December 21st 2008

Why am I starting the trip log 2 days early?  Well, I actually left Phoenix the evening of the 21st.  I few to LAX and then caught my Air Pacific flight to Fiji at 10:30pm.  When I landed in Fiji 10.5 hours later, it had magically become December 23rd!  This was my first time crossing the international dateline.  It was cool to be so far in the future compared to friends back home. 

December 23rd 2008

I got off the 747 as dawn was just starting to show.  I felt like I walked into a sauna!  Damn this country is hot.  Inside the airport wasn’t much better as they didn’t have any air conditioning.  Hmm, oh well, I was only here about 3 hours until my flight to Auckland.  I am scheduled to stay here a few days on my return trip, so I didn’t bother leaving the airport.  I was warned not to leave the airport anyway, as Nadi has a bit of a crime problem.  I passed the next few hours watching the portable DVD player and Brad and Marjorie loaned me.  I brought Season 2 of BTVS with me and some of my favorite episodes are in season 2, so the time passed quickly and I was soon on my way to Auckland. 

Once in Auckland, I collected my baggage and went outside to wait for my pickup.  The van company was running a little behind, but they soon picked me up and we left for their home.  They have a small fleet of vans, maybe a dozen, and work out of their home in north Auckland.  The flights to Nadi and then to Auckland were both booked full, so I didn’t get any real sleep and I was really now beginning to feel it.  My original plan was to get the van and try to get south of the Auckland a few hundred kilometers to camp out, but now I was feeling like hell and a hotel was sounding like a good plan. 

Once we got to Micheala and Tom’s house, I started getting an overview of my van with Tom while the other couple with us was going over their paperwork with Micheala for their van.  After half an hour or so, we switched and I started my paperwork.  Now it was time to pay and I owed about 1800 bucks US for the full rental including deposit and then my card didn’t work.  I checked the time, it was 5pm local, which was 9pm the day before in Los Alamos back home.  Even though I sat down with folks at my bank and told them where I was going and when, they still freaked out and shut down my gold card.  Maybe they thought a crazy kiwi stole it?  I don’t know.  I called every number I had, no dice.  Thankfully my phone worked in NZ.  So, now what? I’m in a residential neighborhood in a stranger's home trying to rent me a van and my cards don’t work and it is near 6pm now, I’m tired as hell and just want to crawl in a corner on the floor and go to sleep!! 

So, I had them try the check card and it worked for 500 US, but still not good enough.  I had 250 NZD in cash on me and I convinced them to give me the van if I gave them all my cash and they had the 500 from the check card and I promised to call my bank first thing in the morning and fix the problem, then they could charge the rest tomorrow.  If this didn’t work and I still had the van they warned me that they’d have to report it stolen!  I just laughed at the absurdity of my life sometimes. 

The day is not over, this is one long damn first day!  I left their place at 7pm and it was going to get dark soon and it was raining, and I was trying to drive a 5-speed manual diesel van on the wrong side of the road and the last decent sleep I had was days ago it seemed.  Being off the main highway in a residential area, I was lost in no time and just started heading toward the coast because I knew there were RV parks, they call them Holiday Parks in NZ, on the coast.  So, after some initial high anxiety, I figured out the van operation and calmed down.  Once I was hopelessly lost, I stopped and looked up the Holiday Park in Orewa and called them. I had a book of all the parks with me, but the wall sized map I had of the country didn’t help me in a suburb of Auckland, I needed to buy maps and forgot to get them at the airport.  So, the folks at the park were wonderful and gave me directions right to their place.  Problem is, I had No MONEY and no cards that worked.  I thought there was still a little left in the ceiling on my check card so I hit an ATM and it gave me 40 bucks, but no more!  That was plenty though.  I got my spot in the park, grabbed some grub, and was fast asleep in the queen size bed in back of the van.  What a long damn day! 

December 24th 2008

Wow, sleep is a wonderful thing.  I woke up feeling like a champ again and the first thing I did was yell at some poor idiot at my bank in New Mexico.  After that I left messages with the van company, then hit the road early. I was driving by 7, time to get the trip started. 

I made it to Taupo by lunchtime and relaxed in town.  The weather was pretty rainy today, but I was mostly driving, so it was okay.  Taupo is a great city and surrounded by beautiful country and the adjacent Lake Taupo is the largest lake in NZ.  I had some lunch and bought some stuff, then headed south down near Tongarirro National Park.  I ended up exploring some forest roads to the east of the park, making camp at the Kaimanawa Road Forest Camp, which is a Department of Conservation camp.  This little campground didn’t have any facilities so nobody was there.  I guess folks prefer the parks with electricity and wireless.  I just enjoyed the evening, drank some local brews, and listened to the Tuis call latel into the night. 

