capsize, sitting in our kayak with our hands in the air. On Darrell’s count of three, we then close our eyes and finger our way around the rim of the kayak until we find and pull the strap of our spraydeck, allowing us to swim out to the surface. We look a bit like fish out of water, like rowers on a rowing machine in the gym, not in their element. Darrell also tells us to paddle in time with our kayak partner. “It’s more efficient and it just looks cooler,” which I can imagine, rather than looking like some unproductive windmill with flailing arms everywhere.

But with emergency plans in place, spraydecks secured, sunscreen applied, it soon was time and there couldn’t have been a better day for it. “It’s an oil painting sky,” Darrell says, also remarking that it’s unusual for there to be calm seas on a warm day. The kind of heat we were kayaking in normally meant more wind. Against a sky that seemed almost too perfect, like the backdrop in a theater or photography studio, Joe talks about a new cloud scientists have just named, “astro” being all that I catch at the time, but one I look up later: Altocumulus Undulatus Asperatus. Yikes. Say that one five times fast. These two guys seem like a fount of endless facts, as if they’ve spent their lives as sponges, absorbing everything there is to know about the natural world. I find it fascinating and never know what they’ll say next.

We weave in and out along the coast, always keeping in mind the tide, popping in and out of places with names like Mosquito Bay or Sandfly Bay. Names that didn’t sound like too promising of a destination, but Darrell quickly explains the namesake, “Sandfly Jack fell in love with a schoolteacher, she moved away, and no one ever saw him again.” Fact or fiction, it’s up to you. In our first lagoon, we pass another group, one much larger than ours with over twenty kayakers and only a couple guides. “Hey mates” are exchanged as we float past. “How’s it going?” one guide asks. “Just another day in paradise,” Darrell replies. “It’s a tough life, but someone’s gotta live it.” Selfless guys, eh? We paddled away from the coast towards Tonga Island, where, according to brochures, we should have supposedly been able to view a seal colony. But – just like in Kaikoura – there was still no “colony” to be found, only a few seals sunbathing here or there. These seals were beginning to feel just as elusive as the penguins were on my trip around the southern half of the South Island.

I’d been disappointed at first to discover that we’d be using two-seater kayaks. I’d liked the idea of paddling on my own, like the great Paul Theroux himself, around the coast, but I soon became more than grateful for the extra pair of strong arms behind me. When deciding who would pair up with who, Darrell suggested “splitting up the testosterone,” so I went with Joe and Elise with Eric. Joe gave me a choice between front or back, but afraid of a freak brain lapse and pointing the rudder in the wrong direction at just the wrong time, I sat up front as navigator, which I found to be slightly less intimidating of a job description than One-In-Charge-Of-Rudder.

Although the lagoons and bays obviously presented no challenge and much of the sea seemed calm, the currents were tricky and strong, as were some sections where the bays fed back into the sea. The choppy waves seemed to have capsize written all over them. “Love the waves,” Joe tells me. Not the kind of explicit instruction I was looking for at the time, but it worked. On a whole, Joe and I worked well as a team. “Nice work, Navigator,” or “Good job, Cap’n,” he’d say, and I’d swell with pride just a little. Later in the morning, Joe asked me how my arms were doing. “Oh, they’re fine,” I lied, already feeling my upper arms burning. “Wow, you must be pretty fit, most people are already dying by this point,” he says. When I answer, “Ha, yeah, I can imagine,” there’s more reality than imagination going on.

While Joe was a good kayak partner, Darrell was everything a good guide should be. Informative and instructive, of course, but with a personality you’re not quick to forget. He was full of stories and forgivably tacky jokes. “What’s a pirate’s favorite letter?” he asks. Having a brother with a remarkably similar sense of humor, I’m familiar with the joke. “Come on, Dazza, we all know the answer to that one.” He keeps pestering me to answer, until finally I relent. “Arrrrgh,” I say, with the same level of embarrassment you often feel in middle school around your parents. “No, it’s the seeeeeea.” I can only laugh. In a quiet lagoon, Elise has me take her picture, carefully handing her camera over to me when our kayaks near each other. Photo taken, I pretend to throw it back with a smiling “Catch!” “With jokes like that you’d make a good guide,” Darrell says. Elise doesn’t look so pleased.

From the kayak, Joe pointed out significant features of the landscape as we paddled past. “Golden beaches, turquoise waters” seems to be the refrain of websites and guidebooks describing the area, but Joe tells me more, going on about the thick cover of trees that hides much of the coast – Rimu, Kanuka, Manuka, and the pesky pine not native to the soil of the area. Darrell catches pieces of our conversation, joining in with more details on the park itself. At 22,530 hectares – about 55,000 acres – Abel Tasman National Park is the smallest of New Zealand’s fourteen national parks. It was founded in 1942, the 300-year anniversary of the arrival of Abel Tasman himself to Golden Bay in 1642, by a woman named Pérrine Moncrieff.

Mrs. Moncrieff, originally from Britain, immigrated across the world in 1921 with her husband and two sons. She became very active in the world of conservation in New Zealand, with the NZ History Online website describing her as “this country’s foremost female conservationist for nearly fifty years.” Not only did she write the first field guide to New Zealand birds – which itself ran to five editions – but she also gave lectures, wrote papers, and along the way, bought land along the shores of the Tasman Bay. This land would then become part of the Abel Tasman National Park she fought so hard to found, earnest in her desire to protect it from the timber industry. As I read later of Pérrine and her work in New Zealand, I am more and more amazed at the amount of people that go into shaping a country. People whose time in the limelight has ended, merely names now with brief biographies and encyclopedia entries, but whose work was crucial in their time. It’s funny once you start digging around in a country’s history, the people that seem to come crawling out of the woodwork, as the saying goes. Where have they gone? Why have we forgotten them?

At midday, we pull our kayaks onto a beach across from Tonga Island and explore the rocks and caves while Darrell and Joe prepare lunch. There’s chicken sandwiches, hummus and veggie wraps, apple juice, and a delicious peanut-butter-crumble-sort-of-creation for dessert. We sit around on logs or on the sand after we finish, letting our arms rest. Darrell gets up and draws maps in the sand of New Zealand and its collision of geological plates, in answer to a question Eric had asked. “You know, Darrell’s written a book as well,” Joe offers up. “What was it called again, Daz?” A Dollar and a Meat Sandwich, we’re told, named after all he had when he set out to hitchhike to the West Coast years ago. It took him three days but he made it. The book itself is an autobiography of sorts, “the kind of thing you write for your kids to read one day,” Darrell says. He self-published it, only a thousand copies or so, but said he sold ten at one time once after telling a tour group about it. After lunch, he washes the dishes in a stream running behind the beach near the woods and soon, we’re in the water again, off to Bark Bay to be picked up by our water taxi.

Back on the boat at the end of the day – proud at having made it through the day without a capsize – we pull into a shallow bay filled with tractors waiting for the taxis to return like a flock of mothers gathered at the bus stop. Each of the tractors is hooked to a trailer, onto which the boats are loaded and then transported back to the kayak companies’ offices in town for storage each night. As we unload and gather our things together, another guide asks Darrell what we were able to see during the day. He tells him about Mosquito Bay, Tonga Island, and the lagoons we’d paddled around. “There’s heaps of bays to explore if you have some adventure time to kill,” he says, throwing our life vests in a pile.

Adventure time to kill. I couldn’t think of a better way to describe not only the day, but my very life itself.

north of the south.

2009-12-13T04:17:00.000-08:00

Cape Cod. Cape Town. Cape Canaveral. There are many of these famous headlands around the world, surrounded by water on three sides, but none have attracted more of my attention than Cape Farewell at the very top left corner of the South Island. Reluctant as we were to leave our unexpected haven at the Innlet, Elise and I knew it was time to continue even further than Collingwood to as far as the road would take us. It was time to venture to the very north of the south.

Something I quickly learned about New Zealand is the deception of distance. On paper, two locations may appear to be only a few kilometers apart – Kaiteriteri and Split Apple Rock, for instance, which I just visited. But what the maps will leave out – or fail to fully convey – is the nature of the roads themselves and the never-ending way in which they twist and turn. I’ve never seen roads wind quite like in New Zealand. Elise herself, as any true German might, bemoaned the Kiwi highways and longed for days gone by back home, speeding along the Autobahn at 180 km/hour.

Similarly, when Elise and I pulled into the I-Site at Cape Farewell, we were shocked to discover the amount of time it would take us to walk around the very base of the Cape, right where Farewell Spit begins to extend into the sea. Inside the I-Site, a vacuum was running, one of the kinds with straps to wear like a backpack. I was surprised to see the woman wearing the bulky contraption, with her dreadlocks tied up in a bunch and chunky high heels. She looked more like someone you’d find in a fair-trade coffeeshop, not an information center in a far-flung location. I’d more or less come to expect retirees in such places, the white-haired men and women whose lives have undoubtedly slowed down considerably, freeing their schedules up for such pursuits.

She pulled out a large map of the Golden Bay area and drew a circle, no bigger than a pin-head perhaps, near the start of Farewell Spit. “This will take you about an hour and a half to walk around,” she said, setting her pencil down. You sure couldn’t tell just by looking at the map. Immediately I started to mentally reshuffle my schedule for the day. Although we’d read public access allows you to walk four kilometers out onto the spit, clearly we’d be there all day if we tried to cover all the ground we could.

Farewell Spit, reaching out thirty or kilometers or so in a hook, the Tasman Sea on one side, Golden Bay to the other, is New Zealand’s longest sand spit, expected to grow two kilometers more in the next five years alone. The Department of Conservation has licensed some companies to lead nature “eco-tours” on the spit, shuttling their customers around in Bedford RL lorry trucks to visit the spit’s lighthouse and the gannet colony even further out, but we had neither the time nor money for such a trip. Instead, we started out on the right side of the spit, following along the northern shores of Golden Bay.

Many of the beaches we’d seen so far on our journey north had been of considerable width. Not so much the ones in the Abel Tasman National Park or Kaiteriteri, but most definitely at Tahuna Beach Reserve and places like Rabbit Island. A wide expanse of silvery, tan sand, the beach we walked on in Nelson stretched further from sand to shore than the streets of Invercargill. Not so along Farewell Spit, however. And the narrowness of the beach was only highlighted by the incoming tide, which pushed us closer and closer to the thickly vegetated shores of the bay. The sand was covered in seaweed, driftwood, plants of all sorts, and Canadian geese floated by the flock-load not far from the shoreline.

We walked for a while along the western side of the spit, picking our way through the vegetation, when we came to a path on our left. From what we could see up ahead, it didn’t seem like the landscape would be changing dramatically enough to warrant additional investigating, so we decided to take the path and see where it spit us out. What lay at the other end was a completely different world. The farther we followed the track, the more we could hear the sound of the ocean growing, the waves of the Tasman Sea flowing into each other on the shore. When at last the cover of trees gave way to waves of sea grass and sand dunes, we found ourselves standing on a veritable sandscape, where the wind had shaped the sand into the kind of patterns and designs you so often see captured in photography collections or calendars. And it was immediately clear just where the Maori name for the spit, Onetahua, had been derived from: “heaped up sand.”

While the side bordering the bay had failed to leave much of an impression, with its narrow beach, cluttered vegetation, and gentle, lapping waters, the eastern shores of the spit were immensely, beautifully desolate. To the right, the sand stretched far into the distance, the lighthouse not in sight; to the left, the dunes rose and fell into cliffs that seemed ages away, impossibly out of reach. For a while, the only footprints on the beach belonged to Elise and myself until a family of four, two young children and their parents, appeared on the horizon. Although at first we’d not intended to complete the entire circular track, we asked the family how much further back to the start. “A while,” they said, and we answered the same when they asked how far to the path towards the bay. We finally turned off the beach and started the walk back, much of it plowing straight through farmland. We said hello to cows and sheep, nervous to be taken for trespassers, and paused to admire wild day lilies in the forest sunlight. To pass from field to field, there was a series of stairs, not so much turnstiles, but wooden steps leading up and over fences. As we approached the final field, literally – and I repeat, literally – filled with sheep, I began to think, “Surely not…” But oh, yes, we walked straight through, the sheep clearing out of our way like the Red Sea for the Israelites.

Having fulfilled our self-imposed walking quota for the day, we decided to skip out on the hour-long hike to Cape Farewell and drive there ourselves. Although a piece of stunning scenery in its own right, the real purpose behind the whole excursion was the cape’s status as the northernmost point of the South Island. I was a bit disappointed by the lack of any major signage – certainly none with the charm of the yellow signs I’d seen at Slope Point – the point instead being marked by your conventional Department of Conservation-sponsored, yellow-lettering-on-dark-green-background sign. However, as I would soon be boarding a ferry in Picton, crossing Cook Strait, and trading my southern life for one on the North Island, it was much more of a fitting moment than the sign, or lack thereof, gave onto. To have been from Slope Point to Cape Farewell, from the very south to the very north, had a kind of symmetry about it, as if I’d come full circle and was truly ready to leave the South Island behind. Although there are places that remain to be seen – Mount Cook and Westport being two I most wish I’d been able to visit – one should always have something to come back to, right?

There was one place we knew couldn’t leave without visiting – Wharariki Beach. Dalia, manager of the Innlet, told us we couldn’t miss it: the magic of low tide, the way in which the water pulled back, uncovering caves and rocks to explore, and the tide pools that were created where young seal pups would play. All of which, of course, we did miss due to timing and the tides. The low tide of the day fell late in the afternoon, when we would unfortunately need to be back on the road towards the Abel Tasman. The beach was about a twenty-minute walk from the carpark, a path that once again wove across hilly green farmland, cows and sheep only just out of reach. In the words of AA, New Zealand’s version of AAA (makes sense, I suppose), Wharariki Beach “isn’t your traditional beach visit…it is a discoverer’s dream.” Just like on the spit, the beach was a succession of sand dunes, but what was most striking was the wind and the way it whipped the sand against you. The tide was only beginning to recede when we arrived, but it didn’t keep us from traversing the dunes, taking in the extraordinary view – steep cliffs, rock islands, and a coastline that extended in either direction far beyond what the eye could see.

Wind-battered and sand-stung, we drove away from Farewell Spit filled with that small sense of accomplishment of having gone the extra mile, of again having gone as far as the road would lead. As we passed through Collingwood a second time, I managed to drag Elise into the Collingwood Museum, a sign on the door welcoming us to “our tiny museum,” and trust me – they weren’t kidding. The museum was comprised of a single hall, perhaps twenty feet long, with windowed display cases on either side. A simple browse up one side and down the other took just minutes. Behind the windows lay an entire township’s Show-and-Tell, a collection of items and knick-knacks, many from the early 1900s and wartime eras. They’d been grouped together to represent areas such as technology and education, with a fair share of household objects and even a first-aid book for “horses, dogs, birds and cattle.” The display cards had almost all been written by hand, giving you the image of a devoted group of volunteers working on them with painstaking care.

Next door was the Aorere Centre, a cultural learning center only slightly larger in size but one that I found to be an excellent complement to the museum. While the museum had been a collection of objects, the center seemed to focus on ideas and broader themes – just the kind of balance I find crucial to learning about a place. You need to both show and tell, right? Apparently Nelson wasn’t the only city in New Zealand whose namesake was a well-known fighting Brit. As an exhibit read, “Collingwood’s name is symbolic of the sea’s importance to early European settlers and their descendents. Admiral Lord Collingwood was second-in-command at the Battle of Trafalgar (1805). After Admiral Lord Nelson was killed, Collingwood completed the British victory over Napoleon’s French/Spanish fleet. When gold fueled the growth of the little settlement of Gibbstown in the 1850s, and grandiose plans for a town were drawn up in London, the proposed town was to be named after Cuthbert Collingwood and the streets for ships, admirals, or nautical terms.” And so it seems that in New Zealand town-planning as in real-life battles, “Collingwood in Golden Bay was to stand alongside Nelson in Tasman Bay.”

With our tour d’ force of the museum and cultural center complete, there was only one spot left to see in Collingwood: the Rosy Glow Chocolate Shop. This landmark location had first been brought to our attention by Dalia as well, who drew an arrow on a map to it as if it was as prominent a feature as the Farewell Spit lighthouse. “And here we have Rosy Glow’s…” Because of the absurdity of her pointing it out to us, I was naturally drawn to visit. I was intrigued as to why such a well-known shop was on a back street, rather than the main “drag” of Collingwood. But Elise and I decided not to drive, as the weather was perfect and we’d been told it was only a five-minute walk. Five turned into ten, though, until it finally came into sight.

In true form, the house was pink, framed by a white picket fence and the to-be-expected large number of rose bushes. The shop, however, was surprisingly small, located on the side of the house, as if they’d run out of ideas for what to do with a spare bedroom. Office? No. Craft room? No. Chocolate shop/tourist trap? Yes. I like it, let’s do it. There wasn’t much to the shop, only two glass cases displaying its wares on lace doilies and a bell to “kindly ring for service.” I’d pictured a white-haired, aproned old woman perhaps wearing wire-rimmed glasses to appear – but the one who did was young, perhaps mid-30s and decidedly not nearly as sugary-sweet as her chocolate. I suppose I would have appreciated a bit more appreciation on her part, having made the effort to visit her shop. As we began the long walk back to town, eating our rapidly-melting goods – me a chocolate caramel bar, Elise a lime sour – a woman passes us and says, “Good chocolate, eh?” and I wonder just how many have been duped into paying for overpriced chocolate they didn’t really want in the first place.

With Collingwood behind, all that lay before us was the trip to Marahau, where we’d be departing from the next day for our kayak trip. On the way there, though, we pulled off the road to see Te Waikoropupu Springs, affectionately known as Pupu Springs. We weren’t the only ones there for Australiasa’s largest spring, sharing the carpark with several campervans. Although sixty other larger springs exist elsewhere, Pupu Springs is the world’s clearest freshwater spring – only the water under the subantarctic shelf is clearer. I’d never seen any kind of springs, though, so I was quite enthralled with watching the bubbles on the surface on the surface. But just when all you really want to do is don a mask and snorkel and go for a swim, signs pop up all along the path prohibiting anyone from entering the water. They always have to spoil your fun, don’t they?

To replenish our collection of mostly non-perishable food items with something a little more palatable for dinner, we stopped off in Takaka, population 1,200, en route to Marahau. It didn’t take long to realize there wasn’t much going on in the town. “There’s more shops than inhabitants,” Elise says in a having-landed-on-Mars kind of awe. I’d read in my guidebook about a café with a community notice board that is often helpful for finding seasonal vineyard or fruitpicking work, something Elise and I were both keen to do for a week or two after touring around. We’d figured the work would be easy to come by, but found just the opposite as soon as we arrived. Many of the hostels in Blenheim which claim to help in finding work had nothing to give us. The seasonal work offices we called greeted us with pre-recorded messages saying, “There is no available work,” or something similarly cheery. Throughout the saga, I thought of a guy named Ryan I’d met in Queenstown back in September who’d mentioned that he was moving up north to work on a friend’s vineyard. He gave me his details and told me to call once I was headed that way myself and he’d help me out with a job. I lost the details, of course, and the harder it became to find work, the more I lamented my mistake.

In Takaka, we passed the Telegraph Hotel, a name that I thought sounded familiar from the guide book, so we popped in to check. Just as I walked into the café/bar area, I turned around only to see Ryan walking in behind me and felt the world – or New Zealand, at least – shrink a few more meters. “Ryan?” I say, not believing the coincidence. “Heeey,” he says slowly, and for a second I’m not sure he remembers. I was his bartender, after all, so who knows how well he would recognize me sober. “Queenstown, right?” After a few minutes of catching up, he tells me he “never did go work on that vineyard after all.” Well, that’s that, it seems. Vineyard connection or not, I’m still amazed at the size of this country and the infinite number of random, “it’s-a-small-world” moments that seem possible here.

And then we were back on the road for the last time of the day. Elise settled into driving, me into my role of DJ/navigator. On a particularly curvy section of the road, drawing close to our day’s destination and just a few minutes outside Marahau, we rounded a bend only to see a girl in her 20s running towards us on the road, waving her arms frantically, yelling, “Stop! Stop! There’s been an accident.” In an instant, my mind was transported from the idyllic end of a Disney family movie to the seat of a horror film. The look of pure terror on her face jolted my stomach – I expected a multiple car collision up ahead; I expected blood; I expected us suddenly transporting people to the hospital; I don’t even know exactly what I expected, but it was definitely the worst. We stopped the car and I grabbed my cell phone, not knowing what else to do. She walked towards a ledge and peered down at the forest below – a flipped car perhaps? Someone thrown from the window? A black helmet appeared – at least driver can move, I told myself. But then he’s standing there, assuring us he’s fine and okay, but that’d he’d like to know where his motorcycle is. It was the most anticlimactic of moments, my heart still racing with no outlet for the adrenaline. Grateful, of course, that I was for the lack of a real tragedy, the scene shook me out of the stupor of our day’s travels.

That night in the kitchen of our hostel, we talked with a Frenchman named Cedric, who shared that he’s traveling with two of his friends after a year’s working holiday in Australia. I’d seen them earlier, a couple, walking out of the bathrooms, the woman rubbing her stomach. I hadn’t been sure if she was pregnant or not, but when we asked about their plans for the next day, Cedric said, “We go to Nelson tomorrow, my friend thinks she’s lost her baby.” Maybe it was the accent, maybe it was like in a TV show when everything all of a sudden makes sense and the character replays flashback after flashback, wondering how they’d missed it before. Of course the couple wasn’t hanging out in the hostel’s common area, of course there was a look of something’s-not-right about the woman as her hand had passed over her stomach. It was one of those moments where the right words to say just don’t come.

These moments of tragic reality are what keep you grounded – an almost encounter with a horrific accident, the potential loss of a child – these are the things that keep your perspective in check. Missed timing with tides, annoyances with shop clerks – it all seems so trivial, so frivolous. The only thing that becomes vital is your heartbeat itself. The fact that you are where you are at all. There is the potential in travel to become increasingly disconnected from reality, especially on an extended trip where every minute of internet usage costs money and is thus avoided, or when time spent in remote places eliminates the ability to keep up with the outside world. I am the first to extol the many wonderful qualities of a traveling life, but I know equally well the danger of becoming increasingly self-centered, solipsistic, with no real finger on the pulse of the world around you. As grateful as I was for the chance to complete my circuit of the South Island, to have circled around the very north of the south, I went to bed that night a little heavy of heart.

journey to the center of the country.

2009-12-02T19:04:00.000-08:00

“Katie thought Shantaram was the guest who rode away on a bicycle,” Dalia says in her London accent before bursting into a hearty laugh, holding the phone away from her face. I stop reading for a moment, a collection of Lonely Planet travel writing I’d recently bought to celebrate my acceptance into graduate school, and look up from my place on one of the three couches in the room, head propped up on one armrest, legs on the other end. Dalia, manager of the Innlet hostel, purveyor of the eco-friendly lifestyle, in search of her novel, Shantaram. Katie, another hostel guest, already in her room for the night, apparently unable to locate aforementioned novel. And me, unacquainted with this mysterious bike-riding guest, but eager to assist in the hunt, offering up a recollection of having seen the book earlier. “Are you sure it wasn’t Sharam?” Dalia asks. “Are you willing to bet your life on that?” Another guest, an older English woman, asks, jesting. Fortunately I wasn’t, as Dalia pointed to a pile of books on the table, one of which being the copy of Rushdie’s Sharam I’d seen earlier.

But I wanted to help if only because I wanted to belong. I wanted to feel a part of this little world Elise and I had stumbled into late Wednesday evening. Earlier that morning, a man named Nick at our hostel in Nelson, the Shortbread Cottage – named appropriately after the little biscuit left on each pillow – had recommended the Innlet to us. It had been a long day’s journey to reach it, the place itself not even our intended destination for the evening, but we arrived nonetheless. The sun was setting as we finally walked into the main house, an old converted villa in the middle of nowhere, only to find the eight or so other guests all sitting down to dinner together – fresh salad, potatoes, and baked fish they’d caught earlier in the day.

Dalia introduced us to the lovely mix of Brits and Germans, Londoner Dan the only bloke of the bunch. “We’re a little female-dominate at the moment,” Dalia says. The crowd was older as well, a welcome change from the usual backpacker crowd, and as we got to know them, it seemed they’d all settled in for the long haul. Many had been there for weeks, and planned on staying for more. When asked how long Elise and I were staying for, I found myself almost embarrassed to admit to only one night. It was the first place I wouldn’t have minded staying a second night.

While at first put off by its designation as an “eco-tourist” site – the very prefix “eco” bringing images of compost piles and unshaven hippies to mind – what I soon found was a warm feeling of home hidden away even beyond the reach of State Highway 6. The highway ends in Collingwood, a town of 250 quiet souls whose name has quite the romantic ring to it. It didn’t take long in Collingwood to realize I’m either a big city girl, on the scale of millions, or a tiny township kind of girl. None of this in between business, cities with 50,000ish populations and their own share of banks, supermarkets, shops and suburbs, but no metropolitan magic. This town, tucked away at the end of the line, so to speak, was perfect.

I immediately decided the Innlet – the name itself a pun I can appreciate – was exactly the kind of hostel I would design. There was no TV, a large black woodburning stove the centerpiece of the lounge instead. Dan retired early, leaving the various women scattered around the lounge with books. Elise sat at the thick wooden kitchen table and talked with another German. It was the perfect soundtrack to read to, the soft lulls of their conversation in a language I couldn’t understand and thus not able to be distracted by, tempted as I would have been to listen or join in. The bedrooms had paper lanterns hanging from the ceiling and sturdy wooden bunks, with interesting and oddly-shaped artwork hanging from the walls. As I settled into bed that night, I thought of a line by Paul Theroux: “If bliss can be described as an exalted state of not wishing to be anywhere else, then this had been bliss.”

“Night, Elise,” I said from across the room, “What a day.”

“Good night. Looks like the Innlet was our destiny after all,” she says, turning out the light. Looks like it was.

* * *

It had been an early morning in Nelson, a town of about 45,000 situated in the far north of the South Island, on the shores of the Tasman Bay. Our first order of the day had been a visit to the Nelson Provincial Museum, where the fact that we were the only ones in the museum failed to escape our notice. Elise and I were immediately overwhelmed. This museum had most likely been conceived and constructed from an entirely nonsensical approach. Juxtaposed to a placard on the Rakaihautu Legend, the story of the first man to visit Nelson in 850 AD, was a brief history of Newman’s Coach Lines, apparently still in operation. All it took was trying to decipher the connection between the two stories to realize this museum would be tough waters to wade through. Elise and I couldn’t fathom what exactly we were supposed to gather from the reckless amount of information. “Museums in Germany have one specific subject,” she says, wandering from display board to display board. “That way, you know what you’re looking for.” Here, though, history mixed with Maori culture which mixed with wildlife, settler life, information on trade and even video presentations. There was no lack of information, but what it needed was cohesion.

Before I let the utter schizophrenia of the place get the best of me, I decided there had to be something basic to learn I could walk away with. The city’s namesake, for instance, was Horatio, Admiral Lord Nelson, famous for his victory – and subsequent death – in the Battle of Trafalgar against Napoleon. The city is also one of few in New Zealand to have adopted its own civic flag, which besides a bishop’s mitre and the arms of Lord Nelson, features blue and white waves showing its relationship with the sea. A particularly macabre exhibit caught my attention, one titled “The New Zealand Death.” As the placard read, “New Zealand’s long coastline, high rainfall, and mountainous terrain led to many deaths by drowning. European settlers were quick to name this the “New Zealand death.” Why the fact that 1,115 New Zealanders had drowned by 1870 was worthy enough for inclusion in the museum was beyond me, but I suppose therein laid its mystery.

Indeed, as we walked out, a Japanese samurai armor caught my attention – I believe the exact phrase to pass through my mind was, what the heck?! As if in answer, a small card near the glass read, “Why do we have samurai armor on display?” The armor was apparently part of their early collections of foreign objects which had been “donated as part of the fashion of collecting for ‘worldly knowledge.’” Almost certainly unknowingly, the Nelson Provincial Museum had chosen the most fitting of displays to end their exhibits with. Nothing beats random in a New Zealand museum than a tribute to Japanese samurai.

From the museum, it was to the home of the Anglican Diocese of Nelson, Christ Church Cathedral, a neo-gothic creation whose foundation stone was laid in 1925 but not consecrated until 1975. Inside the sanctuary, we viewed two wooden chairs and prayer desks on display, used by Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip on the 17^th of January, 1954, as part of their royal tour of New Zealand. This tour had been featured in the museum as well, the first time an English reigning monarch had actually stepped foot on Kiwi soil, perhaps explaining why two simple chairs could be so incredibly noteworthy.

