Field Report 12:
New Zealand - March 27, 1999

By Jeff Bell
 

Hello from the South Island of New Zealand! If I get any farther south, I'm going to have to morph into a penguin. This is the land of (Sir) Edmund Hillary, the first atop Everest, and he is honored with his picture on the $5 bill. It's a beautiful bill, mostly orange in color, and I'd be glad to bring one home for you. Price: $5, exchange rate service fee included.

I'm in Queenstown, at a latitude about equivalent to Portland. My mistake last posting, Melbourne by contrast is about equivalent to San Francisco. New Zealand extends down before the bottom latitude of Australia, and unlike the band in the Northern latitude going from Portland latitude north to the Arctic circle (which encompasses some of the most important land masses on Earth—most of Europe, Canada, and Russia), there is virtually no land from here south to the Anarctic circle. Just a bit of New Zealand, the tip of South America, some islands, and a bit of Anarctica.

The accents, the easy going side of their approach to life, and the NZ coins are nearly identical with Australia, but New Zealanders are a bit different and more significantly, their land is a much richer, greener land. It looks and feels to me very much like the Pacific Northwest, so I constantly have to remind myself that I am in fact very far from home. If the philosophical bent of my observations seems too much for you, keep in mind that I'm traveling alone, and have PLENTY of time to think, perhaps too much, eh?

Cultural Differences

Canadians, especially the younger ones, seem to enjoy feeling that they are significantly different from Americans, and they point to New Zealand vs. Australia as a similar contrast. Perhaps you could sum up the differences fairly by saying that it is harder to find a loudmouth in New Zealand and Canada. The ugly (side of) Americans, as I would define it, is our tendency to travel in another country and insist on having local behavior conform to our cultural norms.

For example, I believe I have noticed a few cases of "exaggerated" advertising down here. In America, the old bait and switch is in fact illegal, but to run a New Zealander over the coals for false advertising has been pointed out to me as a case of the American enforcing its own value system. Another example of a cultural difference has to do with our tendency to seek retribution in the courtroom. There was a recent malpractice case here where a woman lost her suit to demand damages from a doctor who had misdiagnosed her cancer for three years. Experts said that this effectively raised the bar so high for malpractice suits that they were just not possible. In the words of David Bowie, this is not America. Perhaps gratefully so.

In the cosmic order of things, the distinctions between Australia, New Zealand, Canada AND America are minor, like distinguishing between Marmite, Vegamite, and Peanut Butter, a favorite skirmish out on the trail. If you are going to make these distinctions, you'd have to admit the similarities as well -- the exclusionary cultural histories, the very similar values with respect to culinary habits, hobbies, dress, haircuts, spirituality, athletics, and whole range of other things.

Natural Beauty and Tie to U.S.

NZ is filled with natural wonders because it sits on the world's volcanic "rim of fire". The South Island is similar to the Rockies (I just got back from the place where Coors commercials have been shot), and because of it's rich soil, grazing and farming is possible on a scale that is unimaginable in Australia. The North Island is reminenscient of Marin County to me. At the end of any sentence about NZ you could tack a tag..."and also there were many sheep to be found nearby"..and be painting an accurate picture.

The people here are so pleasant, the towns are more "tidy" than Australia or home. You might say New Zealanders have a very genteel but unpretentious way. One bit of news I saw had to do with the television censors struggling with whether to allow the use of the word "bugger" in regular programming. One person interviewed pointed out that they could remember a day when "a baby's bum wasn't allowed to be shown". Hipness is not at a premium here, which is kind of refreshing. Starbuck's looks as funky as can be in downtown Auckland and few people told me, without any qualifications, about how an upcoming Bee Gees concert was having on Auckland hotel room occupancies.

