FEBRUARY 9 - MARCH 2, 2002: The tag line for the South island might be: “New Zealand: Where Is Everybody?” With an overall population of 3.8M mostly in the North, the South island has maybe 750,000 people.  And you never see them: it seems as though most of them don’t get out much, or they are (like us) simply swallowed by the endless, beautiful, and varied wilderness.  

The flight over, 12 plus hours, is uneventful.  Heather is in Business Class.  Alex slums it back in Coach with the commoners.  There is a little story here.  According to Heather’s father, some weeks back he was waiting for a flight near a United Airlines counter when he noticed a woman starting to choke.  He quickly strode over to her and performed the Heimlich maneuver, some food popped out, everything was fine, and United rewarded him with an upgrade.  Personally, we think that the woman was choking and saw ex-Governor “Duty-To-Die” Lamm advancing with outstretched arms and coughed it up from freight and the upgrade was hush money.  In either case, he couldn’t use it and gave it to Heather who sips Chardonnay before stretching out and drifting off to sleep, while Alex contemplates his navel, jackknifed into a coach seat.

 We land in Christchurch on a sparkling, sunny day, joining the Lamms (Dick has somehow wrangled a semester teaching at the University of Canterbury).  We have heard that Christchurch is like America was in the 1950s.  It is all pleasant green spaces, small buildings, and friendly people undoubtedly Leaving It to Beaver.  It reminds me a bit of The Truman Show – it’s that immaculate. 

 All four of us head out the next morning, staying a night in Arthur’s Pass, a quick hike, and down the other side of the mountains, stopping in Okarito, where Dick and Dottie hike while Heather and I go sea kayaking in the spacious lagoon.  We go on to the Glacier towns: Franz Joseph and Fox.  Used to our travel off-season in Europe, we have not booked a room.  Here, we are in high season, and everything is full.  Heather manages to conjure up a “Farm Stay” – essentially a rural family with spare bedrooms – about 30 kilometers from Fox Glacier.  We have a marvelous meal before heading down, where we rediscover the green-shelled NZ mussels.  The air is crisp, the people friendly, the mountains loom overhead.  When we get there, the Farm Stay turns out to be an actual farm, and our hostess is a charming, Thai-born New Zealander. 

The following morning we head out for a Helicopter ride up to the glacier, were we will do a three-hour hike.  There is a lot of standing around at first, but the helicopter ride is quite amazing: the pilot banks down close to a waterfall and you feel the forest is just over your shoulder.  Upon first glance the glacier is less than anticipated. I was expecting something out of Nanook of the North: snow everywhere and immense vistas.  Instead it is a bit like an immense 7-11 slurpee that has spilled over the mountains and down a valley.  But as we trudge along, crampons attached to our boots, we see unexpected delights: deep crevices like scars across its face, sudden holes that fall far into the earth, ice caves and tunnels, and everywhere in the patches of ice, the deepest, most luminous color blue.

After another night at the Farm Stay, and an incredible Thai meal from our hostess, we continue east, stopping first at Wanaka for lunch.  It is a wonderful little town, full of active, athletic-looking people (and a few pudgy tourists).  Then on to Queenstown; we arrive early in the afternoon.  It is stunning: a wide bay with hills covered by small houses, behind which rise impressive mountain peaks.  We take the gondola up to the top of a nearby hill and have a beer overlooking the town.

The next morning is Valentine’s day.  For Heather and I it is a day of reckoning: our “friends” Anne and JB Boris have given us, for a wedding present, a Bungy Jump.  And not any jump, but the Pipeline Bungy: a 340 foot (yes, three-four-oh) drop from a bridge over a small river in Skippers Canyon, until recently the longest Bungy in New Zealand.  I am naturally not a proponent of heights, especially since a little incident my freshman year in college when I fell 2-and-a-half stories (dead sober, without injury).  In the novel 1984, Orwell’s government has a “Room 666” behind which is everyone’s worst fear.  For NARRATOR, it is a fear of rats.  For me, room 666 is a free-fall towards the stationary earth.  The jumping order is decided by weight: I am fourth. And increasingly nervous.  It is an amazingly beautiful place, which helps, until you realize you will be falling through it. My ankles bound, I bunny-hop to the edge of the platform.  Standing there, the world just falls away at your feet.  I bunny-hop back to the rail.  The guide leans in with a few words of encouragement, a deep breath and I head back to the edge.  Helpfully, the group counts down from five.   

