A New Home for Wit

So, Sally and I now officially on the run—not from cops or anything, just from Fiji.  I had planned on keeping up this log but since Sally and I each had a blog and we now have more limited internet time, we have decided to join forces into one travel blog.  And in the name of obfuscation, that blog is neither of our blogs from Fiji.  It is a new entirely and can be found at:

www.longwayhome-sallyandbrian.blogspot.com

You should go there, not here, for your future Brian’s writing needs as that is where I will go for my future writing.  Check it out.  Then someone should remind my parents how to bookmark it (I’m talking to you Rick and Danielle.)

Farewell Photos

Well, we have done it—we have left the village and are now in Suva.  But I wanted to get some photos up here of our farewell from the village because it was a pretty special couple of days.  The whole thing started with our itautau on Friday.  That is our official good-bye ceremony where we present the yaqona (kava) to the chief and the village presents us with some gifts.

Here we are at the beginning of it, getting our isalusalu put on.  These are what one would call a lei in Hawaii but these are also woven plant fibers mixed in with the flowers.  Oh, and the other white lady there is our replacement Carol who also arrived that day.  It is pretty weird to think of someone else’s service just starting in my village just as we are leaving.  Good luck Carol.

Here I am presenting the isevusevu, which is sitting there in front of me.  I cheated and read it but I was still nervous as hell.  Even reading it, I had to get the tone right and know where the stresses and swoops of the speech go.  I am told that I did a passable job.

Accepting the isevusevu and also presenting our gifts to us was a spokesperson for the chief, although the chief also spoke to/about us to the community.  It was pretty cool.  Anyway, this is Noah and he is our neighbor so I like that he presented the gifts to us.  The village gave us the woven mat that we are sitting on and a bunch of woven wall hangings that are made from reeds.  Pretty cool stuff.

 

Then there was the food.  Fijians are known for eating and eating a lot, but the food that we had for our party was ridiculous: fish, prawns, chicken, different curries, dalo, cassava, and dalo leaf, all cooked in coconut milk, and most of it prepared in the lovo, or earth-oven.  Mmmmm.  Unfortunately, I knew that I would be drinking grog later so that eating too much would just make the rest of the night more uncomfortable.

Then comes the grog.  Always the grog.  I sat up front by the chief since it was my night.  Unfortunately, that often means sitting and staring into one’s lap as sitting up front carries a certain responsibility towards dignity.  If you sit up front, it is all business.  Sitting down low means you get to make a scene.  That is where the guitar hangs out and I was occasionally called there to play some songs.

 

 

Like any good tradition, the dignity up front isn’t hard and fast and sometimes the guitar would come to me if I refused to go play it down below.

 

 

Sally gets to have all of the fun with the ladies.  They never have to be dignified.  We asked to break the taboo on dancing for the evening, but were denied.  It turns out there is a link between dancing a little and crime…or so we were told.  No dancing allowed.

Sunday at church the chief gave us another farewell speech that was amazing in that was in English!  That was about the third or fourth time that he had spoken in English since I have been there—once being when Andy and Mary (in-laws) came and visited.  Anyway, his English is not great so it was really sweet that he humbled himself to speak to us in our language.  Then it was Sally’s turn as she humbled herself speaking in Fijian.  She did a great job although the tears were no help!

 

After another two nights of drinking grog, we got on the bus and headed out.  Just like that, Peace Corps life in the village was over.  A lot of the village came out that morning to see us off which was really sweet as well.  They sang us the farewell song, there was lots of hugging and tears and we were off!  So there it is.  Peace Corps.

We are in Suva now, just doing our final close-out things and getting our life a bit organized before heading off on the next leg of the journey.  We are also dealing with some medical issues.  I had a lovely growth on my ear that was getting bigger by the week.  I had it checked out and it was decided that it needed to be removed and checked to make sure it wasn’t a tumor.  It wasn’t—just a cyst.  But I got to have it cut out of my ear which was amazingly painless.  Local anesthetic really is cool.