In the 50s, 60s, and 70s, New Zealand evidently went through the same transitions we went through, it seems that the social changes caused by American's reaction to the Vietnam War were imported throughout the world via the Commonwealth nations. I must refer back to Maxx Maxed of Nimbin and suggest my theory that the "hippies" did in fact change the face of the planet! But imagine the disappointment of people like Maxx, it didn't manifest itself in the way that was imagined. The vision was extreme, too unrealistic, and when the cause was taken over by people in suits and ties, the dissolution must have been great, leaving people like Maxx feeling as if he lived in a sort of no-man's land—save, but largely ignored. Never in his life would he be held up as a respected visionary of a better world. But the connection with more primitive ways of living did in fact, I believe, give insight into something that the mainstream had been slow to recognize at the time— the conservation of things—both species and cultures.

NZ Resonances

This country resonants strongly with my friend, David Zaro. David, I can see why. This is an outdoors lover's paradise. And they play rugby (like you, Zaro) and are absolutely nuts about it, and play it well for their size. There are about 11,000 rugby clubs in New Zealand, and if you do the math you realize that just about every male must have played rugby at some point. You could speculate that this is a way of expressing the other side of the male coin in a culture of peacefulness.

I've seen signs reminding New Zealanders to wear their sunscreen (200 people per year die each year of skin cancer, about one per 10,000), but I doubt the medical community would dare to suggest that New Zealanders would see a much greater improvement in health stats by adopting a different national sport. (My experience with rugby at perhaps 20 year old was splitting my lip on my first game, getting a season ending injury the second game, and having a teammate get paralyzed later in the season playing in the scrum where he normally did not play. I have to admit that most players played not to prove themselves, as perhaps I did, but because they genuinely enjoyed slamming into each other in a good old fashion contact sport.)

Bali resonanted with me the most of all countries I've seen yet, I think because I felt that the locals suggested to me a vision of a world of happy, beautiful people, at peace with the intrusion of foreign cultures. But New Zealand is a place which I can understand resonanting with many people. I am spending 18 days here, about 5% of my year of travel, and every day I struggle to find a way to ignore the desire to have set aside more time for New Zealand. Everywhere you turn, there is a beautiful mountain, stream, lake, beach, sunset -- I'm dealing with it by telling myself it is a place to come back to and spend a relaxed couple of months touring.

The Best 5 Minutes So Far

My favorite place to have been on the trip so far happened in Milford Sound. One way of describing views is by degrees—180 degrees, 360 degrees, etc.—but in fact ANY view can be described more accurately with a sphere, with the viewer being at the center. When you take a picture, you're only really capturing a small bit of the full sphere of view. Like the equivalent of a rectangular puncture patch on the side of a small playground ball. No wonder photos fail so often to capture really dramatic views. Even your field of vision only captures a slightly larger fraction of the full sphere.

To get in everything, the full sphere of view, you'd have to turn your head in many directions to catch it all—down, up, to each side, turn yourself around. And rarely is a view detailed and interesting enough that you need to crane yourself in all those directions.

At about 2:30pm, March 25, 1999, on a sea kayak, at the confluence of the two glaciated river gorges and a fiord running out to sea, I was sitting in a place in Milford Sound where I felt it was a fantastically special view in EVERY direction. Better than IMAX (because it's only one direction), but it sure would have made a good IMAX moment. A group of 4 of us were sitting just above water level, glorious sunshine on the 3,000 to 5,000 foot sheer walls around us, of which about 6 different ones made up the view. A plane traveling by looked like a toy against the enormous rock. There were large waterfalls and green trees in the walls, giving the view incredible detail and depth.

Because it was so perfect in all directions, I put this one above beach views off Lizard Island in Australia, which previous favorite. The downside is that we paddled out of that spot after about 5 minutes, and views were still wonderful, I had been spoiled, that spot was the best, and I could see the lesser-ness by comparison of other views now.

That Milford 5 minutes is still a bit of a touchstone for me. I just saw the movie "Elizabeth" and the richness and perfect beauty of a couple of scenes—dining halls filled with people and one of boats out on a river at night—made a connection with that "natural" moment out there on Milford Sound. It was possible to have "man-made" views which were spectacular as natural ones. The incredible detail in the movie was provided by the intricate dress of the royals and the adornments that they surrounded themselves with.

