A NEW ZEALAND JOURNEY

A NEW ZEALAND JOURNEY
by
Arthur Katz

This journey actually began in 1969, when my son Jamie went off to New Zealand at the age of 16 as an exchange student for a year. He left in the middle of his junior year at Lexington High School, in what now seems like a much more innocent time. I've since wondered what inspired our confidence in his ability to handle the move away from the cocoon that was 1969 Lexington to the unknown, half a world away.
But he did handle well his sometimes difficult situation, in a culture which at that time was at least a full generation behind the one in which he had grown up. He wore the school uniform required by the private school he attended, although keeping his socks up - the uniform included short pants - proved a continuing source of irritation to both Jamie and his headmaster.
His New Zealand family were South African Jews, who had emigrated in the early 1960s to escape the oppressive political and social climate then prevalent under the apartheid regime. As an orthopedic surgeon, his father, Dr. Leo Mirkin, was able to set up a practice and eventually joined the faculty of the School of Medicine at the University of Otago in Dunedin. There were two children, a boy Jamie's age and an older daughter.
Although orthopedics surgeons in the United States rank close to the top of the medical professions in income, in the New Zealand of 1969, professionals like Dr. Mirkin were comfortable rather than wealthy. The upper and lower edges of income distribution were much closer together than in America at the time or since.
The family had a contemporary home, most unusual at that time in Dunedin, the second largest city of the South Island. Both children were in private school, and that was where Jamie was enrolled.
McGlaushan College was modeled on the English public (actually private) high school model, and Jamie had his first experience with cricket and rugby (almost a religious exercise in New Zealand, where the national team, the Blacks, was world renowned). He managed to make the basketball team, an eventuality that would have been most unlikely at Lexington High.
He returned in January 1970, much more than a year older, leaving behind a family and friends whose relationships he has continued to cherish and nourish.
Within months of his return, we had the first of what would be, for twenty years or more, a fairly regular parade of visitors from New Zealand.
Thirty-three years ago, New Zealand seemed to be further from the rest of the world than it does now. When New Zealanders left to see the rest of the world, it was not uncommon for the . walkabout" to last for several years. So, a visit to our home in Lexington might last as long as six months, and was rarely less than a week.
Over the years, we came to know and thoroughly enjoyed his father, his mother, his sister, his brother, his friends, and his friends' families. And always, there were invitations for us to come to visit.
As the years went on, and the trip became financially possible, there was the problem of timing. With the seasons reversed in the Southern Hemisphere, December through February were right times to visit the South Island, which experiences temperatures in the 30's in our summer months.
That meant being away during the December holidays or taking work time in January, both of which proved too disruptive. So, we talked about it, but never went.
In the meantime, Jamie and his wife - who had been an exchange student in Indonesia, - went back twice: once in 1992 and again in 1996. And though the visitors from New Zealand to Lexington had become increasingly rare as students became working adults with families and responsibilities, they still came on occasion.
Early in 2002, Jamie began to talk about another visit, motivated by the declining health of his NZ mother, and the desire to show his now five-year-old adopted Chinese daughter to his friends. My wife's death and my own retirement had erased the time constraints, and when he asked me and agreed that I could bring a friend along, it was an easy decision.
We would leave before Christmas, returning in late January. Our first touchdown would be in Auckland, New Zealand's largest city and its major air terminus, after a 12-hour flight from Los Angeles. driving south, our first destination would be the center of Maori (native New Zealander) culture at Rotarua, and then we would move into a remote area in the southeast of the North Island. before stopping in Wellington, the country's capital.
From there, leaving our rental car and taking the ferry across the strait separating the two major islands, we would pick up another car for the drive southeastward to Christchurch, jumping off port for Antarctic voyages. From there, we would head west across the mountainous spine of the country to the lush west coast, with its dense forests, fjords, glaciers and played-out gold mining sites. This would include a side trip to storied Milford Sound, one of the largest fjords in the world, a visit to the summer vacation areas around Queenstown, and finally, arrival at Dunedin for our last week, to be spent with friends and family.
Jamie had done all the planning - air line tickets, reservations for hotels, b and Us, form stays, jet boat trips, a helicopter to the glaciers, a small plane to Milford Sound instead of a six hour bus trip. Out came the guide books, and the recent novels about New Zealand and what histories I could find in local libraries.
As I began to read, I quickly realized that over the years, I had acquired some sense of the current New Zealand but none at all of its history. Yes, I knew Robert Burns' brother and a group of Scottish emigrants had founded Dunedin, and there had been savage battles with the native Maori. But this had been 1840 or later, and I had no sense of the history of the country before that time, nor any understanding of the forces that produced the New Zealand of our time.
Over the years, reading about places before I visited them has been part of the travel experience for me. With guide books all sounding roughly the same, finding reliable histories and essays on an area's culture has been key to my own understanding. How does one know that a particular historian is unbiased and accurate? Vetting the writer can be a formidable task, lacking access to an expert in the region.
So, one makes as intelligent a choice as one can, and hopes the public libraries will disgorge the volumes when a decision is made on which to read.
As the reading went on, I began to confront the other issues that present themselves.
Should the gifts for the people we will be staying with in New Zealand say something about New England specifically -like maple syrup - or should it relate to the recipient, who I may not have seen in twenty years?
I can remember packing bath soap for business trips to Europe in the 1960's, when the tiny slivers provided in the hotels were inadequate for my rather large frame. Since then, we appear to have instructed the world on that score, and free toilet soap, is now ubiquitous.
I've never kept a journal, but this seems an appropriate time to start one, and I carried two blank books, recent gifts designed to get me going. They went into the carryon which held my reading and writing materials and other essentials I might need for the initial flights.
For me, this would be the longest journey I've ever taken, both in distance and time, since returning from service in Japan after World War II. In the years before my wife became ill, we traveled in the American East, West and South, to Mexico, to Canada, and to Europe, but never for as long a period as this journey will take.
What do I have to do to prepare to be away for 26 days? Turn off the hot water heater, and turn down to heat. Stop the newspaper delivery. Notify the Postal Service to hold my mail until I return. My driveway will be plowed if it snows while I'm away - a distinct possibility - but should I have the steps to the front door shoveled? Without a garage for my car, will it start when I return, after the car has sat unheeded for a month? Hire someone to start it once a week? Clean out the refrigerator, so I am not confronted with green mossy globs when I return?
Who do I need to tell of my plans? And what do I take? Aside from a week's change of clothing - on the assumption that we will be doing laundry from time to time - I'll need reading matter for the 18 hours of flight time going. The vexing problem of gifts for the friends with whom we will be staying has not been solved. It ought to be something, I think, that is peculiarly Lexington or Boston or at least New England. I wonder at the reaction if I showed up with a bushel of Maine potatoes - hard to get more "down home" than that.
There was now a little more than a week to go, and the lists were made. I'd read the two most well-known recent novels on New Zealand, The Bone People and Once Were Warriors. The latter has been controversial, describing in intimate and sordid detail contemporary urban Maori life, and is unsparing in its condemnation of the practice of blaming the whites (pakeha) for the Maoris degradation over the years. I suspect that Maori slums are not on our itinerary, but I want to know more about this fierce people who ate their dead enemies on occasion.
Despite my best intentions to travel light, I ended up with a large duffle bag on wheels and a backpack, and my friend Carol had two medium bogs. Jamie and family, bringing lots of gifts and cameras and amusements that would keep a 6 year old busy for four weeks, were loaded. The treasure turned out to be a portable DVD player about the size of a small laptop, with a dozen movies that will get lots of play over the next month. Car and I solved the "gifts for hosts/hostesses" problem with Vermont maple syrup in plastic jugs and scarves, both of which turned out to be well accepted - or our hosts were being extra polite.