Another German in the Shortbread Cottage, a guy named Nicholas, had told Elise we should visit the Center of New Zealand. There was nothing out of the ordinary on my map about it, so my brain assumed ‘center’ as in a building or government department. It wasn’t until we started walking across a park and a large rugby field that I realized, “Ooh, the center of the country.” Up a steep, zigzagging path we climbed from the bottom of the Botanic Reserve to the geographical center of the country, where a giant microscope-looking statue marked the spot. Of course, as these things usually go, this was merely the “supposed” spot, the true location lying thirty-five kilometers outside Nelson. The coordinates, though – 41°30′S 172°50′E – will lead you only to a “path of unremarkable dense scrub in a forest,” as Wikipedia describes it, which I suppose is the reason for the slightly more accessible location in Nelson. As we climbed back down the path and walked across a wide field, even more plaques informed us that the Botanic Reserves are incidentally the site of New Zealand’s first rugby match, which took place on Saturday, May 14, 1870. Charles Munro, now known as the “Father of New Zealand Rugby,” had gone to study in England and brought the game and the country’s first oval balls back to New Zealand.

It was at this point and hour that I officially deemed this day a day of commemoration. So far in our stops along the way, it seemed we couldn’t so much as cross a field without running into yet another plaque or display board and learning about yet another significant moment in the history of New Zealand. But I suppose that the beauty of such a young country is that this kind of commemoration is possible; that it is feasible to trace so many moments to so many exact dates and names. There are no vague recollections or oral histories. What you get are precise moments, something you can’t always find elsewhere in the world.

* * *

Just as we left the center of Nelson, we passed the Tahuna Beach Reserve where Elise pulled off for a few more photos of the Tasman Bay. Heading back towards the car, though, I noticed a statue in the parking lot and said rather flippantly, “Oh, a statue! Wonder who that could be.” I almost became reverent, however, upon discovering the bronze man I stood before was none other than Abel Janzoon Tasman himself. If there’s one thing to remember about Tasman, perhaps this analogy will help:

Christopher Columbus : America :: Abel Tasman : New Zealand

Tasman, a Dutch explorer and navigator who lived from 1603 to 1659, sailed extensively with the Dutch East India Company. His travels took him to Mauritius, Sumatra, Fiji, New Guinea, and Australia, where he had ultimately been sent to determine just how far east the new continent stretched. The 13^th of December, 1642, is the date officially recorded as Tasman’s first sighting of New Zealand, a sight he described as “a large land, uplifted high.” And as the plaque we viewed read, he and his crew were the first Europeans to have contact with the Maoris, although their run-in with them unfortunately led to his giving the name “Murderers Bay” to what is now Golden Bay. While in the eyes of his company, his travels may not have been the success they hoped for, uncovering neither new areas of trade nor new shipping routes, in my opinion he got luckier than Columbus. Not only does Tasman have a sea, glacier, river and mountain named after him, but also a highway, two marsupial species and even an entire Australian state, Tasmania. Yet again, there’s no Tasman Day here in New Zealand, so maybe Columbus has the higher ground in that respect.

Driving away from Nelson, we passed through towns like Motueka, population 11,000, known for its fruitgrowers, which grew smaller and smaller the nearer we drove to the national park. At one particular intersection, the highway we were following to Collingwood continued to the left, but a sign pointing in the other direction led towards Kaiteriteri, a well-known beach I’d been told by friends to visit. It wasn’t hard to see why, either, as we left the car and walked onto the sand. Any question as to where the name for Golden Bay originated from was instantly cleared up. Not to sound like an idiot, but the sand really was the color of gold, not that washed-out shade of taupe so many beaches are, but with a real depth to it like honey or a sunset. A word I’ve loved for a while is pavonine, “irisdescent,” like a peacock’s tail, the perfect word for the aquamarine waters of Kaiteriteri Beach. The shades of that scene were so much more alive and richer than the beach we’d walked on in Nelson, where the blues and yellows and browns were muted like the colors in a faded photograph from your parents’ childhood.

We drove further to Split Apple Rock, about a fifteen-minute walk from the carpark, a walk that led us to our own piece of paradise. A small yet secluded bay, with a network of caves and boulders alongside it, including Split Apple Rock, a boulder that looked as if it’d been split right down the middle, like one of Terry’s Chocolate Oranges that’d been whacked and unwrapped. While postcards I saw later showed people standing in the rock, their legs propped spread-eagle-like against each side, the tides weren’t so favorable on our visit and we had to content ourselves with the view from the shore.

With our Kaiteriteri-detour having already set us back over an hour – not that we had a schedule, but still – I was hesitant to ask Elise if she’d mind stopping to view what was marked on my map as “First Settlers Landing” and “Historic Plaque.” Nothing grabs my attention like an opportunity to see yet another historic description immortalized in dull bronze. We pulled off at signs pointing to the Settlers Memorial Cairn and – as you do – started walking. And walking. And growing more and more annoyed at having to keep walking. Just where was this cairn located? We would grow closer and closer to what seemed like a summit, a view seemingly about to open up and the trees give way to open sky, only to see the path carried on even further to another elusive summit. Soon the path was leading us in another direction altogether. Whereas for the first ten minutes or so we’d been hiking up a small mountain, we were then walking away from the car and along a path that looked down on the tree-covered slope we’d just covered. It finally got to the point where to turn back was unthinkable. If I’d come this far, I was going to see this thing, whatever it was.

I wasn’t sure Elise was so convinced. It wasn’t that I felt her growing tense, only that I began to think about how I might feel in her situation, with a crazed passenger determined to see every little last point marked on her map and I could imagine how exasperated I would be. Thankfully Elise gave no sign of such emotions and soon the little cairn presented itself. As the path descended further and further, it became apparent we’d gone the completely wrong way around. Down at the foot of the hill, was a gravel road wide enough to fit a car leading directly from the carpark. Unbelievable. If the old adage goes something like, “We went around our elbow to get to our thumb,” it’s safe to say we did a full tour of arms, legs, and feet before coming back up to any finger.

And was the memorial’s honoree worth such effort? The grey cairn, maybe a meter and a half tall and shaped like a pyramid, had been erected to “record the coming of Riwaka’s first pioneers who landed 2 May 1842,” led by Captain Arthur Wakefield who landed in October of 1841 to found Nelson. The captain’s brother, Edward Gibbon Wakefield, was the founder of the New Zealand Company and had recruited Arthur to lead and supervise the new settlement of Nelson. The 1966 Encyclopedia of New Zealand describes Arthur as a “fine naval officer and a capable, energetic colonial administrator,” one who, when assigned to the Nelson settlement, threw “himself whole-heartedly into its planning and equipment.” Edward quickly got his brother into trouble, however, when his guarantees of land to each settler didn’t match up with the actual amount of land available from what had been purchased earlier from the regional Maori chief, Te Rauparaha. It was the classic story of promising to give what wasn’t yours to take. Who ultimately owned the rights to these lands? To the British, in all their imperialistic touting of manifest destiny, it was theirs for the taking, but the Maori fought fiercely when it came to their land. When Arthur Wakefield and a group of about fifty men went to issue a warrant for the Maori chiefs, on the grounds that they’d stood in the way of surveyors trying to sort out the disputed land, things didn’t end well. The Wairau Massacre marked the deaths of 24 British colonists, including that of Captain Arthur Wakefield. Nelson, in all its sunshine and beach life and general placid existence, shows little today to evidence this rocky start.

And that’s often what I’m coming to find on these little sideroad sojourns. Behind seemingly random stones and cairns and memorials, are whole lives. Whole stories. Whole histories. Arthur Wakefield died a bachelor on the 17^th of June, 1843, for reasons entirely unrelated to him. Although he had treated all fairly, Maori and Europeans (Pakeha) alike, he still died at the hands of the Maori. I find it remarkable stories like these exist; they point to a greater history and to an amazing series of entire stories entirely forgotten.

Finally, though, there comes a point in a day spent on the road when enough is enough and all that really becomes important is finding a place to call home for the night. A look in my travel guide and we decided to try for a bed in the Boutique Backpackers, charmingly described as being set in an old post office in “downtown” Collingwood. We park the car across the street and walk up to the building; the view through the windows reveals a clean house furnished in a historic style. There’s no sign of any backpackers, but then again, there are only eight beds available which could easily be concealed upstairs. A knock on one door brings no one, so we try another side. We can hear movement and soon a grey-haired woman appears. I ask about availability. “What?” she asks, a strange look on her face. “Do you have any space?” I repeat.

“You know, I’ve taken that sign down as best as I could, but I had the trees trimmed a little while ago” – and just before you begin to wonder what this has to do with anything, she gets to the point – “It’s no longer open.” Right. That explains the sign then – “Boutique Packp c .” That’s the last time I consult my 2005 guide I’d bought on sale from $5 from Whitcoull’s. I suppose at one point, accuracy does outweigh thriftiness. “You can try the Innlet, it’s a little ways out of town,” our would’ve-been-hostel-manager tells us, “Or the Somerset House just up the hill.”

At the Somerset House, though, a lovely Asian woman advises there are no dorm beds available for the night, but to “try the Innlet, it’s not far from town.”

* * *

Well, the Innlet it was to be. Maybe, as Elise said, it was our destiny. As we made our way there, eleven kilometers out of Collingwood, we passed a sign for Hawke Lookout, 300m. Elise looked at me, her eyes saying, “Should we? Dare we risk exploring yet another supposed point of interest?” I sighed, why not. We crossed the parking lot towards the path and started walking. “How much farther can it be?” Elise asked, a recurring question for the day, and thankfully, it wasn’t much. From the lookout, we could see across the Tasman Bay all the way to Nelson. It’s not every day you have the chance to mark your day’s journey in such a literal way. To stand in one spot and see across an entire bay the track you’d made.

We’d commemorated places of geographical significance, places of cultural significance, people of importance, people slightly more forgotten, random geological features, and vistas of striking beauty. In many ways, the day had been haphazard, comprised of whatever came across us on our path. Points of interest from the map, points of interest from word-of-mouth. It seemed thrown together, like a meal made from leftovers, but in another way the day made perfect sense. We’d covered some serious ground, at least in New Zealand terms. In a place where locals consider half an hour a long drive, we didn’t mess around – and struck closer and closer to the heart of this place we’re calling home for a short while.

Sometimes it’s not about the big things. Travel’s more than seeing the Eiffel Towers and pyramids of the world. Sometimes it’s about the additive process of discovering small piece after small piece. You know those photo mosaics, where an image, maybe one person’s face, has been constructed from hundreds or thousands of composite images or photographs? I often think that’s how my overall perception of New Zealand will be when I leave. When I think of England, my entire experience is defined by London; not only was it the only place I lived, it was one of only two cities I actually visited. In New Zealand, it isn’t so much about the one city you have to see, the one experience you have to have. It’s about the small things, the small towns, the small moments, and the way in which they all add up and add on to each other as you grow in your understanding of the country.

eagle vs. shark II: whale vs. dolphin.

2009-11-28T05:17:00.000-08:00

If there’s one thing New Zealand does well, it’s scenic views. Of course, a close second to this is actually letting you know about the views, by which I mean the amount of signage devoted to one scenic spot. As my German friend Elise and I departed from Christchurch one sunny Monday morning, setting off on our trip around the top of the South Island, I marveled yet again at the country’s ability to proffer so many reasons to pull over from the main state highway. If it wasn’t the sandcastle-esque Cathedral Cliffs by Gore Bay, then it was St. Anne’s Lagoon, which, as peaceful as a pastoral scene it was, hardly seemed to necessitate the three signs alerting us to its existence ten meters off S.H.6.

This particular leg of my year-long, cross-country journey had been in the research and development stages for a while. After my time in Thailand, I knew I still had nearly half of the South Island to see before making my way up north to Wellington for the summer. Several key must-sees (and must-dos) remained: the marine life of Kaikoura and the various activities associated with it, the famous beaches of Abel Tasman National Park and the accompanying sea kayak trips along them, and even the northernmost point of the South Island just near Farewell Spit. The thing that troubled me, though, as I drew plans together in Queenstown, was just exactly how I planned to transport myself around. Hiring a rental car was, cost-wise, out of the question. But the second best alternative, bussing it from town to town, would not only prove still expensive, but would also not afford me the freedom I wanted to stop and explore the aforementioned scenic sights on the side. I wasn’t looking for a ride strictly from point A to point B.

And so it was that on yet another mind-thrilling day in Premier Taste, Elise began telling me about how the friend she’d come traveling with wanted to stay in Queenstown through Christmas while she herself only had a few months left in New Zealand and needed to get traveling again. Before exploring the North Island, though, she still had the rest of the South Island to cover and named many of the places I myself was hoping to see post-Thailand. I was amazed at how the plan fell together on its own: Elise, who had just bought a car, didn’t want to travel on her own; I, more than happy to be someone’s traveling companion, needed transportation. Brilliant!

“Nice day, isn’t?” a man asks as we walked down the streets of Kaikoura, a town of just under 4,000 about two hours north of Christchurch along the east coast. And a nice day it was, I agreed, having just checked into our hostel, the Dolphin Lodge, appropriately named after the abundance of marine life found off the coast of Kaikoura. There is a rotating roster of titles often ascribed to the town, sometimes proclaiming it the “Marine Mammal Capital of the World,” “Whale Watch Capital of the World,” or the slightly combined version of “Marine Mammal Watching Capital of New Zealand.” Over fifty different species of marine mammals call the coast of Kaikoura home, including the Hectors dolphin and the New Zealand sea lion, both of which are found nowhere else in the world. The reason behind this plethora of sea life would come later, though.

It was a simple town, the kind of town with one supermarket, a handful of restaurants and cafés, and – just like the town of Franz Josef – one natural attraction that draws a large number of tourists each year…and by large I mean over one million. The attraction in Kaikoura happens to be the significant presence of marine life and one of the many tourist activities capitalizing on this occurrence is run by a company called WhaleWatch Kaikoura.

We arrived at the Whaleway Station (the company’s shameless pun, not mine) just in time to check in for our whale watch tour, one of several that runs every day. Recalling my infamous Foveaux Strait ferry crossing in July, I didn’t hesitate to hand over $2 for a motion sickness pill. The sea could change fast with the weather and a display board already flashed a seasickness warning. I’d learned my lesson and wouldn’t tolerate a repeat incident, no matter how blue and cloudless the sky looked or how calm the sea appeared.

A curly-haired guy named Tom, sporting aviator sunglasses and a chilled-out attitude, would prove to be our narrator for the afternoon. As the boat powered out to sea, Tom described the science behind the sea, explaining just what it is about the Kaikoura coastline that’s so darn popular with all those whales and dolphins. The unusual thing about Kaikoura, Tom says, is how the continental shelf drops off so close to land, going from 200 meters to 1,000 meters right offshore, facilitating not only marine life but also the proximity for humans to view this marine activity. The waters of the Kaikoura Canyon descend to 1600 meters, deeper than the average depth of the Grand Canyon. Additionally, there’s a remarkable “convergence of currents,” whereby warm water from the north mixes with the cold streaming in from the south, coming together in a way that makes it incredibly nutrient-rich. All these nutrients create the perfect feeding ground, which is a fitting occurrence given the literal meaning of Kaikoura as “meal of crayfish.” Among the 200 species of marine life found in Kaikoura are whales, dolphins, seals and even 75% of the world’s seabirds, including fourteen types of albatrosses, giving the town yet another potential title, the Marine Bird Capital of the World.

The star of our show, though, would be the male sperm whale, the waters being too cold for the females (and I don’t blame them). The sperm whale, the largest toothed predator in the world, also happens to be the deepest and longest diving. Not that we’d have the privilege of seeing too much of these fellows, though. Like a moving, breathing iceberg, it’s possible to see only about 10% of its body as it comes to the surface. Furthermore, Tom shares, each boat averages just one or two whale sightings per trip out. Talk about not getting your money’s worth.

Tom also described a possible theory on where the sperm whale got his name. Early whalers, perhaps “having knocked back too much rum,” cut open the whale’s head only to have a white gooshey substance ooze out – what they thought was sperm, but in reality was up to 2.5 tons of spermaceti oil they store in their head. Scientists eventually discovered the spermaceti works as both an amplifier for their acoustic lens and as an anchor. Cold water circulates around the mass of oil, dropping its temperature until it freezes into a wax and helps him dive more easily. When the whale needs to resurface for air, he pumps blood around the mass, melting the wax until its density is less than that of the ocean.

“So who here’s been whale watching before?” Tom asks and I was proud to be the only raised hand on the boat, having gone a few summers back with my family off the coast of Boston. I knew it would work against me, though, as our trip had been particularly spectacular – a whale breached, actually flipping its entire body out of water. I tried not to expect the same to happen again, or else I could expect disappointment. Although a woman named Lydia was apparently the “official whale spotter,” taking a seat next to the captain, binoculars strung around her neck, we’re all encouraged to keep an eye out for our underwater friends. Only until we see a waterspout twice, though, are we allowed to alert the crew. In that case, Tom clarified, “I give you full permission to kick, scream, shout, dance, do whatever it takes to get the staff’s attention.”

Our first whale in and I see the experience would most definitely be different from Boston. Where I’d seen whale-flipping and tale-slapping, the Kaikoura whales were far less about the show. They were there to breathe, and breathe they did. After several waterspouts (impressive, nonetheless, but how many pictures do you really need of them?) the whale would dive, giving us a window of about three seconds in which to photograph his tail. Moreover, Tom – obviously attuned to sperm whale behavior – was able to predict almost exactly when the whale was going to dive. Accordingly, he’d tell us to whip that windswept hair out of our eyes once and for all and have our camera out. With one whale, Tom preps us, saying “Get your cameras ready, folks, he’s about to dive…no, he’s just playing games with us,” as the waterspouts kept coming. Typical male, I thought, my camera poised and ready.

But the boys didn’t disappoint. One and after another, they kept coming, or rather, we kept finding them. “It’s our lucky day,” Tom says after our third whale sighting, “It’s not often we spend a whole day running between whales, no tracking whatsoever, relying solely on our eyes.” And boy was I grateful. Even though the company promises an 80% refund if no whales are spotted the entire tour, I didn’t want to settle with a money-back guarantee. I went out to whalewatch and some whales to watch were exactly what I wanted.

As we turned around and headed back for shore, I had to agree with Tom as he said, “It was definitely a good day for whale watching in Kaikoura, folks,” with a touch of that facetious air you often hear from sports announcers at the start of a game, as comfortable in their press boxes as a king gazing on his kingdom. You never can tell with tour guides, whether the lines they feed you have any ounce of originality in them, but from the final count, I figured he wasn’t completely misleading us. In total, we watched five whales dive up close, could see three waterspouts from a distance, and two whales just eluded us before we could get any closer. “Seeing five sperm whales dive in one day doesn’t happen very often at all,” Tom says, our boat pulling up to the dock. “Count yourselves very lucky. That really was an amazing trip.”

I only hoped our luck would continue as I awoke the next morning, with dolphin swimming on the agenda for the day. We had a few hours before we needed to check in for our swim, so we decided to drive around the Kaikoura Peninsula in search of the well-known seal colony, the seals famous in many a tourist’s blog for coming up the beach as far as the car parks. Some “colony” I found there, though, seeing only four seals. “Where are they?” I kept asking, “Where are those seals?” I may sound demanding, after expecting to watch whales the first day, then upset at the lack of seals, and surely, I do keep an open mind and open expectations in most of my travels, but when you look on a map and see “Seal Colony” printed in neat pink letters, you’d like to think they’d actually be there when you show up!

After my disappointing visit with the furry, flippered colonists, Elise suggested we visit the gardens in town, her guidebook having mentioned Kaikoura’s Garden of Memories as one worth seeing. Earlier that morning, she asked one of the workers at our hostel where it was located but all Elise got in return was a strange look as the girl said, “Huh, I’ve never heard of that.” Not ones to be easily deterred, we started walking anyways. A look at my map and I see “Memorial Gardens” printed in small letters. Oooh, I think, of course! The garden’s proper title was obviously lost in translation from Elise’s German guidebook. Happy to have sorted it out, I walk into the garden with the feeling of having achieved a small victory, similar to completing a puzzle or a Sudoku. As we exited through the front gate, I turned around only to see a sign: “Garden of Memories.” Well darn if Elise wasn’t right after all! No matter what its name might or might not have been, the gardens were understated and lovely, a simple halfmoon of a pathway, lined with arching whalebones, enclosing a small green complete with the usual war memorial. A small plaque honored Ms. Lydia Washington, the woman who first planted the gardens after WWI. As another sign read, she “was given whalebones” to use, but all I could find myself asking was who had a spare set of whale jawbones laying around in the first place? She tended the gardens until her death at the age of 82 in 1946, at which point she had come to be known as the Grand Old Lady by those around the town. I hope I myself live to achieve such a noble moniker.

Soon it came time to report to the Dolphin Encounter headquarters, the only company in Kaikoura licensed for dolphin swimming experiences. After being fitted out for our wetsuits – hood, suit, flippers, mask and snorkel? check! – we gathered in the auditorium to watch a briefing video. The majority of the video was devoted to tips on how to attract the dolphins. Diving head first, circling around, and swimming with our arms by our sides were all ways we were encouraged to “be dolphin-like,” even singing. Dolphins live in a sonic world, after all, so any sound we made could only help our case. Having worked at the bar in Queenstown, the video continued more and more into what I found to be a hilarious comparison to going out at night, interested in picking up someone. “Dolphins are not interested in you, you have to make an effort to attract them to you,” a narrator says in a serious tone, “You must entertain them. Sometimes they’re interested, sometimes they’re not…we want you to be aware so you don’t go home disappointed.” If only such a video were available to caution young party-goers before heading out on the town for a big night, we all might have fewer broken hearts.

Boarding the boat, our group of ten met our guide for the afternoon, a guy about my age named Owen. After a few introductory remarks and the general rigmarole about life jackets and fire safety, Owen says, “There aren’t many things you need to know about me save that yes, I am Scottish, and yes, my hair is the color of ginger.” If there was ever a guy made for his job, it was Owen. “And no, I don’t spend all of my time throwing one fist in the air and shouting, ‘Freedom!’” Outgoing, funny, and full of information and jokes, he stood at ease in front of us and balanced out our all-too-reticent captain, Mike, as we flew across the water in search of pods of dusky dolphins.

With the scientific name of Lagenorhynchus Obscurus (from the Greek words for bottle and nose and the Latin for dark or indistinct), the dusky dolphin can be found only off the east coast of New Zealand’s South Island, off the coast of South Africa, off of South America near Argentina, and in the South Atlantic Ocean. Being only 1.6 to 1.8 meters in length, it measures in as one of the smaller dolphins, but is still known for its acrobatic abilities, entertaining itself and others with leaps, jumps, and even somersaults – forwards and backwards. And despite its size, the dusky dolphin is a promiscuous little thing. Owen tells us that one scientist observed a female mating five times. With three different males. In two minutes. You’d think that with all that activity, these dolphins would need some serious sleep, but they don’t actually sleep. They merely “rest,” shutting off half their brains while they continue to swim.

All fascinating information, of course, but nothing compared to actually coming face-to-face with them in the water. There isn’t one word I can use to describe my experience that afternoon. On one hand, it was amazing. Phenomenal. Otherworldly. As soon as I slipped off the back of the boat into the water, a toasty 11°C, any tips I’d picked up from the briefing video went the way of my body temperature. The last thing on my mind was remembering to sing into my snorkel or to keep my arms by my side. I had more important things to attend to; namely, breathing. But thankfully my frantic motions didn’t ward off the dolphins too much. I was instantly struck by their grace, by the speed with which they darted around me. One dolphin emerged from the deep into my sight and I somehow managed to start circling, unsure if it would make any difference. As if making eye contact with me like in some 17^th century courtship dance, the dolphin swam – if only for a few seconds – in the same direction as my circle. I’d like to think we made a perfect circle if seen from above. While many were on their own, a similar amount of dolphins swam together, and this I loved. At one point, I dove down – not an easy task in our overly buoyant wetsuits – and three dolphins came up and began to swim in a circle around me. I’ll never forget that moment.

But on the other hand, it was awful – physically, I mean. The water was frigid, knocking the breath out of me as soon as I entered it. Even while suited up from head to toe, the water still flooded in our wetsuits and chilled us more and more each time we climbed back on to the boat to race off towards more dolphins. To further complicate things, I was seasick. Not having realized it would be quite a boat ride away to swim, I hadn’t bothered with the motion sickness pill this time around. After our final swim – and spending over forty-five minutes in the water, quite the feat according to Owen – we peeled the wetsuits off and changed back into dry clothes. At this point, I took my place towards the back of the boat and hunched over, determined to make it to land sans incident. Which I did, but not without discomfort.

The entire afternoon was quite the opposite of my whale watching experience the day before. The whales, massive creatures that they were, moved in a much more foreseeable manner. Guide Tom was able to warn us far in advance about their dive so as to have our cameras ready, the perfect shot pretty hard to miss. But the dolphins? They darted by, in and out of vision in a matter of seconds, difficult to take in due to our peripheral visions already limited because of the mask. I had bought a disposable underwater camera to take with me on the swim, but I barely had time to take a picture before they were gone. Once developed, I am fully expecting twenty-seven shots of murky blue water, with a fin or flipper in the corner of one if I’m lucky.

Towards the end of our trip, Owen shared a few more bits of information on the dolphins, emphasizing the fact that our afternoon had been an entirely natural experience. The dolphins we had seen were totally wild – not fed nor enticed. We’d chased them, “So be proud of yourselves,” Owen says. Proud as I was, the dolphin encounter shattered my illusions and expectations. For whatever reason, when I thought of dolphin swimming before, it conjured images of some commercial affair involving Sea World and Free Willy, of some life-vested child holding onto the fin of a dolphin or trainers throwing fish in their open mouths. Clearly I am glad the dolphins I saw were as free as a dolphin could ever hope to be – all I’m saying is that it would’ve been nice if they’d stuck around a little longer so I could actually appreciate them.

So a sequel to the well-known Kiwi film Eagle vs. Shark could very well be Whale vs. Dolphin, set in none other than Kaikoura, New Zealand, of course. Want a dependable-yet-predictable afternoon with whales of a size that will overwhelm and inspire you to awe? Or would you rather exchange the stable whale-viewing periods for a more fleeting beauty, for something a little briefer, something with an edge to it – where dolphins move so fast you’re lucky you barely get a glimpse? The choice is yours, but if it was up to me, I wouldn’t choose at all.

Both worlds are yours for the taking, so pop that motion-sickness pill, don that impossible wetsuit and get to the water, people.

macanese mystique.

2009-11-21T23:14:00.000-08:00

As my plane descended into Macau, an island off the coast of China, a mere seven square miles and with a population of 500,000, I thought of conversations I’d recently had with a friend about TCKs – Third-Culture Kids, the term describing how children of one culture raised in another country form a third culture based on their unique upbringing. Having a general understanding of Macau’s history – how the Portuguese arrived in the 1550s and governed until 1999 when the island went the way of Hong Kong and became a part of China again – I imagine Macau has a TCK. Now termed Macau SAR, or Special Administrative Region, the city rules itself largely autonomous from China, apart from issues of defense and foreign affairs. I’d also read several travel articles on Macau, both official and not, writing that extolled the “fusion of East and West” to be found in the city. This idea of magical fusion was alluring to me and I couldn’t wait to spend two nights on the island.

The first sight to greet me upon landing, my face pressed against the window of the plane, was a bright red fire truck with “International Airport of Macau” written in Portuguese and Chinese on its side. Here was my first glimpse of the “fusion” and I began to think about what I’ve read and to formulate my own thoughts on this city.

In the passport control line, I look around and laugh to myself at how different I look, at how I must stand out, being the only white female in the terminal, heads above the other women, and blonde at that – and young, as the few other white men were old enough to be my father. But just then, a man walks up to me and says in a Portuguese accent, “Hello, miss, I’m with the police. May I see your passport?” As I eye him incredulously, he flashes a badge – what do I know? I instantly have visions of sitting in a sterile back room in the airport, still unsure of my infraction. The man stares at my passport after I hand it over, flipping through pages, studying each visa. “You here on holiday, miss?” He reaches the book’s end and returns to my visa for Egypt, looking at it even longer. Do I look like I’m linked to some Egyptian crime ring or terrorist cell? Is tall and blonde the new suspect description circulating through airport security across the world? “Thank you, miss. Welcome to Macau.” I watch him as he patrols the terminal. He stops no one else.

My passport stamped, I make my way to the airport’s bus stand. As I board a bus and ask the driver if he goes to the center of town, he throws his hands in the air. He turns around and motions to a young girl in a school uniform to help me. She knows English, I’m relieved to discover. She writes the name of my street in Chinese characters in my book. “Use this to help you,” she says. I switch buses at the Ferry Terminal, dead and determined to not use a taxi. After two weeks in Bangkok with people who knew the language, knew the city, had drivers or could drive themselves, I was ready to be an active traveler again, not just some passive guest – as grateful as I was for their help. I was ready, in fact, I needed to find my own way, I tell myself, keeping all my bags close to my feet like an overprotective mother. Furthermore, I want to be a graceful traveler, but already feel myself fumbling my way through this country. I know nothing, I know no one – this is culture shock if I’ve ever felt it.

