It's the second part of my tale in New Zealand, and this yarn focuses on the fellowship's camping trip from Boxing Day to New Year's Eve. You could say it was the one journey to end them all...
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You learn many uncomfortable truths when you go camping.
Firstly, wet rooms are a test of acrobatic skill. It's hardly a way to conduct
sleepy, morning bathroom routines. I already knew this from my experience of
house-hunting in Singapore, but it never occurred to me that you mightn't be
given a choice in the matter. After our first night camping, in Oamaru, about
80 miles north of Dunedin, I managed to get around this by hanging my clothes
over the towel rail, pointing the shower at the toilet, jumping precariously
around it, and at the end tiptoeing my way out of the room while clutching my
belongings like Indiana Jones taking a leap of faith to nowhere. And I'm still
here.
Oamaru is an unusual little town. It has grand avenues and
whitewashed buildings reminiscent of Italian piazzas or the Indian Raj, but
there's nobody there...which is something of a national theme in New Zealand.
The wide roads almost seem wasted on a population of barely 14 thousand. I
guess it doesn't take them very long to get around the place. That's just as
well because they have to be quite timely to catch a glimpse of the penguins
that turn up at exactly the same spot on the coast to nest every night (see
pictures). Clever penguins, that lot. If you go at 9pm, they will be there, surfing
USA on the incoming tide. I rather enjoyed that they were half-an-hour late
when we went to watch them. Perhaps they are Singaporean penguins. Other main
attractions in Oamaru are the Steampunk museum and the public gardens (see
pictures).
We spent the second night in Dunedin, which means
"Edinburgh" in Gaelic. South Island's second city was designed as a
deliberate nod to Scotland's capital. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the
city centre, dominated by a statue of a seated Robert Burns, who watches over
the city's best-laid plans as far as the hills (see pictures). Today, the two
cities are twinned. The old city certainly borrows from Edinburgh's
recognisable Palladian architecture, and it evens sits atop a hill, but the new
suburbs around it have deviated from this and developed their own style. There
is a large population -- large by South Island standards as there is hardly
anybody outside Christchurch -- in the south of South Island that has Scottish
ancestry, and this is obvious from place names such as Glenorchy, Invercargill
and Dunedin. Some Scot long ago must have thought, 'I'm sick of Scotland. I
want to go somewhere else!' And then he went to live in a place that looks just
like Scotland and built a city called Edinburgh. Dunedin overlooks the pristine
waters of Otago Harbour, which makes for the kind of view that people use in
memes ("Insert inspirational quote here"). The Maori name for Dunedin
is Otipoti, which holds the distinction of the best Maori name I came across during
my trip, because it sounds like Swedish Chef offering you a meat stew. I really
liked the city, but unfortunately we didn't have long enough to see all the
sights, as we had to move on to our base near Milford Sound in time for our
tour of that picturesque bay on the west coast of South Island. The original Speight's brewery
will have to wait for another day...
Christchurch (population 385 thousand) and Dunedin (118
thousand) are the only major cities I visited. You can tell they are small,
even at their best. Singapore is small, but it doesn't feel small. It is a
bustling and busy metropolis of over five million people, with skyscrapers that
light up the night. In fact, I note that the population of Singapore is greater
than that of the whole of New Zealand, and it's a running joke that there are
more people living in Hampshire than on South Island. Make of that what you
will! The New Zealand outside of the massively-overpopulated city of Auckland
is largely devoid not only of skyscrapers but of any multi-storey buildings at
all. Auckland is an interesting case. It's population as a proportion of New
Zealand's population is equivalent to London having 21 million people, New York
having 96 million or Shanghai having 416 million mouths to feed. The
overpopulation crisis is now so bad that the local government is offering
people money to leave the city and live elsewhere, and New Zealand's
points-based immigration system awards points to newcomers who choose to settle
in other cities. But in the rest of New Zealand, they have no need to build
upwards, because at this rate, they will never run out of space. What's more,
everything shuts down at 6pm. For many people, of course, that is among New
Zealand's most attractive qualities.
On our way from Dunedin to the southwestern region of Fiordland,
at the base of the Southern Alps and the setting for Sir Peter Jackson's Middle
Earth in 'Lord of the Rings', we drove through Otago. I could best describe
Otago as the miscellaneous box of New Zealand, a Bible-thumping region of
old-fashioned farmers with curious radio habits, rickety barns and rolling
hills that stands out from any other part of the country. In the distance but
clearly visible are the Southern Alps, and every so often you come across a
gravel road, but you can't tell where it goes. Dotted about the roads are tiny
villages and hamlets, some of which seem to exist only because people stop off
there for petrol and a coffee. That's how all the horror films start, too.
Well, the second home truth about camping is that no matter what
you think, you are not born with toilet etiquette. It is a learned quality.
What are you supposed to do in the queue for the portaloo? Do you speak with
the other people? Is it considered impolite to stare silently into the mud?
Should you attempt to huddle for warmth like penguins? Would your fellow
campers like some soup...or a shave? Do they require help swatting sandflies?
An instruction notice stuck to the side of the toilet would be very welcome.
The only time I had to use one during the trip was the night before the Milford
Sound cruise, when we were camping in near-freezing conditions near the west
coast. In my case, I don't think I had to bother much with conversation,
though, because I frightened the bleary-eyed competitors off with a torch. Even
if you did speak, they’re bloody hard to understand. New Zealandish is not a
phonetic language, and you should be particularly careful of vowels. Take the simple
request that you might hear at a café: “Please can I have a regular cappuccino
with a muffin?” Waiting for my transfer at Auckland airport, I heard this: “Please
kin I hiv a rigular kipucchaino wuth a maffun?” It continued thus for 11 (“alivven”)
days.