BOSTON TO AUCKLAND

Logan Airport was nerve-wracking, with long lines and doubt in my mind that they would ever get us all aboard the full flight.
We were finally off on the great adventure. The much-touted extra leg room on American Airlines turns out to be not just hype - it is really there, and it was a comfortable six hours to Los Angeles. Qantas hasn't yet gotten the message, and quarters were very close, in a plane that appeared not to have an empty seat. United Airlines has announced it is pulling out of the New Zealand market, and evidently has already cut back on flights. We were also traveling at the height of summer in the Southern Hemisphere, the time most people want to visit.
Greeting us at Auckland Airport at 6:30 a.m. was New Zealand sister Joan Mirkin's daughter, Sarah, the first of the Mirkin family to extend what became an almost embarrassing hospitality. Sarah works and lives in New Zealand's largest city and commercial capital. Coffee and catching up on the rest of the family - and then we were climbing aboard the rented van for the drive to Rotarua, a couple of hours away, and the "center of Maori culture".
A resort city, Rotarua is set in a volcano's caldera, next to a lake of the same name, and is permeated by the smell of sulfur and the steam bubbling up from the fumaroles along the lake shore, some extending into town. Hot thermal baths provide the reason for the town's initial existence, and it grew up around the baths commercialized by the central government beginning in 1903. The Maori focus came later, although the Maoris (of the Te Awara tribe) have been in the area for centuries.
The hotel pool was heated, but not from the local waters, and therefore, not part of the "cure" which has drawn people to Rotarua for a century. Skipping the hotel dining room for breakfast the next morning, Carol and I walked into the center of town to the FAT DOG, a funky local restaurant that would have been at home in Arlington or Waltham. One cultural note: poached eggs don't come with toast automatically as they seem to here, as Carol found out.
An hour's walk along a trail which followed the edge of the lake brought us back to the hotel in time for a water-aided massage at the nearby spa, and melting in a series of increasingly hot outdoor pools. Pursuit of health or decadence?
The afternoon was spent at the Rotarua Museum, learning about the cataclysmic volcanic eruption of 1886 at nearby Lake Rotoramaha and the current state of Maori art. A wonderful docent made two and one-half hours much too short to see everything we wanted to - and the Museum would be closed the next day, Christmas. So many sights, so little time.
Christmas eve, along with several hundred other tourists, we were entertained at a Maori Hangi, dances, songs, hakas (more about that later) and a meal, in a replica of a Maori village in the countryside outside Rotarua. All the festivities celebrated Maori culture in a cleaned-up kind of way. A great plus was a group of visiting Tahitian women of all ages, who sang and danced for us. It was a little hokey, to be sure, but the singing of both groups---both original chants and Maori chants set to Western music---was really quite wonderful to hear.
The maori dialog left no doubt that they understand exactly what they are doing and that they are no less determined to have a place in New Zealand society than did their ancestors, whose fierceness forced the British to sign a treaty with them in 1840, having not been able to beat them conclusively in the field.
Although there are virtually no full-bloods left, those designated as Maori number 20% of the population. They are beginning to engender some hostility on the part of the whites at the concessions they have been able to wrest from the government.
Two weeks before our trip, I had gone to visit my brother, who was hospitalized in Virginia with a variety of ailments. He had not been doing well when I was there, but seemed to be recovering in the weeks afterward. But his condition hung over my preparations , and my journey as well.
Christmas in Rotarua was subdued by American standards - a few decorated trees but little of the street lighting we are used to. Carol said, “It’s a family affair here,” and I think she is right.
With the temperature in the 70’s, the Christmas spirit is hard to conjure up. It is my first Christmas season away from Lexington and all my children that I can remember. I’ve always had mixed feelings about this holiday, a time of confusion of feelings about celebrations that have nothing to do with my Jewish faith but which have such a secular context that it is difficult to avoid participating.

