It is a mere matter of hours before I leave this tiny island on the very corner of the world. I am teary, anxious and in a sense, relieved. It feels like I am leaving home- New Zealand has become a part of me- as cheesy and lame as that sounds. What started as a grand adventure abroad has ended in a million tiny lessons that I can carry with me to the next one, a lifetimes worth of spiritual luggage that starts with a wide base and curls in on itself over and over again each tiny arm holding tight to wisdom until I can unfurl it upon the world. Get it, like a fern. And since my year of musings had has come full circle, this will be the last entry made on this most dear blog o' mine. It's been one hell of a time.
I have to thank Da for his advice on the Maori way, Carl for his unwavering hospitality, Stony Ridge for their unabashed love of hedonism, Kiwi for his refusal to accept what's expected, Sue for her generosity and sincerity, Vince and Andie for their beautiful family, Deb for her humor, Claire and Martin for the highlife, Tess for her cynicism and love of under appreciated pop culture, Jedi for his wide-eyed amazement, Darren for his forthrightness, Derryn for his all-around fabulousness, Genea for her verve, Todd for his ineptitude, Sally for her sass, Swampy for his irrepressible work ethic, Garth for always joking, Cory and Taren for being too damn sweet, Reagan for never giving in, Family Ties Guy for never shutting up, Hippie for his smile, Karl for his imagination and passion, Sylvia for her energy, Bev for her kindness, David for his laughter, Tom for his laconic awesomeness, Leonie for her warmth, Jeremy for his endearing silence, Maggie for her spirit and of course, Ryan and Paula for their friendship and for their love. Thank you for reading and I hope you'll continue with me on my next half-cocked and insane adventure.
Monday, February 22, 2010
Sunday, January 31, 2010
The Burn
A city is constructed, a city is burned to ashes...what happens in between in anyone's creation.
Kiwiburn is New Zealand's own homage to Black Rock Desert's annual Burning man festival. For three days at the end of January, outside Taupo in mangy Mangakino burners, pilgrims, hippies, weirdos, generic wasters and guilded German builders gather for the regional event. Ryan donned his giant LPG flame puffer (much to the dismay and delight of the curious), Karl constructed an achingly beautiful temple (by far the most impressive feat of the event), Kiwi built a flailing, celebrant man (that spells things with his movable arms) and Otto flew from the States to bring New Zealand his well-hung Norseman (fire spewing cocks are always welcome).
The days were spent wandering grounds, admiring art for its own sake swaying to music meant to chisel the blunt edge of sanity. Afternoons were wasted lazing under the trees while keeping rigorous worship of the Alter of the Dead Cow. Then came the nights of debaucherous laughter enveloped in warm layers of inebriation, like children of the apocalypse we sought shelter from the fallout and sturdy ground to stumble upon. The dawn heralded the drinking of craft beer out of dirty bowls and gifting whiskey kisses to eager strangers, we watched wide-eyed as enormous limbs fell from trees onto tents below prompting quick scurrying from the safety and warmth of collapsible caravans. The elements greeted us with Mount Pedro's fiery eruption, double rainbows, gales and tempests and seductive, sun-soaked evenings. The man's fire spewing copper tubing hardwired itself into our souls and the temple burned silently revealing the rain soaked moon and we were all reacquainted with that most delicate and gently undulating star-studded universe of ours.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
New Zealand Enrichment Initiative- SCINZ
I have been a tourist in New Zealand for eleven months now and my patience is well past the point of wearing thin and now baring my unadulterated scorn at the attractions this country has to offer. Each city comes equipped with the tourist trifecta- a church, a museum and a garden...boooooring. Every beach, every mountain and almost every river is stunning and pristine. Each area specializes in a new way to hurt, maim or otherwise kill yourself all cleverly disguised as “adventure sports”. Seriously, it gets tedious. As part of my illustrious and brilliant scheme to improve the piteous state of tourism in New Zealand I propose a series of enrichment initiatives that is guaranteed to kick start New Zealand's languid industry.