Anyway, we are all set to go now.  I will try to keep this updated when I have chance on the road.  First stop, Indonesia!

T-Some Number of Hours

It is our last day in the village today which is really weird thing to say. And before you go judging me for sitting in front of the computer on my last day in the village, keep in mind that we have been constantly celebrating/mourning our departure for 4 days and tonight will be no exception. Also, it is pouring rain and there isn’t much else that I could be doing right now that isn’t drinking yaqona (Key: yaqona = grog = kava).

So tomorrow morning, Sally and I will be getting on the bus from the village for the last time and heading to Savusavu for a more familiar farewell from the 10-15 Peace Corps Volunteers in the area that will involve making merry and drinking too much (beer, that is). We are staying one night there before flying to Suva in the morning. In Suva, we have a few things going on. The first is to get the thing that is growing on my ear checked out and removed (the thing, not the ear). It is unclear what it is so a biopsy is being done but no one thinks that is of any concern. But to be safe and since Uncle Sam is paying for my medical care for another week, I thought it best to get it dealt with. The next thing to do is all of our close out paperwork, final reports, turn in equipment, etc. that needs to happen before Peace Corps will let us leave. Then we leave.

I am way ahead of myself. The last month has been pretty cool. We were really dreading this last homestretch envisioning not having much to do except to sit and wait to leave, filling the time drinking grog and eating an endless stream of farewell meals. The grog-drinking and the farewell meals have happened, but they have actually been a lot of fun. And we have been pretty busy: Sally with getting her school library and literacy project to a place where it can be handed off to the next volunteer and me with the seaweed farm to a place where it can be handed off to the community and my farm and backyard garden to the next volunteer. Neither of us could say with any certainty that those are projects are ready to be handed off, but handed off they are. I have been hoping to get into the water one last day to see the seaweed before I go but the weather has been especially nasty the last few weeks.

Then all of a sudden, it was the last week. We had our official farewell ceremony, called the itautau, on Friday. That is where I present the community with some yaqona and give a fairly scripted speech, thanking them for welcoming us and taking care of us and begging pardon for anything that we have done to offend them. As the man, that fell to me and I think that I did a pretty good job. Then the chief gave a speech to us, thanking us for all of our work, asking pardon as well, and giving us our veitalatala, our sending. Then the gifts. We got some pretty nice things from the community; among them is a mat that goes on the floor made of pandanus leaves, some wall hangings made of reeds, and some other odds and ends. Beautiful things.

Then the food. Whoa. We haven’t eaten some good food here, but rarely are all of the best food on one table. They were there that night and right in front of me. The problem was that there wasn’t enough room and that I knew I had to spend the next number of hours drinking grog and food and grog don’t mix. Or to be clearer, they mixed very well when they came back up at about midnight.

Sunday was more farewells, this time in the church. There were plenty of speeches thanking us in the service, once of which was by the chief in English. That was really sweet and humbling for him as his English is not very good. In fact, much of it was indecipherable, but it was such a nice gesture for him to do that. Then it was Sally’s turn to speak which she did very well, turning on the waterworks. We leave Tuesday morning which means that Sunday night and Monday night are long nights of drinking grog as that is the expected way of leaving. I got through Monday night and my plan is to just drink grog until I can’t tonight and then ditch.

So, that is it in a nutshell. I am afraid that I am not yet able to reflect deeply on this experience to provide some unique view into the human condition after all I have seen and done here in Fiji these past 2 and a half years—it is still just the reality of life. Or maybe that is it. Normal life just seems to follow you, despite how ‘abnormal’ one’s conditions may appear. It is interesting to me just how ‘normal’ our life here has become.

I’ll get some photos up here from the events when I have some time to edit them.

