Last days in New Zealand

There is really nothing in Lake Tekapo. It was just an over night stop to and from Mt Cook National Park. I was still paranoid about my things when I got to Mt Cook national park. I arrived a few hours before check in time. I had two choices for storing my things while I went hiking. I could put them in the sauna, which was off or pay $2 to put them in the storage lockers. Well, I was too cheap the pay the $2. So I put the large backpack in the sauna and took the electronics with me on the hike.

I selected a 4 hour hike up to Sealy Tarns, a point on a mountain near Mt Cook, but had heard that there was snow on the mountain that may block the way. I had not even reached the mountain before I began to wish I wasn’t carrying a computer on my back. It was heavy. Several times up the mountain, I was tempted to either stop and turn back or to ditch the computer under a bush. But I kept going until I reached the snow. I tried to go thru the snow, but my socks were getting wet and my footing wasn’t sure. The prospect of tumbling down the side of the mountain was not appealing so I turned back. Most hikers turned back at the point also. So I felt good that I made it as far as most people - even with a computer on my back.

On the way down the mountain, the wind started to pick up. And I could see a storm coming over the mountain. There were lots of rain and wind in this storm and my room leaked during the night. Luckily, the leak was not over the bed. It rained most of the next day, so I just hung out in the hostel until the bus came to take me back to Lake Tekapo. When I left Lake Tekapo the following day, I forgot to turn in the key and get back my $10 key deposit.

By this point I admit I was growing tired of New Zealand. I was no longer looking forward to doing anything. I would spend a week in Christchurch doing absolutely nothing and be fine with it. I did buy a 1-week membership at a gym and worked out for 5 days.

Within 3 hours of placing my food in the kitchen of the YHA in Christchurch, someone had stolen my bottle of pineapple juice. The next day, I checked out of the YHA and into Charlie B’s - not because someone stole my juice, but because the YHA didn’t have room for the next night. I spent the rest of my time at Charlie B’s. On the last day there, I went to make a turkey sandwich and found the empty container in the fridge. Someone had eaten my turkey lunch meat - and one of my meat pies.

Charlie B’s was the first hostel I’d stayed in where they didn’t not provide free linen in the dorm rooms. Good thing I had a sheet in my pack. I had brought a sheet & pillow case it because I had read that hostels charged extra for linen, but this was the first one that did.

My biggest pet peeve with hostel living is that people don’t know how to wash dishes. The glasses always look like they hadn’t been washed, yet everyone washes up after themselves. Then I saw it. You know the brush you use to remove large particles from pots and pans? Over and over I saw people using that on a drinking glass! Do they not look at the glass and see that it isn’t clean? No. My second biggest pet peeve is ovens that don’t get hot. Two drumsticks should not take an hour and still require the microwave oven to finish them off.

My feelings about New Zealand are mixed. The landscape is just absolutely amazing. Everywhere is beautiful. Every picture you take is amazing. If you want to see natural beauty, you won’t be disappointed. There is still lots more for me to see on my next visit to New Zealand. I don’t know when that will be, but instead of a tourist bus, I’ll rent a car. Renting a car for one person will be more expensive, but the additional flexibility of going where I want, when I want will be worth it.

So the land is just beautiful. But what about the people? I heard over and over about how friendly the people of New Zealand are - especially in the smaller towns on the south island. However, this was not my experience. Most of the New Zealanders I encountered were white, not Maori. And there were too many times when people looked the other way when they passed me on the street or did not respond when I said good morning. There is on-going tension between whites and the darker Maori people. When I was there, there was a raid on a Maori village. The Maori say they are just trying to keep their culture alive. The government says they are running a terrorist training camp. And the whites say the Maori need to get over themselves. So, New Zealand is very beautiful, but the people… not really.

My time in New Zealand has come to an end. I spent my last night at the airport because I needed to check in at 4:45 in the morning, for my flight to Melbourne, Australia.

Not seeing the giant albatross

It was raining hard in Dunedin. As usual, the first order of business after checking into the hostel, was going to the grocery store. The Manor House was described as being in a central location. Yeah… It was a 10 minute hike the grocery store, in the cold pouring rain. As I walked to the store, I saw another hostel with free internet. I decided to keep that in mind. Back at the hostel, I decided that I didn’t like it and would move to that other hostel the next day.

My plan for the next day was to get up early, check out of the Manor House and into Penny’s in time to catch the 8:50 bus to the peninsula. The peninsula is the place to go to see penguins, seals and giant albatross. The girl at the desk at Manor, told me the bus schedule and the location to catch the bus - at the train station.

So, there I was at the train station at 8:50 only to find out that the bus does not pass there at all. Eventually, I found myself at the I-site, where I found out where the bus really leaves from. The next bus was at 11:45, but that would have been to late for the hiking I wanted to do. I wanted to take the bus to Portabello, then hike the rest of the way to the see the albatrosses and back to catch the bus. The would take the full day.

So, instead, I decided to visit Baldwin St. Baldwin St is the world’s steepest street - according to Guinness Book of World Records. It was much farther than I expected, but I hiked up the street and back down. On the way back I visited the museum. It had a very good exhibit about the extinct native New Zealand birds. The exhibit did not shy away from naming collectors and museums, including this museum, that contributed to the extinction of many animals.

The next morning, I did not feel like getting out of bed. For some reason, I felt a little uneasy about leaving my things in the room before anyone else got up. I had gotten a little lax with leaving my computer and cameras exposed. I knew I shouldn’t do this, but things had seemed safe. Later that day, 3 guys who worked at the hostel, at different times, told me that I shouldn’t leave my things unattended - even in the room.