SCINZ or Seal Clubbing Institute of New Zealand will be a place to observe and appreciate the delicate poetry of the natural world and then beat the living out of it. For a humble price, you will be equipped with your own club (that's yours to keep!), from there the adventure is yours to create.
The little buggers have taken over the beaches and are begging in that shockingly obnoxious screechy yelp of theirs to be taken down. Like the seagulls we all hate, the seals have become a beach side pest that we can no longer afford to ignore.
If this seems a bit cruel or unwarranted, shall I remind thee that seal clubbing is a time honored tradition the world over. It's perfectly natural and perfectly ethical. Once you get the swing (!) of it they won't even know what hit them...but you will!
Still unsure about how you feel? Here's some reassurance directly from the mouths of our celebrity sponsors.
“If you don't got ends you won't be hittin' no SCINZ” - Big L
“I'm hitting SCINZ again [in New Zealand], rolled up another blunt, bought a Heineken”-Notorious BIG
“I hit those SCINZ for the hell of it, just for the yell I get, ooh ooh ooh for the smell of it”- That guy in Salt and Pepa's Shoop
Can you morally afford to see another seal end up like this?
The other enrichment initiatives have to do with a proper taco stand and helping the good people of New Zealand learn how to make a goddamn ice coffee.
SCINZ or Seal Clubbing Institute of New Zealand will be a place to observe and appreciate the delicate poetry of the natural world and then beat the living out of it. For a humble price, you will be equipped with your own club (that's yours to keep!), from there the adventure is yours to create.
The little buggers have taken over the beaches and are begging in that shockingly obnoxious screechy yelp of theirs to be taken down. Like the seagulls we all hate, the seals have become a beach side pest that we can no longer afford to ignore.
If this seems a bit cruel or unwarranted, shall I remind thee that seal clubbing is a time honored tradition the world over. It's perfectly natural and perfectly ethical. Once you get the swing (!) of it they won't even know what hit them...but you will!
Still unsure about how you feel? Here's some reassurance directly from the mouths of our celebrity sponsors.
“If you don't got ends you won't be hittin' no SCINZ” - Big L
“I'm hitting SCINZ again [in New Zealand], rolled up another blunt, bought a Heineken”-Notorious BIG
“I hit those SCINZ for the hell of it, just for the yell I get, ooh ooh ooh for the smell of it”- That guy in Salt and Pepa's Shoop
Can you morally afford to see another seal end up like this?
The other enrichment initiatives have to do with a proper taco stand and helping the good people of New Zealand learn how to make a goddamn ice coffee.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Cindy & the Surreal South Island
My best childhood friend Cindy is here to visit Katie and I for a month. With meagre savings and heads full of ideas we have set off on a whirlwind tour of the entire South Island. From the start we decided to wing it, as we have for the entirety of our trip, all the while imaging breathtaking views and dramatic landscapes. However, we did not anticipate the chronic weirdness that somehow always seems to find us.
The night Cindy arrived we headed to a backpacker's across the street from a park in Christchurch. All day long they had been setting up hay bales and telephone booth sized plastic boxes. That night, a belligerently drunk me and Cindy headed over to see what the fuss was about. As it turns out it was a peace maze (of course!). At the beginning of the maze you are handed a tiny piece of driftwood with googly eyes pasted on to guide you through your peaceful journey. By station three it becomes obvious that you are in the grasp of some crazy Christians and their idea of a profound experience. They ask you to contemplate your life and write goals (or balls) on tiny magnetic tiles, you walk through a room filled with fake plastic bread covered in fake plastic guns, then you are asked to write things that you feel stressed about and send them through a paper shredder (absolved) and watch as the word (of?) God seems to melt into the ground. I tell you, it was weird and profoundly stupid.
In Kaikoura we camped at a site that narrowly wedged us between the highway and the beach's rocky cliffs, all night we watched headlights pointed straight for us followed closely by the sound of cars whizzing by above our heads.
