Cassandra does New Zealand: a cautionary tale

So, as you may recall, dear Fiona and I ventured out to the west coast of the South Island this past week. but first, I owe you a bit more. So, everything up to Aug 26, in summary form.

I watched a lot of movies. Among them, I finally saw V for Vendetta, which was more self-evident than I thought but GUY FAWKES YAY; Being John Malkovich, a personal favrite that I hadn’t seen in aaaaages; and Goodbye Pork Pie, a 70s NZ film about taking a roadtrip from Auckland to Invercargill in a stolen rental car with 2 hitchhikers. I like New Zealand. They’re pretty nuts, eh? It was a nice piece of classic NZ culture, and Fi and I even passed a filming location on our route. They went down the West Coast too.

I also saw some theatre. This included a tour of Chicago starring some American as Roxie. This was overpriced, but worthwhile. I could have been in the chorus. Honestly, it could’ve been put on at Penn. They probably just had a better budget/access to costumes. But, I do love musical theatre. I also saw my first lunchtime theatre, a weekly event from the Theatre Studies dept. here, held in the campus theatre. It was cool, very short, but an awesome experience. I think I’ll go again this week as it’s Ionesco and I’m sad not to be a part of Rhinoceros.

So, the night before we left, I bought a lamb and Damon from graphics roasted it and the lab had a lovely dinner that night, along with a bottle of the best wine I’ve had yet from/in New Zealand. I had never had lamb before, so we did it proper NZ style. While not my favorite meat and possibly one I wouldn’t be too quick to order, it was a great meal. Now comes a better part of the night. So, every year for a while, there’s been this thing called the Undy500, where Canterbury Uni students buy cars for under 500NZD, decorate it crazy like (sometimes gross like, moreso over the last few years) and drive down to Otago to indulge in Scarfie culture or something. Evidently, otago kids like to burn couches and whatnot, and this party life has helped attract students to the uni, so they tended not to fuss too much over it. Til last year, when there were riots. Well, the riot police came in, some people got arrested, it was lamentable, so there was a code of conduct instituted. To try to prevent it. Well, kids, I bore witness to an Otago style riot. I watched the riot police march a bunch of drunken arm-linked uni kids down castle street (a party street down the other end, which goes past the graphics lab onto campus. They were trying to get them to go into town where they cant burn couches. And arresting a few along the way, for chucking bottles at the cops. Which I watched some more do. Then our focus turned to the other end of a street where a huuuuge fire roared. Ended up being someone’s van. Those poor kids, no way of getting back to uni. Evidently, a house almost caught fire too. It’s kind of ridiculous. Well, the undy is off for next year, I guess. It’s some engineering school thing or something, but it’s somehow gone out of control. I don’t know the whole story, I guess, but do a google seach. it’s interesting. About 60 arrested, between Otago, Canterbury, and non-students.

Okay, now that’s done, onto the West. Well, we should start with the east, since we had to start there. As we embarked, the most beautiful sunrise shone over Dunedin. It made the poor sleep night almost worth it. A long bus ride, later, we were in Christchurch on a gloriously warm day, sitting in the main square, eating bread and watching a Belgian street performer waiting for a lift from Fi’s friend. We dropped off our bags and headed into town to take in what we could during proper hours.

This was the first exciting bit. I saw my first New Zealand hooker. Wait, my first hooker. We were staying just of a street notorious for hookers, and then, tada there was one as we headed into town. Coming back at night, we passed a couple as well. You may ask, how did you know? Oh, trust me kids, you would have known, too.

Anyway, we decided to look into punting on the Avon, punting being like a gondola without the gondola shaped boat, but the same way of moving down the water. When we got there, we opted instead to rent a kayak each and enjoy the river and weather that way. The part we were on bordered on the botanic gardens. Very cool.

We then wandered the botanic gardens some then meandered back to town as the sun set and quickly got cooler. We wandered into the Arts Centre, mostly closed, btu well worth a look in what still somewhat belonged to the uni. We also stopped for a bit of food and warm before finishing our walk homewards. We wanted to find bus times, because the railroad station was hard to locate and harder to get to, so we found the depot whilst getting very cold as we were ill prepared. And so we began a tradition of getting a hot dirnk somewhere with a fireplace and chatting for ages. It was a fanTAStic idea. We had a fairly lazy night, chilling with her friend, before going to bed after the long day and in preparation for the impending travel to the train station.

Ha, yeah, bout that. We sort of…misread our bus route map and went like 4 wrong places before finally catching a bus who took us still a ten minute walk from the train station. but we made it! dirty, tired, sleepy, possibly a little disgruntled, but there. The ensuing train ride easily made up for the stress of getting there.

The Tranzalpine is a four-ish hour train journey across the South Island from Christchurch to Greymouth. It goes through 19 tunnels. It goes through the southern Alps, reaching a halfway mark around scenic Arthur’s Pass, 737m above sea level. It also goes through a town called Cass, for which I was especially excited (ALSO there’s a street in Christchurch called Cass Street, but we didn’t get to it…it’s kind of small. And out of the way). The whole journey, we had a highly informative guide telling us bits of history through the journey. When we got to Cass, he told us that at one point (didn’t catch the year) Cass had a population around 800. Now, if I had blinked, I would have missed Cass. Population: 1. Or so he claimed. But, relly, he can’t have been far off. After Arthur’s Pass, Fi and I discovered the open-air viewing car. Amazing. It was windy and all, but so so so cool. Also, I had pancakes because they had pancakes, and we had greasy reheated food that we shouldn’t have around lunchtime. It sounded more promising than it was.

