* * Day 9, Te Anau

No way we could leave Dunedin without driving up and then back down the world’s steepest road. Whitney and I followed Paul Harris and Jane to the base, then he put all of us in his small car and chugged up the hill in first gear, Paul making jokes and noises like it wouldn’t make it. We chugged to the top of what was indeed a very steep hill, bracketed by sidewalks with steps. We survived with only minor injuries (none, actually). Then we hopped back into our car, bid Paul a fond farewell, and motored on to our next designation.

We took Highway #1 southward, then westward, skirting Invercargill, the other of the South Island’s southernmost cities. The terrain was initially pleasant rolling farmland, with thousands of sheep, heads bowed quietly, grazing in the fields. The land turned more open, like Montana, with expanses of scrubland, some wet enough to graze and some not. We stopped for a picnic lunch in a tiny village beside a playground where a young mother watched over her wild two-year old boy. It was warm and mostly sunny. But the sky to the west looked dark, uncertain, and ominous.

We reached Te Anau around 2:00 pm and found our hotel. The room wasn’t ready. We were vacillating over when we’d drive to Milford Sound, either then or the next morning. We decided to go then.

Milford Sound is on the West Coast, a World Heritage Site of reputed unparalleled beauty. Jane had visited before on her trip 29 years earlier and definitely wanted to go again. It was a “must see” destination from our earliest planning. It was also an 80-mile dead end.

The road from Te Anau started alongside Lake Te Anau, across mostly scrubland, but then entering pine forests. The road began to ascend, gradually at first, then increasingly steeper. We passed the trailhead where in two days hence we’d be starting our three-day hike on the Routeburn Track. The road passed a vast field of glowing lupine, and we reminded ourselves to stop for a photo on the “flip side.” The road then entered an area of an enormous glacial cirque, with towering granite walls. Rain began. All the peaks were hidden in the clouds and puffs of fog enveloped us.

At one point, we drove over gravel instead of pavement where earth-movers were repairing the road from an immense landslide from the mountain on our left. In other places, for as much as a kilometer at the time, the road narrowed to one lane only. There were several tour busses but the traffic was never thick. The road faced a huge, curved, stone wall of mountain, with seemingly nowhere to go. And then appeared the portal of a tunnel. Before we knew it, we were inside, following a line of cars, my eyes poorly adjusted to the utter lack of light other than my headlights. The tunnel descended and there was only one lane of traffic. It was completely disorienting.

We emerged from the western portal and the road continued steeply downward, making several switchbacks. Finally the road grade moderated and within a few more kilometers we reached the end at Milford Sound, about two hours after we began from Te Anau.

The view was sublime as we stepped into a rainy afternoon. There was a pleasant boardwalk that led through a lush forest to a great view at the water’s edge. We took lots of photos but mostly of clouds and fog. Somehow, in spite of the gloom, it was hard to be disappointed.

We drove back mostly under driving rain. The windshield wipers in the intermittent position took on a life of their own, alternating between fast, slow, and off. I was tired and had a headache. We had fifty more miles to go. Finally, we reached town and after scrambling for cover from the rain found dinner (which per usual took way too long and cost way too much money).

Finally back at the hotel, Whitney got on-line and learned that Virginia Tech had pulled a miracle and won a horribly played game in their post-season bowl to finish 7-6. Then she calmed her nerves by watching three hours of the movie Pearl Harbor. As we went to bed, the sky over the lake was finally clearing, but the forecast for the days we were to be on the trail coming up was dismal. “We have awoken a sleeping giant.”

This morning is mostly clear and we can see that Te Anau Lake is quite beautiful; this shore (east) is mostly flat and developed and the far side bracketed by small, forested mountains. The sunshine is a welcome antidote to my apprehension over the prospect of three days walk in the rain. But no sense worrying about an outcome that may not occur, particularly when we’re in the most appealing nation on earth.

* * Day 8, Dunedin 2

Day 7, Dunedin, 2^nd day

It was great to have two nights in the same place, as we stayed again with Paul and Maggie Harris. Paul graciously offered to spend all day with us, showing us around his beautiful city of Dunedin, me driving our rental car whilst he directed.

Our first stop was the mansion of a rich Jewish man, an Englishman who made his fortune importing and selling German pianos to the town’s newly wealthy citizens. His family died without heirs and the mansion was deeded to the city for a museum. It was open to the public, but there was a $17 admission fee per person, too dear for our budget.