SOUTH FROM ROTARUA TO MAHIA

Leaving Rotarua, the town stopped quickly, with none of the straggling small communities that connect New England towns. The countryside takes over abruptly, and for long stretches, I was reminded of a drive across Newfoundland 30 years ago. The road was a two-lane blacktop, no shoulders no guard rails, no houses, no stores, very little traffic for dozens of miles. This is very open country with very few people.
Plantations abound - straight lines of evergreens climb precipitous hills in ordered files. Clear cutting strips the land of all trees, and replanting is done, I suppose, by hand, since machines would be useless in this jumbled terrain.
Distances are very deceiving in the mountainous and hilly areas like the ride south from Rotarua. What looked like five hours on the map actually took seven.
The drive south east took us through the town of Napier to our next stop, a sheep farm stay near the Mahia Peninsular on the southeastern coast of the North Island. Our “cottage” is the rebuilt sheep shearers’ quarters, hauled up from the lowlands some miles away. From the living room, at 9 p.m. the sun is setting to the right over the peninsular, while two hundred feet below us, the surf crashes on the rocky shore. The view to the left is northeastward up the coast towards Gisbourne.
We were on a working sheep farm, with 2000 head on 150 acres of hills. There are cattle roaming as well, and sheep and cattle shit everywhere - the “cottage” is surrounded by paddocks, with sheep who have gotten under the fence in our front yard. Lee, of course, is entranced.
The climb was steep - the van wouldn’t make it until we had unloaded the passengers and some of the luggage. But once up there, the view was terrific.
Christmas dinner was awaiting us in the fridge - not the traditional turkey but New Zealand crayfish, the size of two pound Maine lobsters without the claws.
Our hosts were away but a friendly farm-sitting couple took very good care of us, and friends of theirs shared a large piece of Pavlova with us, New Zealand’s national dessert. Invented to honor Anna Pavlova, the great dancer, on her first visit to New Zealand in 1893, it is a concoction of whipped cream, meringue and fruit, that is both beautiful to behold and exquisite to taste when properly made.
The following morning was spent at a spa 20 kilometers away, high on a hill in the dense forest, with a series of heated pools. I spent more time than I should have in the hottest of the pools, and scared myself and everyone a bit, but recovered relatively quickly, A small shop at the spa had greenstone carved jewelry, which turned out to be the best value we saw on the trip - but, alas, like all travelers, early in the trip we had no means of comparison, and we didn’t buy nearly enough.
There was a surf beach at the nearby village of Makanga that occupied our afternoon. Our last day included a massage for me from a local therapist in return for his getting a reiki treatment from Cynthia, and I cemented the relationship with a spare jar of maple syrup. Next trip, I will stock it by the case.
Lee got a horseback ride, as well as several on a 4 wheel ATV which seems to be the main method of transport on pasture farms. She got to romp with half a dozen sheep dogs, and in general had a great time.
It is hard to describe how bright the stars are in the clear night atmosphere, far from city lights and air pollution. The view from the front deck over the sea at night was very difficult to leave for bed. And leaving the farm, called in Maori, Te Au (The Mist), was even more difficult.