One Month Left

One month. That is how much time we have left in the village. Approximately. We leave the village on something like the 15^th of July. Then we have about a week in Suva while we close up Peace Corps business en route to our July 21^st flight to Bali via Darwin via Brisbane. That will be one long day of travel. For now, we are actually really enjoying the village. This was supposed to be a painful time lame-duck session of waiting until we leave. But quite the contrary, Sally and I are both good and busy and having a pretty good time in the village. Part of it for me is the realization that our days of near limitless free time are coming to a close. I am not sure that I would rather have regular water and electricity than free time like this. I’ll take seeing my family and friends over them both and that is why we are ready to head out.

It has been a pretty fun couple of months. We were on the road for almost all of April and May. In the beginning of April, we did some new site development with some of the Peace Corps staff on Vanua Levu so got to travel around our island a bit more. Good to see the island but pretty long days and lots of village meetings. Soon after that, we headed to our Close of Service conference where we learned about how to be Americans again by staying in a really nice hotel, eating nice food, and talking about how depressed we are going to be upon return due to “culture shock.” (Seriously, I guess that last part is a pretty big deal. Sort of like when soldiers come back from war, only replacing the grisly images of death and destruction with beaches and coconuts.)

Anyway, after the conference, what’s left of our group all went to a little island for Easter where we could make lots of noise and stay for a song. It was a good time. From there we headed back to Nadi to pick our good friend Gina for a little visit. We took her straight up to our village and had a lovely couple of days there before hitting the road again. We fly back to Nadi where we stayed with our dear friends (and fellow PCVs) Chris and Nan for Nan’s birthday at a hotel called Tokatoka. They have the best slide this side of the International Date Line. In the morning we picked up a few more friends: Brian and Heather Coffman and a little miniature version of themselves that tags along with them now. They call her Juliet.

So the whole gang of us (Brian, Heather, Gina, Heather, Sally, myself and mini-Heather/Brian) all got on a boat and headed out the Yasawas—specifically to Waya Island where we stayed at Octopus Resort. It is a pretty sweet place and we had a great time although after almost two weeks, we may have worn out our welcome. Mostly Brian and I dove. The girls lay in the sun and chased the baby. Sometimes Brian and I took over the baby-chasing. There was also some Frisbee and volleyball and hking, but we tried to keep the exertion to a minimum. The diving was good/great but not incredible, which after three trips is now what I believe the diving to be in the Yasawas. Pretty good.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gina left after a couple of days and then Sally and I left the Coffman clan after a few more days. They stayed behind refusing to leave but Sally and I had a meeting in Suva to prepare for the incoming group of new volunteers. That’s right another group, which means that I have officially been here for two years. Yikes. Anyway, we had our two-day meeting and then Sally and I just never left since we were doing some trainings with them right after they got here—Sally on health maintenance and me on farming as well as generally helping out at their 3-day orientation. Finally, in the last week of May, we went home. Here. And I am glad to be here. The weather has finally made the full transition to the “cool/dry” season which is neither cool nor dry but it is both cooler and dryer than the “hot/wet” season. It does mean that we get these nice ocean breezes again which are absent during the hot season.

So now the homestretch. As I said, we are actually pretty busy. Sally is on her final push to get the literacy program/library at the school able to be left. She developed a curriculum that all teachers are going to be trained in this year where the kids are tested and then leveled for reading. All of the books in the library are also leveled so that in the rare case that a child reads, they are reading at their level. Sally is also working with the community to get the parents reading to their kids at home and with the teachers to make better use of the library. There is a lot of buzz about that right now. Nice work Sally.

I am working on a project that I thought was doomed to fail: a seaweed farm. Weirdly it is going really well. Evidently the Chinese pay a lot of money for seaweed for a number of pharmaceutical and industrial uses, only they can’t grow it as fast as we can in tropical waters. So, it gets a good price. The trick is that there is quite a bit of work that goes into getting it set up before the money starts rolling in. That is usually the death knell for a project in Fiji. If it doesn’t produce results immediately and easily it usually falls apart. But for some reason, I have a committed couple of guys who are really into it. Right now we have our nursery going for our planting material and sometime in the next few weeks we will be ready to plant our first crop. After 6 weeks they will harvest that and then sell it. So, we are well on our way. Even the chief has started going out with us to clean and check the seaweed since it is good exercise. He has trouble with his knees but moving in the water is much easier for him.