So now they had me paranoid. I went to the store and purchased pad locks for my backpacks and kept my computer on my back at all times. The third morning, I got up early and took the backpack with my electronics with me to catch the bus. Finally, I was on the bus to the peninsula.

According to the bus schedule, on Saturdays, the bus only goes as far as Portabello, so I got off at Portabello and watched the bus continue on. Determined that I was not going to walk where the bus could have taken me, I headed off in a different direction. This took me to a part of the peninsula where there were no tourist, just sheep and cattle farms. At one point, a came up to some cows that were not behind fences. My childhood fear came back to me and I turned around. I know cattle are docile creatures, nothing to be afraid of, but I do remember a couple of mean bulls from Cox Heath.

I then cut across a salt water marsh and walked along the water’s edge hoping to get as far as the ocean beach. After a while the beach disappeared, and I was faced with a small cliff. I don’t think the water was deep, but I didn’t want to get wet. So I ate and headed back to Portabello to catch the bus. I didn’t see any penguins, seals or albatrosses, but a solitary hike in the middle of nowhere is always good for you.

The next day, the bus took me to Lake Tekapo.

Queenstown & Invercargill

I didn’t plan to stay long in Queenstown. It is advertised as the adventure capital of New Zealand, which means it is all bungee jumping, sky diving and other such activities. I have no desire to do these. But when I got to Queenstown, I found out that there are lots of really great mountain hikes you can do. So I picked one to do the next day.

For this particular trail, it was “required” that I get the trail notes from the DOC. So I got up in the morning and went to the DOC to get the trail notes. $2, they charged for the trail notes. And it didn’t have any information that seemed to be so important. I felt stupid. I headed out in search of the trail and felt a few drops of rain, so I turned around and went back to bed.

I didn’t get up again until mid-afternoon. I decided to go to the store to buy some food and got side tracked and headed up the trail to the gondola. I was not properly dressed, nor did I have water with me. The trail seemed to go on and on and then it merged with a road and continued for some distance in a different direction than the gondola. I wasn’t comfortable with this, so I turned back, rather than risk being up in the mountain when it got dark.

On the way down, I encountered a Malaysian born Chinese man, Ho Soon Cheng. Being friendly, I stopped to speak with him. It turned out that he is the Associate Minister of the Queenstown SDA Church. I told him I used to be an SDA. Of course that prompted him to pray for me. He thinks it was God’s working that I met him that day. He invited me to his home for dinner. I accepted, because you should never turn down free food!

He has a really nice house on a hill. Those SDA pastors never take a vow of poverty. He grows vegetables in a greenhouse and has a kind of lettuce that only grows in the winter. He prepared tomato soup and chili. This was the first time I ate chili. He served me too much food and I had to keep reassuring him that the food was good, just too much for me to eat.

He really has issues with white people. To him, white people are evil. He has reasons for his views. White peoples, in general, have, in all parts of the world, moved in, overrun & treat with contempt, the people they encounter. He has encountered lots of racism in Australia and New Zealand, and he has even been beat up on the street.

In our discussion, I mentioned that being on a tourist bus, I hadn’t gotten any opportunity to interact with any Maori people. So he said that he knew some Maori people in Invercargill, he was going to Invercargill the next day for a meeting, and I was invited to come along. Since my Magic bus tour didn’t go to Invercargill, I saw this as great opportunity.

I was given the opportunity to spend time with Eddie Ake and his wife Tangee. They are Maori. They run a health food store in Invercargill. Surprise, surprise, an SDA run health food store. Eddie took me to the museum and gave me a guided tour. He told me with enthusiasm about his trip to the US & cruise to the Bahamas. It was quite interesting to hear how his SDA beliefs color his views, including his views of traditional Maori culture.

In Invercargill, I was introduced to Pastor Victor Kulakov, an Uzbekistan born Russian. In a short Russian conversation with his wife, I discovered that she wants to have 3 kids. Victor was really impressed with my Russian pronunciation. He said I didn’t have the expected thick accent.

I should have known that nothing in life comes free. Before we left Invercargill, I found myself at small group bible study, at the home of a couple from California. They were studying about the Holy Spirit. Ooo. I was careful not to say anything, as I didn’t want to derail their study. It was odd, after so many years, to see/ hear people struggling with the role of the Holy Spirit, what’s required to be saved/sealed and how one will know if he/she is sealed.

After the small group meeting, Soon Cheng and I raced over to the beach that was made famous in the movie The World’s Fastest Indian. (I had never heard of this movie before.) But it was already dark, and with my camera busted, I could not adjust the settings to take night photos.

I’m glad I met Soon Cheng. It was a good change from the daily routine I had gotten into. He is confident the Holy Spirit will work on me and return me to the church, and he has invited me to sing at his church when ever I return to Queenstown. Ok…. I didn’t get to do the hike, but if I ever come back to New Zealand, I’ll be sure to spend some time in Queenstown.

Pictures from Otago Peninsula near Dunedin, NZ

The view as I ate my $2 icecream cone.

45 km/hr not 45 miles/hr

There is a lot of this in New Zealand...sheep.

the salt marsh

There was no one around for miles - err.. kilometers.

There is a lot of logging going on, but it is of non-native trees. They imported pine from California. Now there is more pine here than in Califormia!

The road less travelled, really...It was just me.