Around noon, we arrived in Greymouth on the West coast at, of course, the mouth of the Grey River where the Tasman sea feeds into it. On the last bit of the train part, this woman on a front porch stood waving at the whooooole train. We decided she must be the official town greeter. After dropping our bags at our hostel of choice (Neptune’s), we wandered down the river and into town. There were some odd things along this historic flood wall thing they’d erected. There were these like 6 huge wooden screw driver heads and some interpreted ruins…whatever that means…. We wandered around shops, and went through a bi about the significance/history of Pounamu (Greenstone or NZ Jade) and Maori tales about it and stuff.

We then headed to Monteith’s Brewery for a tour. It originated on the west cast, was bought out by one in Auckland, but fought successfully to keep brewing alive in its founding town. They seem to do things in a more old school way, and they also make a big point about recycling and conservative. At the end, we got to taste their current 7 beers, and then had the bar open for us to pour as much of whatever we wanted till they kicked us out. And yes, I do mean pour for ourselves – that was the best part. I have never been a barmaid, but I briefly got to be my own.

We were a bit…tipsy afterwards, and the woman spoke of a cool all-you-can-eat we thought we’d hit after getting batteries at the warehouse for Fi’s camera. The buffet was a bit of a let down, though it gave me some steak (Fi’s a vegetarian), and it had a fireplace we sat near. We also chatted a bit with some Americans on break from Victoria Uni in Wellington. They were nice, but we got tiiiiired so we wandered back to the hostel to call it a night (after, of course, a bit of pool, and a puzzle).

The next day was a bit rainy in the morning, but we went out to do a short bush walk before our bus to Hokitika. En route, we hit up an ice cream place to try Monteith’s ice cream. It was interesting, to say the least, and Fi got a cone. We made our way, eventually to where the Kowhai bush walk was, but we kinda turned too soon and walked passed huge mirror lakes/wetlands to the furthest in point of this harbor off the river close to its mouth. The bush walk advertised “unsuspecting wildlife,” so I was set on having me some unsuspecting wildlife…and lo and behold, we had white faced herons, and pukeko, and…some other birds I don’t know what are called. And of course, mallards. Ducks are everywhere in New Zealand. We sort of stalked a heron, too, which was fun, especially watching Fi. Oh! And one of those dog obstacle courses and this dude running his dog on it. That was actually really cool. Once we realised we were on that we were not on the right trail, we tried to sort out where it was and how to get there and, eventually we did. It was very cool, lots of varieties of fern, a couple kowhai, and even cute little look out benches which we didn’t quite have the time for.

Soon enough, we were on a bus to Hokitika. We decided to stay at this bird-themed place called bird song we’d heard was a bit out of town but really nice, and right by the beach. We got in and walked into town, which was a solid journey, but not to bad. Hokitika is a lovely west coast beach town built strongly on a crafts basis – paua, greenstone, bone, glass-blowing, wood, and so on.

When we first got in, it was getting close to closing time for many things, but we made it in this like Water World/Kiwi Encounter thingy just in time. So we went to see the kiwi. Now, the state of their pens was downright depressing, being small and kind of…sad looking. One of them had lost a leg to a possum, hence his being harboured to live out his life, but they were both males so a fence was put up so they wouldn’t fight. Now, if we chose to ignore the rather unsettling state of the pens, kiwi are the goofiest creatures on God’s great earth and I am overjoyed New Zealand has decided to associate itself with them expressly. They have itty bitty wings that are sparsely feathered and hidden under their big poof feathers, so you don’t see them. They have long skinny beaks they poke around, their two spindly legs, and poor eyesight, especially for nocturnal animals. And despite the vast number of drawings, animated characters, and even pictures I’ve seen here, they’re just so unbelievably more ridiculous looking in person. Slightly enhancing the experience were their movements and antics. The one would walk on this log along the fence and then decide to turn around, still on the log, and he’d press his face into the fence, and so unbalance himself and fall down. Several times. I know, it’s cruel, but animals are silly. Also there, we saw giant eels. I did not know til that moment that I am horribly afraid of eels. They were all practically asleep, but they still deeply unsettled me to see. So, yay, another fear!

As it was getting a bit later, we wandered down to part of the town walk (part bush, part heritage), to this piece called Sunset point hich supposedly afforded views of Mt. Cook and Mt. Tasman, the two tallest mountains in New Zealand. We might or might not have seen them, I’m not sure. According to Fi, from the other side, Mt. Cook looks like Jabba the Hutt. We wandered back up the beach as the sun set and stumbled upon a painted statue o a chair, perfectly facing the sunset over the Sea. We sat and watched it, and glanced over our shoulders to see the remarkable colors hit the Alps. The moon was freaking huge that night, too. It was a gorgeous and transformative evening, all and all.

As it was getting dark, we decided to call a cab back to birdsong. When the guy got to us, and we told him we’d just arrived, he told us the standard fare from town to bird song, but said he’d give us a quick tour around town and fill in some history. It was settled by the Irish, like most of the West Coast, and based on mining. I don’t remember the exact figures, but on one street in the 1800s, there were roughly 160 shops, 110 of which were pubs and the other 50 liquor stores. I don’t think he was exaggerating much if at all. He also stopped in at the glow worm dell we new of, but we were too early to get the full dramatic experience yet. On getting home, we made some cous cous for dinner then ventured back to the dell for a more vivid glow worm adventure. According to Fi, they weren’t as bright as they usually are. She reckoned they were going out for the night. I thought it was cool, like a night sky but greener. When we got back, we killed time til the lunar eclipse. It’s the last one NZ will see for 10 years, and it was a very long one. We could only stand the cold (slash stand staying up) through the first half, but it was very very cool.

I’m going to pause my recounting here and finish in a day or two. Right now, we’re on Tuesday night, so you’re aware. The rest will come shortly, as well as a little bit since then.