By several strokes of luck – a sudden realization that the bus was barreling down the street I needed to stop on, a man on the streets able to read the characters my Chinese friend wrote and point me along – I stumble through the doorway of my hotel, the San Va Hospedaria, located on the Rua da Felicidade. Ironically, however, happiness was not my immediate emotion upon walking into my room. To put it crudely, the place is a dump, but it manages to cross the line from bad to comical. There are two glasses sitting upside down on a plate in my room, and when I go to fill them from the water cooler in the lobby, the grey-haired woman at reception points to the red switch and says, “Hot,” the first English she’s spoken. As if I need it, though, in the boiling, un-air-conditioned room. I then ask for a map, she points to the toilet. I ask again, and she points to a chart of English phrases and their Chinese translations kept under glass in the front counter. “Please speak slower,” her finger rests on. I find the map on my own, on a shelf near the water cooler.

Back in my room, water glasses full and already lukewarm, I collapse on the bed and attempt to collect myself. I finally venture outside again a little after four in the afternoon. I’m amazed at the humidity here, at how sticky the air is. After Thailand, land of eternal sweat, I was ready for a change, but it looks like I won’t have that until my return to New Zealand in three days. I start walking with no particular end in mind. Green signs point the way to the Ruins of St. Paul’s, a major landmark in Macau, and soon I find myself winding through Old Macau. The ruins appear and I see a visitors’ center to the side offering free guided tours until mid-November.

I walk into the center and enquire about the tour. “For how many?” a woman named Christina asks. “Just one,” I say and she hands me a tour sticker before leading me out the door. I’d been expecting some sort of a wait, either being told to come back tomorrow or at least in an hour, so the promptness catches me off guard. The tour consists mainly of a walk around the ruins, all that’s left of what was at the time the Church of Mater Dei and St. Paul’s College, the first Western-style university in the Far East. The wooden structure burned down three times, leaving only the stone façade behind. When fire struck for the last time in 1835, no one bothered rebuilding – it seemed they never got the picture and tried another building material. Christina points out several features carved into the façade, comprising what’s referred to as a “sermon in stone:” four saints, the Virgin Mary, six angels, a dove, and even Chinese characters.

I thank Christina for my short tour and make my way to the Macau Museum, at the top of Fortress Hill. It begins with a long narrow room, one side devoted to early Chinese history, the other to Western, leading to the point of “convergence” when the Portuguese came to Macau. An overly friendly security guard on the second floor, a Philippine man named Mark, begins to ask me questions; where I’m from, how long I’m here, and so on. He tells me he came to Macau two years ago but doesn’t expect to be here forever. “I’m still waiting for what I’m meant to do.” It’s a familiar feeling, I assure him.

After struggling to decipher menus of Chinese characters and decidedly unappetizing photographs, I dine at McDonald’s for dinner, in desperate need of a dose of familiarity. But what does attract me to the place thus far are the streetscapes; the neon, the people, the pace, the red lanterns strung in rows everywhere. I arrive back in my room, though, wrestling with the idea of a Third-Culture City, much like the TCKs. Has a fusion, a so-called “convergence,” really taken place? Has there been an intersection or just a parallel existence? Macau is 97% Chinese, and Premier Taste in Queenstown, with all its Brazilians, certainly felt more Portuguese than this place appears to be. Any nod to Portugal – whether tourism brochures citing Portuguese as an official language or signs reading old Portuguese street names – seems more of a formality than an actual part of daily Macanese life.

I sit in bed the first night feeling unsettled and distinctly isolated. No TV, no internet, not even service for my mobile phone if I did feel like splurging on the international fees to text a friend back in New Zealand. It’s just me and a book tonight. A three-bladed fan spins furiously above me, causing a caustic fluorescent rod, suspended by two thin wires, to sway somewhat concerningly. The rooms are not completely contained. There is about a meter between the top of the walls and the ceiling, so voices carry. A man down the hall sings Jeff Buckley’s “Hallelujah” and I’m tempted to sing along. The parquet floor, two shades of wood paneling, has been laid unevenly, the walls are a chipped, peeling shade of kelly green, the double mattress is hard, the only towel they have to offer me is the size of a tea towel. That should make the morning’s shower interesting. But, I keep reminding myself, I am in China. This isn’t some major city’s Chinatown…this is the real thing and all these little nuances aren’t crazy, they’re character, right? The man in the room next to mine (I imagine him to be a man, that is) takes a sip of water. A gulp, rather, then two. He drops his cell phone and I hear the Nokia tone that plays when you turn on your phone. His light clicks off and I am alone.

I wake up the second morning after a fitful night’s sleep on a hard mattress. At least the sky is blue and the air cool. First stop is Lou Lim Leoc Garden, where I learn of the garden model of Soochow, the most well-known Chinese classical garden. As I follow the twisting paths, I note the distinct difference between this and the gardens I frequented in London – gone are the simple layouts, the elegant stretches of straight paths, the wide expanses of green lawn – and I stumble upon groups of rocks shaped into stairs, caves, and dramatic overhangs. Supposedly, a brochure reads, the garden is a miniature landscape and my new-found rocks are molded concrete “mountains.” I climb to the top of such a peak for a look at the gardens as a whole, at the classical pavilion overlooking the pond, at the bamboo groves, and the nine-turn bridges, moving in a zigzag to deter the straight-moving evil spirits.

Already I feel more at ease in this city. The tour I plan to do in the afternoon departs from the ferry terminal. I find a bus stop near the garden just as Bus No. 32 pulls up and opens its door. I glance at its schedule on the bus stand, at the top reads “Terminal” in Portuguese. I jump on just as it pulls away. Success. In one seemingly fluid motion, I am where I need to be, something I will no longer take for granted in a city.

At the terminal, I am told the English version of the tour will not be running that afternoon. Fantastic. Paying fifteen-odd dollars for a tour in Mandarin or Cantonese wasn’t exactly what I had in mind, but I found myself left with little choice. When I find the meeting point for the tour’s departure, there is the expected crowd of Asian faces, but among them was a guy who looked Indian but was dressed suspiciously American in an orange North Face polar fleece, jeans, and trainers. Sure enough, as we walked towards the bus, he introduced himself as Alak, a native New Yorker, graduate of Rutgers University, and derivatives trader for an investment bank – whatever that was supposed to mean. He had come over for the day on a ferry from Hong Kong, where he was visiting his sister and niece. So I wouldn’t be alone in my English-ness after all.

Indeed, I’d expected to learn far less on the top, going along mainly for the ride and easy transport around the city’s major landmarks. Soon after I meet Alak, another couple introduce themselves to me. Chang and Ah, originally from Malaysia, have been living in Melbourne, Australia, for the last twenty-five years and were blessedly proficient in English- as well as Malay, Mandarin, and Cantonese. Hellllo, translators! We quickly agreed they would let me know if anything truly important or noteworthy was said. And then there was the middle-aged Asian woman from Boston, who had coordinated a trip for her six siblings and their mother, originally from Hong Kong. “We speak another dialect of Cantonese,” she tells me, “So we catch maybe one out of ten sentences.” And then, of course, the family of five chattering away to each other in a tongue not distinguishable to my ears.

Our tour guide, Kate, dressed in a simple navy blue cardigan set and khaki pants, takes a microphone and begins the tour as we leave the ferry terminal. She goes on for a while in what I assume to be Cantonese, before a quick “Good afternoon” and nod in the direction of myself and Alak, seated behind me. I had a feeling we got an abbreviated introduction. I turned around and smiled at my American compatriot, “This is hilarious.” It proved to be a pattern on Kate’s part – extended Chinese dialogue followed by one or two words of English. “Here A-Ma Temple,” she might say, or “Have forty minutes.” Here, the most basic of vocabularies and sentences gave way to mere fragments of key nouns – a verb thrown in if we were lucky. But half the time on this kind of thing, you tune the tour guide out anyways. It was nice not to feel bad for it for once. So I turned to my Malaysian-turned-Aussie friends for a few more details. As we crammed the entire group into an elevator in the Macau Tower, Ah tells me we’re going to the observation deck on the 61^st floor for ten minutes before going to another deck on the 58^th. He’s not sure why there are two separate viewing areas, but Chang cuts in, “There’s glass floor on the 58^th!”

So far in my stay in Macau, I’d seen a few remnants of the Western world I felt so far removed from – McDonald’s, Starbucks, Haagen-Daaz kiosks, and even pairs of clean-cut Mormon missionaries roaming the streets – they weren’t difficult to spot, as you can imagine. But at the top of the 338-meter tower, I came across something else – the world’s tallest commercial bungy jump of 233 meters, run by none other than my friends at the A.J. Hackett company – the same company I’d bungeed with in Queenstown. As if a Kiwi myself, I swelled with pride and told Alak about the company’s history and my own bungy experience.

But while having another American around was fine at first, being able to speak English as fast as I wanted and share a laugh over our beloved tour guide, it soon became more like being on a bad first date once you’ve reached the point of having nothing else to say to each other yet still obligated to be together. When told the tour wouldn’t be in English – after my initial moment of “What-do-I-do-now?” panic – I actually began to look forward to the afternoon and the chance to be free to wander around sites on my own, taking pictures as I liked. Instead, just as I’d move to another corner of a temple, I could see the orange of Alak’s fleece in my periphery, moving in my direction. There were definitely interesting aspects of our conversations, especially learning about his family’s history in Kashmir, an area caught in a dangerous tug-of-war between India and Pakistan. Sometimes, though, a girl just wants to be alone – a fact Alak unfortunately didn’t pick up on.

As the tour drew to a close and the bus made its way back to the terminal, Kate asked (or so Chang and Ah relayed) if anyone would like to be dropped off at the Macau Fishmerman’s Wharf instead. It was an area I’d yet to explore, so I let them know. As I gathered my things and shook hands with Kate, Chang, and Ah, exchanging well-wishes, I turned around to say goodbye to Alak, only to see him standing up to follow me off the bus. Oh, boy, was all I thought. We ambled through the wharf and all its many faces. This was no typical pier, teeming with ships and the fishy smell of the ocean. There was neither a single boat docked for the night – “You’d think they put at least one out for show,” Alak mused – nor a lone fisherman hauling in the day’s catch. Instead, this stretch of waterfront property seemed more to me like the abandoned back lot of a Hollywood film company, with the range of movie sets including a row of Victorian brownstones, Shakespearean-style English flats, Italian villas, a Roman amphitheater, a large Babylonian-looking palace that housed a war game arena, and – last but not least – a volcano. They all seemed perfectly authentic and perfectly built to specification and size – except for maybe the volcano – yet all perfectly empty. Despite the restaurants and shops housed in the first floor of each, I felt like I was walking through the shell of a town; that if too strong a breeze blew, the whole thing might topple over. It seemed wrong and out of place, especially as it sat in the shadow of a mammoth Sands casino.

Once back in the terminal, it was time to leave Alak to catch his return ferry to Hong Kong and carry on with the evening. I’d seen the Portuguese aspects of the city, I’d seen the Chinese, now it was time to discover MacVegas, or as Macau is also known, the “Monte Carlo of the Orient.” Gambling had been around for centuries on the island, with Chinese fantan houses opening after the legalization of gambling in 1847, but it wasn’t until the Portuguese handover of Macau back to China in 1999 that Western-style casinos sprung up all over the island – MGM Grand, Hotel Lisboa, Wynn Macau, Galaxy, the works. So much so, in fact, that in 2006, gambling revenues from Macau’s casinos actually exceeded those of Las Vegas, making Macau the highest-volume gambling center in the world.

On the ground floor of the ferry terminal, a three-sided counter houses representatives from casinos all over the city, all offering hotel packages and free shuttle rides from the city. Curious to have a look for myself, I approached, reputedly, the grandest of them all – the Venetian. After a fifteen-minute ride, I enter the lobby of the hotel, not awestruck like I thought I might be – no oversized chandelier hanging precariously above, no sweeping marble staircase. But I suppose that’s only a stereotype, eh? Much like the image I had kept in my mind about casinos, my imagination fed from movies like 21 and Casino Royale, I thought I’d be underdressed in my summer dress, leggings, and flip-flops, surrounded by flash and glamour enhanced by low lightning, servers swinging around trays of expensive, brightly colored cocktails. What I found was that I fit right in. Middle-aged men in blue jeans and tan wind breaker jackets sat at five, ten, and twenty cent machines, pressing buttons a little too mechanically for my liking. Ordinary-looking waiters carried trays holding ordinary glasses of water and soda. Macau was shattering every romantic illusion I’d ever held…about everything.

I decided to try my luck, for the pure heck of it, of course. Discovering the machinery only took paper money, not coins, I joined the queue at the cashier’s counter. The woman in front of me hands over two simple black chips. The cashier flashes a fraud-detecting black-light wand over them and whips out a thick wad of bills. One, two, three, twenty $1000 bills. I glanced down at the paltry $50 bill I clutched close, my intention to break it into $10 Hong Kong notes and gamble with just one suddenly seeming incredibly ridiculous.

As I walked up row after row of computer games – a total of 2,130 of these machines in the Venetian alone - with names like “King of the Wild” and “Diamonds in the Rough,” I slowly realized gone were the days of slot machines and a lucky line of three cherries in a row. Gone were the days of pulling one lever and watching as a cascade of quarters spilled out into your open hands. This was the 21^st century, people, and even if a machine had a lever to pull, it also came with an entire panel of different-colored buttons to push as your fate spun in front of you. I finally settle on a game called “Easy Money” – it’s what we all hope for, isn’t it? – and fed in my ten-dollar note – equivalent to about US$1.25. I pulled the lever a few times, quickly using 4 of my 10 credits already, before experimenting with the buttons. They had something to do with placing bets on certain images that would appear, although I ever got the hang of it. I was clearly out of my league.

Even if I had struck it rich, no shower of coins would have greeted me in this coinless casino. Rather, a simple white ticket with a barcode would have printed out for me to take to the money counter and cash in. Talk about anticlimactic. After a quick look at the high-limits area, which – with its 620 tables games – at least looked a little more familiar with its roulette and craps tables, I set off to explore the shoppes of the Grand Canal – this was Venice, after all.

A tall-ceilinged lobby area, complete with dome and Italian murals, soon led to the food hall. Here, the ceiling was painted like a bright blue sky, cumulus clouds and all. And for a split-second, I forgot it was well past sunset and I’d stumbled upon an outdoor eating area. Each food vendor was housed in a different Italian villa, making up this pseud0-Venetian scene. The rest of the hotel was built in this manner – all the ceilings looking like the sky, all the shops in their own house, and where the walkway of a regular mall would have normally been there were canals, stone bridges, street lamps, and even gondolas moored in water so clear and shallow you could see the coins people had thrown in shimmering at the bottom. It was at once magnificent – impressive in its design – and underwhelming – it felt as empty as Fisherman’s Wharf. What was the point of a place like this in a place like Macau? What was the point of a casino like this at all, if only to be some sort of alternate universe where fortunes are won and lost, where stores like Tiffany and Co., Swarovski, Lacoste, and Mont Blanc are yet another black hole for money. This was as close to Vegas as I ever hope to be.

I had one thing left on my agenda for the day when I got off the bus at Senado Square: souvenirs. In addition to the usual tacky magnet for my grandmother’s fridge and a postcard to send home, whenever I visit a new country I always keep a lookout for something small for myself. This kind of accumulation isn’t always practical as a backpacker with a budget, and I fully expect to be the crazy old lady next door with a bunch of junky knick-knacks gathering dust on her bookshelves, but for right now, I still like to have something tangible to remember the place by, something with which to mark my journey.

From Estonia, it was a set of Russian nesting dolls; from Amsterdam, a tiny pair of wooden yellow clogs; from Egypt, a small limestone carving of Nefertiti. I didn’t know what I’d find in Macau – I had even Googled quintessential Macanese souvenirs before my arrival. But as I saw more of the place for myself and felt more Chinese influence than any real kind of fusion, I began to wonder what little object would capture Macau in such a way as to make me want to take it home. In a souvenir shop that night, I settled on a Chinese drama character, a doll about four inches high and wearing a festive red costume. “What the heck,” I thought, it was getting late and I needed to get some sleep. It wasn’t until I started to walk out of the store, though, feeling just a little unsatisfied with my purchase, not believing that I had truly found what I was looking for, that I spotted a lucky Portuguese rooster, about the same size of my Chinese figure, with “Portugal” written on the side, standing in a far corner of a display shelf. For sixty more Macanese dollars, the lucky rooster joined its new Chinese friend in my bag.

A souvenir from China and a souvenir from Portugal – maybe no great Macanese fusion of an object even exists. When I finally set them on my desk in Wellington, side-by-side, the rooster turned so as to hide the “Portugal” label, I’ll always think of this strange city, where signs painted with Chinese characters hang from buildings with Portuguese façades, remnants of its days as a European colony. I’ll think of the colors, the vibrant red of the Chinese lanterns, the yellow of the incense spirals slowly burning in Buddhist temples, and the lighthearted mint green of the houses where Portuguese officials used to reside. I’ll think of the dichotomy of this place that’s not just “one country, two systems,” as the Chinese government proclaims, but even one city, two worlds – two worlds perhaps not as fused as many seem to believe, yet offering an air of mystique that keeps you coming back for more.

on the [not-so] bright side...

2009-11-21T23:00:00.000-08:00

My time in Queenstown has been filled with some amazing memories, whether it be my first time up the mountain, my first time on stage at Watties, or especially my first leap off a bungy ledge. But in between the Fiordland forays and the glacial galavanting, life hasn’t always been as exciting or exhilarating as many of my posts have portrayed – not every day can hold eight and a half second freefalls to say the least. There was a lot of routine, a lot of monotony, and a lot of annoyances that didn’t always have me jumping out of bed in the morning (or afternoon, depending on whether I’d worked a bar shift the night before or not…). And it normally wasn’t the big stuff that left me upset. Big explosions from an irate customer, few and far between that they were, would usually just make me laugh, amused as I was by their demands to speak to my manager. Instead, it was the petty perturbances (is that even a word?), the little things that had the potential to build up and ruin any good day. As the months went by and many customers were culpable of the same grievances (I call them repeat offenders), I found myself keeping track of pet peeves, a running list forming in my head – and in the heads of my colleagues, as they often shared during a good whinge session. And here, for your enjoyment, are the top three at both of my places of employment in Queenstown. Here, out of my exasperation for your entertainment, is a look at the not-so bright side of my life…not to whinge, but merely to record and laugh out now after the fact.

Premier Taste

4. Customers who don’t talk. I don’t just mean the ones who walk up, say hello, “Fine and you?” and then don’t continue an extended conversation. I mean those select few who quite literally didn’t say a word; who would simply nod when you said hello, who would hold up their EFTPOS card when you told them the total as if to say, “I’ll be paying with a card,” and then walk away. One surefire way to elicit some verbal response from them, though, would be to forget to give them their change or money if they requested cash back. Soon enough, the vow of silence would be broken with an “Excuse me, my money?” confirming this customer wasn’t mute, just not interested in basic conversation.

3. Customers who bring their own bags. Now, I am all for “going green,” buying cloth bags announcing “I’m not plastic!” on the side, and trying to save…whatever it is that using less plastic saves. However, all that I ask is that said customer tells me they brought their own bag, preferably before I finish bagging their groceries and they suddenly snap out of whatever trance they’d fallen into, reach into their purse and pull out a nylon bag, folded into an impossibly smaller bag, and exclaim, “Oh! I am so sorry, I forgot I brought…” “Yes, yes,” I’d say, already unpacking and repacking, shaking my head, “You brought your own bag.” Good on ya, buddy.

2. Customers with different bagging standards. I’m not talking about one customer in particular who has double standards, but different customers with their own opinions that make it impossible to develop any set system when it comes to getting groceries from the shopping cart into bags. Being severely OCD myself, needing a place for everything and for everything to always be in its designated place, I took a rather careful approach to bagging, not quite painstaking but probably putting way more thought into the process than most. Besides the obvious rules like all meat in its own bag, frozen items kept together, and eggs on top, I always tried to make sure items were placed neatly in their bags, not just some random, jumbled mess. One day, an older couple, perhaps in their 50s or 60s, came through my lane. I distinctly remember putting three bags of potato chips and one bag of pre-washed lettuce together in the same bag – hardly an offence, even in my eyes. The woman, though, swiftly took the bag from my hands, saying, “Kids these days, they just aren’t taught how to pack.” I almost laughed out loud at the utter preposterousness of her statement. I imagined myself in some supermarket high court, defending myself: “Number one, Your Honor, I am hardly a ‘kid.’ Number two, yes, she is exactly right – we aren’t taught. We’re bagging groceries, sir, not explosives. And – finally – taught or not, there is nothing wrong with the way I packed that bag.” It was customers like her who just increased the OCD-ness of my packing habits out of the fear of another accusation. But other customers would come through and say, “Oh, just chuck ‘em all in there. I’m not fussed,” throwing off my fastidiousness. Sometimes, you just can’t win.

Before you think otherwise, my job at the bar wasn’t immune from such annoyances, they just looked a little different…

Watties.

4. Customers who think they’re my friend. I’m all for developing relationships with regular customers and there were many, many people I got to know in Queenstown who I would look forward to seeing whenever they came in. It was every so often, though, that someone I didn’t know too well would begin to expect freebies from me. I could understand a legitimate friend wanting a free drink or two every now and then (not that I did, what with observant bosses, video surveillance, and a vigilant stocktake completed every Monday morning), but some people whom I barely knew would make comments like, “One of these days I’m gonna get a free drink off of you, or, “I’ve been bartending for ten years and I would never charge a friend for [insert extra drink here].” Hm, maybe one of these days I won’t…

3. Customers not able to pay. There’s hardly anything more frustrating than having a section packed on all sides with people clamoring for a drink and that one customer holding up the line for a myriad reasons – not enough cash, no cash, an invalid card transaction, or an alcohol-induced inability to recall their pin number. There were once two particularly wonderful customers, two guys – no doubt from Australia – who literally spread fistfuls of coins – of both New Zealand and Australian origins, mind you – across the bar trying to scrape their total together. One had a wallet open as they stood there and I saw a bill tucked away inside large enough to cover their drinks. I reached across the bar, took the bill, and thanked them ever so kindly for their patronage.

2. Customers who don’t order their drinks at once. The way this might typically go would be a guy walks up and orders two beers and three tequila shots. I pour the beers and go to the back of the bar to get the shot glasses and tequila. As I turn around and carry the shots over to the customer, he’ll then hold up any number of fingers indicating he needs that many more. If it’s really my lucky day, he’ll do this several more times, obviously incapable of tallying a total friend count before coming up to the bar to order.

Now, if you’re wondering where #1 is for both these lists, it happens to be the same – Self-Explanatory Customers, or SECs as I refer to them. SECs have a habit of either pointing out the obvious or asking for things I’d already planned to do or get. At the supermarket SECs might ask for a receipt just as it was printing out. “It’s coming,” I’d patiently smile, “Slow machine.” Or sometimes, if a customer was purchasing only four or five small items, it could be faster to scan everything through before placing them all in a bag. SECs would often ask, “Uh, can I have a bag for those?” just as I wetted my fingers to more easily pull the plastic of their bag apart. At the bar, SECs might order three beers, two vodkas, and a water. I’d serve the vodka and be pouring the beer when they’d say, “And a water, please.” “Of course,” I’d say, wishing I’d been born with three arms instead of two. Like I said, pretty petty offences on the whole, but they manage to annoy all the same.

All that being said, I obviously know there are more important things to life than crying over spilled milk, and my daily frustrations are dwarfed by infinitely more important concerns like unemployment rates, epidemics, or the political situation in Burma or North Korea. But it’s fun to laugh about how easy it was to get fed up with my jobs – and in a way, it’s a challenge to not be “that customer.” If I was ever ordering drinks at Wattie’s on my night off or doing my weekly shopping at the supermarket, I’d always tell my friends, “I’m so sorry, I’m being that customer again, aren’t I?” One of the guys I worked with at the supermarket, a Scottish guy named Mark with one of the best sarcastic senses of humor I’ve ever come across, would often come through my checkout lane and jokingly take on several annoying traits at once – moving his items back on the conveyer belt again and again, pretending not to realize the thing was automatic and only stopped when an item was actually in front of its sensor; trying to use his EFTPOS card before I’d selected method of payment, swiping incessantly and with increasing impatience; and standing at the end of my till, receipt in hand, studying it for an uncomfortably long amount of time, eager to point out the smallest mistake or price discrepancy.

That was how we made light of the meniality, though; that was how we kept ourselves sane. But of course sanity found itself in more than customer impersonations – there were many moments I’ll miss and think of often as I move on in New Zealand.

I’ll miss the friends I made – friends that even though we may not have known much about each other or our pasts and background, we still connected and grew close over the winter season. There’s one scene, one moment, that remains in my mind. The stage at Wattie’s was across the room from the bar, but to the right of it was another bar that, while used by the restaurant during the day, became an extension of the dance floor once the DJ came on for the night. On Wednesdays and Sundays, though, as live musicians took the stage for acoustic nights, the side bar became the Wattie’s Staff VIP listening area. We’d pile on, sitting close, swinging our legs, soaking in the local talent. It was on one of my last Wednesdays in Queenstown that we sat in our spot – I’d just finished my own set and I joined Diana, the girl I grew closest to in town who worked in the restaurant, and all of the guys we worked with, most of them English, with accents I could fall in love with, Brit hairstyles I laughed at, and a camaraderie among us all I couldn’t imagine getting any better. As cameras got passed around, our arms wrapped around each other, singing along to covers we knew and love, I looked at Diana and said, “I’m gonna miss this so much.” She smiled and we agreed not to talk about it.

I’ll miss the international community of Queenstown, so impressive for such a small town. I’ll miss not being the token American, feeling out of place in the skin and sound of my nationality. I’d barely left town in October and arrived back in Christchurch, spending the weekend with friends I’d known there before, when the “In America…?” questions started up again. Some people really think up the craziest stuff. “In America, do you guys have fences? When I was in Texas, I didn’t see any…” “In America, are there cyclists? Because when I was there, there were no sidewalks, so where are the cyclists supposed to ride?” “Have you been to New Jersey? Is it amazing?” It gets exhausting being singled out and expected to have an answer for everything they think of. Already I looked back on my time in Queenstown and appreciated it for being a place where everyone was from somewhere else, where no one’s hometown was cause for commotion.

On my last day at the supermarket, my Scottish friend Mark drew me a “stick-figure family” of our circle of friends at Premier Taste. A motley crew it was, but it showed me in the middle with a guitar; Susan, our Irish supervisor, in the corner on a conductor’s stand; Malou, a Malaysian woman and fellow checkout chick, known for her incessant cleaning around the checkout area, with a bottle of cleaning solution in her hand and three “mini-Malous” at her feet, representative of her children; Georg, my 18-year old German friend and me and Mark’s little project who worked in the service deli, his shaggy hair seemingly blowing in the wind from his well-known crazy moves on the dance floor; Remy, a Frenchman who looked younger than he was, a beer in his hand, bags under his eyes, and a clock reading 5am – a guy who wasn’t hesitant to admit he often came to work on just two hours of sleep after a late night out; and even “Cute Kid,” my favorite regular customer, a boy of about nine or ten who would come in, walk around holding a shopping basket and scratching his head as if deep in thought, and walk out with only the most practical of items – never anything remotely frivolous purchased for himself. And that’s only half of the figures included on my drawing, no bigger than a 3x5 index card. Finishing before me that night, Mark handed me the card as he went upstairs to clock out, giving me a hug and saying, “You’ll be missed.” When he came back down, I was in tears – the last thing I thought I would happen on my last day at the supermarket (I’d more envisioned myself jumping for joy or perhaps doing a cartwheel out the automatic sliding doors in front). “It wasn’t supposed to make you cry,” he said, and I hadn’t expected it either – but it just goes to show you the power of the place.

I’ll miss Braden, my bar manager-turned-music promoter. Braden is personally responsible for reviving my music, for getting me up on stage and on the radio. We spent many a late night over a glass or two of white wine after finishing work, “talking shop,” me playing him my songs, him sharing his plans and desire to be a songwriter himself. After one such night, I woke up to a text from him:

Hey, it’s late but never too late to inspire. I’m back writing. How was I to know you were to go, amazing it was, short it is to be. You live your life the way it should be. Chances are taken; choices are made. Everything has a reason and it comes naturally. Night hun, my pen can’t stop.

After I played on the radio, he sent another later that day:

Hey doll. Hope you had a good night, this morning was absolutely amazing for me to watch you do what you’re born to do. Sing your heart out.

And after I left Queenstown, having given him a card thanking him for bringing music back into my life, he wrote:

Hey you. Just read your card down by the beach. I got teary eyed. Thank you. A lot of people come and go here in Queenstown and I forget them but you and I will meet again. It’s just a pity we left it so late to get to know each other. Lots of love.