December 25th 2008

Christmas day!  At least it was for me, alone on the other side of the world.  I made my way back into Taupo and took a few photos of Huka Falls outside town. 

I then filled up at the only gas station open and headed east toward Napier.  It really was a nice drive, crossing over some gorgeous mountain ranges.  The weather in Napier was fabulous too.  The Holiday Park just outside town was super nice, so I opted to stay there.  I drove around town but the whole place was closed as you’d expect on Christmas day.  I ended doing some walks around the wharf looking at all the boats and then I took a several mile detour back to the park through an inland estuary looking at birds. 

I had a really nice surprise while I was walking too.  My brothers and my sister and mom all called me to wish me a Merry Christmas!  It was super nice of them and made my day. 

That evening I did another walk through the estuary and watched the sunset.  This was the quietest Christmas I’ve ever had I think.  The microbrews were flowing like water though. 

December 26th 2008

I awoke with a bit of a hangover.  You know that line you have when you’re drinking that you try to not cross?  It’s that line where you cross over from having a fun time into dwelling on something negative.  It varies for most people and because I was already tired, I think my line was closer than I thought.  It reminded me a lot of this song by legend Merle Haggard:

~Tonight the bottle let me down

And let your memory come around

The one true friend I thought I'd found

But tonight the bottle let me down~

Making a vow with myself to not drink more than 4 beers per night for the rest of the trip, I left Napier and made my way out to Cape Kidnappers which is the cape just south of town.  I had a tour of the gannet colonies scheduled at 0915 with a company called Gannet Safaris.  I was early so I stopped and walked some remote beach I found. 

Once the tour started I was glad that I went with Gannet Safaris.  They cost a little more, but they take a very historic, not to mention scenic route, right up to one of the colonies out on the Cape.  All the other tour companies use tractors to pull trailers full of people down the beach for several miles around to the colonies. 

Our guide, Murray, was a cool dood and he gave us the down low on everything as we drove.  The Australasian Gannet colony is out at the end of the Cape, on a 6,000 acre property owned by a billionaire American who bought the place and put in a world class golf course.  The locals don’t seem to like the American buying so much land, but they like the improvements and jobs from the golf business coming to Napier now.  I also appreciated that that this guy installed miles and miles worth of predator-proof fencing around the entire Cape and pays a full-time staff to remove non-native mammals from the site.  This has really helped the gannet colonies, as well as everything else native that lives in this area.  I’ll explain more on these non-native mammals below in a separate note. 

The 6000 acre site contains a world-class golf course, lodging, and is a working sheep station.  We stopped for a few scenic photos at the top of the cliffs just out of view of the golf course.  The cliffs were breathtaking and we could see the tractor caravans running on the beach below. 

This link shows what the golf course looks like:  http://www.capekidnappers.com/Course30.html

When we arrived at the gannet colony the driver made us some tea, then the folks on the tractor tour started arriving.  They had to walk a few hundred feet up a steep trail to get to the colony and they were huffing and puffing!  This was my first time at a colony of birds this size and the smell of ammonia was pretty over-powering.  There were several cute gannet chicks there to look at though, so I soon ignored the smell. 

Here are a couple videos of the colony to give you an idea of the sights and sounds.

Gannet Video One (33 MB)

Gannet Video Two (17 MB)

The gannet tour was really awesome.  After a while Murray had us load up and we drove over to another site near Black Reef that only his tours went to. 

After the tour completed I wanted to try to get in a quick winery tour if I could.  The drive out to Cape Kidnappers is loaded with world famous NZ wineries.  I ended up stopping at Elephant Hill Winery. I walked the grounds and sampled several of their wines, just sips though, I had to drive. 

Of course I had some ground to cover so the tour was short.  I was back out on the main highway and heading south soon after.  I had read about an endangered species breeding facility in a town called Mount Bruce a few hours south and I hoped to see it before they closed.  I made it there with some time to spare so I walked the grounds talking the endangered bird walk.  Flight cage after flight cage of endangered birds.

I ended up stopping for the night at a holiday park in Upper Hut, about 20 minutes outside of Wellington, the nation’s capital.  I had plans to meet some folks from the university the next day. 