Then we toured the city arboretum. Paul reckoned it to be at least a square kilometer large. He noted that the area was amazingly fertile and there was no sprinkler system; the plants were adequately watered naturally. The rose garden was incredible, with flowers of every size and color. Particularly impressive were some of the trees, including an immense sequoia. Walking past the duck pond, Paul mentioned his understanding that from time to time, some of the poorer students at the local university had absconded with some unlucky ducks to have for dinner.

We drove uphill out of the city on a narrow, winding road, to a fantastic overlook. There was a concrete viewing platform with several other tourists walking about. The view was of the entire city, with the Otago Peninsula to the left, west, the harbor at the point where the Peninsula attached itself to the mainland, and the city in the foreground.  

We then went to Otago University, where we walked around campus and saw the signature building with its Tower of London style clock tower. Paul said it was the location of many movies. Our friend John Gregg spent six months teaching at the dental school here 10 years ago, so it was fun seeing this same sight this many years later.

We drove to the train station downtown, an absolutely magnificent building which is the type that reminds me how utterly plain most of our architecture is. The outside featured granite and brick in three colors: light, dark, and maroon. Again, the clock tower was grand and inspiring. The distinguishing feature of the inside was the floor, made up of well over 1,000,000 hand-laid tiles.

Next door, we toured a free museum of transportation and technology. There were three beautifully restored antique motorcycles along with cars, busses, Maori boats, typewriters, computers, and phones. It was fun showing Whitney what life was like back in ancient times when we used punch cards at Virginia Tech to feed the sole campus computer.

Then we were off to lunch at a café on the Otago Peninsula. I had a seafood chowder with an enormous slice of olive bread. It was delicious, although it took twice as long to arrive and cost twice as much as we’ve come to expect in the States. Outside the picture window, two Harley riders brought their machines roaring to life, rattling the glass. One rider wore a Nazi-style helmet that Paul said was actually illegal here and certainly would provide no protection in a crash. The road was narrow and winding, in some places only one-car wide. At times it was near the crest of the Peninsula’s ridge, at others right by the water on the bay side. It was challenging driving but amazingly picturesque. We could have taken a thousand photos (we only took dozens), although the day had an uncertain sky with poor definition to the light.

We spent two hours at the Royal Albatross Center at the tip of the peninsula. There were millions of seabirds flying and cavorting about, gulls, cormorants, shags, skuas, many of them leaving evidence of our visit on the car windshield. The museum was fascinating, and at $5 per person, in our price range, while the outside tour of the albatross nesting site at $40 each was too expensive. It struck me the wrong way that we’d be charged lots of money to see nature. Paul and I talked about travel budgeting. He told me that he once took his family of four traveling for 8 weeks and faced an American Express invoice of $85,000 when he got home.  Yikes!

So we wandered to the leeward beach where we photographed resting seals and sea lions. Then we climbed back over the saddle to the windward side, overlooking the ocean and the waves crashing on the cliffs. We were keen to spot the great albatross, the giant soaring bird that is the king of the ocean skies. An older man teetered from the parking lot and wrestled with his coat in the brisk, cool wind on his way to the observation site. His name was Lynn, and he told me he visited often. Given the briskness of the wind, the quiet of his voice and the accent of his speech, it was difficult for me to understand him, but he said it was a perfect day for watching the great birds. “They need lots of wind to take off. And it’s just the right temperature.” We watched the sky for perhaps 20 or30 minutes. Then he spotted one of the great birds. It had an enormous wingspan, white with a fringe of black, which was as sleek and flat as a sailplane. It swept over us in a flash, then made a grand swing around the area and was gone. Over the next half-hour, several more came and went, in a similar pattern around the cliffs. Wow! They flew too fast to get good photos, but Whitney managed to take one shot overhead that was clear and well-centered, which I’ll post when I can.

We drove back into the city and re-filled the petrol tank, throwing another $110 into the car. Tired, and with a stretched budget, we bought dinner at Subway and fell asleep reading.

Today we depart for Te Anau and Milford Sound. The former is 3-1/2 hours away, then another 90 minutes to and from Milford back to Te Anau. So a long day in the car. Our backcountry trip is scheduled for two day from now and the weather report in the mountains is awful: rain, heavy at times, and highs in the low 50s.  Damn!