MAHIA TO WELLINGTON

Lee had a date to swim with dolphins at an aquarium in Napier on Friday morning. From a message awaiting us at the aquarium, I learned my brother's condition had worsened, but efforts to reach my sister-in-law proved unavailing. While the news was not unexpected, I began to brace myself for worse.
A night at a not unpleasant commercial hotel in Palmerston North broke up the journey south to Wellington. As we drove towards the capital city, the hills smoothed out, the road proved straighter and we reached Joan Mirkin's home on the south side of the city shortly after noon.
Joan's home sits high on a hill overlooking Wellington Harbor with a view to the southwest into Cook Strait, the body of water between North and South Islands. Ferries between the islands passed in the middle distance, and a few pleasure boats were out, though not in the numbers I would have expected on a warm summer's day. (I found on this, as on many other occasions, that I needed to keep in mind that New Zealand, with a total land area about that of California has a population 40% less than Massachusetts - just 3.8 million people.)
Present for lunch were Joan's twin nephews, the 20 year old sons of her brother Geoff, as well a Joan's boyfriend Phil, a painting contractor. The twins had stopped in to see us on their way to what was assuredly the only Jewish children's camp in New Zealand, where both would be counselors. With just 7,000 Jews in the country, it is essentially an invisible minority, shrinking yearly.
Dinner was quintessentially NZ: lamb chops, beef steaks, and venison sausage, barbecued on the gas grill on the deck, with fresh tomatoes, and lettuce, potato salad and wonderful bread. Jamie's old friend Jennie Pike, who had been head of NZ/AFS in 1969, and her husband Doug Crump and son Jamie (!), joined us, for a wonderful evening.
The house was a bit cramped with five guests but we managed. Cultural note - there are no screens on windows in any of the city dwellings we visited since insects seem to be almost non-existent, and those that do get in are tolerated. I got to check my e-mail that morning, and was amused to find nothing of substance in 67 messages!
The weather, which had been pleasant but cool and partly cloudy, relented and gave us a couple of days of sun and warmth. Part of one day was given over to the marvelous new national museum, Te Papa, and several hours in a recreated "bush" (NZ for forest) guided by Jennie's husband, a polymath scientist who knew the name and circumstances of every plant, bush and tree. Doug gardens, does world-class needlepoint, and has lived in the states on several occasions.
Jennie caters on a part-time basis for many of the embassies in Wellington, and the wonderful meal at her home that night was testimony to her skill, with a frozen boysenberry cream pie for dessert that was totally over the top. Carol, who ordinarily is a semi-vegetarian, discovered fresh New Zealand lamb and for the rest of the stay at least, became a flesh eater, like the rest of us.
We were wined and dined and cosseted beyond belief, including a gala New Year's Eve party at Joan's. a good deal of which I missed, felled by an allergy attack that struck me down. My mood had not been exactly effervescent, dimmed by thoughts of my brother, but Carol was relentless in moving me along, assuring at least one long walk every day.
I found a New Zealand of few imperfections. The people recycle religiously, the streets are clean, and the environment is treated respectfully everywhere we went. If crime and poverty and squalor are present, they are little in evidence. Admittedly, we saw nothing of the small Maori towns and neighborhoods, but in the areas we visited, the Maoris appeared thoroughly integrated into the larger society, and there has been recompense for past wrongs. So much so, in fact, that I found some mutterings among the whites about the pendulum having swung too far. The Maori are certainly still an underclass, but gains appear to have been made.
Rugby, the premier national sport, is dominated by Maori, with cricket less so. My first ever live cricket match was underway in a stadium in Wellington when we wandered in. Typically, a game goes on for most of the day, and important matches can last several days.
After an hour, I began to have some slight understanding of the strategic nature of the game - but an hour was certainly enough. Around us were people who would be there until dark.
Before I had retired early to nurse my allergies on New Year's Eve, Doug Crump and I talked long about New Zealand and the fact that a country with less than 4 million people has produced the best sailors in the world, plus world class rugby players, mountain climbers and track and field athletes. Doug had no easy explanations.
Wellington, as the capital of the country, is the site of the parliament buildings, which we toured and admired. The political parties are both far more socialistic than ours, in the sense of providing for all layers of society, and changes in administration have not meant big changes in government policy, on the whole.
As we loaded the car on New Year's morning to begin the journey to the South Island, Jamie told me he had gotten a call that Harvey had died. I felt the same conflict I had felt in Virginia when I had seen him two weeks before we left - I was committed to the trip and refused to believe that he was as bad as he evidently was. He died on December 31st, just two weeks short of his 76th birthday.
I reached his daughter Joan, and later his wife Ruth, who comforted me as I tried to comfort her.
It is some seventy years since Harvey and I beat each other’s brains out while our mother, Lucy, stood helplessly by. Glastonbury was the stocks then, and we were the country cousins to the rest of the family - the Katz boys from Glastonbury. Trolleys still ran along Main Street to Hartford , and the hills along the New London Turnpike were full of peach orchards.
Our paths diverged but never separated. I was best man at his wedding at Terplitsky’s Old English Manor on the Boardwalk in Atlantic City. I was with him the night he became the first Democrat elected the state legislature from Glastonbury, keeping faith with our father’s bedrock adherence to the Democratic Party.
We never lost touch and we grew closer as the years went on. Fifteen months ago, he and Ruth were with me at my wife;s death,
And now it is over but I will keep my memories of his great good humor - never with malice, and always enjoying a joke on himself. He was a good lawyer, a good husband, a good father and a good brother - and I will miss him.