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Why are there so many endangered critters in New Zealand?

The simple answer is introduced species.  The only native mammals on NZ are sea lions and one small bat.  Since Captain Cook discovered NZ in the mid 1700s, more than thirty mammals species have been introduced.  This is a system where the plants evolved without herbivore pressure, where birds evolved without mammalian predators, so when you mix in all these non-natives it really throws the system into chaos.  For example, European settlers introduced the Australian brushtail possums into NZ to establish a fur trade.  The species is now a common speed bump with over 70 million estimated to be in NZ.  My non-scientific study counted at least one dead possum per every ten kilometers I drove.  At least it gives the non-native Austraian magpie something to scavenge…

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December 27th 2008

Today I was supposed to meet a professor at the university who is studying endangered birds.  It turned out that he had a conflict so instead he sent one of his graduate students to meet me at the Karori Wildlife Sanctuar.  Located in downtown Wellington, this sanctuary’s 225 hectares are home to lots of native birds and native bush.   The perimeter is enclosed by an 8.6 km predator-proof fence, specially designed to exclude non-native mammals ranging from hedgehogs to possums.  My bags were searched before entering to make sure no mice had jumped in.  I met the researcher inside and we went on a nice tour of the sanctuary and I heard about all the local projects they were working on.  It was really enjoyable for me to hear how other folks are dealing with endangered species issues.  Issues are often complex and local in scope so getting a new perspective to go with my own work back home was interesting. 

I left the researcher to get back to her work and I toured the grounds more.  They even had some tuataras in a natural habitat.  They are completely extirpated from the main islands except for here at Karori. 

After the sanctuary I was sitting in my van looking at maps and called my buddy KC.  It was pretty neat to hear him explain to his kids that Chuck was on the other side of the world!  I made my way to downtown Wellington for some lunch at a local brewpub, then walked around the national museum called Te Pappa Museum of New Zealand.  It was a lot like our Smithsonian’s back home, but I just toured the floors of Maori culture.  I wanted to learn more about the native peoples.  All I knew about the Maori was the famous Haka Dance (Video of Haka on YouTube) that the legendary All-Blacks Rugby Team performs before each match.  As cool as the Haka is to watch, I wanted to know more about the culture that created the Haka, how long they’d been here and where they came from.  The museum was a great place to take it all in. 

Speaking of the All-Blacks, it was the off-season while I was in NZ so I didn’t get to see them play.  Cricket was the sport of choice in Dec and Jan and every park I passed was full of kids playing cricket.  I picked up some cool All-Blacks apparel for Cohen, Marjorie and Brad's little boy, check it out:

He loves his uncle Chuckie! :)

Anyway, it was a full day of tourism in Wellington and I stayed at the same holiday park that evening.  There was some sort of dirt track racing going on nearby and the park was full of folks camping out with trailers of race cars and tools.  It was a loud night.  I was looking forward to more remote stuff on the south island. 

December 28th 2008

This morning is the ferry crossing.  The crossing takes about 4 hours to go across the Cook Straight from Wellington to Picton on the south island.  The ferry is huge and it took a while to load up. 

Around noon I was back driving again and the south island has way fewer people and the mountains were spectacular.  I knew by the end of this day that I should have spent my entire 3.5 weeks on the south island.  Oh well, now I know for next time.  I made my way down to Westport and time was not on my side.  It was getting later than I thought and I was not making good time on the south island.  The roads are more narrow and the sights and scenes are so numerous it’s hard to not stop every ten minutes.  One thing that really freaked me out was the way the kiwi’s handle bridges on the south island.  There are so many little rivers and streams everywhere that they have to build a ton of bridges.  To save money the majority of these bridges are single lane and who has right-of-way varied.  I was just finally getting good with the wrong side of the road thing and now I have to watch out for these one-lane bridges all the time! 

Here is a little video of one of the thousands of one-lane bridges.

Bridge Video (44 MB)

Once south of Westport, I knew I had to make camp soon.  South of the town of Charleston I found a road called “4-Mile Road” that went up into the mountains.  I went about 6 miles back into this area until I got the van stuck.  The road was getting to be a little too much for my 2-wheel drive van.  I wasn’t really stuck, I just couldn’t get up a hill.  I backtracked to a nice spot off the road and set up camp.  The surrounding forest was foreboding.  I tried to take some walks into the forest, but I didn’t have a machete to cut a path.  It was that thick.  The birds were calling a lot here too.  I heard some of the local owls calling.  Their name is “Morepork” and they get that name based on their call, it sounds like a bird is in the woods saying “More Pork!”  I much preferred the remote camping like this, but it was not that easy to do in NZ. 