In Moeraki we walked among the spherical boulders strewn about the beach. Some say they are gifts from god, others say they are dinosaur eggs and some claim beacons left by Martians. There are also theories about volcanoes, but Martians and dinosaurs somehow seem more plausible when ogling giant veiny globes clumped randomly on a beach.
At Shag Point we were literally almost blown away by what must have been 200 mph winds. Cindy actually feared for her life and none of us were brave enough to step close enough to the cliffs edge to catch a glimpse of the sea lions below.
We stayed on the grounds of a burned down insane asylum and found among other things, a beautiful old building filled with rusted cars, a half finished airplane kit, about 3 years worth of discarded recycling and an antique loom covered in scrap wood and rusty metal. The owner who obviously had a fondness for collecting strange items and never ever finishing any of his innumerable projects ran such an immaculately clean and organized hostel that he scolded us for pulling up a chair to the dining room that didn't match the set.
That same guy rented us his “beach house” just outside of Dunedin at St. Clairs. As we drove up the insanely steep street we were faced with a blue box that looked remarkably like a storage container. There were no visible windows and the only clue that it was indeed a place of residence and not a dusty shed to store more of his strange crap was a power box shoddily tacked up in one corner. “It's not much to look at from the outside” he said as we wearily followed him up the steps. Once inside the square room opened up onto gorgeous sea views through century old peaked courthouse windows that he had no doubt had in storage for years before building this architectural masterpiece.
In Dunedin we toured the world famous Cadbury factory and left with visions of horrifically creepy animatronic elves planning insidious chocolaty attacks on the unsuspecting masses.
Near Bluff, the South Island's southernmost tip, we drove past fences covered in hundreds of pairs of shoes, homemade sculptures depicting bizarre, unearthly beings, nonsensical murals and experienced a taste of what it actually means to live at the ends of the earth.
In the tiny crossroad town of Haast we got to eat whitebait fritters, which are patties, literally swimming with hundreds of tiny fish.
At Franz Josef we walked to the terminal of a glacier, which seems like a fairly normal thing to do until you see that it is surrounded by rainforest and less than 15 miles from the beach. We also took a night bush walk to see glowworms, which are the bioluminiscent larva of a gnat that doesn't have a mouth.
Along the road to Greymouth we stopped at the “World's Famous Bushman's Museum” and watched a video of mentally deranged Kiwi's jumping off helicopters to fall on top of and wrestle the deer below (the birth of NZ's thriving venison industry). I also tried to buy a possum pie, but because of the “insane laws governing the meat industry” was technically not allowed to buy possum meat, I could have made a four dollar donation in exchange for a free pie, unfortunately, the bushman himself told me he hadn't caught any possums as of late.
The Pancake Rocks at Punakaiki are a scientific mystery, basically, magnificent layers of sandstone that formed in stacks only to be bored and burrowed through by unforgiving surf.
On the way to drop Cindy off at the airport a black cat darted across the car and I slammed the brakes to avoid hitting the poor thing, twenty minutes later on a windy and dangerous road, we got a flat tire. Coincidence, after the experiences of this month, me thinks not.
The night Cindy arrived we headed to a backpacker's across the street from a park in Christchurch. All day long they had been setting up hay bales and telephone booth sized plastic boxes. That night, a belligerently drunk me and Cindy headed over to see what the fuss was about. As it turns out it was a peace maze (of course!). At the beginning of the maze you are handed a tiny piece of driftwood with googly eyes pasted on to guide you through your peaceful journey. By station three it becomes obvious that you are in the grasp of some crazy Christians and their idea of a profound experience. They ask you to contemplate your life and write goals (or balls) on tiny magnetic tiles, you walk through a room filled with fake plastic bread covered in fake plastic guns, then you are asked to write things that you feel stressed about and send them through a paper shredder (absolved) and watch as the word (of?) God seems to melt into the ground. I tell you, it was weird and profoundly stupid.