My last Wednesday night playing, Braden and I stood to the side together, listening to a fantastic new group he’d found for the night. Their female singer was especially incredible and I mouthed “wow” to Braden. “This is who you could be hanging out with, you know,” he said, not happy about my impending departure. “I know, I know,” I sighed, still not 100% sure I was making the right decision. He pulled me in for a hug and said, “It’s just that I believe in you so much.” You don’t get that often in life. I’ve talked several times with my mother, a published author, about the importance of having the right agent, of how the person filling that role in your life and career needs to be someone you know believes in you – someone you know has complete confidence in you. I’d found that and here I was leaving it all – and I’m not even sure why.

Despite all my frustrations, despite the downsides to everyday life, there is a magic about the place I won’t soon forget. In a way, I feel a large part of me grew up in Queenstown – I learned to stand on my own; I grew into my new role as a bartender and developed some semblance of sophistication when it comes to my knowledge of wine and cocktails; I challenged myself physically on the slopes, on glaciers, and on the bungy ledge; I challenged my opinions, beliefs, and stereotypes I’d held; heck, I finally even had romantic interests I was actually interested in myself; all of this while living on the shores of a lake at the foot of the Southern Alps.

I recently finished reading a book titled Another Quiet American: Stories of Life in Laos, whose author, Brett Dakin, graduated from Princeton before spending two years in the capital city of Laos as a consultant for the government’s tourism authority. As I read of his plans to finally leave Vientiane, the reasons he gave for leaving were remarkably similar to mine when I decided to leave Queenstown:

“If I had really wanted to stay, I could have found a way. But that was just it: if I had stayed, I wasn’t sure I’d ever leave. I could imagine myself living in Vientiane for years, applying to renew my visa every few months and holding my breath as I awaited a new lease on my paradisiacal lifestyle…The ease with which I’d slipped into a comfortable routine in Vientiane frightened me, for it wasn’t clear where it would lead…But the main reason I felt I had to leave was more simple: everyone else was always leaving. While I’d lived there, most of my closest friends had left…Sure, it was fun to meet the occasional visiting consultant…but this was no substitute for real friendships I’d established, and it was difficult to watch as the men and women I had come to know disappeared.”

It was good to know I wasn’t alone in my moving on from a place where I was perfectly happy, a place I wasn’t even quite sure why I was leaving. So at the end of the day (or season), a few pet peeves aren’t much when compared to the friends and new experiences I’ll always think of when I think of Queenstown.

where are all the woolly mammoths?

2009-11-01T03:45:00.000-08:00

You know the moment you walk up to a hostel and see a Kiwi Experience bus parked outside, you’re a tourist again. You’re as far from “off the beaten path” as you can get – you are, in fact, on the very definition of the aforementioned path. So what is Kiwi Experience? Think one massive lime green tour bus shuttling thirty or forty backpackers with a bit of a tendency to party around the country from Highlight A to Highlight B and so on. It’s safe to say it’s best to stay away. Thankfully neither two girls sharing my dorm in Franz Josef were partaking in such an Experience. Instead, they were quite the opposite – curled up in bed when I walked in the room, reading obscure novels, sporting long flowing skirts and chunky knit sweaters in uncoordinating colors. My initial impression of “quiet hippie types that keep to themselves” was confirmed when I learned they’re WWOOFers – traveling around New Zealand, doing farm work in exchange for food and accommodation.

But alas, Kiwi Experience Highlight or not, the Franz Josef Glacier must be done, no matter what your status in New Zealand. Even if you’ve lived here for one, five, or fifteen years, it’s a quintessential sight to be seen. Back in August, I heard about the Naked Bus transport company that guarantees at least one seat on every trip for one dollar. Thus similar to my addiction to stalking the Ryan Air website in London for one-pound flights, I sat down one night asking eagerly, “Where can I go and when??” The answer was Franz Josef in mid-October.

Unfortunately, the amazing bus fare – just $3 for a return journey! – came with a not-so-amazing departure time – seven-thirty in the morning, clearly a forbidden hour with my newly-acquired nocturnal lifestyle. Having finished work at 4am the night before (or should I say the morning of?) and not getting home until 5, I knew there was absolutely no chance of me waking up if I decided to attempt an hour of sleep after I packed. So a proper all-nighter it was, filling the early morning hours with a few overdue emails, scheduling, and figuring out what exactly it is you bring when you’re off to hike a glacier.

The bus ride up was exceptionally unremarkable – I’ve had better and worse transport experiences. Being first to arrive on the scene and check in, I’d managed to stake my claim on the entire back seat, but even being able to spread out and lie down didn’t facilitate that good of a sleep. Our driver, lovely man that he was, seemed to be a little too keen on taking breaks, this due to being a smoker I’m sure. Four or five times along the way he stopped for fifteen minutes at a time, making phone calls, having a fag. I mean, as much as I loved the bus, it wasn’t like I was trying to spend any more than the already seven and a half hours on the trip. We even paused for a forty-five minute lunch break at the Salmon River Café – obviously a pre-arrangement between both parties as “No food or drink are to be consumed on the premises” except for the $20 options found on the menu, all of which included salmon. Go figure.

But somehow we made it, ten rest stops and fag breaks later, and after checking into the Rainforest Hostel – supposedly situated on a seven-acre rainforest, but you can’t believe everything you’re told – it was on to seeing just what Franz Josef as a town had to offer besides a glacier. Well, as it turned out, not much. Besides a scattering of hostels and campervan parks, Main Street – otherwise known as State Highway 6 – held only a handful of restaurants and cafés, a bookshop, one supermarket about a tenth of the size of Premier Taste, a glacier center featuring a gift shop and movie theater, two churches, and a couple of glacier guide companies and helicopter tour booking offices. Even after I walked to the edge of town to explore the Department of Conservation office for the glacier, it took no more than half an hour to cover what exactly there was to cover.

The highlight of that first day has to be St. James Anglican Church, which I visited in hopes of seeing a well-known stained glass window that was even featured on a postage stamp in 1946 for its view of the glacier. Although I didn’t find the door to the church unlocked, what I did find was a white tea cup and saucer sitting on top of a few stairs outside with bright green ivy growing from a crack in the cement. I’m not sure why this particular image struck me – perhaps the suggestion of life in a seemingly empty place – but I found the simplicity of the scene resounding with me long into the day.

An early night in the hostel it would be, despite the Monsoon Bar onsite – “It rains…We pour” – touting itself as the “hottest bar on the West Coast.” And it was early to rise as well, up the next morning in time for an 8.15am tour departure. As I brushed my teeth in the communal bathroom, I overheard Kiwi Experiencers moan about hangovers and gossip about who didn’t come back to their rooms last night. I, for one, was amazed they were able to have such a big night in such a small town. It must certainly take a lot more effort than in a place like Queenstown.

At the office of Franz Josef Glacier Guides, we were given blue, yellow, and red plastic cards to exchange for boots and crampons, overtrousers, and a hat and gloves, as well as a safety waiver to sign – besides cautioning “persons with poor balance” against participating in the hike, it also advised that “Franz Josef is considered a ‘warm’ glacier so it is very likely that you will be getting your feet wet on a guided glacier trip.” Just like with my bungee jump, you have to laugh sometimes at what these companies choose to include in their safety statements and wonder at the complaints (and lawsuits?) they’ve received that led to these waivers.

After a short bus ride to the start of the national park, our day began with an hour-long hike to the face of the glacier. A guide named Amy led us along this portion of the hike, taking us across the rocky riverbed of the valley and explaining some of the history and science behind the glacier. “The region’s a geologist’s paradise,” she says, “They can get a little excited.” She pointed out how far the glacier used to extend, distinguished because of the tree line – the difference between the upper part of the cliffs, covered in heavy foliage, and the lower part, where trees were small and scarce and marked with glacial striations. Towards the end of the Seventies, many were worried the glacier was going to disappear once and for all, so far back had it retreated, but from the 1980s until 1999 a sort of mini-Ice Age caused a huge surge forward, guaranteeing the glacier would be around at least a little while longer. Such are the cycles of its movements and growth that the ice at the bottom of the glacier is never more than fifty or sixty years old at any given moment. I don’t know why I imagined Franz Josef to be some remnant of an Ice Age long ago, but as one of the fastest moving glaciers in the world, Amy explains, “You won’t find any woolly mammoths here.”

The glacier itself is twelve kilometers long, filling a valley between steep cliffs that for all intents and purposes reminded me much of Milford Sound – the same sheer rock faces, the same low-hanging cloud cover, the same waterfalls threading their way down through deep green trees – all but for a massive block of ice sitting in the middle. We are told to picture the glacier as a frying pan, with the flat, round section at the top being the Névé, a 50 square kilometer section that accumulates 30-40 meters of snow a year. It can take six years for this snow to compound and form into ice, ice that is pushed forward by the weight of new snowfalls. The “handle” of the frying pan is five kilometers long, running down from the ice fall – often shifting five meters a day – to the terminal face of the glacier – which can move up to one meter a day.

When we reached the face, Amy handed us over to Bryce – “rhymes with ice,” he says with obvious pun intended – who would be leading us on the rest of the full-day hike. He sat us down out of the way of any rockfall and showed us how to strap on our crampons, funky little contraptions that made it feel like wearing steel soccer cleats – not that I ever have or anything, but still. “Anyone ever wear these before?” Bryce asks as he checks that each of our crampons have been secured properly. A Scottish guy named Peter raises his hand. “They have many glaciers in Scotland, Pete?” Bryce asks, obviously amused, and I immediately appreciate his sense of humor, as well as his philosophy of tour-guiding. He had each of us go around and share our name, nationality, and whether we were traveling with anyone else – thankfully I wasn’t the only loner.

Besides Scottish Peter and an American couple from Maine – she sporting L.L. Bean and him an oversized woolen green Swanndri poncho – “Only in New Zealand,” I had to think, “Can you get away with wearing something like that” – I got to know Jonny, a guy my age whose backpack had a patch in the shape of a red coat of arms with “Jersey” and three gold lions emblazoned on it. While my only knowledge of Jersey is in the context of New Jersey back home, I soon learned of the Isle of Jersey, part of the Channel Islands off the coast of Normandy. While closer to France, they are a part of the United Kingdom, technically referred to as a British Crown Dependency. A mere 45 square miles in size, Jersey is considered an off-shore tax haven and the financial services sector is its chief source of income, something Jonny worked in for six years before needing more than island life and heading out to travel. Just like that cup and saucer outside St. James, it’s funny the things that stick to the corners of your mind, how this discovery of a new place – not quite a country in its own right, but almost – made my day on the ice that much better.

With our crampons secured, the group divided itself into two based on physical ability. With only thirteen to begin with, Bryce took my team of seven and said we should be able to cover a lot of ground with our size – “Most days, we can have six groups of at least ten each.” And so we were off on the first segment of our hike, an utter labyrinth of stairs weaving and winding their way up the face of the glacier. What could have been potentially disastrous to my out-of-shape heart – stair after stair after stair – was avoided thanks to having to stop every few meters or so for Bryce to take a pick-axe to the path, evening out the ice and shaping the stairs. Many of the steeper sets of stairs as well as tracks with substantial overhangs had strong cords set up as handrails along them – “No one’s too cool for the handrails,” Bryce says as he tightens and readjusts the screws keeping the cords in place.

After a solid hour or two of Stairmastering our way up the glacier, we reached a wooden box filled with ice picks a little less intimidating in size than Bryce’s – a box that marked the peak of the half-day climb. It was a good reference point, as it showed me just how much you would miss without choosing the full-day experience. You would miss squeezing your way through crevasses so tall and so narrow you have to shuffle along one foot in front of another, and turn your torso sideways, one arm extended behind you, just to make it through. You would miss the naturally formed caves, where water has smoothed out the sides so slickly that walking through them is not unlike scampering through the brightly-colored plastic tubes of McDonald’s Playworlds in your socks. You would miss the view from the vista, where you can hardly believe how far you’ve come in just a few short hours, where the waterfalls along the rocky valley seem minute, and where the glacier itself appears before you as a frozen sea, waves of ice slowly surging forward, the concave shape of each a strikingly electric blue, stunningly translucent, a shade seen only before in a Crayola box.

At the top, Bryce arranged us together for a group photo, me holding his ice pick high into the air, before starting the descent. Anxious to make the bus ride back, we waste no time – “On our way up, we can do what we want, muck around wherever, but it’s straight down the way back.” As I prepared myself for yet another uneventful night in Franz Josef, Jonny and I realized we were not only staying at the same hostel but would be catching the same bus back the next day. Oh, how misery loves company. But what seems like nothing more than another nondescript small town to me isn’t to others. Bryce shared that while in big cities, you might find 5% of people are interested in outdoor activities, in towns like Franz Josef that number is more like 85% and while my ideal weekend might include movies or museums, a performance or night out, these outdoor enthusiasts fill their days off with rock and ice climbing, tramps, or skiing and snowboarding down south.

That’s what I’m coming to learn about New Zealand, though – there are some places that exist simply because of one main natural attraction, one that makes up for the rest of your visit being perhaps less-than-stellar in comparison. And even that last statement is only in my opinion. Beauty’s in the eye of the beholder, after all, and to the right person, a little town with a permanent population of just over 400 might have more to offer than what initially meets the eye.

As for me, I’m just happy my first glacial expedition was so successful, and that even if I had fallen in a crevasse and been frozen alive, I wouldn’t have had to hang out with woolly mammoths until the next Ice Age.

when you least expect it.

2009-10-16T01:51:00.000-07:00

There are certain things I expected to do during my year in New Zealand. Like I’ve written, I knew a bit about Fiordland and was looking forward to visiting Milford Sound. I figured a trip to Oz (short for Australia by those-in-the-know) would be a mandatory pilgrimage already living Down Under. And I couldn’t wait for my first foray to Asia, something that’s soon to happen in about ten days when I leave Christchurch for Bangkok.

But then are there things I would have simply laughed at the thought of if you’d told me about them back in March. There are things I had no idea would even be possible to be a part of in New Zealand. Getting back into music has undoubtedly been the greatest surprise of the year thus far. I started off playing just a couple of songs each Sunday at Wattie’s – something I was fine with as it was certainly more than I’d played in the past year and a half. But it wasn’t long until my manager Braden got an idea and had a plan brewing. Working with our promotions manager, he had soon created “Wednesdays Unplugged,” a mid-week acoustic night that would feature five local musicians each week – including me!

It was hard to believe I’d gone from two to three songs in between another artist’s set to officially having my own 45-minute-long set. All of a sudden, I was back in it, back in the music; scribbling down set lists on the back of comment cards from the supermarket, learning covers, digging out old originals. I even started performing with another guy from Wattie’s, an English guy named Dave. Braden was pretty set on putting the two of us together – Dave on guitar, me on a mic – and while I felt stressed he kept calling me, telling me to arrange a practice session with Dave when I barely had enough time for both jobs, even that collaboration has been great. The simple feeling of creating music with another person, of having someone else up on stage with you, to give looks to, to banter with in between songs, to laugh with when you forget yet another word.

But even with having a chance to perform every week in Wattie’s, nothing could have prepared me for the latest musical opportunity. Braden can tend to have quite the laissez-faire approach when it comes to music and getting gigs together. From the first Sunday he wanted me up on stage to pairing Dave and I together on Wednesdays, he’ll either leave it to the last minute or bring the subject up in the most nonchalant way. So I shouldn’t have been surprised when last Friday, I walked into work at the bar and the first thing Braden said to me was, “So we’re all confirmed for the radio next Friday.”

Excuse me? Confirmed? I had no idea there was anything of the sort in the works, let alone good to go or "done and dusted," as the Kiwis might say. And ecstatic as I was over the news, my nerves kicked in an instant later and in that crisis-management kind of way, I needed details. “What do you mean I’m on the radio? Which station? When? For how long? Do they want covers or originals?”

But of course, Braden could give me nothing, only that I had to be there at 7.45 am, a truly unacceptable hour in our line of work. And although I knew I’d be performing for a segment called “Friday Live,” he couldn’t even tell me what station it would be on so there was no real point in telling friends to tune in (not that there was any chance of them being conscious at that hour) because I had no idea of where to direct them. But so I showed up one bright, early Friday morning to the RadioWorks office in town where most of Queenstown’s radio stations are based. Braden came with me and we were shown into the reception area where we waited for our slot. Around 8.15 (having been told I was playing at 8.30), the two announcers, Emma and Margot, came out of the recording studio and asked who I was.

“Oh, we were expecting a Dave...” Which is exactly what you want to hear when a) you’re eaten up with nerves and b) you’ve already set your Facebook status to “OMG!!!! Going to sing on NZ radio!!!!” or something similarly overdone, and we all know the embarrassment of Facebook-status-retration. “Oh, sorry guys…false alarm…” But the women were lovely and accommodating, making a split-second decision – supposedly against what their bosses would probably agree to – to include me anyways, having me go on before this mystery “Dave” arrived to play and promote next week’s Jazz Fest.

They brought me into the recording studio and I was shown the seat I’d be playing from. As I waited to play, I marveled at how animated and expressive they were on air, even while talking to an empty room. Maybe that’s the secret to DJs we know and love? The whole affair was pretty quick-bang – thirty seconds in and they announced I’d be playing – “Alright, folks, we’re about to get even prettier in here. We’ve got Candace Rose in the studio this morning who’ll be playing for us.” Two minutes later we were back on air. It was go-time.

It was all I could do to ignore the microphone in front of me and just talk to them as if having a normal conversation. “So what are you playing for us today, Candace?” And the more leading question, asked purposely as a sort of plug for Watties – “Do you play anywhere around town?” By that point, though, I’d gotten into the swing of things and I let the newfound promoter in me come out. “Absolutely, Emma. Every Wednesday night at Wattie’s at 9pm, we have five amazing local acts in…” It was one of those moments where you stop and ask yourself, “Who are you and what have you done with the old me?”

I only ended up playing one song, an original called “Yours for the Taking.” It’s one I wrote on piano but have since transferred to guitar so I can play it at Wattie’s. It goes over great every time I play it, so I decided it might be the best choice for the radio. It went well, especially considering it was probably the earliest I’ve ever performed live I was grateful for just a few parts where my voice got scratchy. As I played, I looked around the room, at Braden and the announcers, and got affirming nods, thumb-ups, and the like. I wanted nothing more than to enjoy it, to live in that moment and revel in the fact that it was really happening. When I finished, Emma said, “What an absolute treasure we have here today. Thank you so much for that, Candace, and remember you can see Candace every Wednesday at Wattie’s…” I chatted with them briefly afterwards but it was soon time for jazzy Dave to have his go on air.

As Braden and I walked back out into the still-early Morning, I was completely buzzing – no other word for it. Exhilarated, energized, on a high, whatever. All I could say to myself was, “Who woulda thought? Who woulda thought?!” The last thing I pictured happening in New Zealand was having a chance to sing and play live on a major station – the total last thing. “You nailed it,” Braden says, “The lyics are brilliant. You know what you’re doing.”

I do? Really? It was a cool thing to hear, to think that the years of lessons, practice, camps and performances are paying off in a way. That as a musician, I am able to offer something people enjoy. The buzz stayed strong through the morning (the longest, most productive morning I’ve had in a while, I might add), making the thought of going back to sleep an impossibility. So I carried on, officially submitting my application for grad school, wrapping all the Christmas presents I’m taking to Thailand to send home with my mother – and even going into work at the supermarket more cheerful than usual.

But after four hours of utter monotony – of the dreadfully draining task of my arm moving in the same swiping motion ten thousand times an hour – I had lost it. The morning in the studio was but a faint memory in my mind-numbed state. Until, that is, one gentleman came down my till and after a few moments of talking, he asks, “Was that you singing on the radio this morning?” Talk about an irrepressible smile – I couldn’t even help it, I was absolutely beaming. “Why, yes it was,” I said with a sly grin on my face. “That was pretty sharp. Was it pre-recorded or live?” I assured him it was indeed live (hence the name of the segment, really) and as he walked off, he says, “Keep at it.”

It’s one of those phrases that hits you right in the gut. There, in my checkout lane, I fought back tears, blinking fast and staring up at the fluorescent lights hanging overhead. Because sometimes, caught in the never-ending monotony, you just have to wonder. What will all become of this, you ask yourself. Often while closing the bar each night, as I’m sweeping up piles of bottlecaps, straws, napkins, and broken bits of glass, Braden will walk by and call me Cinderella. I have to laugh and wonder if he’s right. It’s hard to balance having a mind that’s itching to be creative with having jobs that are anything but. But – this is where I am right now, these are the jobs I have and I will aim to do them with the smallest amount of grumbling that I can manage. And, of course, always holding onto every opportunity like this one, hoping they are only a taste of what’s to come.

And to you, sir – you in checkout lane 4 telling a tired young checkout chick to keep at it…yes, sir, you better believe I will.

until i can't...

2009-10-12T20:58:00.000-07:00

Over the past year or so of traveling and living abroad, I’ve noticed an interesting theme weave itself in and out of the conversations I have with people about what I’m doing – that being the perception that this time of my life is temporary, an idea that’s often expressed in the phrase “while you can.”

“That’s great you’re doing this while you can.”

“You should definitely have these experiences while you can.”

Or the most wistful approach – “I wish I had done the same when I was your age.”

While I can? It’s always a phrase that scares me slightly – it’s unnerving in the way it implies a time will come when I can’t, when I’ll have to “settle down,” “get a real job,” “have kids,” etc. It’s weird to hear other young travelers like me say they have to go home to the real world because, to me, this is my real world. When I went to Egypt last year, there were three other American girls on the tour who were also living in London through the BUNAC program. As you do in these situations, everyone was asked where they were from, what they did in London (where it seemed everyone was living), where they were headed next, and so on. When the girls were asked about their post-London plans, all of them replied, “Oh, probably go home and get a real job.” It fascinates me how the traveling life almost always gets written off as not a proper job. But why? Why can’t being a backpacker be a real job, even if it doesn’t require a university degree? Granted we’re not crunching numbers or putting on suits in the morning or earning a stable five-figure salary from a single employer, but who’s to say it’s not real? The only reason I work two jobs in Queenstown (and am thus told by everyone that I work too much) is so that I can continue to save a reasonable sum every week. Just because I’m traveling doesn’t mean I can’t be financially responsible, it doesn’t mean my savings account has to get run into the ground.

Thus with all my frustrations and misperceptions, I look forward to meeting people who defy this concept and haven’t limited themselves to a global lifestyle only “while they can.” Like the family that came through my checkout lane a few weeks ago. The dad was wearing a Notre Dame baseball hat and I was feeling particularly chatty and up to striking conversations with customers, so I asked him about it. Turned out he was from Indiana, his wife was from England, and they met while working abroad for the same company…in Stockholm. And as if that wasn’t random enough, they currently live in Sydney with their two daughters. Increasingly intrigued by this couple’s story, I kept asking questions. Something my Kiwi friend Paul and I have discussed while joking about getting married is where the wedding would be for such an international match. This particular couple got hitched right near Windsor Castle, something I can’t imagine many relatives complaining about having to attend. And then the ever-popular question of how often you’d see your families living so far from home. “Not much,” he says, especially considering his twin brother lives in Alaska. Ouch. Looking at his daughters, though, he goes on to say, “But this is my family now.” How cool is that?

Or, to move on to Exhibit B, there was another woman who came through my till this week who asked me almost immediately after hearing my accent, “Are you from the States?” (Sidenote: You know you’re bound to have a good conversation with any American who refers to the country as “The States” rather than using the Team America-esque pronunication of “America.”) An American herself, she met her South African husband on a blind date in New York City, a date that brought her all the way to Queenstown, New Zealand, six years ago where she now raises her ten-year old twin girls. Another question I’ve given a lot of thought to is about children living in one country with parents who originated from another. Do these twins, for instance, consider themselves Kiwis now, Americans or some hybrid form of Ameri-zealanders? Interestingly enough, she shared that one daughter has developed a New Zealand accent while the other has retained her American one. Brings a whole new meaning to the word fraternal, doesn’t it?

And finally, my flatmate and friend Jordan. Although originally from Colorado, her art-dealing parents have lived in Bangkok the past four years as well as places like Nepal, India, and Costa Rica, if only for a few months in each country. She thus attended an American International high school in Bangkok and hopes to go to university in Melbourne, Australia. Where the whole idea for this entry even came from was on our overnight trip to Milford Sound. At dinner on the boat, we were seated with an American couple from San Diego. As Jordan shared her story in answer to more rounds of the usual getting-to-know-you questions, I grew more and more amazed at the woman’s inability to grasp Jordan’s life history. In every lull in the conversation, she’d come back to it, returning to it like an old Sudoku you couldn’t solve but weren’t yet ready to admit defeat to. “So, where did you go to high school, then?”…”You went to a school in Costa Rica, but wouldn’t that have been in Spanish?”…”And you haven’t started college yet?” It was all I could do to not laugh and say, “Come on, now, is it that hard to understand?” At the end of dinner – such sweet sorrow that it was to part from them – the woman said, “Well, I’m glad you girls are doing this while you can.”

That’s when it hit me…why, why – and I ask that with every ounce of exasperation I can muster – do people say that? What is it about the life abroad that seems so mysteriously incompatible with having a “real” job, raising a family, and just carrying on with life in general? Why – there’s that frustration again – does there seem to be such a divide between this time of my life and the next chapter? Now, to be fair, a friend in Christchurch asked me once, “I presume you’ll decide to settle down at some point?” And every so often, I am filled with such a desire, especially after looking at Pottery Barn or Urban Outfitters too long and simply wanting a place to finally hang some of the pictures I’ve taken. And as my mom always reminds me, at some point I will have to have a small life and deal with its normal, daily struggles – annoying neighbors, frustrating queues at the supermarket, paying my children’s tuition. I can’t always jet about – at some point I must connect with one place and build a community. But the key to that is reconciling the fact that life is often small with the knowledge that the world is big, and we must have both. We cannot live in the world disconnected from real relationships, but we also must never lose perspective in life on the greater world around us. So rather than thinking of that day when I do settle down as a be all, end all to my travels, I’m going to keep on doing what I’m doing…not “while I can” but until I can’t.

And I suppose what’s keeping me from feeling like this chapter of my life is just a series of random wanderings, just a way of delaying the real world, is the belief that this is exactly what I’m supposed to be doing, this is right where I’m supposed to be. I’ve written before on my love for Jack Kerouac after reading On the Road, especially the following line:

“I felt like an arrow that could shoot all the way out.”

I instantly connected with his reckless abandon, his searching after something undefined and potentially unobtainable, and his constant decision to go. But a few days after I finished Kerouac, I picked up a book by Oswald Chambers, a well-known religious author who ran a Bible College in London in the 1910s. There, in his writing, was my answer:

“A saint’s life is in the hands of God like a bow and arrow in the hands of an archer. God is aiming at something the saint cannot see, and He stretches and strains and every now and again the saint says – “I cannot stand anymore.” God does not heed, He goes on stretching till His purpose is in sight, then He lets fly. Trust yourself in God’s hands.”

In a desire to develop my travel writing for the mainstream publishing industry, I’ve sort of kept much of the spiritual side of my journey in New Zealand out of the picture of this blog. But the truth is, it’s been a major part of what I’m learning here and how I am growing and changing as a person as a result of living in this country. And I know faith and spirituality are not taboo subjects by any means, as best-selling books like Eat, Pray, Love and Blue Like Jazz show people are willing and want to read about, but for me personally, it’s something I want to make certain that I present and discuss topics in a way that’s approachable, interesting and relevant.

But when I came across this juxtaposition – or perhaps intersection would be a more fitting word choice – this collision of ideas – “I felt like an arrow that could shoot all the way out” vs. “My life is in the hands of God like a bow and arrow in the hands of an archer” – I got it. This is it, this is the perfect marriage of ideas and ideals. Life is an adventure, we are meant to shoot all the way out as far as we can reach, and it’s not a matter of getting our sense of curiosity and lust for the world out of our system before the age of 30. However – and this is where the glorious “but” of my epiphany comes in – we are not sailing through the universe on some random trajectory, falling when and where we may. Just as Shakespeare wrote, “There’s a divinity that shapes our ends,” we are an arrow shot by an Archer with a dead-on shot, an Archer who knows the exact point where we will fall. We don’t know, though, and that, my friends, is what makes life such an epic adventure.

So it’s funny to pause at this moment in my course through the air and look back at points in my life where things could have gone in such another direction. One of those moments was my last semester before graduating from university when I began dating a guy I was essentially set up with by family friends back home. On paper, we were perfect for each other – eerily similar tastes in music and movies, similar life experiences and hobbies – you know how it goes, what prompted the set-up in the first place and fueled our families’ pressure to begin a relationship even though neither of us had ever dated anyone seriously before. But as the months went by and graduation drew nearer, it became clear the connection wasn’t there and – worse yet – he wasn’t talking about it. As I struggled to make a decision about life post-university, I wavered between getting a teaching job in my hometown to be near him or pursuing another job elsewhere. Ultimately, London won out almost immediately after I heard about the opportunity, a voice inside me whispering louder each time, “Go. Go. Go.”