* * Day 7, Dunedin 1

Day 7, Dunedin

We began our day at the vacation home in Akaroa of David and Tracy Fisher, who we planned to meet at lunchtime. We had a simple breakfast of granola bars and orange juice and headed to the main street where we found the managing realty office and paid our rent. From the clerk, we got confusing directions where we could find an even more scenic drive off the peninsula. So we drove away from the village under a dark, heavy cloud-cover, and found a turn that took us steeply up one of the mountains that rims the bay. Quickly gaining altitude, the view opened up and on this curving, winding tight two-lane road, broad green vistas treated us in every direction. Sheep grazed quietly on the hillsides and bicyclists strained with exertion, but otherwise the road was so quiet we could stop in the middle of it to take photos, of which we took many. We spent an hour meandering around there on ridgetop roads, while Whitney slept in the back seat, before finally rejoining the highway and leaving the peninsula.

We reached the outskirts of Christchurch and turned south on Highway 1. Note here that we never actually entered central Christchurch, having heard that the entire downtown was destroyed by an earthquake in February 2011. 185 people were killed by the quake, which was the second worst earthquake in terms of damage ever to strike the country. We met residents of the city who said the quake seemed to last as long as a minute and was as loud as a freight train coming through the living room. Glass windows broke, china fell from the cabinets and framed photos flew off walls. Enormous cracks formed across level ground and landslides fell from cliffs. So we decided not to tour the city.

Highway 1 is the busiest road in the island, but is still in most places only two-lane, with a speed limit of 100 km/hr (about 62 mph). There were multiple passing zones where an extra lane was added for a kilometer or so, but using them provided scant advantage, as almost everybody was going the same speed. We were told there were great views of the distant mountains to our right (west), but the cloud-cover prevented us from seeing them.

Our first destination was the home of Tracy and David Fisher. We learned of the Fishers as they owned a vacation home in Meadows of Dan, Virginia, about an hour from our home in Blacksburg. We turned off the highway in the center of Ashburton, where the traffic was busy enough to be at a full stop. The Fisher home was 6 km to the southeast, on a quiet country road through flat farmland.

Approaching the house, I felt like we were approaching South Fork Ranch in the TV show Dallas. There was an elaborate brick entryway to the broad two-storey home.  Tracy and David burst from the house and greeted us heartily. Tracy and David are Australians, but moved to New Zealand and bought this farm, where they grow grain crops. Both are ebullient and wonderfully vociferous. David was bawdy and comical, regaling us of stories about his journeys across America and around the world. Tracy had a huge smile on her face and glowed radiantly, her pale blue eyes shining. We were also joined by their three kids, two boys and a girl, all around 20 years old. One son was into farming and planned to join his dad in business and the other attended a small church college in Kentucky. The girl was pregnant, and I later learned from Whitney that her husband and first child were visiting his folks for the holiday in Australia.

We were warned by our mutual friends not to talk politics or religion. So what did we talk about? Politics and religion, mostly religion, ours being much different from theirs. We decided that they were devoted Christians living in one of the most secular countries on earth, and we were a blended family with roots in Judaism and Catholicism, now mostly atheist, living in one of the most Christian countries on earth.

Most farmers I know continually struggle, but the Fishers have done well, thank you very much. In addition to the vacation cottage they own in Akaroa, they own another in the Mount Cook area to the west and still another in Virginia. When most people travel overseas, they rent a car to get around. The Fishers buy cars, typically huge American cars from the 1960s, and ship them home. After Tracy fed us an amazing lunch of lamb roast, vegetables, and potatoes, we walked to the garage and barn where they kept three American cars in the former and two huge farm combines in the latter. David and I climbed the ladder to the cab the newest combine that he said cost a half-million dollars, where he sat me behind the plush, upholstered driver’s seat. The machine had a computer and GPS and could navigate itself, while carefully metering the planting or harvest. He explained how his area was one of the most fertile places to grow crops in the world and how, through careful management and green techniques, they attained among the highest yields per acre anywhere, while maintaining soil fertility.

We had a wonderful visit and by the time we left, my gut hurt from laughing so much. We eagerly look forward to seeing them back in Southwest Virginia when they return to Meadows of Dan.

We continued southbound to Dunedin on Highway 1, with Whitney giving me a break for a brief nap, she took  a turn behind the right-side-of-the-car steering wheel and did her first-ever left-side driving. She did great!

We arrived around 6:30 at the home of Paul and Maggie Harris, who were renting us rooms for the next two nights. The Harrises were referred to us by our friends back home, John and Leslie Gregg, who had spent six months living with them in Dunedin ten years earlier. Paul sent us downtown for dinner at a restaurant where we spent 50% more than a similar meal would have cost back home. We came back to the house and enjoyed the next couple of hours chatting in the parlor and getting better acquainted.

