Kaikoura Wildlife

This past weekend Michele, Richard, and I went to Kaikoura, which is about two hours away from Christchurch. When we first arrived, Saturday afternoon, the weather was cloudy and miserable and cold, although the scenery is still quite beautiful. We took a little walk out here on the South Bay.

We then stopped by the seal colony, where we saw quite a few seals up on the rocky shore and--a really pleasant surprise--up near the hedges next to where we parked the car. This seal is quite cute, but I wonder what happened to the pelt on its neck. He looks a bit hurt.

Cheryl asked for more pictures of me, and it's perfect to be included in an entry about wildlife. Arooo.

This seal was rather blobby. It's worth clicking on this photo to see a close-up of just what a blob this seal is.


After gawking at big lazy seals, we toasted our weekend with some delicious pints of beer. That's Richard and Michele. They'll be celebrating their 10th wedding anniversary next year, a great couple.


The next morning, bright, early, chipper, we boarded a whale-watching boat. Before seeing whales, a pod of dusky dolphins swam by. The ones in the wild are nothing like the ones I saw at Sea World as a kid. They don't have to jump through hoops to be truly beautiful, amazing creatures. I just loved how they swam together and half-rolled themselves over the current.

Unfortunately, I spent more time gawking than getting any decent photos.

Next we saw a sperm whale, whom the boat crew called Big Nick, because he too had some sort of gash, but on his dorsal fin. We saw Big Nick in two separate viewings. He emerged and submerged and then we found him again when he emerged for the second time. Sperm whales keep two tons of oil in their foreheads and no one really knows why -- to help them float back up to the surface after they dive 3000 meters? I liked that theory the best.

I didn't get good photos of the whale. I might have to borrow a few from Richard to show you. At any rate, here you can see the whale spotter with a long pole which he puts in the water so as to hear the whale's sonic-locating.

An albatross! Someone tell me you remember reading "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" at university?

Sunday was a spectacularly good day.

Like anyone, I like a good dose of culture. The Maori used these "Try Pots" in the whaling days.

Before returning home, we walked up the hill to a marae, a meeting house, where we saw a few interesting wooden carvings.

Signs of the Kiwi

On Wednesday I went with Michele's friend Heather to the Signs of the Kiwi, which is like an outpost (a café really) off of the hiking trail. We took the Sugarloaf Loop trail and saw the Littleton Harbor on one side and all of Christchurch on the other. Rather than bombard you with more scenic vista pics or mountain pics, of which I have a few hundred by now, I thought it would be nice to show you the signs.

Here is the engraving on the outside of Signs of the Kiwi. On the inside, above the stained glass windows, it reads "Merry meet, merry part...."


Outside the elaborate Signs of the Takahe building was this engraving: "Let us march on singing ever the road will tire us less."


Here (and at Sumner Beach) grouper (the fish) is spelled groper. I might have to buy a groper when I return from Kaikoura.


From the Bridge of Remembrance:


Graffiti at a small shelter atop the Conical Hill hike at Hamner Springs:

Uncertainty

Today, while taking the shuttle to the thermal pools of Hanmer Springs, I chatted with the driver. Almost 50, he has almost 15 granchildren. His wife left him with five kids and didn't contact them again for nine years, so he was left with the task of raising them himself. He also survived bone cancer when he was 37, even when the doctor told him he would die. I didn't get into the whole rigmarole of discussing my family history; in a nutshell, cancer has been a major cast member in our family's play, and I fear that I might die in my 40s (hence the adventurous spirit -- what do I have to lose?). He did say something about surviving cancer that stuck with me. He said, yes, it's good to have a positive attitude and all that, but he doesn't think it was just his positive attitude that saved him. He said he had five kids to raise. In other words, he didn't have a choice. When the doctor gave him his death sentence, it didn't look like Truth.

I don't have that same firmness of purpose. Perhaps while adventuring I'll uncover it (or the path to it). It's like Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle -- I can't see the electron particle and the path of the electron at the same time.

Sand Castles, Big Cats, Meerkats

Now home from my second trip to Sumner Beach, I'll show you photos from my first trip from this past Friday. Here's the view to the north. Farther north (and east?) would be the Brighton Beach pier, if I have my geography correct. (See that strip of sandbar in the middle? That heads east toward the pier.)