Milford Track and Fiordland

March 22-25 were spend hiking the Milford Track, basically a climb up and down two long, glaciated valleys with a high alpine pass in between. Along the way you pass such noteables as the base of Sutherland Falls, the 5th highest falls at 1,900 feet, crashing and exploding and blotting out most all other sounds at the bottom.

The Milford area is an area of fiords, named after that famous explorer, Henry Fiord. (Yea, Americans will believe anything. One Aussie described telling some Americans that his town got it's electricity from a 1km square grid of kangaroos jumping up and down. Seems the American had asked whether they had electricity where he lived.) Fiords are deep river valleys cut out by glaciers in ice ages past. They make for very dramatic landscapes, often the walls are vertical or nearly vertical, thousands of feet tall.

And this area is one of the rainiest places on Earth. Our first night it rained 7 1/2 inches and another 7 the following day. The guide said that one summer in the valley we were in, it rained nearly 300 inches!

This made for an interesting second day. The valley we were in was flooded and the trail was often calf deep in water, and everywhere there were waterfalls coming down off the towering cliffs on either side, as if the walls were bleeding. 40 of us traveled as a traveling unit from hut to hut, and I had one interesting cross-country experience were I nearly got stuck up high on a bush infested cliff, trying to find a way around a bit of flooded track. No worries mate.

Equipped with ear-plugs to ignore the snorers in the group of 40, we got a good night's sleep and headed over the pass the next day to enjoy a superb high alpine drama. I say drama, because the clouds provided the curtains, drawing back every now and then to reveal one spectacular view after another. Far better than if we could see them all at once on a clear day. People were gasping with delight, like kids watching a puppet show.

There was even comic relief to the show. It was provided by the kea, a high altitude overgrown dark green parrot who was deft at poaching from packs. Keas were known to have flown off with a boot set aside for a moment, and I was informed that one had alighted on my pack when I had turned my back momentarily. I think I got a good photo of this one as he flew away, with his beautiful red, black and yellow on the undersides of its wings.

It was fun getting to know a few of the characters in the group. I bonded with a couple from Minnesota while there was a group of three middle aged New Zealanders who kept everyone laughing. At one hut everyone introduce themselves, and when one English fellow was slow about responding and spoke rather loudly, one of the New Zealand comedy troupe loudly remarked "he's a bit of deaf." Another time I caught one of them on a roll about how she "didn't give a toss about rugby."

The trek (they call it "tramping" and the trail is a "track") ended in Milford Sound, a place which is very reminescient of Yosemite in scope and grandeur. The thing to do was to take an overnight cruise on the Sound. Around dinner time they dropped us into the water on sea kayaks and the interesting part about this was that you start paddling around, thinking "this is pretty cool, I'm having fun, aren't I?", until the sunset came, and everyone (except one young couple which evidently couldn't latch onto the moment) just stopped and sat in silence watching the pink sky. At that moment you realize there is another level to "fun" which you hadn't been aware of a few moments before.

The Commonwealth

More Canadians were in our group on the Milford Track than Americans. We probably don't travel as much here and the Canadian weather as we know, is something worth escaping in the winter.

But it is striking to be down here and realize how much of the planet is inhabited (infested would be a word the disaffected might use) by English speaking people, especially those who still feel some allegiance to "the Crown". New Zealanders still celebrate the Queen's BIRTHDAY. And she also graces the face of their $20.

Now we know that as Americans we have left this all behind, but if the truth be known, the inherited preoccupation with hierarchy hasn't quite died yet, has it? Nice system for the Dark Ages, the English system—OK, everybody line up and stay in your positions—kinda of the antithesis of "all men created equal". One English couple travel here said that in spite of the fact that New Zealanders knew nothing of this particular couple's life in England, New Zealanders everywhere felt compelled to tell them of their ancestry, who they were related to, where they came from. It's much like a parent/child relationship, New Zealand, with it's 3 million or so people, just hadn't accumulated enough history of it's own to feel that England's going's on is in effect more important than their own.

That's about enough for now, if you've gotten this far, chances are your boss is already wondering what you're up to. Thanks for hearing me out, bye for now!

Fall is here, and spring is there.

Cheers,
Jeff
 

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