I write all of this only to say I had a Family Man moment the other day, a moment where you see what your life could’ve looked like had you chosen the prize behind Door Two instead of Door One. The terrible beauty of Facebook is that it enables these moments to happen a lot sooner than your 20^th high school reunion where you see your first love balding and thirty pounds heavier – or in better shape than ever. So I happened to see photos of the house this guy from last semester is currently building on some property his family owns – a perfectly normal, plastic-sided, two-story construction found all over Suburbia. And all I could do was thank God this guy hadn’t talked, that he hadn’t told me to stay. Because now that I’ve gone, now that I’m here, I can’t imagine being anywhere else. It’s not that I want more or better than that house, it’s not that I want to aim higher – it’s just that I hope, by the grace of God, my arrow shoots out in a different direction.

Until then, I’ll be here…until I can’t.

she'll be coming 'round the mountain...

2009-10-06T00:39:00.000-07:00

There couldn’t be a more fitting time for the phrase “Better late than never” than to refer to me going up the mountain for a little snow action. Having not decided to even make the move to Queenstown until early June – once the season had already started – I first missed out on any good deals that would make a season’s pass even remotely affordable. Then there was the whole issue of gear – board, boots, bindings, a stylish Roxy or Burton jacket with coordinating pants, of course – another pricey investment all on its own. And finally, once I actually arrived in Queenstown and realized that I’d need two quasi-full-time jobs in order to keep saving at the same rate as I was in Christchurch, I wasn’t left with much time to make all that investment in gear and a pass even worth it. All of this leading to the unfortunate reality that I had soon spent three months in Queenstown without a single trip up the slopes – a fact that left me shame-faced every time yet another customer would ask, “So you’re in town for the snow, then?”

Because, let’s face it, not many aren’t. In this mecca of adventure and snow sports, the options are extensive. An hour or two away in Wanaka (a mini-Queenstown, if you will) lie two ski fields, Cardrona and Treble Cone, one that boasts of the longest vertical rise in the Southern Lakes region. Closer to home for Queenstown residents are the Remarkables and Coronet Peak, whose claim to fame is its status as New Zealand’s first commercial ski field. Opened in 1947 by Harry Wigley, it began with only a single rope tow – compared with the $30 million invested in 141 new snow cannons last year, it’s safe to say Coronet has come a long way from its humble beginnings.

But it was to the Remarkables that I headed to for my debut run on a New Zealand ski field. Rumor has it the mountain range earned its name from being one of only two in the world that runs directly north to south – true or not, the ski field offers a little something for everyone: plenty of runs for novice and intermediate skiers as well as terrain parks for the experts among us – parks like the Stash, an “evolutionary, revolutionary Burton signature park,” apparently the first of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere. I was initially supposed to make the trek to Treble Cone for my first run having won a free pass from the bar for being the best-dressed pirate at our Pirate Party on International Talk-Like-A-Pirate Day. (Turns out strapping on an eye patch, hoop earring, red-and-white striped shirt and skull socks can be good for something!) But when I went to book my shuttle to Treble Cone, neither bus company was running their service anymore due to lack of demand. (Alas, as a workmate at the bar said, I should’ve gone, “Well, I’m demanding it! Here’s your demand!”)

I trudged back to our promotions manager to see if I could exchange the free pass for the $50 voucher to our sister bar that had been my other option. “Well, do you want one for Coronet or Remarks instead?” he asked. Really? Was it that easy? Best case of “Ask not, receive not” ever! Jordan had already asked me to go up to Remarks with her on Monday anyways, so I eagerly swapped my Treble Cone pass and started making the necessary preparations. It amazes me how much this town is geared towards getting you up the mountain. Maybe I’ve just never lived in such a purpose-built location before, but I couldn’t believe how simple it was to get everything taken care of before my big day. I had about twenty rental shops to choose from when getting a board out. When I walked into the one nearest my house, the shop attendant asked, “You’ve been here a few times already, right?” Don’t you love it when someone thinks they know you and precedes to give you discounts because of it? “What was your name again?...Oh, right, right, I knew that…Where do you work in town?...Yeah, that’s what I thought…” With the price on one-day board rentals already knocked down due to spring and the end of the season, he also gave me the multi-day rate on my oh-so-modern elastic black ski pants. My outfit for the day was turning into quite the hodge-podge affair – pants from the ski shop, one of Jordan’s extra jackets, cracked goggles that a flatmate left behind after moving out – at least the beanie would be mine. Lastly, there was the transport issue to be sorted, which thankfully wasn’t the dead-end that it had been for Treble Cone. A bus would take me there and back to Remarks (about an hour from Queenstown) for only ten dollars. Done, done, and done!

And so the day came, and it couldn’t have come any sooner. Just the day before, Treble Cone, Cardrona, and Coronet Peak all closed for the season, leaving the Remarkables as the only open ski field for just a week more. Having not been on a snowboard since last Christmas in the French Alps – and then, for only a week – I was a bit hesitant about how the day would go. Jordan – herself an experienced rider – said she would stick with me for the day, but I was nervous I wouldn’t remember what to do and end up holding her back. Rather than start off on the basic beginner slopes (referred to as the Magic Carpet), I said we might as well go up the proper lift and do a real run. It was the same method the guys used on our Alps trip and I was hoping it’d work this time around, too. Despite a few hiccups at the start – buckling up my right foot in the front when I actually ride regular (left foot front), or forgetting how to carve back from my heels to my toes – it all ended up going okay. Our other flatmate Sarah, who works in the rentals on Remarks, likened it to riding a bike – even if you don’t do it for a while, boarding is something that slowly comes back to you. It was cool to actually be able to pick up where I left off in France – getting off the lifts without crashing and making a complete fool of myself, carving and making wide S’s down the slopes, and ultimately pushing myself – not letting myself off easily but putting my left front forward and going vertically down steeper slopes. Sure, the falls may be worse, but boy is the speed of the run worth it.

For our last run of the day, Jordan asked if I felt up for an intermediate track. “Why not?” I thought – better to make the most of my one chance on the slopes than play it safe on the beginner runs I’d already been on. While the first slope was the steepest I’d encountered the whole day, it was also nothing but thick powder – none of the slushy snow that had been tracked over again and again. And although the powder is a little harder to get going in (not to mention getting up from if you fall!) it feels incredible once you start carving in it – like cutting through a cloud, you might as well be floating on air like some character in Super Mario Brothers. And that is when you realize just what about this – the snow, the slopes, the scene – is so alluring for the hundreds of thousands of people that flood this town – and so many others across the world – every season. The chance to feel like part of another world, if only in the few seconds of air you get off a jump.

In the end, I was glad to see what the snow is all about. Although my bar job has given me quite the look into the nightlife scene of Queenstown, there’d been a massive blank where I spend my days behind a supermarket checkout till while the rest of the town hits the slopes. Finally it was my turn, my chance to don the gear and be the one coming ‘round the mountain.

And even if I didn’t get the goggle tan I was going for (which is a surefire sign of any legitimate skier or rider), at least I’ve got a red nose and chapped lips to show for my day up the slopes…

what the fuss all is about.

2009-10-03T21:40:00.000-07:00

If there’s one thing you can’t miss while on holiday in Queenstown, it’s Milford Sound. Even a bungy jump – while a strongly suggested addition to your itinerary – should fall second to a journey to this much-reputed fiord in South West New Zealand. And – should you think I’m making all this up – take a look at the results from Trip Advisor’s 2008 Travelers’ Choice Destination Awards. Second place went to Queenstown, which is obviously exciting in and of itself. First place. though? Milford Sound, baby. But before visiting, even I had to ask: just what exactly is all the fuss about?

I decided I had to find out for myself. Among the locals of Queenstown, there is quite the debate over whether Milford Sound is better than Doubtful Sound, a sort of “sister fiord” to Milford, only much larger and closer to Queenstown. But is bigger always better? Despite my doubts about which to visit, in the end it was a pretty obvious answer. Could I really leave New Zealand next year without visiting Milford Sound and still hold my head up high? And so my flatmate Jordan and I departed Queenstown on a Real Journeys coach bus and began the five-hour trek through Te Anau and Milford Road and Homer Tunnel to a far corner of Fiordland National Park. That might be the first thing that helps to explain the allure of Milford, simply the absolute remoteness of its location. It is a mission to reach, situated far from any largely populated area - 295 kilometers from Queenstown and 279 from Invercargill. It’s one road in, one road out – a road often subject to avalanches, further heightening the challenge of reaching the sound. But reach it they do, with over 550,000 visitors a year paying homage to what even Rudyard Kipling called the eighth wonder of the world.

If the not-exactly-convenient location doesn’t seem to thwart the influx of visitors, you’d think at least the weather would. Milford Sound receives a mean annual rainfall of 6,813 mm on 182 days a year – so much rain, in fact, that it’s often considered the wettest inhabited place in New Zealand. When someone asks you if you had good weather on your trip to Milford, it’s a bit of a tricky answer. Although sun is often equated with good weather and rain might be classed as less-than-desired conditions to visit anywhere else, Milford Sound in the rain – not to be ironic or witty in any way – is when it shines, when it puts on its best performance. The copious amount of rainfall creates hundreds of temporary waterfalls in addition to all of the permanent ones already gracing the cliffs with their presence.

The mist generated from these falls, combined with the already heavy fog hanging over the walls of the fiord, makes for quite the surreal scene. Jordan and I discovered this not long after our cruise left the dock at Milford Village. While we had originally intended to join the masses on a day trip to the sound, the locals’ discount offered on overnight cruises made it a whopping four extra dollars to go from two-hour scenic cruise (picnic lunch provided, of course) to eighteen hours on the sound, inclusive of accommodation, dinner and breakfast, and our choice of water activity. Talk about value for money. It wasn’t a hard decision to make, trust me.

We left the dock at 4:30 in the afternoon and were welcomed on board the Milford Mariner with tea, coffee, and – much to the delight of our hunger – muffins! We spent close to an hour cruising the sound before anchoring for the night in Harrison Cove. So many aspects of the trip kept giving us reasons to be glad we came. When Jordan and I found our room for the night (I kept wanting to refer to it as our berth, so nautically-inspired was I), we collapsed on the beds in sheer giddy gratitude for the chance to spend one night on a proper mattress covered with clean, proper sheets and a proper duvet. (Alternatively, spend one night in our house and you’ll see where I’m coming from.) And then I couldn’t have been happier to find a piano conveniently positioned in the ship’s “saloon,” i.e. main dining and lounging area. As if my first overnight cruise on Milford Sound wasn’t already guaranteed to be perfect, it’s like someone went, “Here, Candace, you want perfect? You even get to play the piano.” I played a few of my songs and laughed when everyone in the saloon clapped and told me to keep going – what more could I have really asked for?

Well, kayaking it seems. I mentioned earlier a water activity being part of the night, and it was our choice between a kayak and a seat on a guided tender craft. When the time came to choose, though, Jordan and I found ourselves between a rock and a hard place. In the days preceding the trip, I had – per usual – told everyone I would be going kayaking, leaving out the fact that I’d only been once before on Beachcomber Island in Fiji (and I’ll leave you to assume how that ended up for me…) So when the time came to strap on a life vest and pick up a paddle, I wasn’t quite as keen as I was originally. Part of our dilemma arose out of the fact that it somehow didn’t register with us to pack activity-appropriate clothing. Thus, if we happened to tip (an outcome we both considered highly likely), we would be – for lack of a better term – screwed for the night. But then there was a little thing called our pride at stake. We stood on the lower level of the Mariner, where on one side people queued up for a kayak, and on the other side, a line formed for the tender craft ride – a line comprised mainly of those white-haired retirees I mentioned in my last post. There was no doubt about it, the tender craft would be safe, but is that really what we came for? Could we go back to Queenstown and tell our friends, “Man, was that guided boat ride a thrill or what?” In the end, we stripped down to our bare essentials (still including pants, of course), leaving behind a few bits and pieces so that in the event of an unexpected swim in the sound, we wouldn’t be left entirely high and dry (or should I say, not dry?) and got in those kayaks. Just like that day in the bungy pod, there was no way I could have realistically come all this way and not kayaked in Milford Sound.

And oh was it worth it. Within five minutes you know this is what the fuss is all about, the utter magic of the fiord. A light rain was falling, not too intense, hardly noticeable, just enough to mist around you as you glided through the stillest water you’ve ever seen. The walls of the fiord are insanely steep, the rock faces rising over 1,200 meters (3,900 feet) above you. Waterfalls abound, cascades of all sizes and lengths, running down the rock and through the deep green trees and foliage clinging to the near-vertical cliffs. You feel infinitesimal, absolutely engulfed by this overwhelming display of nature in its most majestic and untainted state. You could be in Lord of the Rings or on the set of some other fantasy film, surely anywhere but in the real world. I was silent, partly due to my intense concentration that I would not tip over, but also due to yet another moment of disbelief – “Am I really here?”

We followed along the edge of the cove, paddling up to where the cliffs met the water to view trees that had fallen into the sound as a result of tree avalanches. At a wider stretch of shoreline, we paused in order to wait for the chance to view the Fiordland Crested Penguin. Although I laughed at the contradictory language used in Real Journey’s brochure, which stated, “Rare penguins can often be seen,” this particular penguin is indeed rare, with only 2,000 breeding pairs left in the world – a fact that made my first penguin sighting that much sweeter. Despite the initial empty shoreline, it wasn’t long before three little penguins were seen making their way out of the trees, using their adorable “waddle-waddle-jump!” method to get from rock to rock before diving into the water. Our kayak guide (coincidentally also Skip, our bus driver as you may remember from my last post) advised a few more inquisitive members of our group to stay away from the shore – “We don’t want to intimidate them.” Fair enough, Skip, but dontcha think a group of twenty people wearing bright yellow life vests, sitting in bright yellow kayaks, holding bright yellow paddles, waiting eagerly to see them, has already posed a big enough threat of intimidation? Not to mention ruining the aesthetics of the scene…

With the success of a dry kayak ride and a rare penguin sighting behind us, the dinner bell beckoned us back on board the Mariner for a well-deserved, delicious three-course buffet dinner. French bread and dips, cream of mushroom soup, roast lamb, and the best dessert table this side of the equator –I was in love. As tempting as an hour-long slideshow and talk on Milford Sound sounded for the perfect post-dinner activity, Jordan and I opted to camp out in the saloon, working on writing projects and application essays while other passengers broke out poker sets, Yahtzee and Connect-4. It was low-key and internet-free, everything a night away from Queenstown should be.

The next morning, after feasting (okay, gorging…) ourselves on a breakfast buffet (including the cutest little jars of Marmite called Just-mite), we went outside to the deck as the boat set off for a longer cruise around the fiord. What I hadn’t realized before the trip is that Milford Sound is actually connected to the ocean, running fifteen kilometers inland from the Tasman Sea. Its entrance isn’t easy to spot, though, obscured by Dale Point, which meant that it was often overlooked by early whalers and sailors. Even James Cook, one of the first great explorers of New Zealand, passed right by it…several times. It wasn’t until the early 1800s that a Welshman, Captain John Grono, sailed into Milford Sound thinking it was a large bay. While not a misunderstanding on the same level as Columbus taking Florida to be India, Grono soon discovered it was anything but a bay and named the fiord after his hometown of Milford Haven in Wales. (Real Journeys then returned the favor, calling their bar on board the Mariner “Grono’s Bar.”)

This connection between the fiord and the Tasman Sea has an interesting effect on the physical makeup of the sound’s water. Although the sea itself is – obviously – saltwater, the high amount of rainfall in the region causes a layer of fresh water to rest on the surface. Much of this layer originates from the rivers and waterfalls emptying into the sound, carrying with them water that has been “stained by tannin and other organic matter from the forest floor” (thank you, Real Journeys brochure – I can only get so technical in my own words.) What all this means is that this fresh water is much darker than usual, the shade of tea, even, and this discoloration does not allow the normal level of sunlight to reach the saltwater (10 meters in the fiord compared to 70 meters on the coast). Thus, marine life, including black coral, which is typically found at much deeper depths, can find a shallower home in Milford Sound.

So it’s no wonder so many people cast their votes for Milford Sound as the #1 can’t-miss. When we finally returned to the dock the next morning, I disembarked completely satisfied, feeling that if I left New Zealand tomorrow, at least I saw everything that I came to see.

But that statement’s never entirely true, now is it?

possum and kea and avalanches...oh, my!

2009-09-28T06:58:00.000-07:00

We’ve all seen the countless cards, magnets, plaques, and who knows what other decorative knick-knacks inscribed with the quote: “The journey is more important than the destination.” It’s a common proverb I always try to live up to, especially during times like my fourth year of university when all I really wanted to do was graduate. But never before have I appreciated its meaning than on my trip to Milford Sound last week. When I booked the trip with my American flatmate Jordan, I expected the Sound itself to be the highlight of the two-day journey and for the five-hour bus ride to be spent primarily with the iPod in and seat tilted back. But I should’ve known better when I decided to go with a company named Real Journeys, mainly because they were offering a 45% locals’ discount in September and October – for a journey it was, the bus ride not just a means to Milford Sound, but a chance to see and experience a great portion of Fiordland National Park.

On a grey Monday morning Jordan and I boarded the bus, finding our seats in the back like any cool kid would do. Departing Queenstown at 9am, we set out tracing Lake Wakatipu in a southerly direction, which, with a length of 80 kilometers, can apparently boast of being New Zealand’s longest lake. Our driver/tour guide Skip shared that the Titanic’s last port-of-call was also in Queenstown, only this one in Ireland. The particular relevance of this “factoid” I never quite got, but I soon began to see that 50-something Skip was one of those guides who should never, ever be allowed within fifty feet of a microphone or any other amplification system. Given such an outlet, there’s no telling the number of random, highly pointless pieces of trivia we will be subjected to listening to…and no doubt find ourselves remembering the next day.

We disembarked about twenty minutes later, Skip wanting to give us a chance for our first of about thirty photo-ops along the way. While everyone else snapped away, I had a chance to examine the age dynamics of our group:

45% white-haired retirees

45% Asians

5% random Canadian boys with mysteriously British-sounding accents

4% aspiring American photojournalists (us, duh.)

1% Chatty-Cathy tour guide

As eclectic as the mix appeared to be, Jordan and I couldn’t have been happier. Exhausted from the hectic pace of Queenstown, over the nightlife and the constant need to go out, we’d been looking forward to getting out of town for the night ever since we booked the trip. As the quad-dorm cruise was full when we went to make our reservation, we were left with no choice but to upgrade to the double-bed boat – but as it turned out, it soon seemed that we’d managed to miss out on the usual bawdy backpacker crowd – something neither of us were complaining about. A quiet night with septuagenarians as our cruisemates? Heck yes.

We passed through a series of small towns, most notably Garston – the most inland town in all of New Zealand, situated 128 kilometers from the nearest ocean – before stopping at the Five Rivers Café for a morning tea break. Just like with the perfumeria and limestone “factory” we visited on our tour in Egypt, I got the impression that the majority (if not, all) of the café’s business was generated from the multitude of tour buses traveling through this otherwise untrafficked region.

Before arriving in Te Anau for a lunch break, Skip pulled off by Lake Manapouri – “Lake of the Sorrowing Heart,” as this lake and its 34 islands is known. This was no ordinary lake, though, as we soon came to learn. Instead it was the center of a heated controversy, the site of New Zealand’s greatest environmental battle. In the 1950s plans were made to raise the water levels of both Lake Manapouri and Lake Te Anau – the second largest lake in the country – for official and political purposes of hydro-electric generation (please don’t ask what that means). This would have raised the level of Manapouri by up to thirty meters in some places, causing it to merge with Lake Te Anau. Guess that would explain the sorrowing heart, eh? But as so often happens, the people would have none of it. They protested, over 10% of the population of New Zealand signing the Save Manapouri petition in 1972. In the end, the lakes were saved, a body of guardians was created to manage the lake levels, and a boulder was set at the edge of Lake Manapouri to mark where the water would have been raised had the proposed level been approved. A bronze plaque on the rock commemorates the struggle to “save the lake,” quoting Thoreau:

“In wilderness is the preservation of the world.”

I can think of no better quote to describe New Zealand’s commitment to the environment and the value it places on it as a country. “Clean, green New Zealand” is more than a motto – it’s a way of life in this reusable-bag-toting, anti-nuclear-warfare country. The fight for Manapouri thus comes as an expected response from people who already have such a concern and respect for the environment they inhabit.

Following the emotional and national significance of Manapouri, I found Te Anau and its permanent population of 2,500 to be rather blasé and a little too reminiscent of Invercargill – flat, small, and generally unremarkable. Although situated so close to Doubtful Sound, I soon thanked myself that I hadn’t made a trip from Queenstown with the sole intention of seeing Te Anau, as I had considered doing at one point. The chief purpose the town serves – it’s “redeeming quality,” you could say – is that it’s the base for many Fiordland expeditions, for the Milford Track itself – possibly the most well-known Great Walk of New Zealand – departs from Te Anau Downs.

Fiordland. The first region to catch my eye when I looked at a map of New Zealand in my London flat with the crazy intention of moving here. I knew only of Milford Sound, the reputed mecca of scenic must-sees. So to finally arrive in Fiordland National Park was quite the moment. “Go into Fiordland with a sense of humor,” Skip shares over the microphone. “Fiordland is relentless, lonely, and rough,” a place of mystery with species yet to be discovered. The Department of Conservation’s Visitors’ Center for the park is on the outskirts of Te Anau and Jordan and I pay a visit on our lunch break, scarfing down mince and steak pies as we speedwalk from town. A number of brochures I pick up in the center shed light on this mystical land of fjords and fog.

In December of 1990, the region of South-West New Zealand was designated as a World Heritage site. Fiordland, Mt. Aspiring, Westland, and Mt. Cook National Parks, areas comprising over six and a half million acres of land, were brought together under the Maori name of Te Wahipounamu, “the place of the greenstone.” The Southern Alps are just one feature of this diverse landscape, situated along the fault line of the Pacific and Indo-Australian crustal plates. As the DOC’s pamphlet describes:

“South-West New Zealand is one of the great temperate wildernesses of the world. It is an area of snowcapped mountains, glaciers, forests, tussock grasslands, lakes, rivers, wetlands, and over 1000 km of wild coastline.”

This haven of natural wonders might explain the need for an entirely separate publication titled “Fiordland Tramping.” Tramping is quite the Kiwi thing to do – and I’m not talking about life as a hobo or donning scandalous attire and frequenting ill-lit back alleys at inappropriate hours. No, it’s donning quick-drying polypropylene and polar fleeces, slinging on your day pack chock full of biscuits and muesli bars, and going on a walk – perhaps one of the nine Great Walks of New Zealand. From Lake Waikaremoana on the North Island to the Abel Tasman on the South, the Walks are the crème de la crème of the tramping world, offering better quality huts than those found on other routes. Three of them alone are found in Fiordland National Park, not to mention seven other tramping tracks and two marked routes. It’s quite the official business as well, with all the huts along the routes requiring reservations for overnight accommodations. Many of the Great Walks even require the tramper to book a space prior to departure in order to prevent over-crowding along the track. Although it’s not something I can really picture myself doing while here, the culture of tramping is something I can appreciate about New Zealand.

The stretch between Te Anau and Milford Sound is known as Milford Road, a two-hour route that can see up to seventy coaches pas through it in a nine-hour period. It’s also known as BMW Strait, Skip says, guiding our bus along its many tree-lined curves that are often featured in auto commercials. I think of the many shots of attractive men hyped up on testosterone, shifting gears in their foreign-made cars, and totally get what he’s saying. Clips of the area have apparently even been used by Japanese real estate companies, although I feel for the hopes of buyers that can only be dashed when they realize their new property isn’t located in the lush rainforest they thought it was. Construction on the road itself began in the 1930s, with WPA-like government-run work schemes behind it, but the Homer Tunnel wasn’t completed until 1954 due to delays from World War II.

We make a five-minute toilet break in a spot called – for whatever reason – Knobs Flat. Like any good rest area, the building is informative as well as useful. A small exhibit outside the toilet not only sheds further light on the region as a World Heritage site, but also includes a few display boards on local wildlife. I’m fine learning about birds and such until I see a life-size replica of a possum on the other side of the room. This wouldn’t have been nearly as upsetting under normal circumstances, but it just so happened I had a particularly traumatic encounter the night before with Terry the Possum, who lives – if not on our roof – then in quite serious proximity to it. Not a day passes that Terry doesn’t make himself known to us, terrorizing the baby birds on our roof, screeching, scampering about, and generally sounding like he’s about to bust through our ceiling at any moment. Needless to say, we are not a fan of Terry.

So imagine my lovely surprise to get home one normal Sunday night, open my bedroom door, and see two little eyes peering up at me from the opposite corner of my room. There’s also a cat that can often be found lurking about our flat, so my initial thought went to that. It wasn’t until I flipped the light switch that I realized Terry had somehow found his way into my room through my open windows. Terry the Terror…in my room. You can imagine my scream at this point, of that I’m sure. And in his seedy little hands (paws?) was a jar of peanut butter I’d mistakenly – gravely mistakenly – left unopened in my room. Unbelievable. “Get out!” I screamed at him, no doubt waking my flatmates. When he didn’t move or set my peanut butter down where he found it, I tried kicking him out my window, but it must’ve been knocked shut when he got in. A second kick and he was out my front door and I was left to recover, shaking only mildly.

So it was with much satisfaction that I listened to Skip as he described the Australian bushy-tailed possum as a “total nuisance.” Released in New Zealand in the 1870s to get the fur trade going, there are currently 70 million possums infesting the country (that’s 17.5 possums to one person! – an unacceptable statistic). Not only did they used to carry TB, they now eat foliage, not kosher with the Kiwis who value the native ecology above all. Their worst crime of all, though? Their Australian heritage, from which they came – something not directly their own fault, but for which they are all the more loathed. To the Kiwis, the only good possum is a dead one – a “squashum,” as Skip put it. He said New Zealanders go especially out of their way when driving at night to hit a possum. Good on ‘em!

Not long after Knobs Flat we entered the Hollyford Valley. “This can throw anything at us,” Skip says, which is of course incredibly reassuring to hear as we begin driving through a well-known avalanche zone. Floods, earthquakes, avalanches – apparently there’s no end to the spectrum of natural disasters we may or may not be run into. But the element of danger only augmented the mystery of the region, with the misty fog settled low and ethereal-like around the mountains. Through the fog you could see the scar marks on the steep hills from tree avalanches, where trees have such shallow roots that they cling together and scrape the face of the mountain in the event of an earthquake. We drove through seventeen kilometers of a “No Stopping” avalanche zone, a rule Skip disregards as he pulls off the side of the road to view a kea, the world’s only alpine parrot. Having seen several of the cheeky little birds in Christchurch, I was more interested in photographing the landscape, with massive piles of snow heaped against the sides of mountains, but the kea turned out to be quite the showstopper for the rest of the group.

The rest of the journey to Milford Sound was rather uneventful, but on the return trip, just as we came out on the other side of Homer Tunnel, I had the opportunity to see my first avalanche. As the snow accumulates all winter long on top of the mountains, it grows heavier and heavier until it starts to melt in the spring, posing quite the hazard to those wishing to pass through the road. As our bus rounded the first curve out of the tunnel, there was suddenly blizzard-like conditions, snow swirling dizzyingly all around – my first snow of the season! But before I had a chance to get excited, Skip pointed out an avalanche to our left, which resembled white porridge being poured quickly out of a bowl. “Well, folks, I’ve never seen one quite like this,” Skip says, slowing down to see if we’d be able to make it past. Man, does he have a way of making us feel safe or what?

Any fear was unfounded, though, as we soon made it through the danger zone and were well on our way back to Queenstown. As our return trip traced the same route we’d only just taken the day before, Skip graciously put away his microphone (still not sure how he managed to part with it!), the endless stream of factoids finally coming to an end, and we were able to get some sleep. Although I’d signed up only to see Milford Sound, I got much more than I expected out of the journey. Lake Marian, Mount Tutoko, the Chasm – our bus ride showed me places I didn’t expect to discover only because I didn’t know they existed…

…But I suppose that’s the proper role of a journey after all.

halfway marks and summer hopes.

2009-09-27T07:21:00.005-07:00

And so six months have come and gone. I realized the other day that at this point during my time in London, I was packing up and moving out, anxious about leaving England behind but excited for the long-awaited reunion with family and friends. So to be here in New Zealand with half a year behind me, it’s weird to think that I’ve still got another half to go; that even as things wind down here in Queenstown and I make plans for my trip to Thailand, I’ll be coming back – there’s still ground to cover, still miles to clock in before my time here is done.

But as I round the six-month mark, I thought I might have my own sort of “mid-year year performance review” in order to evaluate/reflect on/insert-corporate-phrase-of-your-choice/think about life in the Land of the Long White Cloud thus far. One thing’s for sure, it hasn’t been what I expected. Which, of course, is a tricky statement to make considering I came here not even knowing what to expect in the first place. I was asked several times, both by Americans before I left and Kiwis once I arrived, “So what are your expectations for New Zealand?” It was a disconcerting question, one that caught me off guard. Expectations? Not only did I not have them, but I began to wonder why not. Did I need to have them in order to come? Were they a prerequisite for going? As my friend Ryan picked me up from the Auckland airport and drove me to his house, I contemplated the question. “I don’t know,” I tried to answer, “See New Zealand? Visit Fiordland?” I couldn’t have sounded anymore vague.