I found out how bad the sand flies are on this night.  I tried to hang out outside the van to watch the sunset, but the sand flies were thick!  I was warned about them on the south island.  The warnings were right.  Their bite hurts. 

December 29th 2008

I slept like a king in my little van and it helped that the surrounding forest was so serene.  On my way back down to the main road I stopped at a small lake and took a few photos.  It was a pretty little lake.

On down the road to the south I topped for a quick look at a place called Pancake Rocks.  Looking at the picture, you can see where they get their name.  More photos are in the albums of course.  I also had some nice breakfast here at a small café. 

I drove south to the town of Fox Glacier and had lunch and then went up to the actual glacier.  I should have stopped to see Franz Josef Glacier too, but I didn’t.  The drive up to the glacier was beautiful.  There were signs along the road that showed where the glacier was in past years.  It has receded a lot in the last twenty.  It’s pretty damn cool to see a glacier at such a low elevation, hell, almost sea level.  Amazing… 

I headed out to Gillespie Beach at the end of Cook Flat road to find camp.  Unfortunately all I found was a parking lot, but hey, there was room, and me all the other vans just parked it and camped.  I had several hours until dark, so I went on a hike.  The area was first established as a gold mining area back in the day so my hike went close to several old mining operations.  Not much was left of the equipment with the salty air coming off the Tasman Sea. 

I walked for about 90 minutes to reach a distant seal colony, but when I got there it was empty.  Maybe they moved away?  I don’t know.  It was all good because the hike was so gorgeous.  On the way back a few miles from the carpark was a deep inland lagoon and I stopped and set up for a few sunset photos.  Mount Cook was in the background covered in glaciers and it made for striking views.  I don’t think that the photos came near as well as they should have.  Oh well. 

The sand flies were beyond description.  I was wearing shorts and sandals and they were literally eating me alive, bug spray or not.  The evening light and amazing views helped me ignore the little bastards. 

Right after I took that picture above I walked into this juvenile spotted shag sitting on the beach.  As I approached it fell on its side and just stared at me.  There were gulls around who had been trying to finish off this sickly shag as it was bleeding in places.  I grabbed the bird and it was too weak to move or even bite me.  Its keel had no meat on it, so it was malnourished and probably dehydrated as well.  It would be dead in hours, probably sooner, and it was suffering.  I can’t watch animals suffer and if I have the means to do something about, generally I would do that.  I won’t say here what happened, but needless to say, its suffering ended soon.  Dealing with this stricken bird really put a damper on my evening.  I hiked the last mile in the dark and crashed out in my van, exhausted.   

December 30th 2008

Per usual, I left camp early and was motoring.  It seems everyone sleeps in here.  I like to be moving by 0730 at the latest, so most mornings I had the road to myself.  I was heading to Queenstown today and the views heading down there were incredible.  I think I said it earlier, but literally one could spend an entire trip in just one place on the south island and never be able to get enough photos. 

I rolled into Queenstown after lunch and what a mess.  The town itself is gorgeous, but this time of year, every kid in the country comes to Queenstown to party it up.  I had a space reserved at the holiday park in Queenstown and when I arrived a security guard escorted me to a small spot just large enough for my van and said I shouldn’t move if I wanted to keep the spot.  I should have just left town and camped somewhere up north near Glenorchy, but I wanted to see how big the party would be on New Years Eve and I had a Lord of the Rings tour scheduled the morning of the 1st, so I sucked it up and stayed. 

The bright spot about this camp was the cool kids camped near me.  I met Jonathan and Lucy from Great Britain.  They were about 3 or 4 months into a year-long world tour.  Jonathan was 31 I think, so he is doing something right to travel like this.  They even have a little web-blog for their travels:  http://www.getjealous.com/brassolucy  We had a lot in common and had some great talks about everything from travel to politics.  Also camped nearby was Vikram, a professional from Auckland, originally from India.  He was travelling with Corina, a young German girl, and Anais, a young student from America on an extended work trip in NZ.  It was quite the multi-cultural experience.  The whole town was a blend of every ethnicity imaginable.  The one real downer was the rain.  It rained pretty much all day on the 30th and 31st.  It’s hard to drink beer and bullshit with friends when you’re huddled under a tarp or side of a building to escape the rain. 