That’s it for now!

Leaving Fiji

JULY 20!!  JULY 20!! It is official.  Sally and I will be on a plane out of Fiji on July 20th.  We don’t quite know where that plane will land, but WE WILL BE ON IT!  We are currently at our Close of Service Workshop talking about how to back out of our villages in the least destructive way.  We are also learning how to be American again—like how to write a resume and stop at stoplights. 

Right now I am staying at the Pearl, a really nice hotel in Pacific Harbor where Andrea use to live and I spent some part of a month back in 2003.  It brings back funny memories although it is such a different place after living in a Fijian village for 2 years.  Namely. it is much, much nicer than I remember it.  Then again, it is still in Fiji which means that they are out of coffee and that the shower leaks all over the rest of the bathroom.  Evidently water is different in Fiji because I have never seen a shower where the water did not leak all of the rest of the bathroom.

Anyway, I just wanted to get the word out: July 20th.  That means that if you are planning on meeting us in Indonesia, you can plan accordingly.  I’m thinking of you Andrea.  See you there.

"Using your knife on the land is where you should use it as that is its proper use."

--Another Fijian proverb written on the same bus stop, only written in Fijian and translated by me.

Quote of the Day

“Revenge is a dish that taste good when it is cold.”

--Fijian Proverb as written on a bus shelter, in English

OPENING DAY!!

My sister just sent me an email saying that it is time for a new blog and she is right. My excuse was that it is too hot to be entertaining, so you can be the judge of that. The good news is that we are on the tail end of our experiences of Fiji hot seasons. It should start cooling off any week now and by the time that we leave in July, it should be that weather that you pay a lot of money to travel to. Right now, it is that kind of weather that people travel to because the flights are cheaper.

Tonight was a rare treat in the village; an honest to goodness big tent revival, Fiji-style. The CMF church which has all of about 8 members in the village invited some group, which may have been called The Eagle Force, to come and entertain/convert us to the CMF brand of Christianity. I am not exactly sure what that entails, but I know that they play a lot of guitar and I would guess that there is a fair amount of the hand waving and tongue-speaking. Anyway, back to the show/revival, it cost F$3 (US$free) to get in and they had a gate, tickets, a stamp, everything. Impressive. There was a lot of music, which was pretty good all things considered, a bit of joke telling, a couple of instances of preachers yelling at the crowd, a whole lot of praying, and of course, the action choruses.

Action choruses may be a new thing to you, dear reader, as they were new to me ere my arrival in Fiji. Here is what it is. Some music plays, preferably aged English Christian pop songs, and a group of 5-10 people do a choreographed interpretive dance. It is truly amazing. Sally has used other adjectives to describe them and I haven’t heard her mention amazing just yet.

Sally and I paid our $3 because you have to support any sort of money-making venture in this country in my opinion; they just never happen and if someone is pitching a product, any product, with the intent of making money to better himself/herself/the church I am buying. Usually the standard mode of getting money is to have a fundraiser called a soli. Basically you pay to drink kava, the same thing that you do every night only tonight you pay for it because we are raising money for something. I’ll take the action chorus, thank you.

Today is April 1^st in Fiji, which is both Sally and my favorite day of the year. Sally because she loves April Fool’s Day, and me because it is Opening Day for baseball (and often coincides with the NCAA Final Four. GO VCU!!!). Wish me luck as I wade through my wife’s pranks to try to listen to the Giants play. If she really wanted to get me, she would hide the internet thingy so I couldn’t listen to the game. Please don’t tell her.

New Zealand. Whoa. Part II.