WELLINGTON TO CHRISTCHURCH

The car was left at the ferry terminal in Wellington - we would pick up another on the other side - as we began the three hour trip in calm seas and sunny skies. Most of the trip is through Marlborough Sound, with hills rising on all sides, very lush and green, and isolated homes widely scattered along the shore and up on the slopes.
We did pick up a car in the small terminal town, Picton, but as Jamie said, "What a country!" Through miscommunications when we changed our ferry schedule, no van was waiting for us as promised. Rather than make us wait the four hours until the time the van was expected, we were given a Camry, and told to go on our way with the assurance that the van and what luggage wouldn't fit into the Camry would be delivered to our hotel, two hours down the coast, that evening. And so it was. Avis in New Zealand really does try harder.
The trip down the east coasts of the South Island took us through the wine country of Marlborough, and then along the coast, through hills with the ocean on our left. Seals basked in the sun in the kelp beds in the shallow coves. Caravans and tents showed up unexpectedly in makeshift campsites on the narrow coastal plain. NZers are casual about where they camp, - any likely patch of level grass seems to qualify.
Kiakora, a small town right on the water two hours south of Picton, exists primarily as the base of the whale watching boats which follow the sperm whales which inhabit the ocean off the South Island. We were fortunate enough to see four whales break from their stay on the surface and dive, flaunting their massive tales in the air.
Abalone shell, which is called paua in Maori, is collected in quantity in Kiakora and polished to bring out its multicolored surface. Whole shells and shell made into jewelry and souvenirs dominated the stores which have sprung up to take advantage of the whale watchers drawn to the town.
Christchurch, the largest city on the South Island, and jumping off place for most Antarctic expeditions, had the feeling of a city in the British Midlands, complete with the Avon River running through the heart of the town, and punts as in the namesake river in Oxford England.
Our accommodations were in a bed and breakfast which turned out to be two houses, one of which was turned over to us. Carol and I had the first floor, complete with living room, dining room, kitchen, bath and large bedroom, with a similar suite upstairs. with two bedrooms. A Victorian home built in 1903, it was restored by a German couple, with two children, aged four and five.
Lee and the children bonded immediately, and she spent all her free time with them. Unusually, the five year old was a boy born to a Maori woman and adopted by the German couple. Unusually, the father told us, because Maoris rarely let children be adopted out of the community. He said, in this case, the mother had not wanted her parents to know she was pregnant and was happy to have the child placed with a white family.
The town was relatively empty, with many people away, we were told, on holiday. I reached Jo Hannah, and learned that she, Stanzie, Mara and Harry will all be at Harvey's funeral in West Hartford tomorrow. Despite his many ailments, I never truly thought I would outlive him. Seize the day and make the most of it, as Carol keeps telling me.
As in most New Zealand cities, a botanical garden and park figure prominently in the configuration of the town, and Christchurch was not exception. Theirs including a huge wading pool which Lee took full advantage of. Carol and Cynthia walked to the park from the house while we followed in the car. Both are avid walkers, and I slow them down, although I try to do at least a mile a day.

CHRISTCHURCH TO WANAKA

On Sunday, January 5th, we headed west, across the Canterbury Plains, the largest level farming area in the country. On the South Island, mountains run down the country from north to south roughly two-thirds of the way across. Driving over Arthur's Pass - we couldn't resist the obligatory picture of Arthur at his pass - we arrived on the west coast at Hokitiki, and traveled a few miles south to Whataroa, a very small town, where we had reservations at a farm.
What was once sheep and beef cattle country along the west coast between the sea and the mountains is now the province of thousands of milk cows, whose daily production gets trucked to Hokitiki, to the processing plant that turns it into dry milk for export to the Orient.
The farmer, at whose specially-built-for-tourists home we stayed, leases 150 acres for dairy cattle, fenced off into neat 5 acre paddocks between which the herd of 500 cattle are moved frequently to keep the grass fresh. He has another 90 acres which is being developed for the same purpose, as well as 70 acres he keeps for himself to handle 100 sheep and a few cows.
He was my age, and we found we had both served in the Army of Occupation in Japan in 1946-47, albeit in different armies. He and his wife proved great company, talking of their 8 children and 22 grandchildren, all except two children living outside New Zealand. Here, as with other families we met, the children evidently find New Zealand too confining, and many take off to see the world, marry abroad, and never come back permanently. Making it easy is the fact that New Zealanders can work in the UK and other Commonwealth countries for up to two years without special papers or permits.
We were the only guests while we were there, and used most of the available rooms. Breakfast was part of the package, but dinner was on offer and we wisely ate in both nights we were there - marvelous lamb one night and corned beef and blue cod the next.
We had seen the tiny town - population 350 - which appeared to lack much in the way of anything except a convenience store with a snackbar. Whataroa's size and low density of people are typical of the west coast - the entire Westland area, thousands of square miles, has only 31,000 inhabitants.
Jet boats were invented in NZ to cope with the multitude of shallow rivers. We had our first experience at Whataroa, running down one river to the sea and up another to reach the only mainland nesting area in NZ of white herons. Dozens were on their nests, taking care of their young chicks, with spoonbills looking on from their own nests - a truly lovely sight, and reachable only by jetboats, which operate in as little as eight inches of water at speeds up to 30 miles per hour.
The land that has not been claimed for farming on the west coast is temperate rain forest, full of huge fern trees, creepers entwining the other species, and as dense as would be expected with the enormous rainfall on that part of the island. Since NZ has virtually no native mammals and a paucity of insect life, the walk through a portion of the jungle to reach the blind on the river, set up to observe the herons, was most comfortable.
That afternoon, Cynthia, Carol and I found the beach a Okarito, twelve miles away. Set in a magnificent shallow bay, perhaps three miles long between the headlands, the beach was a hundred yards deep with fine black sand - and no more than 20 people in sight as we drove in through the tiny beach resort. Okarito had been a gold mining town of 3000 souls briefly in the 1860’s, but now had about 20 permanent residents and a dozen “baches” - NZ for weekend cottages.
Cynthia’s adventure for the day consisted of being knockdown by a wave and being dragged seaward by the undertow while looking for a waterfall we had seen earlier. A passerby hauled her out, wet but undaunted.
Lee had a wonderful time on the farm, riding on the 4 wheel ATV, watching the milking at the central milking parlor, and feeding the sheep in a small corral adjoining the house. She started holding bread over the fence - but by the second day she was in the pen, with the sheep crowding around her.
The farming couple were delightful. He is third generation New Zealander, a legitimate farmer, while she is a master weaver who has taught weaving in Japan for a number of years.