Here's the view to the south, up on the cliffs of Taylor's Mistake. Down below is Hobson's Beach, and I only know this name because it was faintly etched on a rock I climbed down off of. Apparently, this section of beach is undergoing a dispute, in that the city wants to tear down all the houses here. Many of these houses are weekend retreats, though, which I suppose lessens the tragedy somewhat. Several of the houses, to my surprise, were on stilts. And, if you know me, you know I love stilted houses. I have three main goals in life, and one of them is to live by the ocean in a house on stilts. A vision of it came to me in a dream or a daydream when I was a teenager, and that kind of thing is unshakeable. The house, on the other hand (especially if it's stilted), might shake and might fall into the sea.

Up on the cliff these really adorable donkeys came up to me. They were tiny, maybe four feet tall from hoof to ear.

These next few photos are from the following day (Saturday) at Orana Wildlife Park. I couldn't pass up feeding this cute calf. After giving it leaves, it went for my hair.

Here's a view from inside the cage atop the truck, from the lion "experience," which Michele and Richard and I paid to do in a sudden lapse of sanity. A few lions hungrily gripped onto the cage or circled the top. Any weakness in the enclosure and we would've been lunch.

This meerkat reminded me of Gandhi. Its expression said, "I'm a visionary." I attempted to look into its eyes but it looked beyond me. I was a mere thing to this meerkat, ahead of its time and ready to solve world hunger or something.

Caged Humans

I'm writing from a library at Sumner Beach, Christchurch. Since the last posting, I visited the Orana Wildlife Park and hiked through the Peel Forest.

At Orana we participated in a bizarre experience which involved a truck, a cage, and a few hungry lions. We paid for this, for some reason, and our adrenals I hope are no less worse for the wear. We boarded a truckbed-turned-cage, huddled in the center, and watched wide-eyed as the truck entered the lion reserve and several hungry lions hopped on. We were instructed to not stick any appendages outside the open cage squares. Some of the lions clutched to the cage with their paws and pressed their open-mouthed muzzles to the bars. The handler, inside the cage with us, threw pieces of bloody raw horsemeat (sorry, my horse-loving friends) into their open mouths. He also offered them meat with the flat of his palm, so that the large felines could only tongue up their dinner and not his fingers. Although he had a zoology degree, he said he only needed a one-year certificate having to do with the care of captive animals. Is a career change in order for me? What do you think, Mom?

As an aside, one of the male lions recently choked on a piece of horsemeat, and the park will now have to purchase one by mail-order.

I also fed some cute giraffes. One reached his tongue out to lick my shirt, as it missed the leafy vine I was holding out to him. I fed a cute calf. And, I saw some really cool lemurs and meerkats!

Taylor's Mistake

Michele throws a stick to Buckley, after our walk along the bluffs -- past Sumner Beach and across Taylor's Mistake.

B

The night before last Michele, Richard, and I ate at a fantastic Bengali restaurant downtown. If everyone could eat such delicious garlic naan, we would live in a peaceful society. Next we cycled to a theatre (sic) to see Mon Meilleur Ami (My Best Friend). Ignore the B-grade rating on IMDB; this was a fantastic film -- and strange. The protagonist is an art collector who has no friends. On a whim he bids on a Greek urn featuring the famous friendship between Achilles and Patrocles. When his contacts say he has no friends, and he retorts that he does, his business partner bets him the urn. Hilarity (and weirdness) ensues. Usually I wonder mid-film whether or not I'm enjoying myself, and at no time did I do this during this one; I was completely enraptured. Interestingly, at the Academy Theatre, in the upstairs area where we were, the seating is limited to about 15. It was like a private viewing room for people with money and bonbons. The other two people there besides us brought their wine glasses into the room with them. How civilized!

Yesterday Michele and I cycled to the very new International Buddhist Centre on Riccarton Road. Although they close for lunch at 4 and we were there at 4:30, the workers (devotees?) were kind to offer us some of what was left: steamed dumplings, fried curried pockets (very much like samosas), and fried tofu. We also had lotus tea with almond cookies. The lotus flower, which I had to taste, reminded me very much of artichokes. I had to go back there for lunch today and lotus tea. I love that Centre more than anything and want to go back every day. After lunch we went to Sumner Beach and hiked Taylor's Mistake. But, we just got back from dinner at Heather's (she made a delicious banana cake which, when warmed, goes perfectly with rocky road ice cream), and I'm sleepy, so I'll show you the pictures tomorrow.