I don’t actually remember any numbers after “three.”  But I do remember falling: it is exhilarating. Over quickly, the few seconds of free-fall are extraordinary, until you are hanging upside down by your ankles being lowered to a waiting boat.  Heather is better: although she looks nervous she does not hesitate, and her jump is strong.   It is hard to describe the feeling that comes after a jump: it is a sort of beautification.  Attached is a picture of my jump: follow the rope and you can see my blue shorts and bald head. I recommend it.  Sort of. (Details at http://pipeline.co.nz).  To top off the day, we go jetboating.  Kind of like Whitewater rafting on amphetamines, and without doubt much more dangerous than Bungy: we zoom through the canyon on a speed boat, coming within inches of overhangs and the rock walls, as our driver then spins the boat 360 degrees in a small pool of water.  Amazingly the only safety device present is our lifejackets, which won’t be much help in the 18-24 inches of water, but might be somewhat effective is stemming the flow of blood if one is still conscious after impact.  It’s great fun.  A good meal that evening and we turn in.  Interestingly, both of us wake during the night, reliving the free-fall.  It is not a nightmare, and there is no fear associated with it, but it seems very real.

The next day we sleep in.  Not to be outdone, Dick and Dottie have risen early to go skydiving.  We take a leisurely bike ride around the immense lake.  We meet up after lunch and on we go, to Te Anau.  We have booked at an inn starred in our (one year outdated) guidebook; when we arrive we find it has been bought by Holiday Inn.  As Dick says, the price of never having a bad room at a Holiday Inn is that you never have a good room.  So we spend a few hours by the pool saved by the warm weather.  Oddly enough, in an otherwise forgettable town, we find a great restaurant.  We rise early the next morning to see the famous Te Anau glowworms.  It is 15 minutes of an interesting tour cleverly hidden in 180 minutes of activity.  Still, when we descend in the caves, with its caverns and rocks, and see the glowworms – tiny gleaming dots that cover the rocks above, like hundreds of distant stars in the last light of dusk – it is fascinating.

The morning passes; we head to our cruise in Doubtful Sound.  It is a bit of a herd: there are 70 people joining us.  Getting there is half the battle: we take two boats and a long bus ride.  Settling in around 2:30pm, the boat pulls out into the sound.  It is amazing scenery: the glacial valleys have these immense sloping hills on all sides of the placid water, deserted and vast.  We pass some seals on the rocks, finally anchor, and a crowd of probably 45 people head out in little snub-nosed kayaks.  In the end, it is a odd paradox: we are in one of the most beautiful and deserted parts of the world, a landscape with no traces of people, civilization miles away, and one is unable to get away from the chattering voices of tourists on holiday.  For dinner, however, we end up at a large communal table with several young brits, swig down some wine, and end up having a grand time.  The next morning, heading back to port, dolphins come and play in the wave at the front of the boat.

Back to Te Anau, we split off from Dick and Dottie and take a bus to Dunedin, staying at a lovely B&B run by a quite insane Englishwoman on the outskirts of town.  The next day when we head into Dunedin, the charming distant lights of the night before have vanished and we find a fairly dreary, pseudo-industrial town.  And it is drizzling.  We catch a matinee of Lord Of The Rings.  Which is also disappointing.  The town is saved somewhat by a neat tour of the local Brewery, but even that is tainted: by law, the beer is limited to about 4% alcohol. 

We have tried to rent a car to explore the nearby Otaga Peninsula; after 23 phone calls the only free car is across town and quite expensive, and we are on a tight schedule.  For a few dollars more, on the advice of our host, we are able to book a personal driver.  Our drive, the aptly named Brian Wilson, shows up in a classic 1969 Jaguar; once ensconced he has matching jackets to shelter us from the rain, and binoculars, and he has booked all our tickets in advance, and waits for us just where the tours end to whisk us away.  We’re sorry, and will deny it later, but damn, it was great. 