The home is a magnificent structure in the Tudor style, on a residential street on a hillside in an older section of the city. The interior rooms have high ceilings with exposed hardwood beams. There is elegance at every turn, from the hardwood furniture to the upright piano to the antique artwork and wallpaper on the walls.

Both Harrises are now retired, but Maggie was an English teacher and was delighted when I presented her with two of my books. “Within the first few pages, I’ll understand your style,” she said.  Gulp! I didn’t find out what Paul did for a living, but we’ll learn more about that today as he is keen to take us touring on the nearby Otago Peninsula, where there are albatrosses, penguins, and other exotic wildlife, “only twenty minutes from the city,” according to Paul. It is early morning now, finally under what appears to be a clear sky.

 We look forward to another day of fun, adventure, and camaraderie here in New Zealand, the most appealing nation in the world.

* * Day 6, Akaroa

Day 6, Akaroa

The Banks Peninsula juts into the South Pacific like a bulbous, dissected thumb at the base of the plain south of Christchurch. In reality, it is the caldera of an extinct volcano, with Lyttleton Harbor nearly splitting the peninsula from the mainland on the north and Akrora Harbor doing much the same from the south. On the eastern shore of the latter is the village of Akaroa, spilling upwards from the shallow waters of the harbor onto the nearby green hills.

The entire peninsula has a Scottish feel to it, with deep green fields of grass interspersed with even deeper green forests. Akaroa is one of New Zealand’s earliest settlements, founded by the French in 1840, as remote to Europeans as any place on the planet. The streets in town are all named “Rue”, the French word for street, thus Rue Lavaud is Main and we’re on Rue Jolie. Our habitation this night is a summer cottage of Tracy and David Fisher, friends of a friend in Meadows of Dan, Virginia, where they own another home as well. It is an older one storey wooden frame place, with a rustic, uncomplicated charm of mismatched doors, salvaged furniture and antique wiring and plumbing. There are ‘for sale’ signs about, as if we’ve arrived just in time.

The access road is a curvy, tight affair, with lots of cars and busses, all of the seemingly going slower than I wished.

But I digress.

The day began at the home of Libby Gairdner and Tim Anderson in Hamilton, where we’d shared Christmas dinner the day before. After an emotional, heartfelt farewell to them and their son Jared and daughter’s boyfriend Israel, we drove to the airport in Auckland where we put another $100 worth of petrol into the mid-sized rental car before turning it in. The domestic terminal was exclusively, or almost so, served by Air New Zealand. At the security check, we were never asked to take off our shoes or empty our liquid containers by the staffers, who were the friendliest I’ve ever encountered. Our trip to Christchurch was on the Airbus equivalent of the Boeing 737, a small, two-engine jet. I had a window seat but there was nothing to see outside except clouds. Instead, I spent my time chatting with the older woman, dressed in red, who sat beside me. She was a widow who moved from Auckland when her husband passed away 7 years earlier to the quiet, remote Bay of Islands, three hours north. She was on her way to see her son in Christchurch. Like many Kiwis, she had traveled extensively, including a lengthy Mediterranean cruise earlier in the year. She said, “New Zealanders like to travel, but almost every trip for us is a long one.”

Whitney successfully navigated us out of the Christchurch area and onto the Akaroa highway. It swept across the plains and onto the peninsula, where it hugged the shoreline of the various bays. Then we climbed over the mountain separating Lake Forsyth from Akaroa Harbor, giving us a splendid view to the latter as we descended out of the summit fog on the cool, overcast day.

 After settling in, we walked through town and uphill towards what was billed as the French cemetery. We were expecting a collection of weathered headstones, but found instead a single monument, an obelisk with an engraved explanation that the earlier ones were in such disrepair when the town fathers finally got around to restoring it that they couldn’t be used. Whitney was testy and disagreeable; Jane and I knew it from Whitney’s youth that she was exhibiting obvious signs of being tired, but she refused to take a nap. Her mood improved when she entered a gift shop and bought a couple of gifts for her friends.

Much to Whitney’s disappointment, for dinner we eschewed the restaurants and instead bought makings for spaghetti and meatballs, which I cooked in the tiny kitchen. It was actually pretty tasty in spite of the antique three-eye electric stove and of the makeshift nature cooking implements. Jane wants to eat the left-overs for breakfast.

Afterwards, I went for a walk on the shoreline of the harbor. Someone was shooting skyward some fireworks from the village, with colorful sparklers flashing overhead. Two children swam in the clear, dark, presumably chilly waters. A white-faced, grey heron strolled the dark sand. Across the bay, low clouds still shrouded the hilltops. I was reminded by the old joke by Twain, “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco,” and thought much the same about here.