As a side note, New Zealanders are very strange. While biking around today, I saw college students drinking beer at what must have been 11:15 a.m., to celebrate the end of the term. They were partying before noon, that is, dressed in cow-patterned cowboy hats and cleavage-revealing tops and big plastic sunglasses. Also, Christchurch recently elected a mayor, and the guy who came in 4th (at nearly 5000 votes) is a 25-year-old guy and street sweeper who spent $98 on his campaign. That's 10% of the votes of what the winning guy received, who, if he had lost, would've sold everything and moved to Italy. (We could all use this sort of Plan B.)

News from Home

Being away, I miss home more than ever. I'm especially comforted by e-mails and comments from faraway friends and relatives and similarly enjoy sending news, e-mails, and postcards. (Anyone want a postcard? If so, please provide an address.)

I've done a couple things here that I might not have done had they not reminded me of friends. Near Queenstown I visited a Chinese settlement, because it seemed like something Corri Jimenez would've done. (Happy 40th, Cor.) Arrowtown is an old goldmining town, settled in the 1860s. By the 1880s many of the Chinese prospectors had moved back, and one in seven had died. A few chose to remain and make a meager leaving. Near the settlement I visited a cemetary, which is something Annie Brockett would've done. (Annie just got married to Pete in DC, and I'm sad to have missed their wedding -- congrats, kids.)

My beautiful cousin Miriam had her fourth child on October 12, 4:44 p.m.; here is Russell -- quite a cutie.


Molloy just bought a new car. Here's a picture of Joey (the dog we share) in his new backseat den. He looks a bit like he's been told to "stay."


Cheryl requested I post pictures of myself. So here is a picture of me at Michele and Richard's house. A sip of coffee, a crossword puzzle, and my two doggie companions Griffon and Buckley. Notice how seamlessly I match the dog beds.


Jamie, the best roommate "in a world" (sic), seems to be thriving amid his own menagerie. He's my cat Wishbone's temporary caretaker (we call the cat Kitty). I had written him to "give Kitty a nose-kiss for me," and he wrote back:

Whenever I think of giving nose kisses to the kitty, I
first check to see if he has a live mouse in his
mouth. the other day, I was doing whatever I was
doing, and I noticed that as I'd gone in and out of a
room several times, the kitty was paying close
attention to my sweats, which I'd left on the floor.
I picked them up, and there was a mouse hiding
underneath. Kitty was right on him, and I followed
him to your den, where he batted him twice and then
ate him in three bites! oh the crunching, the
horrible, horrible crunching!

Fiordland

On the 9th, after waking up early in the campervan, viewing Porpoise Bay and the fossilized forest, and eating muesli, we headed for the Fiordland. As a side note, the campervan smells a bit like cow's milk and a bit like wet socks, which makes sleeping in it a challenge, especially if you have to sleep in the same van with me, because I snore--and moan.

(Yeah, it's embarrassing.)

Just so you can imagine it spatially, imagine me traveling in the shape of a "J," but with a curvier hook. We start on the east coast in the upper middle of the south island, at Christchurch, head south to the Otago Peninsula and farther south to the Catlins, come up the west side to Te Anau and then, near Milford Sound, to the Hollyford Track, and finally Queenstown. My bus trip from Queenstown back to Christchurch makes it sort of a lowercase cursive "J," actually, but without the dot.

Our initial plan was to do the Milford Track, but the folks at the DOC (pronounced "dock" and standing for Department of Conservation) said that the track was only open to people with avalanche experience. I might like to someday take some type of class to learn how to handle avalanches. A Canuck we met on our hike said that it involves something like checking the cleavage of the ice, using a probe to search for buried avalanche victims (i.e., poking down into the ice with a retractable stick until you hit the buried person), and generally surveying a scene so as to understand your safety there. Anyone want to expand on this?

The DOC workers suggested the Hollyford Track instead, so we filled out a form stating our intentions and bought a hut pass. That's the other thing: many of the tracks here also have shelters along the way. These aren't thatch-roofed huts or anything; they're wooden buildings with bunk beds, mattresses, sink water, cast iron stoves, and outdoor toilets. The huts and the level of maintenance on these tracks make my alpine wilderness experience with Kimmy in August seem like an eXtreme sport or death-defying activity. I would kind of have liked to have done the Milford Track, avalanche potential included, just to be challenged, because one could really have done the Hollyford Track with one's grandmother and her walker and she's dragging an IV and she's wearing inappropriate shoes and dragging a handbag the size of Bharain.