We tour the yellow-eyed penguin shelter, and the royal albatross breeding grounds.  The latter is particularly extraordinary: watching a bird come towards us and land is roughly akin to a pint-size 777 gliding in just over your head.  Equally impressive are the details about these birds, which tour the Antarctic, sometimes without touching land for years.  When Brian drops us off at the local city bus station, insisting on carrying our bags from the Jaguar trunk to the bus, we feel the absolute scorn of the backpacker crowd, who ignore my gestures of solidarity: bandana-wrapped head and three-day beard. 

The six-hour bus ride back to Christchurch is memorable only because the driver offers us a choice of movies to watch and after he lists the options Heather shouts “Bring It On” (okay, it is a teenage cheerleader movie) in the otherwise silent bus, and we end up giggling to ourselves, probably the only people absorbed in this suburban melodrama.

Two days in Christchurch including a side trip to Akaroa, a charming little French town where we have an excellent, traditional French dinner, and we are off again, this time to the North.  Just out of town we stop at two wineries and take a spectacular drive along the coast.  We stay the night at a vineyard just outside Renwick with a lively couple in a gorgeous spot.  An electrician by trade and a former boat captain, they have reinvented themselves very successfully as grapegrowers.  In the morning we get a tour of the vineyard and cogent explanation of the growing process, accompanied by their black labrador.   

And uneventful day and overnight in Golden Bay and Collingwood, we head to Abel Tasman national park for a two-day kayaking trip.  It’s magic.  We have checked to make sure it is a small group (8 kayaking, 10 on the overnight boat) and it is beautiful landscape.  The rest of our group includes two older Kiwi brothers and their wives, a young woman from Ft Collins CO, and another woman who turns out to be the Outward Bound director who was in charge of the group when Heather went.  It is a truly stunning place, and once you are off, isolated and scenic.  The only catch is that it is less kayaking then we would like: a 30-minute break for morning tea, 90 minutes for a hot (and quite tasty) lunch, and the day ends in mid-afternoon.  Still, it’s excellent.  Our night is also fabulous: we are on a large catamaran; our host pulls up the anchor rope and lops off a few dozen mussels that have attached themselves and which serve as an appetizer before our feast.  We sleep well and deep.

The next day of kayaking is much like the first; pleasant and under-strenuous.  We see some seals, who come and play within a few feet of our kayaks, and explore an endless lagoon.  It is odd to see the difference in perspective: we see empty shorelines with 2 or three small boats in the coves and think it is near paradise; our guide, a hardcore conservationist, complains about all the boats ruining the shoreline, including the one belonging to our hosts of the previous night.  And rails against their liquor license.  We think she needs a nice urban holiday in, say, inner-city Detroit. 

From Abel Tasman we spend two days in Nelson, which is a sleepy and relaxed beach town a bit like Santa Cruz. We then head down to Kaiakora, just making our scheduled tour to swim with the Dusky Dolphins.  We get wetsuits, snorkeling gear, and are shown a touch-feely video and head out.  I am pretty skeptical, as it all sounds a little new age.  When we get out in the water though, we suddenly see a pod of about 100 dolphins and are quickly surrounded.  The horn sounds, and we slip into the water.  In a few seconds dozens of dolphins are suddenly zooming past me, as if I was standing in the middle of I-70 at rush hour.  It is simply unlike anything we have done.  We have a couple separate drops; we learn to interact with the dolphins, diving below the surface and following them in circles.  Several linger to play with us, and at several times we find ourselves inches away from one looking us directly in the eye.  An awesome experience.

After another excellent dinner, the next day we go whale watching.  The locals are Sperm whales, which surface every three hours or so for about 10 minutes.  We do see two whales, identifiable as immobile gray-brown blobs.  Let me briefly say that I think whale watching would be greatly improved by the provision of cocktails, and perhaps a TV or two.  The brief moment of interest is when the whales dive, as the tail comes majestically up and then disappears, but it is five seconds of action.  We yearn for the dolphins. Back soon to Christchurch, a day of hectic planning and we are off to Australia.

on to australia...