COUNTER-CULTURAL NOTE: When the farmer was growing up, New Zealand had not converted to the metric system, and he still talked of miles and yards and feet, and not meters and kilos.

ROADS: New Zealand roads are designed for small cars and little traffic. An unexpected feature are one-lane bridges, even on major highways. As you approach, signs indicate whether you have the right of way, and we backed up only once. Evidently, the lack of traffic when most of the bridges in the countryside were built dictated the money saving configuration. There are long stretches of this two lane blacktop without shoulders or guard rails in the mountains, where passing is possible only when the slower vehicle ahead , usually a truck, pulls into a “lay-by”. NZers tend to be impatient behind the wheel, and we were honked at on several occasions for our relatively slow pace, albeit at the speed limit of 66 miles per hour. Driving is on the left, and the few times I’ve driven when Carol and I have gone off on our own, it has not been a problem, as along as one is careful in entering and exiting the roundabouts, which we would call traffic circles and which are much more common in NZ.

Contrary to our expectations, NZ has turned out to be virtually rainless for our trip. It rained last Saturday night for the first time on our trip, but the sky was clear by morning. We had expected the South Island to be cooler than the North but the opposite has been true - we were experiencing temperatures in the 80’s for the first time.
With the high rainfall, the landscape is unbelievably lush, which is wonderful to behold, but hell on my allergies. I found some Chlortrimetron which seemed to work.
South from Whataroa, the main road meets the Franz Josef Glacier, and everyone except me - I’m not especially fond of helicopters, - rode a copter to the glacier and loved the experience. It is also possible to take a guided walk in, and all the tourist amenities are in evidence.
From the glacier, it was a fairly brief run to Wanaka, to enjoy the hospitality of the Guthrie family, John, Jenny and assorted young people. John and Jamie had been best friends at school, and John and his kids had been to visit with us in Lexington on a number of occasions over the years. John teaches marketing at the University of Otago, and most years has managed to find a conference or a lectureship that gets him on the road. Their home is in Dunedin, and Jenny is a lawyer working for the law firm of Geoff Mirkin, Jamie’s New Zealand brother.
The family has a rambling summer home on Lake Wanaka, which for twenty years had been the home of John’s father, and was still housed an apartment for his unmarried sister, who had also visited with us twenty-five years ago.
With six Guthries and five of us, tents proved to be very useful - the children, including Lee, slept in one and Carol and I in another. On the grounds were a grass tennis court - John plays doubles on an international level - and a greenhouse, and a very complicated water system that John’s son, Hamish, 18, was attempting to subdue.
John’s father was an avid gardener and there were flowers and bushes everywhere. Inside the house, acres of books were piled in every room, together with memorabilia and just plain stuff, accumulated in the 25 years of his father’s retirement.
A beach is a quarter mile away, with snow-capped mountains rimming the lake. John launched his ski boat, and Lee got a ride on a “biscuit” which we would call a tube. She even tried the water skis but that didn’t quite work out. The three Guthrie children and John himself are very proficient skiers.
Wanaka is a summer resort, but primarily for cottages. We had the laziest days of the trip, walking, reading in the garden, taking the boat up the lake - it is miles long and not very wide - and on the last day, celebrating John’s birthday with an outdoor lunch at a winery on the lake shore a couple of miles away.
Reading in the garden, I was serenaded by songs of birds I’d never before heard, the soft shush of the sprinklers and the murmur of Lee and the Guthrie children and their friends from the nearby tent.
Meals were excellent, although on the first day, we arrived at 4:30 for dinner which finally materialized at 9 o’clock. Most meals at the Guthries are barbecue of one kind or another.
On our last night, there were sixteen of us on hand, for Jenny at the last minute had invited a family of six to join us, but it went off without a hitch. Dinner featured lamb chops and sausages, with oven-baked chicken legs, boiled potatoes, asparagus, a green salad and tomatoes, easy to throw together is you have the ingredients. NZers love FRESH in fruits and vegetables and the difference is palpable. Jenny was a marvelous hostess.
The visit ended on a high note, with everyone together for lunch in the open at Rippon Vineyard’s restaurant on the lake shore, accompanied by the establishment’s excellent Merlot-Shiraz.