New Zealand is the only place in the world where you can go
directly from Scotland to Wales with nothing in between. Milford Sound, named
for Milford Haven, west Wales, is a pristine glacial fjord of crystal-clear
water surrounded by ice-capped mountains on the west coast of South Island.
Flowing into the Tasman Sea, it has been proclaimed as the world's top tourist
destination and Rudyard Kipling once declared it the eighth Wonder of the
World.
On the chilly morning after the chilly night in the mountains,
we set out for our Milford Sound cruise at 08:55, and the sound is every bit of
the wonder that Kipling proclaimed it to be (see pictures). As we pulled out of
the harbour, bottlenose dolphins appeared from below and swam in the boat's
slipstream all the way out towards the sea. On either side were some of the
country's most famous mountains: the 5500-ft Mitre Peak (so named because it
looks like the Pope's hat) watches over and prays while the 4300-ft Lion faces
the 5000-ft Elephant ready for battle on the other side. In fact, Mitre Peak
descends right down to the bottom of the fiord, another 1000 feet, making it
one of the tallest mountains in the world to rise directly out of the sea. The
Welsh theme continues with the 6600-ft Mount Pembroke, set behind the picture-perfect
Harrison Cove (see pictures). What's most striking about 5000-ft sheer drops is
their propensity to dwarf even the largest objects around you. This is the case
when you look at the sound's two waterfalls, Lady Bowen Falls and Stirling
Falls, which spring out of the cliff faces. Bowen Falls is 531 ft high,
Stirling Falls is 498 ft high, and they are separated by a distance of over
five miles. And yet they look as though they couldn't be half that size, or
half as far apart when framed against the backdrop of the mountains with
nothing but water in between. Between the two waterfalls is a seal colony that
likes to sleep atop a rock in the water. Lord knows how they slap their way up
there with those tiny flippers of theirs, but they probably deserve the nap
afterwards. Not only that, but Milford Sound is home to a colony of Fiordland
penguins. They must have been busy fiording while were we there, as we didn't
see them.
Our last stop on our southwards journey was the pretty waterside
town of Queenstown, not to be confused with the pretty inland town of
Queenstown in Singapore. The New Zealand incarnation might be the best place in
the country for reckless abandon. It is a hub of adventure sports, has a
thriving nightlife and hosts a small wildlife park where they hatch birds out
of kiwifruits. I was up for an adventure sport or two myself, but had to
recklessly abandon the idea upon discovering the extent to which bungee-jumping
would eat into my remaining funds. So, another one for next time. They don't call
it bungee-jumping. They call it "bungy-jumping", so I'm not too upset
about missing it, because I do not presently have sinus trouble, so they
probably wouldn't have let me do it anyway. We did have a go on the luge,
though. You can get a gondola right to the top of the hill and the views from
there, of the sprawling town climbing down from the hills and meeting the blue
waters of Lake Wakatipu, are astounding (see pictures). From the top, the luge
will get you down in about two or three minutes, but fear not, for you can keep
going to enjoy the view all over again. We went up five times!
Queenstown is the third-largest settlement on South Island, but
it's considerably smaller than Christchurch and Dunedin. It's so small that I
think the residents only have one hairdresser between them. I had this thought
when I saw the same woman walking around everywhere. It took me a few attempts
to realise that it was a different woman each time -- and on one occasion, it
was a man -- but that they all had the same haircut, late-coalition era Theresa
May. Now it may well be that there are many hairdressers in Queenstown, all of
them offering the chance to look like the British Prime Minister. Given the
omnipresent feeling of a time-lapse that follows you around New Zealand, I
wonder if they have just received the news that she's been elected an MP...
Queenstown crowned, it was back to a more solid bed in Christchurch
in time for the New Year. Some folks know how to have a good time down there,
despite the occasionally sleepy nature of the place. The nightlife is
concentrated around Hagley Park, the city’s main public common, complemented by
the greenery of the nearby Botanic Gardens. As we walked around the place on
New Year’s Eve, my favourite sight was a group of made-up, middle-aged lady
friends strolling down the road with each other, laughing and having the time of
the year! Most people were headed to the free concert at Hagley Park, where
they also had a fireworks display set up (see pictures). The concert comprised
local musicians performing a variety of original and cover songs, mainly rock
music. At 23:30, the acts changed, and the lead singer of the band coming on announced
that their job was to see off 2016 in the right style. Accordingly, I wondered
if members of the band were going to drop dead suddenly throughout the set!
Fortunately, it was not that literal of a style, and they instead performed some
rousing classics to see us into the New Year, pausing only for the fireworks at
midnight!
And it was the following day, the final day, New Year’s Day, that
we went to Akaroa (see pictures), and it was there, at long last, that I finally
found the golden Speight’s I had been looking for, the one beer in all of New
Zealand that was better than Singapore’s Speights. There it was, in this hotel
pizza bar in a sleepy town next to sleepy (and extremely hungover)
Christchurch. But find it I did, and so I could tender my resignation and fly
out of New Zealand the following day a contented man.
Over the last couple of days of the trip, I did have time to buy
one or two mementos. On that note, does anyone know any nice things to do with
Mesopotamia blue? It's not souvenir paint; it's cheese. And it's not from
Mesopotamia; it's from a shop next to 'Subway' in one of those miscellaneous
Otago hamlets.
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By:
The Imperial Orange.
12th January 2017