In Kaikoura we camped at a site that narrowly wedged us between the highway and the beach's rocky cliffs, all night we watched headlights pointed straight for us followed closely by the sound of cars whizzing by above our heads.
In Moeraki we walked among the spherical boulders strewn about the beach. Some say they are gifts from god, others say they are dinosaur eggs and some claim beacons left by Martians. There are also theories about volcanoes, but Martians and dinosaurs somehow seem more plausible when ogling giant veiny globes clumped randomly on a beach.
At Shag Point we were literally almost blown away by what must have been 200 mph winds. Cindy actually feared for her life and none of us were brave enough to step close enough to the cliffs edge to catch a glimpse of the sea lions below.
We stayed on the grounds of a burned down insane asylum and found among other things, a beautiful old building filled with rusted cars, a half finished airplane kit, about 3 years worth of discarded recycling and an antique loom covered in scrap wood and rusty metal. The owner who obviously had a fondness for collecting strange items and never ever finishing any of his innumerable projects ran such an immaculately clean and organized hostel that he scolded us for pulling up a chair to the dining room that didn't match the set.
That same guy rented us his “beach house” just outside of Dunedin at St. Clairs. As we drove up the insanely steep street we were faced with a blue box that looked remarkably like a storage container. There were no visible windows and the only clue that it was indeed a place of residence and not a dusty shed to store more of his strange crap was a power box shoddily tacked up in one corner. “It's not much to look at from the outside” he said as we wearily followed him up the steps. Once inside the square room opened up onto gorgeous sea views through century old peaked courthouse windows that he had no doubt had in storage for years before building this architectural masterpiece.
In Dunedin we toured the world famous Cadbury factory and left with visions of horrifically creepy animatronic elves planning insidious chocolaty attacks on the unsuspecting masses.
Near Bluff, the South Island's southernmost tip, we drove past fences covered in hundreds of pairs of shoes, homemade sculptures depicting bizarre, unearthly beings, nonsensical murals and experienced a taste of what it actually means to live at the ends of the earth.
In the tiny crossroad town of Haast we got to eat whitebait fritters, which are patties, literally swimming with hundreds of tiny fish.
At Franz Josef we walked to the terminal of a glacier, which seems like a fairly normal thing to do until you see that it is surrounded by rainforest and less than 15 miles from the beach. We also took a night bush walk to see glowworms, which are the bioluminiscent larva of a gnat that doesn't have a mouth.
Along the road to Greymouth we stopped at the “World's Famous Bushman's Museum” and watched a video of mentally deranged Kiwi's jumping off helicopters to fall on top of and wrestle the deer below (the birth of NZ's thriving venison industry). I also tried to buy a possum pie, but because of the “insane laws governing the meat industry” was technically not allowed to buy possum meat, I could have made a four dollar donation in exchange for a free pie, unfortunately, the bushman himself told me he hadn't caught any possums as of late.
The Pancake Rocks at Punakaiki are a scientific mystery, basically, magnificent layers of sandstone that formed in stacks only to be bored and burrowed through by unforgiving surf.
On the way to drop Cindy off at the airport a black cat darted across the car and I slammed the brakes to avoid hitting the poor thing, twenty minutes later on a windy and dangerous road, we got a flat tire. Coincidence, after the experiences of this month, me thinks not.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Wallaby Madness
I thought that Wallabies only lived in Australia so imagine my delight when I learned there is also a population a few kilometres from where we spent New Year's. In 1870 Captain Thompson brought a few over from Tasmania and within a few years the population exploded, they are largely considered pests in the area since that time many people have come to hunt them. However, there is a sanctuary in the area called EnkleDooVery Korna in Waimate. The eccentric Gwen Dempster Schouten started her wallaby refuge in 1977 to house orphaned wallabies and doesn't have any aspirations of giving it up anytime soon.
She spouts out about a million rules and random facts as she shoves willow branches in your hands and releases you to feed/pet/ogle and love the wallabies at your own pace. From there you are left alone to navigate through her maze of pens housing over 60 wallabies.