I suppose the one expectation I did have related to what my year here would look like. I expected to be in Christchurch for the entire length of my time in New Zealand, doing similar work to what I did in London. I applied to at least five administrative assistant positions with the University of Canterbury, hoping for some sort of one-year, fixed-term contract with a “proper” income. And, in a way, I think I thought I would find a close-knit group of friends like I had in London, friends who would keep me put in one place rather than traversing the country like my Kiwis kept me from seeing the rest of England. So there were some expectations, however subconscious or unspoken, but none that even began to compare with the ones in place when I left for London.

What I’ve found is that New Zealand is a country that shapes your time here, defining and molding your expectations for you. I am amazed at the number of times my plans have changed thus far, at the number of times I’ve made up my mind only to go back on my word the next week. I’ve found making a decision is sometimes as pointless as making your bed right before you go to sleep. What’s the use, eh? But why so indecisive? Why so unable to make a plan and stick to it? Simply because this country has so incredibly much to offer. The diversity of landscapes and natural environments is astounding, especially when you consider the size of New Zealand. A look at a world map, just to compare it with its neighbor, Australia, or my home country, is almost laughable. The Kiwis are dwarfed in the shadow of a brute force like Russia, the global perception of New Zealand being one of a tiny country hanging onto the edge of the earth, but spend any time here and you’ll soon see it is anything but small.

In fact, as I have come to see, you will undoubtedly be hard-pressed to cover it all, even though the numbers aren’t terribly intimidating. A quick Google Maps search shows that from Cape Reinga at the top of the North Island to Slope Point at the bottom of the South Island is 1,396 kilometers, about 870 miles, which is roughly the distance from Bangor, Maine, to the Virginia-North Carolina border – barely half the East Coast. But what those measurements don’t take into account are things like Cook Strait taking four hours to cross on the Interisland Ferry or the roads twisting and turning like a bad perm, never seeming to go directly from point A to point B. Or, most especially, just how much there is to see – beaches, islands, volcanoes, glaciers, rainforests, alpine mountains…there is no end to the smorgasbord of scenery and sights to feast your senses on.

So it’s funny now to look back on my first days here and remember the disappointment I initially felt, at the lack of culture shock I expected to experience. But the longer I’m here, the more I see it’s a culture shock of ideas, assumptions, traditions, and paradigms. It’s a culture shock that takes time to feel, not an instant encounter with the foreign or an immediate barrage of sights and sounds never met. When you step off the airplane, there is no indeterminate cacophony of a foreign native tongue – you can read the signs, you can converse in ease with strangers. When you go to the mall, there is no struggle to identify mystery meats in the food court – you can eat at Subway and Wendy’s, you can buy clothes from Kmart in styles you’re used to. When you turn on the TV, there’s no channel-surfing to find something you know – you can watch Grey’s Anatomy and Desperate Housewives, you can cry as Ty Pennington changes yet another family’s life on Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. There aren’t a lot of “can’t”s you’re forced to cope with, as is normally the case with traveling and living abroad. There aren’t too many times when you say in frustration, “Man, I can’t wait to go home so I can ______.”

Which, to be honest, is an incredibly weird sensation. When you make the decision to live abroad, you make it with the idea that you will be giving a lot up – you make it ready to sacrifice your favorite things from home, which of course makes a return to those things that much sweeter. Hence my disappointment this day six months ago, driving up to an Auckland mall, face to face with the Westernization – and furthermore, Americanization – of New Zealand. Was it too much to ask for to be able to turn on the TV and not be able to watch Dr. Phil?!

But as the months have passed, I’ve stopped viewing it as what I haven’t had to give up, but what I’ve had to gain. For one, the natural settings are spectacular. There’s not a day I walk out my front door and don’t catch my breath at the sight of the Southern Alps literally in my backyard. And then the people I’ve met, the friends I’ve made, especially here in cosmopolitan Queenstown, are worth every mile traveled to get here. English, Scottish, Irish, French, German, Canadian, Indian, Australian, South American – people I would’ve never crossed paths with had I stayed home. And even the history of New Zealand is one worth getting to know, especially interesting when I compare its colonization process with that of the States. So what if I can still keep up with the current season of American Idol, albeit a week behind? What I can’t do back home is travel two hours to hike a glacier, as I’m about to do in October – and that, as I’ve now learned, is what New Zealand is all about.

So as I will soon be over the metaphorical Hump Day of my year here, the question that remains is, of course – where next? What to from here? With the new opportunities to get back into music at the bar, I had seriously considered staying in Queenstown for the summer. It certainly wouldn’t have been a bad setup – I decided if I did stay, I’d work only at the bar, making a blessed exit from the supermarket, giving me time to wakeboard, skydive, work on music…and my tan! But every time I waver between staying and going, I think back again to the fact that I only have a year here and want to make the most of it. So…Wellington for the summer it is! And I can’t even say how excited I am – looking up flats in the capital city the other day, a picture popped up on my computer screen of a street scene and I literally felt a pang in my heart. I love the city life and the thought of returning to it – no matter how modest a “big city” Wellington may be – makes me so happy. It occurred to me the other day – Queenstown doesn’t have a single stoplight. Just a couple of roundabouts and crosswalks to ameliorate pedestrian/driver relations. How insane is that? Not that I’ve ever felt like I was really living in an American Midwest sort of small town while in Queenstown, but there’s no saying I might not jump for joy at the first stoplight I see in Wellington.

It’s not just the desire to see more, though, that fueled my decision to move to Wellington. It’s this, this book, my writing, that I find is always pushing me forward, always making me go. Staying just isn’t an option when I’m wanting to continually uncover new material, new stories, and new experiences. A move to the North Island will be exactly that – I only wonder how I’ll see it all in four months. Everyone I’ve talked with has said how different the North Island is from the South, and I want to be able to speak with authority, from my own encounters, on that difference. And moreover, most everyone says the South Island is better than the North – even North Islanders I’ve met have said the same. I want to be able to gather my own points of reference and draw my own conclusions. Isn’t that what I came to do, after all?

Summer up north will ultimately bring a sense of symmetry and completion to my year in New Zealand – four months in Christchurch, four in Queenstown, four in Wellington. The perfect triad of living experiences. And even more than a return to a city, I am hoping for a return to normalcy, at least a schedule not so blaringly nocturnal. Christchurch was settled, quiet, a city of families and suburbs and 9-to-5 jobs. Queenstown has been mental, a holiday town of thrills and adventure, of staying out all night and sleeping all day, learning to embrace its transient nature. Thus I anticipate Wellington to be a fitting end, quite the denouement to the arc of my year – from settled to manic to…balanced? A city a bit more “New Zealand” than Queenstown, with more to do than just go out, with museums and the Royal Ballet of New Zealand and cricket stadiums. I suppose we’ll find out, won’t we?

But above all, I am grateful for the purpose this book/project/writing has brought to my time here. When I left for London, I titled my blog, “A Blindfold and a Prayer,” after a line in a song I’d recently written. Much like Robert Louis Stevenson said he “travel[s] not to go anywhere but to go,” I went to London not knowing particularly why – just that I had to go. New Zealand has been a whole different story. During my time at home in February, I first learned about the MA in Travel Writing available from Kingston University in London, a program I’m currently applying for in the hopes of attending next September. The discovery of that option suddenly gave my haphazard decision to move to New Zealand a heck of a lot of direction. I would be no blindfolded backpacker, aimless in my travels. As my blog title now reads, I am a “wide-eyed wanderluster,” driven by my desire to become a professional travel writer. With eyes wide open, I have soaked up this country over the past six months and can’t wait for the next half to unfold.

All I have to say is, bring it on...

fear meets faith.

2009-09-17T21:33:00.000-07:00

If there’s one thing my post at the checkout lane of Premier Taste has shown me, it’s that Queenstown hasn’t earned the name of Adventure Capital of the World for nothing. The number of people who come through my till every day sporting fleeces and jackets emblazoned with the logos of the various companies is astounding. First there’s the jet boats – the Shotover, the Dart River, the Kawarau Jet; the paragliding, skydiving, and God knows what other ways to propel yourself from the sky; then the gondola and luge company; safaris and paintballing; kayaks and white water rafting; the various ski areas, of course, and then, a New Zealand classic, the bungy jumping. Each time they’d come to check out, it only showed me how much I’ve yet to do here, how many crazy opportunities there are to push yourself to so many physical limits.

So when a guy I work with at the supermarket, my Scottish friend Mark, mentioned a couple weeks ago that he was doing the Nevis Highwire Bungy in a few days, I knew I had to do it. Mark and I are in similar situations, in that we’ve both lived in Queenstown for a little while now, but the fact that we’re leaving in a matter of weeks has made us realize, we’ve got things to do. So I hastily rearranged work schedules and freed up my morning to allow for the four hours the entire bungy experience takes. While Mark had originally set out to do the Nevis with two of his friends, I managed to recruit two more – a German girl and guy who had both recently started working at Premier Taste as well.

Forking over the three hundred dollars for the jump (and the photo/DVD combo pack, of course) wasn’t something I spent a lot of time thinking over. It was just something I knew I couldn’t pass up. Skydiving, paragliding, white water rafting – all activities I’ve contemplated doing while in Queenstown, but all things I can do elsewhere. The bungy though? Queenstown is the bungy. To do a bungy jump in New Zealand is sort of the equivalent of eating a pizza in Italy or having a Starbucks espresso in Seattle. It’ where it all began.

The company I’d be jumping with, A J Hackett Bungy, built the world’s first commercial bungy operation in 1988 – the Kawarau Bridge Bungy, 43 meters above the Kawarau River in Queenstown. The company’s namesake, A J Hackett, is a Kiwi entrepreneur cited on Wikipedia as the very Father of Bungy Jumping. From his first jump off of Auckland’s Greenhithe Bridge in 1986, Hackett went on to establish commercial bungy sites around the world as well as earn himself several Guinness records, including the world’s first bungy off a building and jumping out of a helicopter in Malaysia with a bungy stretch of over a kilometer. Has this man lost his mind or what? The 134 meter drop of the Nevis Highwire Bungy – my form of torture – makes it the highest bungy in New Zealand and second highest in the Southern Hemisphere, second only to the Bloukrans River Bridge jump in South Africa. Here goes nothing, right?

And so the day arrived. It had been a fitful night’s sleep, and understandably so. In the days preceding J-Day, Jump Day as I’d come to call it, I didn’t dwell too much on the fact that I was about to go throw myself off a bungy pod suspended by cables over a gorge and freefall for 134 meters. But my sleep the night before clearly showed my subconscious was at least scared out of its mind – I had dream after dream of being up in the pod, of other jumpers going to the edge, screaming as they looked down, running back, the attendants holding their shoulders saying all-too-calmly, “Conquer your fears, you have to jump.” When I told Mark about the dreams when I arrived at the bungy center in town the next morning, he asked, “So did you jump?” And like those dreams where you’re falling but never hit the ground, I myself never stepped up to jump, so I didn’t even have that to go off for whether or not I would actually do it.

10.20 am. Boarding time. Coincidentally, Mark had pulled his back the day before and couldn’t even join us for the jump. “Who’s idea was this again?” asks Mark’s friend Dave. “Martin! And he’s not even coming,” we all groaned as we found our seats. There’s only one word for that forty-five minute ride: ominous. Like lambs being led to the slaughter, everyone glanced at each other, asking quietly, “So is this your first time?” As if desperate for reassurance that they would survive, desperate to know they weren’t alone. And you can tell the bungy company actually revels in it, that they love to play up our fears. As the bus passes the Kawarau Bridge jump, the driver almost delights in announcing, “Just to give you an idea, the Nevis is over three times the height of the bridge jump.” Awesome. And when I asked the woman making my booking about the safety record, she looked at me nonchalantly, “No one has died bungy jumping in New Zealand.” A response which of course skips over a myriad other options of not-so-hapy outcomes, but who’s getting specific? Included in the waiver I had to sign is the following statement:

“I accept that Bungy Jumping carries with it some degree of risk; both to the person, property and emotional trauma of friends and family spectating. Knowing of the risk I still wish to register and participate in Bungy Jumping and so expressly agree to assume the risk of personal injury, damage or trauma to friends and family while I participate in this activity.”

Emotional trauma? They really think of everything in this industry. The only thing that set me slightly at ease was finding out we would be jumping heaviest to lightest. A friend of mind who visited Queenstown a few weeks ago did the Bridge jump and said they had simply asked who wanted to jump first. I had been mulling over this for days, torn by my Type-A, overachieving side that wanted to be first as well, and my other freaked-out-on-the-verge-of-a-panic-attack side that really just wanted to see how it was done a few times before jumping myself. So I felt a little relieved as I harnessed up at the jump site, knowing the jump order was out of my control, but still feeling a little concerned for those heavier than me who had been told they were going first in order to “test the line.” If I was freaking out, what in the world must they be thinking?

We leave our purses and backpacks in lockers and walk out onto a wooden viewing platform. While we wait to board the gondola that’ll take us to our death, I mean, the bungy pod, we watch other jumpers take the leap. Most simply scream, their friends hoping for a swear word to slip out and incriminate them on the video, but one girl cries out, “Iiiii loooove Neeeew Zeeeeealand.” Hardly my sentiments at the moment. The time comes for our group to begin. It turns out Sam, Mark’s other friend, has the privilege of weighing the most and our leader asks if he’s come with anyone. The rest of us join him in the gondola, which conveniently holds five jumpers and one attendant. We clip carabiners onto a wire running across the ceiling – an action that doesn’t go unquestioned by myself as to why we might need to do so – and start moving. I’m delighted to find the floor of the gondola is serrated metal, so that I’m never quite unaware of just how high up we’re actually suspended.

11.30am. In the pod, finally. There’s still a group ahead of us, so we wait for them to finish their jumps, all the while growing quieter as a barrage of signs attempt to instruct us: “Remember you must do a big dive.” One sign shows the danger of jumping feet first, rather than diving straight out, which is of course the opposite of everything those “No diving in five feet or less” signs at the pool ever tried to engrain in our minds as a kid. About three turns away from your jump, an attendant sits you up on a counter and tightens straps around your calves, contraptions that have an eerie resemblance to the arm bands used by nurses to check your blood pressure. My German friend Georg looks at me and asks, “Why are you so white?”

One turn away, just as the victim in front of you jumps, you’re ushered behind “the line,” the line marked by the signs, “Only jumper and attendant past this point,” and told to sit in a seat that looks far too much like a dentist’s chair for my liking. [Have I mentioned by utter and complete hatred for dentists? So yeah, that didn’t help things.] Another attendant begins attaching a weight to your legs and clipping all sorts of carabiners and ropes to you, asking all sorts of comforting questions like, “So this is your first time bungy jumping? How are you feeling?” He explains about how I need to do a sit-up after my second bounce and pull a strap on my left foot. It’ll release something or another, letting me flip up as I’m pulled back into the cabin, rather than hang like a dead fish with my feet first. I’m determined that won’t happen to me, so I keep repeating everything after him.

I’m reminded of when I went white water rafting in the New River of West Virginia. Our raft guide told us that if we hit a particularly rough section of the river, he’d yell out, Get down,” and we should all dig our legs into the sides of the raft. We all know what happens in those moments of sheer panic and how easy it is to forget whatever it is you’re “supposed” to do – kind of how no one actually remembers to turn the steering wheel the opposite way when you start fishtailing on black ice, no matter how many times you’re told to do so in driver’s ed. So there I was in that raft, about to face class 5 rapids for the first time in my life, so I just wanted to be absolutely sure of what to do. “So when you say ‘get down,’ you mean…?” “No, I mean, I want you to start dancing,” says my smart-aleck guide.

12noon. It was much the same in that foreboding dentist’s chair in the pod. I asked something like, “So when you say pull to the left, you mean my left, not yours?” or some other panic-induced, ridiculously stupid question. After a quick, entirely-fake smile for the official camera, it was go-time. I waddled over like a pitiful duck to the wooden jumping platform. The attendant throws the weight over the ledge, causing me to lurch forward slightly, places a hand on my back, and starts counting.

“Three….two…”

It wasn’t even a matter of thinking about whether or not I was ready. There was no time for that, it was only, “Jump out, jump out, jump out.” As much as I tried not to look down, I had to watch my feet as they inched nearer and nearer to the edge of the platform. Photos give away my complete hesitance, my bent knees, arms that refuse to stretch completely out; the video captured the most pained expressions on my face.

“One…”

It wasn’t that the attendant had to push me off the ledge, but it wasn’t that I jumped entirely on my own either. It was with a gentle nudge that I pushed off with my feet, a scream escaping before I’d even fully left the platform, much like a child squirms and says, “Ouch,” before even receiving a much-feared shot. But in about the span of two seconds, the most amazing thing happened. Freefall. The feeling of being completely suspended above the earth literally took my breath away; the feeling of floating, of being weightless, of absolutely nothing. It has to be what astronauts feel for the first time in space. In two seconds, all my panic melted into peace, my fear into faith. Hours of dread and distress instantly giving way to eight and a half seconds of soaking in as much of it as I could; of resting in my trust that the rope would support me. What better metaphor for life, for this year and my decision to come to New Zealand.

After the first bounce, I was entirely at peace, arms extended over my head, taking in the scene below me. I couldn’t even speak, breathing hard not from exhaustion but exhilaration. Once I bounced twice I did a sit-up and pulled the strap, possibly the simplest of maneuvers, definitely not one I needed to stress over. From there it was twenty seconds or so as they reeled me in, back up to the cabin, like some little fish caught in the Pacific.

“That was incredible!” I shouted to the attendants as they pulled me back in and unhooked me from the rope. There’s a reason all of the photo packages and paraphernalia from the company have “I did it!” written on them, because it’s all you can think in the first moments after the jump. Because you were so close to letting your fears win out, to not doing it. So when you step away from the jumping area and take a few breaths, it’s such a high to think, “I did it. That was it? That was what I was so scared of?”

But it all went too terribly fast. After the jump, it was back in the gondola, into the bungy center to select our photos and print them, and then back on the bus en route to Queenstown, in time for a 2.30pm start at work. Talk about anticlimactic. We didn’t say much on the ride back, just shared photos and uttered various words like, “Amazing,” “brilliant,” and “life-changing.”

If there’s one thing that gives me the courage to keep jumping in life – whether literally or figuratively – this is it. I just hope the freefall’s longer next time around.

chance of pace, change of place.

2009-09-15T06:10:00.000-07:00

Since arriving in Queenstown, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say I don’t get out much, and by “out,” I don’t just mean this town itself, but even my little world in Queenstown. From my flat to Premier Taste across the street, from the supermarket down Shotover Street, left on Camp, right onto the Queenstown Mall to Wattie’s, from Wattie’s to Bardeaux, then home. Wake up, repeat, with the intermittent visit to the pharmacy or Starbucks thrown in, when time allows. This sort of tunnel vision can be partly attributed to working seventy to eighty hours a week, and partly because of “limited resources,” i.e. no car and a refusal to pay six dollars for one local bus ride. It’s a matter of principles, people! And, of course, being unwilling to part with the money I’ve yet to go up the mountain (Q-Town talk for hit the slopes) or take part in your standard adventure activities – no skydiving, no paragliding, and most ashamedly of all, no bungy jumping!

But, that being said, it’s not like I haven’t done anything. Every so often, I’ve had the chance to venture outside my ever-predictable routine. One such occasion came about a month into my time in Queenstown. When I started work at Premier Taste, I didn’t entirely know whether or not to expect to make the best of friends there – at least, I was simply unsure of the “friend potential.” But as it turned out, there was an English girl my age named Britney I got to know well within a week of work. It just so happened Britney had recently bought a car and was keen for some exploring the various areas surrounding Queenstown. First up was Glenorchy, a little town we’d both vaguely heard was “cute.” One Saturday, my shift at Premier Taste had been cut, so we set out, traveling out along Lake Wakatipu, tracing the water’s edge for about fifty kilometers until we passed a roadside sign proclaiming: “Welcome to Glenorchy: Gateway to Paradise.” But welcome to what, exactly? Before we began to think the Paradise bit was just some sort of cruel joke by the Glenorchy City Council, we later found out Paradise is actually another town after Glenorchy – which, let me be clear, was not a paradise. We pass by an iSite information center and Britney and I start looking at each other, both of us too afraid to ask, “So what is so ‘cute’ about this?”

Because quite frankly, there didn’t seem to be a heck of a lot going on in Glenorchy, a “small settlement nestled in spectacular scenery,” as Wikipedia describes it. As we drove down the main street, we counted all of three commercial establishments (okay fine, more like five or six – two restaurants, two cafes, a gift shop, and a petrol station) before parking in a gravel lot and walking towards the wharf, which should not be imagined as anything more than a small wooden dock extending into the lake. However there was a small building next to the dock that made for a few lovely photos with its wooden slats been painted a barn red and a white sign with “GLENORCHY” on it hung above the door. We then moved on to the three other streets in the town, where we stumbled across the Glenorchy Library, possibly the world’s smallest library, a seafoam-green, tin-roofed building open only from 3-5pm on Mondays and Wednesdays. Next door was the town’s museum with a sign on the door that read:

“Our small museum will be open on most Sundays through until Easter from 1pm to 3pm. If you would like to visit at other times, please phone Elaine or Ronda.”

If you’re noticing a pattern, namely the repetition of the word ‘small,’ trust me – it’s not a result of a limited vocabulary, but a deliberate attempt at making sure you don’t miss my point. That’s the thing about New Zealand though – this country is constantly redefining my perceptions of what ‘small’ is. After London, even Christchurch and it’s some 360,000 residents seemed like a huge adjustment. It’s been a constant process of downsizing ever since Christchurch, which now seems as big as New York City after places like Greymouth, Queenstown, and most especially Glenorchy. But no matter the size, one thing’s for certain about any New Zealand town – it will undoubtedly have a war memorial. And sure enough, right next to the public restrooms and across the street from the smallest post office you ever will see, was the Glenorchy War Memorial, built “in memory of those who gave their lives in the Empire’s cause, 1914-1920.” At least some things can be counted on these days.

We finished up our riveting excursion with lunch at the Glenorchy Hotel, the pub to ourselves and the burger and mocha the highlight of the day, hands down – certainly more exciting than our brief walk around the Glenorchy Lagoon, which would be more appropriately identified as a bog or marsh. The overcast skies didn’t help transform the grey water or brown, bushy landscape into anything more striking. But, let it be said, at least we went and can now speak with more authority the next time someone goes on about how “cute” Glenorchy is. For example, an older guy came down my checkout lane the other day and began telling me how crazy it gets in the Glenorchy pub on Friday nights, especially if there’s a live band on. As he walked off, all I could think was, “There’s no way. There’s literally no way.” Then again, it is New Zealand, where I’m slowly learning anything is possible.

The next day I headed off with a different crew down to Wanaka, a town of about 5,000 an hour from Queenstown. The main event of the night was a concert by a New Zealand-grown funk/reggae band called Kora. Heaps of hospo people from Queenstown were planning to flood into Wanaka to see the show and a couple of days earlier, a guy I met offered me an extra ticket, so I thought I’d tag along. The initial plan was to go down with him and his friends, but after I failed to wake up for the 8am departure time, I caught a later ride at a less painful hour with a girl from Wattie’s, two guys from a restaurant in town, and two guys who lead a pub crawl called Big Night Out. As we pulled out from the petrol station and got on the road, we agreed it was exactly what we all needed – a break, a night away from Queenstown, a chance to turn up the music, not say a word, and just drive.

We reached Wanaka in mid-afternoon, a stunning sun reflecting off the lake and the crisp air warm enough to lose our jackets for a while. Wanaka is undoubtedly a mini-Queenstown, literally half the size population-wise, also situated right on the edge of a lake surrounded by snow-capped Alps, with many of the same restaurants and bars and that same small-town-big-heart feeling to it. We settled down in a park by the lake with a few drinks and did nothing (except run over to a kebab shop for dinner) until the show. Everything was too nice about it to move – the weather, the lake, the friends – it doesn’t take much sometimes.

The show itself was epic, whether from being thrown onto a friend’s shoulders or seeing about half of Queenstown’s hospo crowd there, which of course begged the question of who was actually left at work for the night. Afterwards, I convinced one of the pub crawl leaders to buy me a mince pie from an all-night bakery before crashing on the bed in the campervan. I think I may have failed to mention earlier that while four of us drove to Wanaka in your average SUV, the two restaurant boys led the way in an amazing white campervan. The driver, a crazy Czech named Michal, wandered out of the Kora show at one point and met up with us after saying, “I’ve moved the van…It’s a surprise!” Which obviously thrilled us, as soon as we saw it wasn’t just outside the venue and had to spend twenty minutes running around town in search of it. But we came across it eventually and, even though I had a room booked a hostel, as soon as I saw that mattress my head hit the pillow. Apparently I was out as out can be, for the van was moved several times later during the night and I have no recollection of waking for any of it. I woke up in the morning and as I got out to use the public toilets across the street, one of the guys jokingly warned me, “Be careful, there’s normal people out there.” Stepping out of the van, I laughed to discover Michal had parked horizontally across two handicapped spaces. Classic.

When we went to move the cars later, the SUV wouldn’t start, and as all of us were too cheap to use our phone credit to call a mechanic, I ran into the information center – unshowered, of course, and with a beanie thrown over my hair – and begged a lovely woman named Gloria to use their phone. After a few moments of no one picking up the phone, Gloria sighed, “They’re probably on their lunch break. They do get one, you know.” “Of course,” I replied, “Everyone does.” “Not everyone,” she said. Ouch…hungry much? I finally reached a mechanic and got out of that iSite as fast as I could before upsetting Gloria anymore. The whole trip just had that Little Miss Sunshine magic to it, one of those weekends filled with random moments you won’t soon forget.

We tried several times to jump the car, but – per usual – it was the mechanic who got it on his first try. Thirty bucks for two minutes’ work – what a bargain! Despite the unexpected delay, we made it back to Queenstown in time for my shift at Wattie’s that night – and with that, it was back to the grind. So I was grateful for the chance a couple of weeks ago to pop out of town again with Britney to another little place called Arrowtown, a historic gold mining town about twenty minutes outside of Queenstown. Before milling about town, we went off to explore the Chinese mining settlement set up by the Department of Conservation to commemorate the 8,000 Chinese immigrants that came in the mid-1800s to work the goldfields of Otago-Southland and the West Coast. The settlement couldn’t have contained more than four or five actual buildings – Ah Lum’s general store, a few tin or straw-roofed huts, and the ruins of Ah Gum’s hut. Indeed, there were more official DOC placards explaining the history of the settlement than there were actual sites of interest. It had quite the air of desolution about it, each building set at a distance from another, and really made you sense the isolation the settlers were supposed to have felt.

From the settlement it was into the town center, which was thankfully much “cuter” than Glenorchy could ever hope to be. As it usually goes with particularly historic places, the local authority keeps a strict standard on the appearance of the town’s architecture, which definitely gives off that Wild West sort of vibe. But in the small details you can tell it was settled by Europeans and not rogue American cowboys – a red telephone booth next to the pharmacy, quaint village greens, even a red Edwardian posting box that appeared to be quite the tourist photo-op. But there’s not much else to Arrowtown than the historic avenue of Buckingham Street. Britney and I passed a group wandering about and overheard a girl ask, “So that’s it? Really?” It’s an oft-asked question, but if you don’t go, you won’t know, eh? Everyone who visits Arrowntown is told to have a pie at the Arrowtown Bakery, which we dutifully did even though I didn’t find anything especially remarkable about my mince and cheese pie. Lunch was followed by a quick look into the Lakes District Museum, where the only free exhibit was titled “Speaking of Chance” – a compilation of interviews with elderly residents of Arrowtown to provide an oral history of the town and region. A stroll down an avenue of trees protected by the district council – good to know someone’s looking out for them! – brought us back to the car and en route to Queenstown.

So whether traveling fifty kilometers to see there’s actually nothing to see, sleeping in an illegally-parked campervan, or retracing the steps of Chinese immigrants of an old mining town, it’s been good to have a little change of routine every now and then. It may not be much, but it is enough.

springtime in september.

2009-09-14T00:08:00.000-07:00

“It’s spring fever…And when you’ve got it, you want—oh, you don’t quite know what it is you DO want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so! It seems to you that mainly what you want is to get away, get away from the same old tedious things you’re so used to seeing and so tired of, and see something new.”

- Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer

There’s no better moment to write on the changing of seasons than this: sitting on the picnic table in my front yard, an absolutely brilliant – and warm! – sun shining, iPod in, journal out, a royal blue kite flying across the street, green shoots finding their way out of the hard winter soil, buds and blooms bursting to life. I’m not typically one of those people who take heaps of photographs of flowers, but even I couldn’t resist getting my camera out a few minutes ago to capture the sudden explosion of color around the house. I don’t even know the names of most of my floral friends – except for the massively gorgeous Camilla bush right outside my bedroom. There’s nothing more invigorating than waking up in the morning (okay, okay…afternoon) than to the beautiful rose-like pink Camilla blooms brushing against my window. Pink, purple, fuchsia, white, and – best of all – green; all shades and signs that maybe, just maybe, the worst is over, that the mild breezes blowing are only a taste of the long-awaited summer soon on its way.