Continued from below…

From Milford Sound, we made our way towards Queenstown, which we summarily skipped. Now, we have heard that Queenstown is beautiful and it is the nexus of “adventure travel” in New Zealand. Being as Sally and I were not interested in dropping $200 to jump out of, off of or into something we drove on past for real adventure travel: wine tasting. Outside of Queenstown is Gibson Valley, known for its Pinot Noir. We did accidentally drive by the bridge that was the site of the very first bungee jump in the world. We had to stop and gawk. Plus it was beautiful.

Anyway, we skipped Queenstown because we wanted to get to Wanaka, a little-ish town on Lake Wanaka (naturally) that was the amazing. I want to move there. It reminded me of a much smaller Lake Tahoe—on a big lake and surrounded by mountains. Word on the street is that there is a lot of skiing around there. It being summer here, that wasn’t an option. We only had one night there, which was too bad because I really liked it.

But we were in a hurry to get to the glaciers area and it was worth it. From Wanaka, we had a couple hour drive up to Fox Glacier, where we stayed in a wonderful, wonderful hostel called Ivory Towers. They have a big, crowded hostel in town but we stayed in their cottage that they have out of town. It only has a couple of rooms, a wonderful shared kitchen and a view of Mount Cook to blind you (shrouded in clouds most of the time that we were there). We stayed there 2 nights but could have happily stayed longer. From there, we were walking distance away from Lake Matheson, which is well-traveled because of the mountain reflections in its calm waters. I went for the birding!

The real draw, however, of the glacier areas are its two accessible glaciers, Fox and Franz Josef. When we first got there in the evening, we made a run up to Fox Glacier to just hike to the terminal face which you can do without charge or fanfare. In order to get onto the ice, you have to take a guided (and pricey) tour, which I am told one should just do because it is amazing. Well, after our hike to the face of Fox Glacier we decided that the next day, we would pay the money to do the tour on Franz Josef glacier. The next day we were all booked and ready to go when the rains hit…and we started feeling the buyer’s remorse. Ultimately, we canceled the tour thinking it too expensive to run around on the ice. We also figured that there may very well be access to glaciers is in our future. Anyway, we hiked to the terminal face of that glacier as well and that was stunning. Glaciers are amazing, amazing things. Oh and if you need any more evidence that the earth is heating up, head on down to New Zealand and see that glaciers melting and retreating into the mountains as fast as they can.

Leaving Fox Glacier, we had our big driving day—something like 8 hours up the west coast and back into the mountains further north. First made a little detour down to Jackson Bay for one reason and one reason alone: penguins. I really like penguins. I don’t know why but I do. There is a penguin called the southern fjordland penguin that hangs out there but since breeding season was over, they weren’t really around. We scoured beaches and braved driving rain to get a glimpse of one but alas had no success. Abandoning the effort, we drove into the little town to turn around and there, walking down the road was one crested fjorland penguin. Cool.

So, we drove up the west coast of the southern island, which we had heard compared to Highway 1 in CA. Nope. But it was really pretty—small towns separated by miles and miles of grassland and beach on one side and the towering Southern Alps on the other. We stopped at a couple of towns to stretch and eat fudge: Hokatika and Greymouth being their names. Hokatika had been touted as a great little town. It is if you are trying to drop hundreds of dollars on jade artwork. We were fresh out of $500 bills so after gawking at some of the beautiful jade pieces, we just bought some fudge and headed out. You can’t even eat jade.

Our final destination that day was Hanmer Springs, a getaway spot for the city of Christchurch. In the winter, it is a mountain playground surrounded by mountains and skiing. The draw for us was the hot springs which are not the kind at the end of a secluded trail where some naked hippies are bathing. This was a complex with something like 10 pools of various water temperatures from pretty warm to hotter than you can stand with every kind of pulsating and massaging jet at your disposal. We just hung out there for hours, moving between pools, reading, napping, soaking again. It was sort of a cool day so it was perfect. It was perfect right up until a very large man walked by us and shook the deck that we were lounging on. Wait, he walked by but the deck was still shaking. Then when we figured that couldn’t possibly still be shaking the deck, we realized that an earthquake was happening. It was a long one but not particularly strong. Sally and I didn’t think much of it. Everyone else did. Soon after, people went running for the exit.