WANAKA TO QUEENSTOWN TO DUNEDIN

Clearly, we had to follow a schedule on this trip, because so much of it involved meeting and staying with friends. But it also meant passing by places that were clearly worthy of closer scrutiny. As unlikely as it seems, another month would not have been too much time to enjoy all there was to embrace.

CULTURAL NOTE: In many NZ homes, as in England, the toilet is in a separate room from the shower or tub or wash basin. Many hoppers have two flush modes, to save water - light for liquids and full for other materials. The hot and cold faucets are often reversed.

The road from Wanaka to Queenstown crosses the Crown Range, and descends in a series of esses into the valley where Queenstown sits, providing dramatic views of the lake and the countryside. The town is the most popular winter and summer resort in New Zealand, and the tourists are everywhere.
International flights direct to the town’s small airport bring Japanese, Chinese and other Asians, and many of the tourist stores are Japanese owned, apparently.
Our lodging was a bed and breakfast, chosen for the owner’s status as a “natural healer”. It was a couple of miles out of town, set into a steep hillside, with spectacular gardens and a stream running through the property. Small waterfalls in the stream were just outside our door, making a lovely white noise.
In keeping with the hostess’ profession, breakfast was completely organic, which worked well with the bread but not as well for me, at least, with the cereal. But homemade jams, yogurt, black currant juice and a very good herbal tea were all consumed with appreciation.
Queenstown is the gateway to Milford Sound, a long deep fjord that has been the focus of visitors’ attention since the West Coast was opened in the 1860’s. Two options for visiting exist: a six hour bus trip in and the same six hours out, or a flight of half an hour.
We had booked the latter, but the weather refused to cooperate, with clouds down below the tops of the surrounding hills. We settled for a trip to the top of one of the local hills by gondola, where a ski lift went further up the hill for those intrepid souls, like my son and granddaughter who chose to come down concrete chutes on wheeled sleds.
After three days, the weather on Sunday morning lifted enough for us to fly into and over the Sound, but without landing - which left us with some spectacular memories but not really satisfied.
In the meantime, we had taken a trip to the Dart River - first, a bus to the village of Glenorchy, occupied when we arrived by a motorcycle rally. Another bus brought us to the river, along a highway, unpaved, through the bush. Although the road was designated a national highway, we forded streams at least four times in the hour ‘s ride, passing several of the sites of the filming of Lord of The Rings.
A ten minute walk through the bush to the landing site, and then an hour’s ride up the Dart on a jet boat, far enough so that the trees were down to the water’s edge on both sides and navigation became problematic.

CULTURAL NOTE : The opossum is not native to NZ. It was introduced, accidentally or deliberately, some years ago. With no natural enemies, it has overrun large areas of the country, devastating forests. Declared a national pest, it is exterminated whenever possible. The thrifty NZers have devised a method for combining the fur of the animal with wool to produce exquisitely soft sweaters, hats and other apparel. At Glenorchy , I found a shop which tanned the hides and made gloves and caps and jackets of the fur - of surpassing softness and warmth.