The first sign of spring came last month when we started selling little bunches of daffodils in Premier Taste. To me, daffodils are spring – I couldn’t think of a better image to represent the season. As local customers would come down my checkout lane, a bunch of daffodils resting on the top of their full-to-the-brim carts, I’d hold the flowers and ask ever so hopefully, “So is this it? Is winter really over?” Of course there were weeks more of wintry wonderfulness to come, but something about those golden blooms is enough for me to make it through. They also happen to be the face of the Cancer Society of New Zealand, whose logo features a daffodil. The last Friday in August is known as Daffodil Day, when they hold their main fundraising drive for the year. Much like the tradition of selling poppies for ANZAC Day, volunteers stand outside stores and street corners with boxes of fake daffodils to pin to your lapel. [Being a major fan of the paper poppies, I of course promptly purchased a daffodil to sport next to my ever-attractive Premier Taste name badge.]

Daffodil Day then gave way to the First Day of Spring, which here happens to fall on the first of September. I’d expected the twenty-first, given that back home it’s the autumnal equinox and all that, but clearly the Kiwis can’t be bothered with the randomness of lunar occurrences. The first day of each season falls tidily on the first of each corresponding month – September for spring, December for summer, March for autumn, and June for summer. I went on an online investigation to suss out some sort of reasoning behind the differences in dates and was surprised to find that apparently, associating the start of seasons with each appropriate equinox is quite an American thing to do. Who knew? Wikipedia has this to say about it:

“Some cultures, such as those who devised the Celtic and East Asian calendars, call the Spring Equinox mid-spring, but others (especially in the USA and England), regard it as the ‘first day of spring.’ For most temperate regions, signs of spring appear long before the middle of March, but the folklore of March 21 being ‘first day of spring’ persists, and June 21 as the ‘first day of summer’ is common in the USA.”

And to turn to an even more authoritative source, a string of responses on a Yahoo!Answers query includes the following quote:

“The seasons are the same in Australia and New Zealand…No seasons start on the 21^st, 22^nd, or 23^rd. That’s just in America.”

Can’t you just hear their tone of voice as user aussiechik723 typed that out?

Regardless of whatever date a season may or may not begin on, the fact that September means spring in New Zealand is just weird. For me, September has always been Labor Day, the start of a new school year, new lunch boxes and No. 2 pencils, and last-minute trips to the beach before October brings changing leaves and cooler evenings. Those are just sort of the instantaneous connotations that are conjured in my mind when I think “September,” much the same as June means summer break, sun tans, and my birthday, or November and pumpkin pie, Thanksgiving, and cold nights spent at football games or bonfires. As much as a holiday or annual event can represent a month, months in my mind are also inextricably linked to the weather typical of that time of year. So it’s been an adjustment to life on this side of the equator, where all the associations I’ve carried with me no longer apply to each month. When someone says they’re getting married or expecting a baby in January, I have to remind myself that that month is no longer thirty-one long days of grey coldness and post-Christmas boredom, but the glorious height of summer itself.

But my associations with the various months and seasons aren’t the only things that have undergone a little reevaluation since arriving in New Zealand. Just like in London, it’s such a struggle to no longer be able to measure temperature in Fahrenheit – when I hear thirty degrees, my first thought is freezing, but have to remember to switch to Celsius where thirty is actually rather hot. The same goes for distance and speed limits. One hundred kilometers an hour will probably always seem insanely fast to my miles-per-hour mind, until I remember 100km/h is just your average highway driving speed. And I will almost surely have to continue to convert any amount of money back into US dollars to decide whether or not it’s a fair price. I’ve managed to develop my own scale of NZ dollars for some things like rent and food, but for other things, especially flights, I still switch currencies. It’s like you can’t ever just hear something and go, “That’s hot (or cold),” or “That’s fast (or slow).” There are no instant decisions or automatic judgment calls. Even without a language barrier, there’s still that one extra step I have to take in order to understand certain measurements on my own terms.

But either way – whether the 1^st or 21^st of September – the start of spring in Queenstown is having a visible effect – and I don’t just mean the fact that supermarkets are selling fresh bunches of daffodils. With the new season comes the end of another, the end of winter and the snow season up on the slopes. Even though the slopes don’t officially close until the beginning of October, already the town is quieter, emptying out as the mountain starts melting. I’ve noticed a drastic drop at Premier Taste, where lines no longer stretch back to the frozen section, and at Wattie’s, where I’m making at least a hundred drinks less each night and some nights have apparently been even slower than in summer. Even my flat has shrunk in half – in the span of a couple weeks, five out of the ten of us have left – either for home or to continue traveling. And in one way, I’m starting to get anxious to be on the move again. I’m not used to being the one left behind and all this shifting about is making me restless, ready for the next leg of the journey.

Maybe that’s why they call it spring fever after all…

new doors, old melodies.

2009-09-06T22:36:00.000-07:00

I’ve always been a person of many passions. Music, writing, photography, travel – so many interests, so little time, eh? Interests I was never okay with relegating as just “hobbies” or Saturday morning projects – they’re all things I could see myself pursuing as a viable career. But with so many doors in front of you, how do you know which one to knock on? How do you know which one will open – if any? And hardest still, how do you make peace with a closed door? How do you bring yourself to accept the fact that as much as you may love something, that’s not what you’re meant to do?

From the moment I performed my first original song in a coffeehouse during high school, I felt pulled in opposite directions. On one hand, I loved “school,” academia, being an English major, engaging in critical analyses and debating over themes and plot development. But on the other hand, what was I to do with my passion for music, my love for songwriting and putting together setlists and performing as a band? The first crucial moment of decision came during my third year of uni when I performed in a songwriting competition judged by – no pressure, now – the manager of the Dave Matthews Band. As nervous as I had been about how to approach him, he took care of it, coming up to me at intermission, asking to meet with me to discuss my music. Really? Seriously? “Well sure, Bruce, let me just check my calendar…” In his office – when I wasn’t distracted by the plethora of platinum records literally strewn across his walls – he told me to apply for an internship with a record label in New York City that summer and that if I didn’t get it on my own, he would – you gotta love this – “make it happen.” Um, okay?

But for some reason, I didn’t. That other part of me – that OCD, punctual, academic side of me – won out for the summer. I decided to go in a different direction, landing an English editorial internship with a textbook publishing company in Boston. I don’t know what made me do it, other than some subconscious need to know if whether or not the editing life was for me. It wasn’t, of course, but at least that door was closed.

The second major decision came on the brink of graduation from university. I think I went through all of fourth year with the desire to pursue music, in whatever capacity it may be, outweighing all other options. Even when I was a good little English major and looked into teaching positions, I kept narrowing in on the Nashville area with the hopes of moving there. And with one of my closest friends choosing to attend graduate school in Music City, it seemed like a realistic move to make. But when no teaching jobs opened up and all the office/admin jobs I looked into offered a mere one week of vacation a year, that’s when the panic set in. Sitting in a computer lab one day, fear of the “real world” in full swing, all I could think was, “How will I ever see Europe on one week a year?” Or in other words, I would never see Europe with that kind of holiday scheme.

So, Life Choice #2 – London. As much as I wanted to see where songwriting could take me in Nashville, the desire to see the world itself won out this time. As much as I would regret not pursuing songwriting, something in me made me believe I would regret not traveling even more. And so I went – and so music was laid to rest. Even with the occasional chance to play a friend’s guitar or the even more occasional twelve-pounds-an-hour visit to a piano practice room in London, the presence of music in my life decreased dramatically. I had all but stopped writing, hadn’t performed in months – the best word to describe music in my life was dormant.

But I was okay with that – I had made the decision after all. Between all the traveling and the Euro-sightseeing, I didn’t even have much time to miss music as much I thought I would. I closed that door myself, after all, and was content with the way life was.

Now – to make all this slightly more New Zealand-relevant – a couple of weeks ago, it was an especially good night at the bar. Packed crowds, fast pace, an awesome crew working, the DJ playing all my favorite songs – so of course I couldn’t help but dance around the bar, singing out every word of every song at the top of my lungs. My much-beloved bar manager Braden looked over at me and said, “You know who you remind me of? The girl from Coyote Ugly.” Which – having not seen the movie myself – is apparently about a bartender who sings. “You can sing, can’t you?” he asks, and me – caught up in the moment – let a “Heck yeah!” escape before catching myself with a “I mean, a little?” “We’re gonna have you up there next Sunday,” he says, pointing to the stage, referring to Acoustic Sundays where two incredibly talented local musicians play every week. “You’re gonna blow me away, I just know it,” he says as he walks away.

I tried my best to lower his expectations – Pearlie, the female vocalist who sings every week, has an absolutely insane range – and the last thing I wanted was him expecting the same from me. The whole affair was rather haphazard. As if the fact that I hadn’t performed for over a year and a half weren’t enough, there was also no possibility of performing on a piano – it’d have to be guitar, which having never played it in public, I was only slightly hesitant about. I managed to borrow a guitar off a friend and find a few hours to practice and prepare – two covers, “Realize” by Colbie Caillat and “The First Cut is the Deepest” by Sheryl Crow, as well as an original, “Yours for the Taking.” And – just to top it all off – I’ve had a weird cough/cold bug my entire time in Queenstown, the fact of which wasn’t doing wonders for my confidence, my throat not being in the best of conditions.

But when it came down to it, I just had to do it. I went into work and was surprisingly substantially less nervous than I normally am before a performance. I’d had a brief chance to run through the songs out back on Shay’s guitar, a gorgeous Takamine, and felt okay – not great, but not entirely fearful either. At about twelve, right before starting his second set, Shay runs up to the bar and says to me, “Grab yourself a shot and get up there!” I ran to the back, threw on a different shirt and some lip gloss and took my hair down. I walked on stage as all my colleagues cheered from the side, thinking only, “Oh Lord, what have I gotten myself into?”

The bar was full, with at least a hundred people – the biggest crowd I’d ever played in front of – not to mention all my friends I work with, even the general manager of the bar, lined up one side, with the entire front section of the audience made up entirely of guys. It was utterly exhilarating, by far my best experience in New Zealand as of yet. Shay had originally told me to cut one of the covers and keep it short and sweet. But after the first two songs went so well, he came back on stage and asked the crowd, “What do you say we hear one more?” I couldn’t believe how much they were yelling. “Alright, alright,” I said, “If you insist.”

It was the best feeling in the world – as cool as it was having twenty guys in the front singing along to “The First Cut is the Deepest,” even cooler was having one of them pick up on the words to my own song and sing along to the last chorus. A surreal moment, a moment where you know without a doubt that this is what you are meant to be doing. I came off stage and Braden gave me the biggest hug, “That was perfect. You had 6’3” muscle men crying. There wasn’t a guy in the bar not in tears. You looked so comfortable up there it was unreal."

And the craziest thing about it all, the absolute magic of the night, was that my music wasn’t dormant anymore. I’d given it up to see the world, and than randomly, strangely, suddenly – I had music and travel at once. Nothing had been sacrificed after all, nothing except my perception that I couldn’t pursue both. Can you really have your cake and eat it, too? I felt like crying I was so happy. It had been like playing for my family, having all my friends looking on, smiling from the sides, and having such a supportive, engaged crowd – I couldn’t have asked for more.

But there is more to come, as it turns out. Braden is a schemer, a dreamer, a man with grand plans. Starting in two weeks’ time, he’s launching a new promotion, Acoustic Wednesdays, with the same four local musicians on stage each week – and he wants one of the slots to go to me. I’ll also keep playing a few songs each Sunday, as well as a potential spot in a charity festival/event Braden is planning for the summer. From thinking I’d laid music to rest to having it back in my life so out of the blue, it has been so unexpected but so, so good. I’d forgotten how much I missed it and how much I love performing my songs. It was like falling in love all over again.

Of course, this new turn of events brings me to evaluate my original plans for the rest of my time in New Zealand – as I’ve done how many other times so far? I left Christchurch for Queenstown expecting to be here for the season and then move on at some point in October. After I got connected here and made plans for a three-week trip to Thailand in November, I sketched out a further itinerary of about four weeks at the top of the South Island post-Thailand before returning to Queenstown for three weeks over Christmas and New Year’s until, finally….the North Island – most likely spending my last three months based out of the capital of Wellington.

Braden’s been asking me all along to stay for the summer, something I wasn’t too keen to do…up until now – now that the chance to get connected into the music scene of Queenstown has presented itself, I could see myself perfectly content with not moving on. I could see myself quitting Premier Taste – as much for the sake of my sanity as for the sake of my music – spending the days outdoors, wakeboarding on a friend’s jet boat, skydiving, getting a long-overdue tan, and spending nights at Wattie’s and performing. There could be a worse arrangement, that’s for sure.

And so I feel like I’m back in that same quandary as before in Christchurch. As the Clash sing, “Should I stay or should I go now?” It’s getting to be an all-too-familiar question in my life, one that maybe I’m just going to have to get used to dealing with. Life is all about decisions, about choices, about making peace with closed doors, summoning the courage to knock on new ones, and – if there’s several open – having the wisdom to know which one to walk through.

As for now, I’m letting the questions alone – it’s just good to have the melodies back.

more than the seeing of sights.

2009-08-24T04:25:00.000-07:00

“Certainly, travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living.” – Miriam Beard

“One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.” – Henry Miller

“Voyage, travel and change of place impart vigor.” – Seneca

Since coming to New Zealand, and to Queenstown especially, it’s funny to be able to catch myself changing. To make a decision and say, “Whoa, I wouldn’t have made that same one this time last year.” Because – as the above quotes relate to – one would hope that as you travel, the scenery is not the only thing to change; that as the horizons of your world broaden, the same would occur to the horizons of your mind. New perspectives, new paradigms, new ways of living and thinking and seeing the world around you.

To be terribly honest, whilst living in London, I wasn’t all that interested in meeting other Americans. Not that I didn’t enjoy the ones I did meet, but I wasn’t exactly rushing out to attend American Expat social events either. Most of my new friends were from New Zealand or Australia, with a handful of English thrown in there – I loved the international aspect of our friendship, of comparing accents and pronunciations and being told to “Stay out of it, America.” Whenever I was introduced to another American, I think the person introducing us was usually the most excited about our common country of origin. It was just that I felt that if I had wanted to meet other fellow countrymen, I could’ve stayed in New York or Boston – wasn’t the whole point of moving to London, the melting pots of melting pots, to meet people I couldn’t have met back home?

I didn’t encounter too many Americans in Christchurch, besides the typical slew of tourists I served, mainly a girl my age from Texas at my restaurant and a woman from Illinois at my office. So it’s been interesting to be in Queenstown and find myself excited – to actually look forward to – meeting people hailing from the same Motherland as myself. Which is a fortunate development to occur, considering they are all over – whether on holiday (“vacation,” in Americanese), here for the season, or having bit the bullet and made a permanent move to this part of the world. And no one was I more excited to meet than a guy named Jared at the bar. He was one of the first people I met on the night of my trial and we both quickly picked up on each other’s accents. “So where are you from?” he asks. “Virginia?” I answer in that questioning way as you wait to hear what state another American is from, so as to determine how much you actually have in common. I’ve met other Americans in the bar from states like Montana or Nevada, but just about all we share is a president, a national anthem, and, if not a love for baseball, at least a complete lack of understanding of cricket.

Jared’s jaw dropped as he told me he, too, was from Virginia, state of all states. We both couldn’t believe our common status as Virginians, the state of Sic Semper Tyrannis and “Virginia is for Lovers.” Even though we happened to be from completely different regions, there was an instant sort of comfortability with him – there was a sense of being known, no need for explanations or extensive background information. I soon met his flatmate Brad, another Virginian who went to high school with Jared and is now traveling with him. Both of them have brothers who went to my university and are familiar with the traditions, customs, the Greek System and even Foxfields, an annual horse race that’s basically an excuse to get dressed up in bowties, seersucker, and sundresses and drink all day while achieving a less-than-ideal sunburn. While it was weird talking about my university in such a specific way again, it was also such a good feeling to have a past again, not just some nebulous existence in the present with people from all over where neither of you have a true understanding of where the other has come from. And as interesting as the conversation in my international friendships can be, filled with the new slang and phrases of another country’s jargon, hanging out with Jared and Brad has been a small taste of home, of being able to ask where their “trash can” is rather than the “rubbish bin” and passing the “ketchup” rather than “to-mah-toe” sauce.

And furthermore, our status as Americans abroad lets us relate to each other in a pretty unique way. For so many of the British, European, Aussie and Kiwi friends I’ve made, what we’re doing – an OE, or “Overseas Experience” – is the norm – not entirely out of the ordinary. Not to discount their move in any way, for it still requires the same level of preparation and courage, but with statistical myths stating 25% of New Zealanders live abroad, it gives you an idea of the popularity of the OE. That doesn’t seem to be quite the case for many Americans, though. I’ve run into Brad several times while out, and maybe it’s just the time of night, but we seem to always end up having those epic late-night conversations about “life” and our plans and a common desire to break out of the high school-college-job-marriage-mortgage pattern. We understand what the other has left behind – it’s not that we think we want something better, it’s just that we want something different. Last night at the bar, I served two women from the States – one is the defense attaché to the US Embassy in Wellington, the other is earning her PhD in psychology to work with war veterans from Vietnam and Iraq, both having served in the Navy for over twenty years and traveled to over forty countries. I couldn’t have left my conversation with them more inspired. “Keep doing what you’re doing,” they said to me. To see two women living the kind of life I hope to lead was incredible, and further reinforced my new love for fellow American expats.

But it’s not just my circle of friends that I find expanding – I’ve surprised myself at how at home I feel in Queenstown, despite it being such a small town. I’ve always considered myself a city girl, comfortable in the anonymity of millions, content on a subway of people I don’t know. And it’s what I never liked about Charlottesville, the town of about 40,000 that I went to university in – the fact that it always seemed too small. One friend who worked at a local bar complained about seeing the same crowd, the same people, out every night. I hated never being able to go somewhere without seeing someone I knew, be it Harris Teeter, Starbucks, or the mall. Sometimes you just want to escape it all, you know? Thus my love for Boston and London and the blessed seclusion of the big city.

So it’s strange to reside in an even smaller town and find myself happy here, happy getting to know the group of locals living here for the season. Working at essentially the only supermarket in town as well as one of the most popular bars means I meet a lot of people, and sometimes a lot of the same people who frequent both establishments. My absolute favorite moment is when I’ll go to serve someone at the bar whom I’ve rung up earlier that day in Premier Taste – the look on their face, the moment when they realize they’ve seen me before – “Do you happen to work…?” Anticipating their question, I smile proudly and assure them, “The supermarket? Why yes, I do, as a matter of fact.” While walking through the bar last night collecting all the empty glasses, a guy stopped me and asked, “Do you have a sister who works at the supermarket?” I almost died laughing as I informed him, “That’s me, actually!” It’s the best feeling when someone comes up to my section of the bar and shouts, “Premier Taste!” or “Supermarket girl!” And that’s just the tourists…Getting to know the network of other hospo workers and bouncers also has its perks, whether it be getting discounts on drinks, not having to show my ID to get in somewhere, or – best of all – jumping the queue on a Saturday night.

Maybe I’ve gotten over my need to lose myself in a city since my time in Charlottesville, or maybe it’s much to do with the same change in my perspective towards other Americans – it’s that feeling of being known, of having come alone to a foreign country and finding myself connected, feeling like I belong somewhere. Or maybe it has to do with the fact that the more I travel, the more and more I discover the importance of people as well as places. Before I departed for Europe last year, I was consumed with wanting to visit places – any country, every country – and arrived in London with every intention of taking a trip every weekend around the UK and Europe – Bath, Stonehenge, Cambridge, the Lake District, France, you name it. Within a few weeks though, I’d met my new group of Kiwi friends and found myself giving up the trips in lieu of just being with them in London on the weekends. Rather than a series of small trips like I’d originally planned, I ended up going on two bigger trips with the Kiwis – something I would never have imagined happening. But, in a way, it ruined me – it opened up this new world of the magic of traveling with close friends. When I later went to Paris with a group of fifteen random girls through a student travel club, I was angry at myself – “You’re in Paris, Candace, why aren’t you happier?” It just wasn’t the same, though, after Egypt and the French Alps. The inside jokes, the teasing, being able to be grumpy if I felt like it – it was all missing. Instead, it was back to the basics, back to introductions and questions like “Where are you from” and “So what to do you do in London?” As exciting as new friends can be, the trip just wasn’t the same.

So as I travel alone through New Zealand, I’ve started picking up on the “tricks of the [backpacking] trade” – the ways to meet people and put myself in situations with others “of my kind.” In Boston, I rented a single room in a rooming house, hoping to avoid the risk of a bad roommate experience. I started off my flat search in Christchurch with much the same intention of finding a studio apartment or single bedroom flat rather than just a room in a shared house. But when nothing came to fruition, I ended up going with the latter, much out of desperation. It’s cool, though, to now look back on it and see that if I hadn’t chosen that flat, I would never have met my flatmate Kenny, who in turn got me the job at the restaurant, which in turn opened up a whole new group of friends and was in turn owned by someone who hooked me up with my job at Wattie’s – a chain reaction that almost never happened. So when my landlord in Christchurch said his house in Queenstown would come with nine flatmates, he was spot on by saying, “Think of it like having nine instant friends.” A year ago, I would’ve run in the other direction at the prospect of moving into a house with nine strangers – but now I’ve got an amazing group of friends, a quasi-family of sorts, from all over the world. Living alone comes with few risks – after all, the only dishes left in the sink are the ones you couldn’t be bothered washing the night before. After a while, though, all that talking to yourself can get to you. But if you’re willing to risk getting a few kooks and crazies as flatmates, you’ll be in a position to gain that much more when flatties turn into friends and things go better than expected.

The same goes for my hostel-booking habits. When scoping out hostels online for our Scandinavian trip last August – my first Euro-experience – my first instinct was to go for the triples so we could have our own room. Only if the larger dorms were drastically less in price would we book a bed in something like an 8 or 12-bed dorm. But after times like in Prague – where Emily and I brushed up on our Spanish to hang out with our dormmates from Barcelona – or Greymouth – where my new French dormmates provided some unexpected company for the weekend – I try now to opt for a dorm bed. Each experience grows my confidence and courage, as I venture further and further outside my comfort zone and put myself in new situations that are almost always worth the risk of the unknown.

So whether it’s opening myself up to any friendship, any town, or any situation, I am grateful not just for New Zealand, but for a new me – a me who I wouldn’t have recognized this time last year, a me who I hope continues to cherish every challenge as a chance for change.

another day in neverland.

2009-08-20T16:34:00.000-07:00

Six weeks in, and I’m in love with this place. Maybe it’s the crisp alpine air, maybe it’s walking out my front door every day greeted by snow-capped mountains, maybe it’s just the energy that flows through the streets. It’s impossible to deny the buzz of Queenstown – it’s exhilarating, it’s addicting, and it’s not just because of its standing as the adventure capital of the world or the smorgasbord of extreme activities to be found here – it’s the simple fact that everyone here is on the move. In Christchurch, I often got the impression that people born there stayed there – that the lifestyle was more on the settled, stable side. But Queenstown, thriving on tourism, is inherently transient. A hotspot for backpackers and 5-star travelers alike, there is an incredible diversity all around you, and it’s exciting to be a part of.

Even at Premier Taste, the majority of my checkout colleagues are Brazilian or from Asian countries like India, Thailand, and Singapore. I’m one of just a few people from an actual English-speaking country. So as Portuguese fills the air, you have to stop and ask yourself, I am in New Zealand, right? The number of accents that come through my checkout lane every day is intense. Just this past week I’ve served people from Australia (not so unusual, I know), Ireland, the Czech Republic, Germany, Argentina, Russia and Saudi Arabia. How cool is that? It lends this little town with a permanent population of only 10,000 quite the cosmopolitan feel to it. Queenstown never feels like a small town. But I suppose with over one and a half million tourists flooding in every year, it comes with the territory.

But (there’s always a but, right?) with so many people shifting in and out, you can’t help but feel it’s all just a little too ephemeral at times. A friend once described a similar feeling of fleeting beauty like watching your breath in the cold winter air – enchanting to see but equally as heartbreaking, as you know it won’t last. There’s not a better image for Queenstown – yes, there’s someone new to meet every night, which can be refreshing and help you avoid feeling stagnant, but that same person will most likely be gone by the next night or week or – if you’re lucky – the end of the season. With so many connections slipping through your fingers, what do you hold onto? One guy I’ve gotten to know put it bluntly – “This isn’t real, you know? These aren’t real connections.” Even one of my bar managers jokes about falling in love with a different girl every night – “This is killing me. They’re here for a week and then they’re gone forever.” It’s a fantasy world like no other – equaled only by Las Vegas or maybe Florida during MTV’s Spring Break. A fantasy world where no one grows old – as I’ve heard it put, this is Neverland.

When friends from home ask how Queenstown is, I answer with one word: mental. The pace of this place is utterly manic – I marvel as people go from the mountain to the bars and back up the next day. Nowhere else would you go out on a Tuesday or Wednesday night and find the bars and clubs so packed with people. Nowhere else would you go out so many times a week, absolutely irregardless of what day of the week it even is. It’s a city of one-night stands and week-long affairs that are over before they’ve ever begun. Commitment isn’t something that sits well with Queenstown. Everything this place offers – from the bungy jumps to the slopes to the nightlife – is there to give you a thrill, there for the rush.

But somehow, in the middle of all the cosmopolitan craziness and never-ending quest for stimulation, I got a small taste of as real a relationship that might be possible here. There was an Irish guy named Connor who worked at the bar with me who – I won’t lie – I had a crush on almost immediately after starting there. The Irish accent’s never done much for me, but I actually didn’t mind his, especially the way words like “the” and “thirty” would sound more like “de” and “thirdee.” I got to know him a bit during my first week and one night after work, he asked me if I would want to get dinner the following evening. Would I? It was all I could do to not jump up and down shouting, “Connor asked me out! Connor asked me out!” We went to a place along the wharf called Luceano’s and I can honestly say it was the best first date as of yet – not a lull to be found in the conversation, everything paid for, including a dessert we shared. It was one of those dates where you look at your phone at the end and can’t believe it’s already 11pm. Since I had yet to properly go out in Queenstown, he took me around to a few bars and pubs and at one point, we even played pool with another couple. As he walked me home at the end of the night, I couldn’t help but think of the words to Dashboard Confessional’s “Hands Down” – “My hopes were so high that your kiss might kill me / So won’t you kill me / So I die happy.” And true to form, the goodnight kiss on my front porch was the perfect ending to a perfect date.

The week that followed was one straight from the first part of a chick flick rom-com before everything goes awry and threatens the entire relationship. Whether flirting at work or out together on our nights off with friends, it was bliss – he said I’d made Queenstown infinitely better for him, that he couldn’t stop smiling when he looked at me – which of course left an irrepressible smile on my face. I’m sure my supermarket customers thought I was a complete nutter as I’d go into work each day utterly giddy, remembering the night out before. And above all, I loved that I had managed to beat the Queenstown system – I had found someone I genuinely liked, someone I wanted to be with who wanted to be with me too. It was unreal, especially considering the circumstances.

But as those things go, Connor ended up “pulling a Queenstown” about ten days later, saying that if his timeframe were different, it would be different between us, but as he was leaving in a few weeks he just wanted to have fun for the rest of his time. Many would say, “fair enough,” but I couldn’t believe it, given all the things he had said and the way he had acted initially. During the time we were together, I’d been singing Empire of the Sun – “Walking on a dream / How can I explain / …I’m living in a rhythm where the minute’s working overtime.” And a dream it turned out to be, as I went from the perfect happiness of the first few days to the gut-wrenching disappointment after he called it off. And not to mention the terrible awkwardness of having to go back and work with him the next day. But such is life. I have a good friend I met in London who’s originally from Christchurch and well-acquainted with Queenstown. As I told him about Connor and how upset I was, he said, “Babe, you’re in Queenstown. You can’t care.” Which is easer said than done, but still, it put things into perspective. And as my cousin said, “I know it sucks, but Candace, you had your heart broken by an Irish guy while bartending in New Zealand. That’s pretty freaking cool.”

And so I find myself grateful for my job at Premier Taste, even as much as I love working at Wattie’s. The nightlife scene can be exhilarating, all glamour and flash. Everyone’s dressed to impress, the drinks are flowing, the low lighting designed to flatter (much like the surreptitious way retail stores install special lights and mirrors in the fitting rooms to optimize how the customer looks in their product). So there’s nothing like going to work at the supermarket for a good healthy dose of reality. Under the ghastly glow of fluorescent lighting, people come as they are, often straight from the slopes, exhausted in their ski gear, or from work, in uniform, with tired kids tugging at their hip. No one puts on a show in a supermarket. They come for one of the most basic necessities in life. Even in Neverland, people need to eat.