December 31st 2008

Today was a bust really, I couldn’t move the van for fear of losing my 10 feet of parking so I was walking everywhere I went.  I walked through town hoping to spy a tattoo parlor for a new tatt, and I did but it was closed.  Bummer.  Nearby was a small eco place called the Kiwi Birdlife Park.  I went in for a visit and walked the grounds.  It was a small place, but they had some cool exhibits.  The best part was a little show that they put on for everyone.  They brought out some birds to see, and best of all, a live tuatara.  Afterward I asked the young lady if she would let me hold the beast or simply pet it and she said no, wasn’t allowed.  I even pulled the “I’m a biologist” card which she deftly ignored.  She was sweet though, a wealth of local information, and she let me take close-ups of the tuatara with my camera.  I’ll have to explain a little about the tuatara below.  It is simply a living fossil.  The one thing that really stuck with me about our talk after the show was when she talked about endangered species.  Her quote to me was this: “If you want to study ‘extinction’, come to NZ”. I thought that was pretty poignant thought.  

New Zealand Pigeons are huge!

Tuatara

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What the hell is a tuatara and why does Chuck think they are so cool?

Well, if you look at the Class Reptilia, the reptiles of the world, it is broken into 4 groups. Turtles and tortoises; lizards and snakes; crocodiles and alligators; and the tuatara all by itself, the only species left from an ancient group of reptiles that goes back to the dinosaurs. The tuatara is a living fossil. It has some very strange characteristics and the weirdest I think is their third eye. It's called a pineal eye and is on the top of their head covered up by some small scales. The "eye" has a retina, lens, and nerve endings, yet it is not used for seeing. The unique eye is sensitive to light and may help the tuatara judge the time of day or season. The tuatara also doesn't have external ears like lizards do. Scientists do not know how old tuataras live either. They have one in captivity in Invercargill that is over a hundred years old and still breeding! I can only wish I have that same success. Sadly this species is totally extirpated from the main islands thanks to introduced mammals like stoats and rats who eat their eggs. Luckily the tuatara is also found on some of the small islands that surround NZ and they are doing well in these places. The tuatara, one more reason NZ is a cool place.

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Later in the afternoon I met up with the gang and we started making plans for the evening.  Queenstown has loads of bars and we were trying to decide which one we’d hit first. The two girls with Vikram decided to go off and do their own thing, they thought us “older” folks would slow them down.  The German girl kept bragging about how back home she parties all night, blah blah.  Whatever.  So, we took off and ended up at this place called The World Bar for dinner and we ended up drinking a lot there too.  They were serving tea kettle pots full of some liquor, not sure what it was, and I have no recollection of how many tea kettle pots we went through! 

The table next to us was some kiwis from Auckland down for the party and they were playing a drinking game and they insisted that we join them.  Kiwis are the friendliest bunch.  The game was weird, it went like this.  You had like 4 sayings that were allowed, yee-haw, woo-hoo, wooooo, and a few others and the point was to go around the table screaming these things, and there were rules about what could be said and when, like a woo-hoo could only follow a yee-haw.  Needless to say, I was confused and messed up pretty much every time it got to me. Just imagine a group of drunkards from around the world taking turns in a circular fashion around the table screaming out weird things like yee-haw and woo-hoo!  It was a funny sight. 

After we stumbled out of there, we hit a few more bars and partied it up, finally ending up out on the dock near midnight.  Of course, it was still raining, so it was a little cold.  The fireworks in Roswell last 4th of July were way better and who the hell can say they’ve seen fireworks in Roswell New Mexico?  Not many I’m guessing.  Point is, the fireworks were lame, but still, it was a fun experience and I laughed at all the staggering kids everywhere.  The drinking age in NZ is 18. 

Right before midnight my brother Jesse texted me!  It was 4am on the 30th his time, yet he set his alarm to send me a text.  What a good guy.  He was supposed to go with me on this trip too but shit happened and he couldn’t make it.  Next time Jess.   

Jonathan and Lucy wanted to party it up more, but I was done, so I made my way back to the van to crash out.  Back at the van, I saw the girls tent partially open and inside they are passed out cold, puke everywhere.  Lovely sight it was, not....  Yeah, so much for the big German party girl. Whatever…  LOL…

Drunk kids everywhere...

Jonathan and Lucy

Your's truly

End of part 1...