It turns out that the last time an earthquake was felt at Hanmer Springs was in September when a 7.1 earthquake hit outside of Christchurch and did some serious damage. When this earthquake hit, everyone at Hanmer Springs was hoping that it was just a small local quake. But as reports came out of Christchurch, that was obviously not the case. Christchurch got nailed again, this time by a smaller but more destructive quake as its epicenter was closer to the surface and closer to the city. Sally and I responded by going back into the pools, not thinking much about it.

It was when we left Hanmer Springs and headed for Kaikoura that we realized the scope. As all communications had been wiped out, there were just periodic rumors circulating around. It wasn’t until people started arriving from there, fleeing the city that it became clear just how bad it was. At that point, we also realized that family and Peace Corps were going to hear about this and that we had no ability to contact anyone. It wasn’t until the next day that we got a window of internet to shoot Peace Corps and family a note that we were OK. Of course, by then Peace Corps had sort of gone nuts. They have to account for volunteers at all times and so had to report to headquarters in DC that they couldn’t account for us and that we were in the area of the earthquake. It is all cleaned up now, but there was manhunt on for us which got as high as the US embassy in New Zealand.

Anyway, Kaikoura. Sally and I literally looked at property here. We want to move here. Ocean on one side, skiable mountains on the other and lots of fertile land for a little farm. Beautiful downtown and ridiculous scenery everywhere. We were there for three nights and never wanted to leave. Plus, they had the best fudge on our trip. We got the 5-pack. We went on a wonderful hike around the peninsula, took some bikes out for a ride, ate good food, drank good beer and wine and had a generally nice time. Most folks when they come to Kaikoura go on a whale-watching boat trip. Whales are cool, but they are no birds! I opted for the Albatross Encounter! It was one of the highlights of my trip. I won’t try to convince you just how cool large seabirds like albatross, mollymawk, and giant petrels are but I will say that if you ever have the chance to see these birds up close, you will agree with me. First of all, until you see one up close, I don’t think you can understand just how big a 9 foot wingspan is on a bird and how big that bird must be on which they are attached. We saw Wandering and Royal albatross and they are really giant, beautiful birds. From the boat, the guide threw out some chum, which drew in birds of all shapes and sizes, mostly very large and beautiful. We also saw more penguins on that trip along with a colony of seal pups and a pod of about 50 dusky dolphins jumping around. Cool. Really cool.

We left Kaikoura with a bit of dread. First of all, due to the earthquake destruction Peace Corps had told us not to go to Christchurch but to instead drive north, cross the straight between the two islands and then to try to fly out of Wellington. However, they could not help us financially. We had to drop our rental car in Christchurch and that was where our flight was. So, after some pretty tense conversations that resulted in me telling Peace Corps that we were going to do what they were telling us not to do. It was a bit of frustrating double-standard. They were telling us that we were not allowed to go to Christchurch but that since we were on annual leave on private time, they could not help with anything financially. In our minds, when you are on “private time” and paying, no one gets to tell you what to do. So, we went to Christchurch. Upon arrival it became very clear that we should not be in Christchurch.

The first thing that we saw was the liquefaction. Christchurch is built on a plain of glacial silt that holds a lot of water. So when the earth shook around, that slurry of silt and water turned into a liquid that flooded the city. Once the water settled out, it left behind a 3-5 inch layer of muddy silt covering the city. By the time that we got there, there were piles of this everywhere, almost like it had snowed and people had shoveled it out of their yards and off their driveways. Cars were buried in it and roads were closed where they hadn’t cleared yet. As we got closer to town, the roads got worse and worse where giant cracks had opened up and chunks of land decided to be a few inches higher or lower after the quake. We were trying to get to our hostel which claimed on its website to open and “fully functional” after the earthquake. We had a hell of time getting there because so many roads were closed. Ultimately, we asked one of the many police managing the city what to do and they sent us on a roundabout way to get there.