So as much as my manager at Wattie’s wants me to quit my day job and go full-time at the bar, I can’t. I need Premier Taste to get me out of bed before four in the afternoon, I need it to keep me grounded to the real world and for some remnant of normality in the crazy microcosm that is Queenstown.

waxing nocturnal.

2009-08-18T02:08:00.000-07:00

When the owner of my restaurant in Christchurch heard about the supermarket job I’d lined up in Queenstown, he asked me why I didn’t want a “hospo” job instead (short for hospitality in this corner of the world). It’s not that I didn’t want one, I explained, but more that hospo jobs in Queenstown weren’t exactly yours for the taking this time of year. But then that phrase you always love to hear when you’re keen for a connection or two – “Let me make a few calls,” he says. A few calls later, I had the number of a guy to contact once I got down to Queenstown. Turned out my connection was more of a real estate mogul than restaurateur, but he offered the same mysterious promise of phone calls on my behalf. I actually couldn’t believe the effort he made for me, just a random girl he’d never met and knowing about my hospo experience only through hear-say. Not only did he pass my details on, but kept calling and emailing the next couple of days to make sure I’d been contacted by someone, had somewhere to live, needed any more help, and so on. It was such a reassurance during the slow start of my time in Queenstown.

I eventually get a call from a guy named Brett, manager of Wattie’s Gourmet Pizza Bar, a restaurant and bar I knew nothing about except from a place with the same name in Christchurch. He had me come in the next day for a chat, where he told me he’d already filled all the restaurant positions but that they still needed some part-time help behind the bar. Bar work was something I’d been interested in for a while, ever since my flatmate/bar supervisor in Christchurch had mentioned trying to switch me from floor to bar staff at our restaurant. But the head manager would have nothing of it, so I hadn’t had the chance. Even with my lack of bar experience, though, Brett lined me up for a trial the following night.

The following night just happened to be a Friday night, and as if that – a Friday night in Queenstown – wasn’t daunting enough, it also happened to be their Michael Jackson tribute party, given his death a couple weeks before. I had absolutely no idea what to expect. My one and only attempt to pour a beer for fun one night after work in Christchurch was nothing short of disastrous – the amount of head was embarrassing in front of just a few friends…and now I’d have to attempt it a second time with a packed crowd all singing “I'm starting with the man in the mirror” as an audience? You could safely say I was nervous.

But, wearing a black shirt with THRILLER in bold white across the front, I was amazed at how okay it actually was, at how much better it was than I was expecting. Although the amount of people lined up to serve was daunting at first, I took a deep breath and took them one by one. The beer thankfully gave me no trouble at all and you can’t get much more basic than pouring a glass of wine. And when it came to mixed drinks, all the bottles of house spirits have special stops on them that cut off automatically after you’ve poured the standard amount. At the end of the night, the bar manager offered me the job – even said he was really impressed! – and put me on the schedule for the coming week. Bartending, here I come.

A few days ago, I pulled out that article I’ve mentioned before about the lack of employment opportunities in Queenstown. I couldn’t believe it. The second paragraph began:

“Many businesses have stopped accepting CVs and backpackers are full of new arrivals who are desperate for employment. Wattie’s Gourmet Pizza Bar general manager Brett Ames said the number of job-seekers coming in each day was ‘just mayhem.’ About 15 to 20 people, but sometimes as many as 50, visited the restaurant each day asking for work. ‘On some days, when everyone arrives in town, they just pile in.’ The business employed about 35 people normally but up to 60 in the busiest periods.”

How I managed to beat the “mayhem” and get offered a job there is astounding. More and more I see the power of connections and of knowing someone who knows someone. It’s all about having people “who have people.” The more I talked to other bartenders at Wattie’s, the more I realized my story wasn’t the only one of its kind. It’s like there’s some sort of twisted mafia governing the hospo world of Queenstown, an underground network controlling who’s in and who’s out.

The restaurant part of Wattie’s stays open every night until ten or eleven, meaning the earlier hours of your bar shift are spent filling drink orders for the tables and doing prep work for the night to come, whether it be slicing up thirty-odd lemons in the kitchen or scrubbing down the back bar. Once the restaurant starts to empty out, tables are rolled away, chairs are folded down, couches are pushed to the side. The music grows in volume and changes tone, going gradually from the likes of “Brown-Eyed Girl” and the Friends theme song (which, coincidentally, is disconcerting to hear without watching Jennifer Anniston and Matthew Perry dance around in a fountain) to the beat-driven songs of Rihanna, Black Eyed Peas, and MGMT. It takes an hour or two to switch mentalities from family-oriented restaurant to night club, but come midnight, it’s go-time.

But being that the bar doesn’t close til 2.30, cleanup takes at least until 4am. Getting the place back into some state of respectability is split between cleaning the bar and the floor. I typically get assigned to the bar portion, meaning I have the joy of putting hundreds of glasses through the dishwasher and sorting them out into their appropriate trays for the night. Those on the floor sweep, scour and scrub every surface imaginable, putting tables and chairs back in place for the transformation back to a restaurant. Come four o’ clock, it’s time to sit around a booth, have a staff drink, count and divide our tips and – fingers crossed – have a freshly baked pizza that didn’t get sold from the fridge earlier that night. Not that eating pizza at four in the morning is the healthiest thing in the world – or anywhere close to it – but it’s definitely one of the biggest perks of the job.

What’s not a perk is my newfound nocturnal lifestyle. By the time we finish up our drinks and pizza, it can be anywhere between 4 and 5, and we often head down to another bar called Bardeaux that stays open ‘til 5. It’s one of the standard port of calls on a night out in Queenstown – from Wattie’s ‘til 2.30 to World Bar ‘til 4 to Bardeaux, a rather chilled-out place with an amazingly huge wood-burning fireplace and oversized leather couches. It’s the perfect place to wind down after a long shift. After the lights come on at Bardeaux, it’s usually to the 2-4, a – go figure – twenty-four hour convenience store for chips (fries, of course) or a chicken cordon bleu, and then – finally – to home. The bizarreness of my new schedule didn’t hit me until walking home the other night, when the newspaper man drove past me. The newspaper guy? Really? And then one of my flatmates who works up on the mountain told me how she saw my light on when she got up for work one morning. This can’t be natural…

But while sleeping the day away only to get up to work through the night has made for a weird adjustment here in Queenstown, it’s also made for some great friends so far. Everyone I work with is in the same situation as myself – young and traveling, far from home – England, Ireland, Canada, Georgia, and even another Virginian, we hail from every corner of the Northern Hemisphere. Even my first weekend at Wattie’s, management paid for all the bar staff to go paintballing. It was my first such experience so I won’t lie and say I didn’t offer to “guard our base” in hopes of just hiding out behind a tree the whole time and avoiding the much-feared welts. And while the game taught me how truly horrible my aim is, it was still a chance to out of my little world in Queenstown and have a shot and – more likely – be shot by new friends.

And when you get down to it, you really can’t beat a job where going to work means dancing around to songs you love with good friends, getting to meet and talk to interesting people, in a place where everyone’s happy to be here.

…It’s just that whole trying-to-see-the-sun thing that gets to you after a while!

life as a checkout chick.

2009-08-10T00:42:00.000-07:00

One could say there are three scenarios that dominate the role-playing world of little girls. The first is undoubtedly house – I can distinctly remember shouting, “Let’s play house!” to my sister/cousins/friends/playmate-of-the-day, divvying out role assignments – mother (usually myself, of course), daughter, baby, annoying aunt who never visits, and father if we managed to rope my brother in. Secondly, no girl grows up without playing school. Whoever was lucky enough to be the teacher would drag out the bulky blue Fisher-Price chalkboard with the blackboard that didn’t even really let you write on it with chalk. The rest of us would sit on the floor (okay, who am I kidding? I always made myself teacher as well…) while the teacher read aloud or handed out made-up tests or quizzed us from math flash cards. Then, of course, is store, where you’d pull out the calculator and note pad and Monopoly money (or a proper plastic cash register, if you had good enough parents) and scrounge together items for sale. [A variation on store is town, whereby each individual involved sets up shop and you take turns giving patronage to each ‘establishment.’]

So as you can see, with all my experience behind that plastic cash register, I grew up with a sort of fascination with the role of a checkout operator at the grocery store, and nothing would make me happier than when the bagger had disappeared and I could help bag our groceries. That might explain the weird level of excitement I felt on the first day of starting work at Premier Taste, a chain of locally owned and operated supermarkets on the South Island of New Zealand. I went in early on my first day (which wasn’t an issue given that it’s located a miraculous one-minute walk from my flat) to pick up my uniform. The total hideousness of my uniform only mildly tempered my excitement – black pleated, waist-high pants reminiscent of private school uniforms, a royal blue collared shirt that’s royally designed like a box, and a massive – and I repeat, massive – black polar fleece guaranteed to make me appear 3x my size. The whole get-up eliminates any curve or veritable sense of style whatsoever. But my name badge? Possibly the only cool thing about getting dressed for work.

Unisex uniform or not, I was officially beginning my life as a checkout chick, as the cashiers are so lovingly referred to in New Zealand (tells you something about the gender-specific tendencies of the role, eh?), and I was so looking forward to it. The first hour of my inaugural shift was spent on a tour of the store, which besides a look at the facilities available to staff, included your typical “All canned items can be found on aisle 4” sort of jargon. I learned some important details for the job, such as the fact that broccoli and avocados are charged by quantity, onions and kumara by weight, and red peppers (or capsicum, in Kiwispeak) could be either, depending on the week and stock level. The next hour was spent on the actual tills (another word for cash register) with a trainer there to help me through my first transactions.

After a while, though, I turned around and realized I was on my own. Well, here we go…this is it! A supervisor comes up and says that the other new girl and I are doing very well for our first day, keeping up with the ridiculous influx of skiers and boarders just off the slopes. And you know the absolutely hysterical thing? I cared. It mattered to me to hear him say that. I wanted to do well and was embarrassed when I needed his help to fix a mistake. There’s got to be something seriously wrong with me. As the days went on, the novelty of the job had yet to wan. As much as I wanted to wear that bored, disaffected look, smacking on my gum and staring at the TV instead of talking to customers, I just couldn’t fake it. I was loving it too much.

At Premier Taste, I’m essentially paid to talk to people. Of course there’s remembering all the produce codes and ensuring all frozen items are bagged together, but at the heart of the job, I just get to have conversations with each customer that comes through my lane. The majority of the shoppers are tourists, so there’s no end to the potential questions – where are they from, how long are they here for, what have they done in Queenstown so far, how were the slopes today, etc… In the off-chance you get a born-and-bred local, there’s a whole other side to the questions and you hear about the time long before Premier Taste ever opened and there was only the 24-hour convenience store in town. And then there are the in-betweeners, much like myself, only here for the season – not quite tourists, but not quite locals either. When customers hear my accent, that opens up the conversation as well, especially when they ask my favorite question – “Well, now you’re a long way from home, aren’t you?” We share stories, travel tips, advice about where to go in Queenstown and where to go in our respective home countries. It’s quite the bonding experience, really. One of the other girls was helping me bag one day and said, “You don’t have to be so nice to everyone, you know, they don’t deserve it.” And yes, I know that, but it’s all part of chain reactions and paying it forward. If they leave the store with a smile on their face or if I’ve helped make their day that much smoother, I can go home happy.

If there is a “stressful” aspect of the job – and I say it like that only because this “stress” pales in comparison to other jobs I’ve held previously – it’d have to be checking ID for alcohol purchases. Premier Taste has a couple of funny policies – one is that we have to ID any customer who looks under 25. The other – and this is the real kicker – is that acceptable forms of ID only include New Zealand driver’s licenses or a passport (well, also a NZ 18+ Hospitality card, but I think I’ve had a total of about three customers have one so far). That means we can’t accept driver’s licenses from any other country – much to the chagrin of our customers. It makes sense to a degree, given that if we sell alcohol to a minor – knowingly or unknowingly – the checkout operator is fined $2,000, the supervisor $10,000, and the store can lose their liquor license. Ouch. BUT, it also has the unfortunate consequence of me pissing off at least one embittered customer a day. And they’re usually Aussies, who glare at me saying, “What do you mean you won’t accept my license? I can drive with it here.” I then of course flush the color of the tomatoes they’ve also just bought and try to pleasantly explain, “I do understand, but I as well can drive with my license but can’t use it to buy alcohol either. You’ll have to come back with your passport.” Which is exactly what they want to hear after you’ve removed their twenty-four pack of Speight’s or two bottles of Shiraz from the conveyor belt. I’ve also resigned myself to being a terrible judge of age. I’ve so far IDed people well into their thirties and just barely decided to ID someone only to find out they’ve just turned 18. Well done, Candace, well done.

A friend from home, after finding out about my new employment, sent me the link to an article on NPR titled “‘Checkout Girl’ Anna Sam Cashes in with Bestselling Memoir.” A French literature student who ended up working in a supermarket for five years after graduation due to a lack of job opportunities, she went from tenured cashier to bestselling international author with the publication of one book – talk about a catapulted lifestyle change. I haven’t read the memoir yet, Checkout: A Life on the Tills, but a quote from Sam in the article couldn’t describe my new life any better:

“It’s a job where you see every people; it’s a job where no one sees you. You see families very happy, families very sad; people are very nice; people are very bad. And at the end of your day, you say, ‘Oh my god, I’m happy because I have a normal life; I’m better than I thought.’”

The best example of that final thought would have to be when last week, a girl my age ate a muffin, walked out without paying for it, was promptly arrested and issued a $400 fine. Besides questioning her decision to save a buck or two, I was immensely grateful for a job that not only gives me a 5% discount on food (including our famous Texas muffins), but will hopefully never let me reach that point of desperation.

a change of scenery...literally.

2009-08-09T06:26:00.000-07:00

Before arriving in London last August, the two girls I was traveling with and I did a quick tour of part of Scandinavia – Sweden, Estonia (okay, not technically Scandinavia), and four days in a lake house in Finland. And as wonderful as the views were and as much as the three of us didn’t want to leave, I also could not wait to board that plane to London. I remember likening the night before we left to Christmas Eve, of the impossibility of sleep and the crushing anticipation of the morning to come. What would be waiting for you beneath the tree? That was exactly how London seemed to me – a flat, a job, a new group of friends, a new city to explore and to get to know – all presents I was dying to rip the wrapping off of and discover.

And so I found myself in Invercargill on the last morning of my Deep South NZ roadtrip, wanting to see the city yet anxious to get back on the road and get down to business…Queenstown. I’d heard so many things about the town, I’d seen pictures, even watched The Bachelor’s season finale filmed there – but my life in Queenstown? Even though I had a flat and job sorted before ever leaving Christchurch, there was still so much marked TBD – To Be Determined, that is. Just another set of gifts, another set of unknowns dying to make themselves known.

In his book Goodnight, Mister Lenin: A Journey through the End of the Soviet Empire, Italian author Tiziano Terzani perfectly captures what I’m trying to describe:

“In any case the expedition gave me a good reason to travel again, to feel again that unique thrill understood only by those addicted to the drug of departures, the sense of freedom on arriving in places where you know no one, places you have only read about in other people’s books – that incomparable pleasure of seeking to know at first hand, and to understand.”

That is why I left Christchurch, that is why I sat in my restaurant one night after we’d closed, polishing fork after fork, knife after knife, saying to myself, “You have to go. You can’t stay.” If such a drug of departures exists, it’s clear I’m addicted – or rather, to a drug of arrivals. I can do without departures, without tear-filled farewells, without goodbyes and the pain of leaving the ones you love behind. But the arrivals are always worth the pain to me, the thrill of the unknown always outweighs the comfort of the known. I left Christchurch for a change of scenery – in both a literal and figurative sense – and I got everything I bargained for.

If you can, imagine the route I took from Christchurch to Queenstown like the letter J. From Christchurch, it was straight down to Dunedin before curving around to Invercargill. Stewart island fell at the bottom of the J before I looped up again towards Queenstown. It was on that final loop that the reality of the move I was making really hit me – from the flat coastline of Invercargill the snow-capped Southern Alps suddenly appeared in the distance along State Highway Six. The change came before you could note it happening, a bend in the road and there was a lake, with its still waters filling the nooks and crannies of the hills that rose from its shores, and hazy sunlight gleaming on the surface of the lake, diffused by low-hanging clouds. It was pristine, it was rugged, it was awesome in the truest sense of the word.

Someone had obviously anticipated the effect the fjord-lake setting might have on the likes of us accustomed to the Canterbury Plains and ingeniously created turn-off after turn-off along the road, even if it was just a few spare meters of gravel to pull into instead of risking the lives of others, myself, and my camera to record that visual feast. Just when I thought I had pulled over for the last time, the lake would widen or the mountains would grow whiter or the sky would open, spilling out sunlight, and I couldn’t resist the invitation.

But even as inspired as I was feeling by the newness of the scenery in front of me, I felt slightly less so about the prospect of starting over in Queenstown. Words that come to mind might include overwhelmed, panicked, or confused. As I drove through the rather average-looking suburb of Frankton and made my way into the heart of Queenstown, I began to doubt my decision to come here at all. Maybe I would’ve been better off just visiting the town, like so many people in Christchurch advised me – why do I always have to up and move somewhere?

But doubts and depression had to wait – practical matters, like always, took priority. I had my rental car booked until 5pm that evening, meaning I needed to find my new flat, drop off my stuff (of which there was more than usual, being that I drove rather than flew, I didn’t need to purge as much before the move), and return the car all within a couple of hours. The flat wasn’t hard to find; it was a typical sort of house with a picnic table outside and an outline of the United States crafted from bottle caps pressed into the ground. Thankfully a guy was home and I went in to introduce myself.

His name was Laurent, a Frenchman, and in broken English attempted to tell me that there weren’t any open rooms in the house. Remember that feeling of panic I was talking about? I raced to explain myself, “No…you don’t understand…Rick is my landlord in Christchurch…there has to be a room…this is 253 Thomson Street, right?” It was like the panicked mumblings you spit out to airline representatives at the check-in desk when you’re on standby, or the train you’re trying to catch is due in any minute and you’re twenty platforms away – “But sir, do you understand me? I have to be there by 12:30.” It was every bit as hopeless as it sounds.

And there’s no use even commenting on the utter impossibility of contacting my landlord – lost cause doesn’t even come close to describing it. I phoned and texted him non-stop for an hour, much like a crazed ex-girlfriend in denial after a break-up, but to no avail. It was one of those moments in life where I quite literally had absolutely no idea what to do. All I wanted was someone to swoop in and say, “Do this. Go there” – anything to help me break through the fog of disbelief that I had no place to stay for the night. I love traveling and being in New Zealand and it isn’t often that I wish I wasn’t doing it alone, but just every now and then, I just want someone else to help me through all the decisions. The first was flat-hunting in Christchurch – there’s only so much advice friends and family can give you halfway across the world. That night in Queenstown, I could’ve used someone by my side.

I off-loaded all my bags into the front entryway, for lack of a better plan, because flat or not flat, the rental car needed returning. I caught a bus back from the airport (for an exorbitant fare as well, I might add, so that didn’t help my day any), on which the driver had a bit of a senior moment. All the passengers had gotten off on the way through Frankton, leaving just me to ride it out into central Queenstown. The driver looks in his rear-view mirror at me, curled into a feeling-sorry-for-myself ball in a seat towards the far back and asks what I was still on the bus for. Mildly confused, I reply, “I’m wanting to get into town?” in that statement-as-question tone where the inflection of your voice goes up as you doubt the validity of your response. He stares at me for a moment then admits he thought he’d already finished the route for the day. We sort of both shook our heads, had a laugh about it and carried on.

When I did reach town, the first thing to catch my eye were the Golden Arches, and right then I thought nothing could be better than a little greasy comfort food. I snagged a booth to myself (selfishly inconsiderate, I know), pulled out my book and took a look around, starting to get to know my new home for the next few months. If the snow caps and Lake Wakatipu weren’t signs I was somewhere completely different, then the crowds of people milling about in their ski gear definitely were. In Christchurch, Kathmandu had a hold on the market for winter gear, with probably close to 97% of the residents wearing identical black puffer jackets. But in Queenstown, the names you see are Burton, Rossignol, Ride, Roxy – all ski jackets in every shade and style imaginable.

The whole alpine-orientation of the town was going to take some getting used to. I’m a beach girl – always have been, always will be. I grew up visiting my grandparents in the Outer Banks of North Carolina and hitting up Virginia Beach with friends during summer breaks from high school. As a family, all our vacations and holiday trips took place in the summer to other equally hot places. During the winter, we stayed put, except for one Thanksgiving when I was seven and we went away…to the beach. So one look at the snow-gear-clad crowds of Queenstown and I just didn’t feel like myself.

Back at the flat, I begin getting to know to the motley crew that was my nine new flatmates – an American guy, an Australian couple, two guys from Belgium, a Kiwi girl, a Scottish girl and a Scottish guy who has since been replaced by another American girl. They all immediately sympathized with my plight, either having had similar experiences with our landlord or just familiar with his slipshod nature, and offered to let me crash in their lounge for the night until everything could be sorted out. The thought of having to move all my stuff – down an insanely steep hill at that – and trying to find a hostel that late into the evening was too discouraging to even entertain, so I was all too keen to sleep on a couch if I had to.

The conversations from that evening were incredibly enlightening into beginning to understand Queenstown as a place. There’s no doubt whatsoever that people are here for two things – the snow and the nightlife. My flatmates couldn’t believe I had no plans of buying a season lift pass. One of the Belgians asked, “So what are you going to do then?” I answered, “Uh…work?” rather hesitantly, starting to doubt the decision myself. I looked at the collection of snowboards and skis propped along the front wall, at all the ski gear draped across drying racks, and felt so out of place. Back in Christchurch, two of my flatmates also held two jobs, so I didn’t feel bad for it – work was what we did. But several of my new flatmates in Queenstown didn’t even have one – not that they weren’t looking for employment, of course – it just meant that there seems to be more people around the house now when I come home in between jobs who make me ask myself, “Am I working too much?”

And if days are for the snow, then nights are for the parties – it’s a two-item agenda in this town. My second night, my flatmates were asking each other if they were going out that night – “On a Monday?!” I wanted to ask. But weekends are clearly irrelevant in Queenstown, as your two scheduled days off may not be over the traditional Saturday/Sunday weekend at all. Thus, if you have Wednesday and Thursday off each week, Friday becomes your new Monday and Tuesday your new Friday. It’s just about as bizarre and disconcerting as it gets.

By Monday night, though, the lack-of-an-open-room situation had resolved itself. A handyman employed by our landlord finished up a new addition, letting the Scottish girl move out of the room promised to me. I started work at the supermarket that day as well, so between settling into my new room and showing up for my new job every day, I had plenty to keep my mind off the fact that while this change of scenery was oh-so-welcome, like any big change it was going to take some getting used to.

speed dating the south.

2009-08-03T01:29:00.000-07:00

I arrived in Invercargill on a Friday night around dinnertime, a few hours behind schedule. According to my original sketched-out plan for the roadtrip, ETA was a bit earlier in the day, so as to give me most of the afternoon to explore the city. But I had sorely miscalculated how long it would take to drive from Dunedin via the Southern Scenic Route. Apparently, when you stop twice an hour for this vista here and that beach there, it stretches out what would’ve only taken about two and a half hours to a full day’s drive. So night had fallen by the time I finally pulled into New Zealand’s southernmost city.

Being an OCD-prone over-planner, especially when it comes to travels, I usually have the where’s and when’s nailed down ages before I ever pack my bags. But for some reason, for the first time I didn’t pre-book a hostel for my stay in Invercargill. Maybe because it was winter and maybe because it was, well, Invercargill, I didn’t expect to run into too much difficulty, plus, I wanted to know the feeling of arriving in a new town not entirely sure where you’d be resting your head for the night. You know, throw a little spontaneity into the mix. Rather than some hostels that were converted houses in more residential areas, I opted for the Tuatara Backpacker’s, a large, square building with a massive mural of its namesake that immediately caught my attention as I drove down one of the main streets in the city.

After a few issues with parking (which may or may not have involved me driving around the same loop three times), I checked into the Tuatara without a hitch and thought, Right. I’m in Invercargill on a Friday night by myself…what’s next? But a list of movie times in the hostel reception area and a conveniently-located cinema across the street answered that question for me. I even bought popcorn, so you know it was a good night.

Of course, all of this really has nothing to do with Invercargill as a city whatsoever. I could’ve spontaneously found a hostel and seen The Proposal in Christchurch for all you know. But even I didn’t get to properly acquaint myself with the city until after next day’s foray to Stewart Island. Because I hadn’t had the chance to see it my first night, I had to make the time on Sunday for a few hours before starting on the final leg of the trip to Queenstown. I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to make it back again, so in a “go big or go home” kind of mood, returned to Invercargill Sunday morning with about two hours to spare.

In the world of travel, two hours to see a city is the equivalent of a two-minute speed dating session. I’d done it before in Belgium while on a weekend trip to Amsterdam, when the group I was with pulled off in Brugges for an extended lunch break and we had about an hour and a half to see the medieval city. The downside is, obviously, you miss a lot, but the benefit is that you usually see only the best of what the city has to offer. You get all the interesting architecture, well-planned parks and maybe a museum, without time to get lost, time for frustration over the transport system, and definitely not any time to get bored. It’s genius.

I had picked up a brochure outlining the Invercargill Heritage Trail, which was helpful in that I was able to scan it for must-sees and misses on my blitz of the city. Like many of the other cities I’ve seen on the South Island thus far, most of the historic buildings were constructed in mainly Edwardian and Victorian styles, so I appreciated the Art Deco-themed architecture that set the city apart. Invercargill slowly grew to life in the 1850s as people from Dunedin looked further south for land for sheep runs. In 1856, the Governor of New Zealand, Sir Thomas Gore Browne, gave his approval for both a new port at Bluff to address the stock needs of the farmers and for a new township nearby: Invercargill. He looked to John Turnbull Thomson, the chief surveyor of the Otago region, to map out of the city, to be named after William Cargill, Superintendent of Otago. Thomson’s plans for Invercargill included a grid-iron street layout, plenty of gardens and public reserves, and the spacious 40 meter wide streets that the city is now famous for. An aluminum smelter 20 kilometers to the south helps to give Invercargill the industrial feel many notice upon visiting.

Despite the significance of places like the Town Hall, Public Trust building, the Water Tower and even the YMCA, with its interesting fusion of turn-of-the-century architecture and modern murals, it’s not the buildings I will remember most about the city but its sculptures. If there’s one thing Invercargill has perfected, it would have to be the art of a well-placed and well-thought-out sculpture. In front of the city council building stands ‘Blade of Grass is Strength,’ the winning entry in a sculpture competition to commemorate Invercargill’s centennial celebration in 1971. The steel sculpture has one blade that arcs upward and another that loops once and then curves to meet the point of the first blade. As a plaque describes, it not only “symbolizes the importance of pasture to the economy of Invercargill,” but more specifically:

Points Upward à Aspiration, growth and progress

Entwined à Strength linked for cooperation

Revolving à For an all around view

Thirty years later, in conjunction with the new millennium, the city revealed yet another symbolic statue – an umbrella. Now before you begin thinking, much like I first did, of the randomness of such an object, several plaques clear up any questions: there is nothing random about this massive steel umbrella. Every facet of it represents something, from the spiral handle reflecting how our solar system is on one of the spiral arms of our galaxy to the alignment of the umbrella reflecting John Turnbull Thomson’s initial surveys of the city’s main streets. Overall, though, the sculpture draws its meaning from the fact that the umbrella is “one of the oldest inventions” (who knew?) and “symbolizes the protector from rain and Sun for the 5,013 Invercargill family names below.” Indeed, the ground surrounding the umbrella is paved with bricks that have all been inscribed with the names of the families living in Invercargill in the year 2000. Talk about cultivating community spirit. Titled “Our People – Time and Place,” the whole affair is very much based on the astronomical and cosmological significance of the region. Suffice it to say, both sculptures were a welcome chance to stop and think while running from building to building.

My architectural tour of the city complete, I paid a final visit to Queens Park and the Southland Museum and Art Gallery, bizarrely shaped like a pyramid. The gardens were part of Thomson’s first plans for the city, in which he set aside 80 hectares (about 200 acres) for public reserves. Hailed as “Southland’s premier park,” it certainly doesn’t disappoint. With its rose gardens, bandstand and pond, it was very much reminiscent of the parks in London, especially with the Peter Pan and Tinkerbell statue much like the one in the Kensington Gardens, but the kunekune pigs and wallabies in the Animal Reserve swiftly reminded that I am indeed in New Zealand.

I left the park feeling content and very happy about my brief encounter with Invercargill. It was a pleasant city and, as an immigration website describes it, one that “has all the benefits of city life with few of the drawbacks.”

I’ll need to spend more time there to disagree, but as for now, I wouldn’t be opposed to a second date…