That evening I took a ferry to the glowworm caves. I really would've loved to have shown you pictures of these caves and the glowworms, but no cameras were allowed in the caves, as that causes the worms to switch off their lights. The ferry takes you through the fiords to where rivers and waterfalls go underground. The glowworms, much like spiders, catch insects in sticky material. They spit sticky strands which hang from their bodies. They then produce a glowing light at their tail-end, which is somewhat a mystery to scientists, but which is made by some combination of ATP, oxygen, and some other ingredient. The lights look like stars at the roof of the cave, and they look nice to insects and to gawkers like me on slow underground boat rides.

Here is what the mountains looked like on the ferry ride home.


The mountains, some of them snowy, some of them containing waterfalls, generally looked like this. When I was a child, I'd draw triangular mountains with snowy caps and was both exhilerated to see mountains for the first time and saddened when, in North Carolina and Tennessee, I saw rolling mountains with green peaks. In the Antipodes, however, the mountains are jagged and snow-capped, just like in childhood artwork. It really is life imitating art, you know?


Along the Hollyford Track were a few swinging one-person capacity bridges.


At sundown these were the views just outside Alabaster Hut.

Moeraki and Curio Bays

Over the last week I took about 200 pictures, most of them of mountains. So, I will attempt to play catch-up with pictures. Now that I'm back in Christchurch, I could spend the subsequent days recollecting some of the highlights of my travels from October 6th on. In a nutshell, in case other stuff happens and I don't know how to itemize it all, I joined the Swedes in their campervan and drove south to Moeraki Bay, through Oamaru and the Otago Peninsula, into the Catlins, across to the Fiordlands, up to Queenstown and back.

Here is a picture of one of Moeraki Bay's famous boulders. They're ancient and really round and people seem to like them.


Before finding the boulders on the beach, Fil did a u-turn on the road, and we ended up stuck in a muddy ditch. Being stuck is fun with a campervan, which is like a bulky man on little legs, bulky chassis on little wheels. Several really friendly guys from China and Vietnam helped us; they jacked up both sides of the van, and we collected stones, which they shoved under the wheels for traction. We tried many times to push the back of the van while the car started. 45 minutes after we had gotten stuck, we succeeded in pushing the van out. On our successful push, the tires and clogged-up muffler sprayed mud and dirt on us as the van charged over the grass. We were covered in dirt and screaming with joy. Those guys who helped us are our heroes. When we asked how we could thank them, one guy, William, said, "Just enjoy the rest of your day."

It was one of those faith-in-humanity moments. Fil, Ola, and I are all relatively positive people, so no one was ever really angry or frustrated throughout that ordeal. We actually considered the getting-the-van-stuck experience to be the highlight of our day. At any rate, that night was Fil's birthday and the three of us got really really drunk, so much so that we spent the whole next day lolling about Dunedin.

A couple short walks, spotted shag sightings, beach hikes, hundreds of sheep, and one yellow-eyed penguin later, we left the Otago Peninsula (on the evening of the 8th) for the Catlins, where we saw waterfalls, Porpoise Bay, and Curio Bay. Curio Bay features a fossilized forest, which dates back to the Jurassic Era and which one can only see at low tide, i.e., too bright and too early in the morning.


It's now past midnight, so I'll wrap it up and post a couple more select pictures tomorrow.

Porpoise Bay

This morning, around 7:30 a.m., at Porpoise Bay:



Tomorrow morning I'm heading for the Hollyford Track. We're only going to trek for two days. The Department of Conservation is so funny; they said they'd call the police if we're not back by the 12th. I can understand their precautionary measures, though, especially since so many tourists get eaten up by the weather. Currently, even though it's quite warm out, it had been snowing and so there are avalanche warnings everywhere.

The Banks Peninsula

Yesterday, I went to the Banks Peninsula. Nine million years ago the land comprising the peninsula were two volcanoes. Eventually the two volcanoes joined with the mainland.

