EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the first of two installments.
By LAWSON LAU
A long, long time ago in a land far, far away, when I was a high school teacher who taught world geography, I dreamt of visiting two countries.
One was the United States of America. Since then, my wife, Pam, and I have lived more than 30 years in Illinois. We have also traveled more extensively in Al Capp’s Hew Hess Hay than Henry David Thoreau, who seemed to have lived with some measure of eco-contentment beside a pond.
New Zealand was the other country. We recently spent 16 glorious days, including Christmas 2013 and the new year, in the Land of the Kiwi.
Stunning spectacular days greeted us in our initial week in the North Island. Blue skies with temperatures in the low 70s to upper 50s were most welcome after I had to clear my driveway of 6 inches of snow the day before we left for New Zealand. And then on Jan. 5, I used the snow thrower to clear a path in bitter cold wind chill so that I could drive the minivan onto my driveway.
It was a nicely varied itinerary for our group of eight. We went on three group tours on coaches and ferries in Auckland, Bay of Islands and Queenstown, and spent much of the rest of our time driving in two rented vehicles. We drove from Auckland to Rotorua and then Wellington. From there, we flew to Queenstown in the South Island, where we picked up another two vehicles.
We then drove to Fox Glacier and Greymouth. Next, we went on a TranzAlpine train journey from coast to coast across the Southern Alps in the South Island. Finally, we flew from Christchurch to Auckland.
I’ll write on the North Island in this first of two stories.
Protruding tongue
In Rotorua is Te Puia, the New Zealand Maori Arts and Crafts Institute. Maori wood carvings often feature adult male figures with protruding tongues.
American mothers would not have encouraged such insolence in their children: “If you do that,” so they claim, “your tongue would freeze that way.” And it would appear that Maori adult men have provided all-knowing moms with proof enough. Maori mothers, however, have a different perspective. It’s all a cultural thing.
A Maori mother enlightens her American counterpart: “In wood carvings, it tells of the importance of oral tradition. Knowledge of our history and ancestors is passed on through the tongue.”
In person, it conveys a different message, especially when the Maoris are confronted with unwelcome strangers. Sticking out the tongue at close quarters at intruders signifies defiance and intimidation.
Combined with appropriate threatening hand gestures, the stamping of feet and unintelligible grunts, it transmits the keep-your-distance-or-else message.
Te Puia, located in a natural thermal valley, has steaming, bubbling mud pools and geysers that put up a continuous performance for tourists.
Roaming the Shire
A couple of weeks before we left for New Zealand, Pam, our daughter Andreana, our friend Jiahuan Guo and I watched “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.” It’s the first film in the Hobbit trilogy. My son JohnMark has watched the recently-released second film, “The Desolation of Smaug.” And all of us have watched “The Lord of the Rings.” These many-thumbs-up movies, in part, prepared us for visiting Hobbit country.
JRR Tolkien could have had New Zealand in mind when he wanted an idyllic, lush landscape for his tales of Middle-earth. Other gorgeous landscapes of mountains, valleys, gorges, waterfalls in the South Island provide the backdrop for other segments of the narratives. On the way from Auckland to Rotorua, we stopped at Hobbiton.
A two-hour bus tour brought us to the heart of the Shire with its grazing sheep. We walked right up to the doorstep of many of the 44 Hobbit holes, some with a fluffy stream of smoke rising from the chimneys. A profusion of blooming annuals adds color, character and charm to each front yard.
The original makeshift Hobbit holes designed for the movie were replaced with permanent structures to lure vacationing humans into the Shire. The entrepreneurs were in the process of enlarging the gift shop called the Shire Store, otherwise known as the Tourist Trap.
Our bus brought us to the dimly lit Green Dragon Inn, where we were given a choice of brew. Thus fortified, we continued our journey.
Harborside Market
At 9 a.m. Sunday along the Wellington harbor, it seemed as though all Wellingtonians were asleep except for a handful of joggers — until we came upon the Harborside Market.
