WanderLustin' - Travel Log

Greetings from a freakishly soggy Alice Springs! We arrived to gray skies this morning and learned that it’s been pouring here for the last 5 days. Everything is flooded and the normally 100+ degree temps have been in the 60’s. We’re about to head off on a 5-day 4WD tour of the “Red Center,” but before we go totally offline we wanted to close out with a few final thoughts on our month in New Zealand.

We left New Zealand behind almost a week ago, but I think we’re still kind of there in spirit. Not that our five days in Sydney weren’t fun (Dustin will post an update about that soon), but New Zealand, despite the ups and downs of traveling with the barfing twenty-somethings and staying in the occasional crappy hostel, feels like a place where we could actually live. The silly, occasionally dry, and almost always bawdy sense of humor of the Kiwis, coupled with their eagerness to get out and play in the beautiful natural playground in their backyard, make for a nation full of fun, adventure-loving, tree-hugging goofballs in one of the most beautiful natural places on earth. It’s like San Francisco without the smugness. And with Marmite.

Dustin and I had both been to New Zealand before — each of us travelled over a month there separately in our pre-Lustin days — but I think both of us felt like we discovered a whole new country this time around. For me, that newness was the result of seeing NZ in actual sunlight (it rained a big chunk of the time I was there before) and going further off the beaten (i.e. tourist) path than I did before. (And here I have to give credit to Stray, without whom we probably never would have found our way to Hahei or Raglan or Stewart Island). It’s hard to say what my favorite NZ places/experiences were since there were so many, but if I had to narrow it down to my top 3, they’d probably be the Queen Charlotte Track, where we walked our asses off and met one unforgettable lady; the Bay of Islands, where we sailed out on the clear azure water past incredibly lush green islands and met one strange parrot; and Stewart Island, a place that managed to cast a spell on us even though we had to leave much too soon.

There are some other things we noticed while we were traveling around the north and south islands that we liked and didn’t like that we thought we should call out now. Here’s our Top 7 Best and Worst of New Zealand…

The Best

The Flat White: Also known as a cappuccino with more milk, for reasons that have already been described in this blog on numerous occasions. We heart you.
The 1/2 Flush: Why hasn’t America adopted this? Not only does it save water, but who doesn’t want more nuance in their flushing options??
Beer: It’s everywhere in NZ, and it’s really good. Special honorable mention to Mac’s Hop Rocker & Speight’s Gold.
Tort Law: Or the absence of it. You pretty much can’t sue anyone in NZ, which means they have no problem letting you throw yourself off a bridge or raft down Class 5 rapids or abseil down into dark caves with little or no training. You assume the risk and they let you play.
Eggs: We ate a LOT of eggs in NZ, thanks to the ubiquitous huge “Kiwi” (i.e. British) brekkies. The yolks in NZ eggs have a color and flavor that make our eggs in the States look like watered down tasteless pale yellow blobs. I thought of Michael Pollan every time I cut one open to see its orangey deliciousness ooze out.
No pennies (or nickels!): Enough said.
iSites: God bless these tourist offices. They’re in almost every little town in the country, they offer great advice, they make bookings for you, and they’re FREE. Special shout-out to the iSite in Taehape for giving us shelter (and free internet) while Mr. Scoobs was undergoing emergency surgery.

And The Not-So-Best

No screens: Anywhere. For a country that seems to be a colony for mosquitoes and sandflies in the same way that Australia was once a colony for criminals, it seems crazy that we didn’t find screens anywhere. Dustin has especially strong feelings about this — just ask him about the “moth.”
Internet: It’s horrifying, but we estimate we spent at least $300 on internet in NZ, and it was often bandwidth-limited (not that I actually know what that means) and slowwwwww. Dustin also has strong feelings about this. He will happily rant for anyone who asks.
Hot and cold faucets: They’re almost always on separate sides of the sink, and they shoot out either freezing cold water or scorching hot water, depending on which you choose, and they’re not even consistently on the same side of the sink. Sometimes the hot faucet is on the left; other times it’s the cold faucet — and neither is entirely desirable when you’re trying to wash your face without receiving hypothermia or second degree burns. It’s the 21st century — haven’t we advanced to a point where everyone has a right to access lukewarm water??
Cuisine: OK, so we all know the Brits really don’t DO food, and NZ is essentially still a British colony when it comes to all things gastronomical. This means that a) everything is fried; b) they use this weird fine pepper powder that seems about as far from a peppercorn as bologna is from a cow; and c) they don’t have mustard anywhere, which meant that we actually had to buy a rare jar of dijon mustard and carry it with us as emergency condiment. I also kept salt with me at all times because they apparently also don’t like actually tasting their food. Oh, and one more thing — they charge for ketchup (or “tomato sauce” as they call it) like it was a kind of tomatoey liquid gold. This just isn’t right.
Switchbacks: This is both a pro and a con for NZ. Apparently they don’t believe in switchbacks because the trails we hiked essentially either went straight up the mountain or straight down it. Definitely harder on the hammies and quads, but also a lot more efficient!
Chip clips: Someone (and I think that someone might be my husband) could make a fortune by introducing chip clips into this country. They don’t have them and yet they eat chips EVERYWHERE. They would have come very handy for all the bags of dry food we lugged around for a month.
Coke: It tastes really weird. And there’s no Diet Dr. Pepper. If it weren’t for the existence of the flat white, we might not be able to look beyond this.

Other than those minor complaints, the bottom line is that we have a big crush on New Zealand and we will definitely be back. With mustard in hand.