When we got to the hostel, we found that “fully functional” meant no gas, no heat, no hot water, and no water. There was bin of water that we could pull from and boil to drink. The bathroom was a port-a-potty a few blocks away. We tried to stay anywhere else but everything was full. So we settled. And just as we settled in to our room, we felt our first aftershock, a 4.4 bolt that struck fast and furiously. 10 minutes later, another one hit, and then another. We started to come to the conclusion that maybe we shouldn’t have come to Christchurch. We probably felt 10-15 aftershocks in the 10 hours that we were in Christchurch. But we dropped of our car and got on our flight to Auckland in the morning like it was nothing. Just like that, our New Zealand trip was over. And in a few short hours, we found ourselves in Nadi again, sweating profusely. Welcome home.

Alive and Well

We have heard a whole lot from family and friends concerned about us and with regards to the earthquake here in New Zealand. Thank you all for your concern but rest assured all we are alive and well. We felt the earthquake from Hamner Springs, a couple of hours from Christchurch, where there was no damage. We are now in Kaikoura which is just north of Christchurch. Phone lines and internet have been in bad shape since the earthquake, so I am sorry about the spotty and brief email contact.

The tricky part will be going home (Fiji-home I mean) since we are scheduled to fly out of Christchurch tomorrow morning. We will be driving from Kaikoura today and are just sort of hoping for the best once we get there. There is widespread damage and the central part of town is closed. That being said, we have a booking at a hostel that we are pretty sure is up and running and the airport is reportedly working, despite the tower having collapsed. Many roads are out and Christchurch is a disaster. Wish us luck!

I will continue with my blogs about our New Zealand travels soon.

New Zealand. Whoa.

As advertised, New Zealand is amazing. It is more than amazing. Consider this: the water runs all the time, there are always lights and plugs, hot water comes from the tap(!), almost all of the roads are paved, there are refrigerators around like there was a nation-wide clearance sale on them, and there exists the notion of customer service. These are all pretty much absent in Fiji and their presence alone would have made this a great trip. But, New Zealand really is an amazing place.

So, here is what is has looked like so far. We got here on Sunday night and spent a day in Auckland between our flight from Fiji and our domestic flight to the south island. Auckland was cool. We ate veggie wraps and had our first dark beer in about 2 years. It was like heaven. I’m not kidding. Monteith’s Black Beer is a wonderful, wonderful creation.

The wrap was good too. Anyway, we had just a few hours to walk around a western city, marvel at the cleanliness, the traffic signal where the green guy signaling to walk actually walks too. He moves and looks like he is doing a little dance. Anyway, that night we flew to Christchurch and stayed at a backpackers called Kiwi Basecamp.

Here we are marveling at the wonderful treats the New Zealand has to offer.  Sally also like me.

In the morning, we picked up our car. It started a little inauspiciously as the car didn’t work. A little backstory here: I have been scouring the web for cheap car rental places in NZ and this was the cheapest advertising old, but reliable, cars for discounted rates. Well, they got the old part right. The good news was that it never left the lot and we got a little upgrade. We are traveling around in a little Mazda 4-door hatchback thing. It works. As for the driving, remember that I have not driven in 4 years and I haven’t driven on the left hand side of the road in almost 10 (Australia). Did I mention that it is a manual and that you have to shift with your left hand? The first few days were a harrowing experience for all but after a few narrow misses, it is old hat. I even parallel parked that thing yesterday with little fanfare.

From Christchurch we headed south towards Dunedin, stopping along the way at craft distiller in Oamaru to try some whiskey. They had a tasting room like wine. Good stuff. Unfortunately, the whiskey maker went belly up and they aren’t making it anymore. We got to try the tail end. We didn’t buy any; I can make better. (Before I forget, there is a barrel of whiskey aging in my basement as we speak that I made before leaving for Fiji. You are all invited to the uncorking to give it a try when I get back.)