Therefore, in greater Canterbury, you can drive from Christchurch to Akaroa--or completely around the peninsula surrounding the city of Akaroa, in a camper van, with two young men whom you might've met about 1000 miles away in Fiji last week.

Before the boys arrived, I biked to downtown Christchurch. Some of the old buildings have been converted to artists' studios and galleries. In one of the courtyards is this sculpture, for lack of a better word, called "Echo." I didn't just draw on the picture with Microsoft Paintbrush (especially since I'm consigned to use a Mac here); this is a real thing that's hung in the air with clothesline-type things, and that's my best description of it.

I returned to the Canterbury Museum to learn more about the Maori and the moa. I was especially surprised and somewhat saddened that the Maori used to wear cloaks not just made of pigeon feathers but also of dog.

Then I went to the art museum, which featured an absolutely interesting exhibit of Ans Westra photography. She published a children's book in the '60s called Washing at the Pa, which was about Maori day-to-day life, all told with black-and-white photographic images. The lovely book was banned at the time by their version of a Board of Education. Controversy ensued, because it was around then that New Zealanders were coming to terms with their colonial past and their treatment of the indigenous Maoris.

I left the gallery around 5 in the evening.


I, then, biked home. Ola and Fil, my Swedish friends whom I met in Fiji, drove their camper van to Christchurch to pick me up. We'll travel for a few days while Michele is finishing up her freelance work, and I'll help them with petrol costs. Thankful that they had a place to sleep for the night and even shower, they made us a taco dinner. I like being cooked for.


The next morning we left for the Banks Peninsula, a day trip in the camper van. I told them that if I was going to share the van with them that they would have to wash their dishes first. :)


Here is one of the bays within the peninsula. This one has a landmass looking a bit like an exclamation point.


As the sun started to lower in the sky, the sea turned from blue to silver, like liquid mercury. Fil said it looked like cement, but he pronounced it "semen." For the longest time I looked out at the water wondering why it looked like semen. I thought that I must really have led a sheltered life until Ola finally caught the pronunciation mistake. Suffice to say, we were all embarrassed.


And here's where everything becomes lowbrow. We stopped for coffee (and ended up with Devonshire tea and scones with strawberry jam and cream for some reason--an honest mistake?). This sign was in the restroom.


After having a proper tea, we visited the museum at Okains Bay. Better than the museum in Christchurch, this one explained quite a bit about the Maori. Here is a statue as one of the exterior decorations to a meeting house. If you click on it to enlarge the photo, you'll see that there are faces in strange places...


Fil and Ola and I drove around and down to the exclamation point and walked up it and ate Cadbury chocolate. Here's a view of the exclamation mark longways.


At the end of the day, we stopped at Birdlings Flat to look at the sunset and collect smooth rocks.

Christchurch, New Zealand

By the way, if Bush bombs Iran, I'm staying here forever. Michele and Richard said they'd adopt me.

Yesterday, after getting my bike adjusted (the front wheel wasn't true), I biked into town, ate, purchased the requisite hot chocolate at a book café. The drink makers in Christchurch tend to serve hot chocolate with giant marshmallow confections. They look like big pastel mints. I wrote there in my little handheld computer and looked out on the walking mall, filled with loitering teens, much like Eugene's West Broadway before the road went through their concrete territory. When I left, it rained, and I ducked into the cathedral.

Christchurch is 7% Maori. The Maori make up about 20 or 30% of the rest of the country. I found it interesting that this engraving of a common Christian prayer, probably done in the mid-1800s on the walls of the cathedral, featured the accompanying Maori translation. I especially like the Maori translation for "Forever and ever."


The cathedral was undergoing construction, and I was amused by the mechanical crane contrasting with the flying buttresses.


The "Pacific Chapel" is the size of a shoebox. What does an accessman access? What is this man doing? Is he about to ride off and away from the cathedral in his mobile accessman ake, ake, ake?


En route to my bike, I ducked into the Canterbury Museum, which was only open for another half hour. The moa were large flightless birds, now extinct, which used to hang out with the Maori. Here is an artist's interpretation of a moa, which for some reason is tucking its neck over and around to protect an egg. It looks kind of pathetic really.


Next I walked through the Botanical Gardens and sat on this bench and watched the Korean and Japanese tourists saunter by.


The sun emerged.


Therefore, I took pictures of tulips.