Carol and I had also taken a steamer to the far end of the lake, on a lovely calm afternoon, while waiting for the weather to clear. Although Milford Sound is only a few miles in a direct line from Queenstown, the mountain range which separates the two areas produces distinctly different climates. Queenstown weather is not an indicator of what is happening across the range to the southwest.
Eventually, on the last afternoon, the weather cleared enough for us to fly into the Milford Sound area, but not unfortunately to land. The area lived up to its hype - next time, the bus trip for sure.
Jamie’s NZ brother, Geoff Mirkin, joined us in Queenstown, staying at a hotel in town. We traveled to Dunedin in a caravan, with Geoff taking us over out-of-the way roads through the wine and sheep country of Central Otago, the province of which Dunedin is the central city.
The countryside continued to be hilly, with strange rock formations showing through the pasture land. A mid-trip stop for ice cream which had become a daily - sometimes, twice daily event - broke up the four hour trip.
NZ ice cream puts most American brands to shame, for creaminess and richness. Even Carol, who normally completely eschews ice cream, was seen scrapping the last of a two-liter carton of Caramello ice cream at Geoff’s one evening.
GUSTATORY NOTE: NZ milk is much richer than American, due evidently to the fact that the cows are pasture fed on grass or hay - in the winter - and virtually never on grain. Few antibiotics are needed, and “trim” milk, which is what we would term 2%, tastes as good as our whole milk.
In Dunedin, Carol and I stayed with Rose Mirkin, in the same room Jamie had occupied more than 30 years ago, while the others were lodged with Geoff and Sue in the house just below Rose’s. Both sit high on hill overlooking the harbor and Otago Peninsular, jutting eastward into the Pacific Ocean.
It was cloudy and cool our first morning in Dunedin, and I broke down and bought a pure wool sweater on sale for NZ $60 (about US $35). My luggage was falling apart by this time, and Geoff drove us to a discount house (yes, in NZ too), and Carol found place mats and coasters.
Dinner at Geoff’s featured leg of lamb, and we managed to literally eat everything put on the table. Afterwards, Sue, Carol and I talked long into the evening.
Sue has worked in hospice in the past, in addition to her training as a physical therapist. She quizzed both of us on the death of our spouses, interested in what she terms the “transition” but what we call death. In her terms, something happens that is not oblivion.
Sue recently signed up for courses in anatomy at the Otago Medical School to further her interest in connective tissue work as part of physical therapy.
The warmth that I remembered from her visit more than ten years ago to Lexington was there in abundance. She in turn had fond memories of Mara’s welcoming to her and her two sons when they visited Mara in Denver.
Rose’s house is a contemporary, which would fit nicely into Five Fields, having been built in the early ‘60s, when “contemporary” was virtually unknown in NZ. The house features wooden built-ins with comfortable seating, and large windows looking east over the harbor. The grounds are full of blooming flowers and trees, completely screening it on all sides from the streets. A garden path leads down to Geoff’s contemporary house below.
Dunedin is touted as the wildlife capital of NZ, based on three phenomena - a colony of yellow-eyed penguins and a colony of albatross, both on the eastward, ocean end of Otago Peninsular, which forms the south side of the town’s harbor; and a colony of seals in the same general area.
Both colonies were raising chicks during our visit, and we were fortunate - we were told - to see albatross on the wing. These magnificent birds, with wingspan up to eight feet, glide on wind currents for thousands of miles, returning to land to breed annually. Several swopped close overhead as we watched seals along the rocks below the rookery.
A few miles away, penguins, who had been out catching fish in the ocean waters, paddled ashore, across a wide beach, and up a bluff to their nests set in open areas above the beach.
An enterprising farmer had dug trenches in the nesting area, camouflaged them with lattice work and netting, and opened them to tourists. The trenches were deep enough so that the humans who passed through them were the height of the penguins, which evidently was reassuring enough so that we were within three or four feet of the nests. As we watched, the chicks, covered in grey-brown fur which they later lose, stick their long beaks down the parent’s throat to get at the regurgitated fish the parent has spent the day catching.
Lee struck up an acquaintance with another girl who appeared about her own age, and the pair seemed to be getting along very well. When we arrived back at the parking lot, it was to find that the girl was Dutch, spoke no English, but the two had found some means of communication.
A museum in Dunedin devoted much exhibit space to the various immigrant groups that had contributed to the city’s growth and diversity over the years. But I also learned that I would not be welcome as anything other than a tourist - a mock application for a permanent visa was turned down: probably too old and not wealthy enough. For Asians, the fence appears to be even higher.
Our three days in Dunedin included a trip out the northern coast of the harbor, to visit a colony of bachelor seals, and see divers coming up with abalone, the shells of which are a major temptation to tourist dollars.
The day before we left, we all went north along the coast to visit Moeraki, a sacred place, where perfectly round boulders grace the beach. Formed by accretion around a core, deep in the earth, the boulders rise to the surface through uplifting of the tectonic plates. It was a warm sunlit day, made warmer by the hospitality of Douglas McTavish, a NZ classmate of Jamie’s, a Scottish engineer who has worked all over the world, but has settled at Moeraki while working on a huge irrigation scheme for Central Otago.
A final meal with the Mirkins made we aware that while we would probably see Geoff and Sue and John and Jennie, it was unlikely that we would see Rose again. At 80, she can no longer make the long trip to the states.
After our 11 hour flight from Auckland to Los Angeles, I decided that the next trip to NZ, if we make one, will be in stages, with stops in Hawaii and Fiji.
After nearly four weeks, I was tired of travel, finally. Doing it again, I would opt for one day every week in which there was nothing planned - just time to relax and be rather than do. The last few days, I opted out of a couple of things, having run out of reserves.
But it was a wonderful experience. I don’t think I have ever before been to a place that I could find nothing wrong with. It is a country that the people who live there have decided to take care of. That in itself is unusual, and we may have missed the more disagreeable aspects of life in NZ, but we certainly saw few of them.
I want to go back to see all the things we missed, and to relish the warmth we felt from everyone we met. On our last day, shopping in downtown Dunedin, Carol asked for tee shirts for her grandchildren. The saleslady apologetically told her the store didn’t have what she wanted, but took us out on the street and pointed to a store further along the block that would carry what Carol asked for.
That encounter seemed to epitomize the spirit of the country. I hope it stays that way -