A throng of early risers hovered over an array of fresh fruits and vegetables. It’s their Sunday farmers’ market. A nice head of freshly harvested broccoli went for NZ $1.49. Kiwi fruits in Champaign-Urbana stores tend to be wincingly sour. Here, the taste of the gold kiwis has a touch of creamy custard.
Wafted by the wind coming off the ocean, the inviting odors of fried foods drew us like seagulls to free food. The wide variety of food reflects the land’s immigrant community: Moroccan spicy chicken, falafel hummus, traditional Hungarian freshly baked pastries, Langosh fried bread, bacon and egg butty, mussel fritters, vegetable frittata, wieners, Cambodian roti rolls, Chilean hot dogs, empanadas, smoked salmon, Vietnamese sandwiches and kebabs. And venison: tender Bambi wraps. (Besides sheep and cattle farms, there are deer farms.)
Such multicultural foods are available in the towns we visited. No tips are required in restaurants; hence, prices are a tad higher than those in C-U.
Apartment suites
Friends Mike Fimmen and Mary Anderson and Pam’s younger sister Cindy and her husband Eric Chin joined our family on our New Zealand travel adventure. Our agent is David Chipps (davidc@goway.com.au) out of Sydney, Australia. The cost of hotels, rental cars, a coach tour, train tickets, internal flights came up to about $1,900 each. It does not include entrance fees to various sites we visited. Air New Zealand from O’Hare Airport to Auckland cost about a third of United Airlines.
Our accommodation consisted largely of hotel apartment suites with two rooms in each suite equipped with a kitchen and a washer and dryer. Occasionally breakfast was provided. I once made a bacon sausage sandwich to go.
With a combined experience of well over half a century, a love for cooking and with the availability of an equipped kitchen, Pam and Cindy dished up a Christmas feast of roast chicken, salmon, garlic bread, roasted potatoes, stuffing and assorted vegetables, which went down well with sparkling cider.
Exhilarating experience
On our first day in Auckland, we took the ferry from the harbor, a short walk from our hotel, and roamed Waiheke Island. A coach brought us the next day to the Bay of Islands, with stops at the Maori Waitangi Treaty House and the town of Russell, our most northerly venture.
In downtown Auckland is Sky Tower, the country’s tallest man-made structure. At the 720-foot platform, we had a panoramic view of the city and the harbor.
None of us chose to bungee jump from the Sky Tower. It would be a fall of 680 feet. It’s advertised as “completely safe.” No one has splattered the city’s sidewalk. Next time, maybe.
On the way south, we stopped by the roaring Huka Falls, where we used the unique “pay toilet” for 20 cents each. What is unique about it is that we had to pay not to increase the level of the waterfall.
We also briefly visited Craters of the Moon, a thermal area, and the Waitomo Glowworm Caves, where we saw the glow in the darkness but not the worm. We also stretched our legs when we walked a trail at the Redwood Forest.
When I taught the geography of New Zealand and the United States, I pictured the former as a miniature of the latter. It is so. Standing on Gillespie Beach, there is the immense, rolling Tasman Sea before us; turning around, almost a hop away, are the snow-capped mountains.
Is it a worthwhile journey into a country with a sparse 4.5 million people who drive on the other side of the road on mainly one-lane highways with a maximum speed of 62 mph as well as safety cameras or more popularly called speed traps in small towns with a 30 mph speed limit?
Anticipation sometimes turns out to be three-quarters of the real thing. Not so in this instance. Long was the anticipation; exhilarating was the experience.
Lawson Lau is a pastor at All Nations Baptist Church and part-time humanities faculty member at Parkland College. He was born in the Republic of Singapore (like the United States, a former British colony). It is 80 miles from the Equator, and hence it is always hot and humid summer, never winter.
The Lau family: A long expected journey - Champaign/Urbana News
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