They are soft like rabbits and playful like puppies. They grab the willow out of your hands and clasp it into theirs as they greedily chomp down on the leaves. The babies peek their heads and gigantic feet from the mother's pouches and some even dare to hop out and grab a leaf or two of their own. Strangely, peacocks coexist with wallabies and are seemingly extremely jealous of all the attention paid to the marsupials, one in particular kept fanning out his feathers demanding to be photographed.
After the wallaby/peacock extravaganza you get to see fuzzy bizarro-world chickens and Muffin the miniature pony with spinal bifida. At the end Gwen lets you nestle an orphaned wallaby baby in your arms and tour her house which is more like a deranged curio shop and exhibition of taxidermic wonders than a home.
Monday, January 18, 2010
Sea Life and Touristic Endeavors
The South Island is a veritable cornucopia of marine wildlife, you literally can't walk onto a beach without finding mussels, cockles, paua or crabs. The further south you get the bigger the marine life, until you are almost running smack into thirty pound albatross and enormous seals. The catch is that most of the known nesting grounds are surrounded by maximum security prison-grade razor wire fences and cute little tourist centers that charge upwards of $40 for the privilege of viewing New Zealand's most stunning wildlife.
If you are ever in the area and insulted by the steep admission prices let me recommend two worthwhile things to do. Sit in the parking lots of the attraction. The penguins seem to have run of the place and many nests stretch beyond the fences keeping humans out. Albatross and other seabirds are obviously not obstructed by measly 10ft razor wire and can be viewed quite clearly from outside proper viewing grounds. The second thing to do is to ask the locals and I don't mean the woman working at the i-SITE info desk, but the Kiwi's in your campsite or at the local cafe. Many of them have spent their entire lives in the area and have a wealth of valuable tips for viewing wildlife in an intimate, natural and free setting.
It's probably the closest you will ever get to seeing these magnificent creatures outside of a zoo and I urge you to walk off the beaten track, skip the hoardes of obnoxious flash-happy tourists and seek the animals in the setting in which they were meant to be seen. Even from a distance, squinting in the last lights of day, you will not be disappointed.
Friday, January 1, 2010
2010 Rock!
We decided that camping on the beach would be the best possible way to spend New Years, so we gathered a few awesome friends, picked up some booze and headed off to a cozy and extremely affordable campsite just south of Oamaru in Kakanui. The day we arrived it was unsettlingly windy and the exceedingly nice owners offered us the most sheltered spot on the grounds in our own little corner.
Immediately we were surrounded by feral children and their boisterous parents. It was a thoroughly Kiwi campsite and with no other tourists around we were immediately pegged as “the foreigners”. Right off the bat mothers offered us food. One woman had her husband cook us up paua which is a jet black blob (a seaslug of sorts) that lives in a beautiful rainbow colored shell in the ocean and tastes remarkably like conch, then we were given a heaping plateful of fresh-caught blue cod right off the grill and told that there was plenty more if we wanted. I had nearly forgotten just how damn nice and hospitable Kiwi's are.
On New Year's eve we drove to the small town of Waimate and visited Gwen at EnkleDooVery Korna where she cares for and runs a full-fledged wallaby/chicken/muffin the miniature pony house. She spurted out a long winded list of rules then set us free to pet and hand feed the wallabies until our heart's were content. Her house, if you an even still call it that looks like a deranged curio shop where petticoats hang amidst fake fly ridden food and real taxidermic wonders. She deserves her own blog post (which I will one day get around to writing).
That afternoon we set up our spots nearest the kitchen, ate a huge bbq and started the party. We talked about plans for the upcoming year and in lieu of a self-punishing resolution we wrote out lists of 50 goals that we each wanted to accomplish in the upcoming year, no matter how big or small. Midnight brought hugs and kisses from strangers and friends. Then at just after midnight we watched an amazing and outgoing 10 year old boy dance, move for move, the entirety of Lady Gaga's, Poker Face. Check, only 49 goals to go until 2011. Happy New Year everyone.
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