As I write, the sky is darkening outside and the sun is setting somewhere, but not where we can see it. I’m reading a paperback book from the shelf, a novel by Leon Uris, which appears to be one of the newer books in the small library, while dozing off intermittently. The book was copyrighted in 1964. It is over 600 pages of small print. My novels are half that and I’m counseled that they’re too long. Attention spans must have been longer 50 years ago. A bare naked lightbulb hangs from a goose-neck fixture imbedded in wall above me and provides my reading light. There is no internet service here, not even a detectable network for my laptop to tap. So I’ll need to upload this entry later.

On our itinerary, tomorrow offers a long driving day. Before we depart the peninsula, there is reputedly a hilltop somewhere around here that provides amazing views. But with tonight’s clouds and the likelihood of more in the morning, we’re not likely to find it.

Thus, Phase II of our journey is underway, with our arrival in and upcoming exploration of the South Island, in the world’s most appealing nation.

* * Day 5, Hamilton

Grab a pen and paper. Write your description for the perfect country. A stunning natural setting. Clean, clear rivers. Stunning mountains. Endless vistas in crystal skies. Exotic wildlife. Absense of snakes, poisonous plants, or insect pests. Spotless roadways. Beautiful cities and prosperous towns. Pristine harbors. Friendly people… who speak English. This is New Zealand, the most charming country in the world. It’s Christmas day. We’ve just spent the best day of our lives in the most appealing country on earth. How could life be better?

On the continuation of our couch-surfing of the North Island, I’ve not had any more interaction with anyone than Libby Gairdner. Virtually the day she learned we were coming, she invited us to share Christmas dinner with her, her husband Tim Anderson, and their blended family.

Libby’s son Jared was there, newly back from several years living in Canada. Israel was there, the boyfriend of Libby’s daughter who is studying in Georgia and couldn't come. Tim’s two daughters were there, Cloe and Adele, along with Cloe’s husband Joel and baby daughter Ava and Adelle’s partner Sam. We were all one big happy family, sitting around a large, square wooden table on the patio behind the house, although until moments before we’d never met them. Thus are the friendship habits of Kiwis.

She fed us a scrumptious meal of beef Scotch fillet, roast lamb, bean salad, pasta salad, roast vegetable salad, broccoli salad, fresh garden greens, and three desserts, including chocolate raspberry fruit trifle, kiwi fruit pavlova, and hot Christmas plum pudding with brandy crème. There was a breeze that lent a slight chill to the otherwise muggy, summer air. There were no insect pests whatsoever.

After a brief rest, Libby arranged for a friend of hers, Jim Galt, to take me motorcycling. Jim borrowed a motorbike for himself from the local Honda shop (an 800cc Crosstour, a bike that isn't imported to the states) and let me ride his ST-1300, which was almost identical to my own. While everyone else rode in cars, we followed on a longer, curvier route to a small harbor town called Raglan. At one point mere minutes into our ride, I almost ran into the back of Jim's bike as he stopped for a roundabout and I was looking right to assess oncoming traffic. But afterwards, all went smoothly. For most of the ride on a curving, winding road, there was a car in front of us, governing our speed, which perhaps was a good thing. Birds flitted about and Jim almost hit one with his shoulder. The road had several road kills of birds and other indistinguishable wildlife. Blooming wildflowers were all about. In places, the air was fragrant with summer scents. It showered intermittently and it was fun guessing whether the grey clouds to our left would be closer or further with each oncoming kilometer. We were rained on a bit but not enough to dampen my enthusiasm and fun.

We gathered in Raglan where we planned to have a picnic, but with the still threatening skys, we returned to Libby's house in Hamilton where we ate sandwiches for dinner. Thus are the friendship habits of Kiwis.

Jim is a solicitor, what we would call a lawyer, and Tim is in law enforcement. Jim asked me how it could be that America was infested with so many guns and how extraordinarily lethal weapons could be in the hands of everyday citizens. He was astounded to hear our NRA president say the solution to mass killings in schools was more armed security. Tim said that even most of the beat cops in New Zealand didn't carry guns. Gun violence in NZ is astonishingly rare. Shrug. Libby and I talked about our Rotary experiences leading Group Study Exchange teams overseas, hers to India and mine to Bolivia, and how we'd gotten ourselves in trouble by being blunt and honest about what we'd seen.

Tomorrow we move on, flying to Christchurch on the South Island. The people on the North Island say the South Islanders are much friendlier. We can’t even imagine. Our adventure in the world’s most appealing country continues.