That tasting necessitated eating lunch and walking around to avoid driving under the influence on the left hand side in a manual, but Oamaru is a really neat place. The waterfront is all old warehouses that once served to supply the world’s wool. There is still a bunch of wool packing done there but the majority of the spaces were being turned into shops and alehouses and places to try whiskey.

After sobriety, we continued south to the town of Dunedin and then out to the Otago Peninsula, where we stayed in a little hamlet called Portobello for a couple of nights. The draw here was for me: birds. Specifically, penguins and albatross! We stayed at a really small place called Bus Stop Backpackers, which stopped operating 3 days after we left. The owners retired. So, I would really recommend it only, you can’t go there. Sorry. I spent my mornings running around going crazy about new birds and Sally spent them trying to get warm. I am sure that it is not particularly cold here but after a few years in Fiji, it feels pretty cold to us here.

The highlight for me was the night that we watched the little Blue penguins (smallest in the world) come ashore in groups of 25 and waddle to their nests. As long as you keep still they just walk right by you and a couple came as close as 10 feet, milling around, trying to remember where they left their babies. Super cute. We also did some good hiking and got to see my first albatross. There is a point on the peninsula where they nest and so were flying all around. These were Royal albatross and until you’ve seen one, it is impossible to explain just how big they are. With a wingspan of 9 feet, they can just glide like it’s nothing—so amazing.

We went on a few hikes as well, mostly along ridiculous beaches where the waves crash on-shore like in California and Oregon. I forgot how much I missed that. In Fiji, there aren’t any waves at the beach because they all get knocked down at the fringing reef. The beaches in Fiji are quiet, docile affairs. Beaches in New Zealand are chaotic and loud, and thanks to my heritage, I prefer the latter. Then again, I didn’t swim in these waters (cold!). On the beaches, we got to see fur seals and sea lions and lots of more birds.

After Otago, we hit the road inland to Te Anau where all of the New Zealand’s tourists end up. The town is amazingly beautiful and reminiscent of Lake Tahoe, with its town situated on a massive lake. We stayed at a gigantic holiday park that had fields of tents, rows and rows of campervans and mobile homes and cabins all over the place. I don’t recommend these. It was pretty cool to see how everyone travels but there were really a lot of people there. Te Anau on the other hand is worth the price of admission.

First of all, there were the glow worm caves. Whoa. The only way to see them is to take this tour but it is worth it. The cave is pretty standard. You walk in with a guide and she tells you all the cool stuff about caves and water and you look at crazy formations and underwater waterfalls and the like. But then you get into this little Gollum-esque boat and the turn off the lights and you paddle into this grotto which is totally black expect that these worms that live there glow on the wall. They are everywhere and they make constellations all over the walls and roof. It was amazing. Do this if you are in New Zealand. Sorry, no photos of this—not allowed as the wee beasties don’t like it.

Just outside of Te Anau, we took the road up to Milford Sound. First of all, this road is really beautiful and had we not taken a boat into the Sound (really a fjord, not a sound at all), the drive would have been worth it. I guess that I have not seen many glacial valleys in my life outside of Yosemite, but they are unbelievable. Crazy mountains, impossibly deep valleys, waterfalls everywhere, and lakes with water colored like it is straight out of a toxic waste dump. We went on a hike in those mountains following a part of the famous Routeburn track that people reserve months ahead of time to hike over 3-4 days. We just did a day hike there so we didn’t need to book it. Beautiful forest full of trees from some other planet, lots of birds. Then we got up above tree-line and impressive views of the surrounding mountains opened up. Cool.

Milford Sound is a bit of a tourist mecca, but worth it despite the crowds. The draw is the boats that tour the fjord and we hopped on one of those. We took an early morning boat to avoid the crowds (and because it was cheaper) and were happy we did. We spent a couple of hours cruising the fjord and just staring agape at the world around us: waterfalls, mountains, glaciers, birds, fur seals. It was great.

From here, we head off to the west coast. More to come!..