Christchurch

I flew down to Christchurch yesterday. Due to some international law/foreign policy mishap, Rama will be joining me later. In fact, at this stage i still don't know when he's flying into Christchurch, so it'll be a bit of an adventure.


Anyway, i get 1 day to explore Christchurch on my own. It's a nice English town, fashioned to be a replica of a nice English town. There's a river - Avon - and English-looking buildings. Very quaint. In fact, i had a nice romantic walk by myself down the river yesterday - it was very nice. Truthfully, other than "nice" and "quaint" i can't think of any other way to describe X-church.
Oh, they have a tram - that's the scenic attraction. Since i've taken trams since I was a kid in Minsk, that didn't particularly appeal to me. And the churches are nice too - but i think i've seen enough in my lifetime.

BUT! Christchurch is right next to the Banks Peninsula - and that's where i went today. Took the Gondola up to the top of a mountain (same as a Heavenly gondola, even same Doppelmayer company makes it) so the ride itself wasn't much. The scenery, however, was astounding.

I rented a mountain bike at the top and wanted to take a leisure road down. small note - just like cars, bikes are reversed too - the brakes are swapped. that accounted for one of the first falls.

New Zealanders take their mountain biking seriously. What i thought would be a leisurely stroll turned out to be a fun experience. Somehow i ended up in the section for downhill riding - and it's marked just like ski slopes - blue/black/double-black diamond. I kid you not - i came up to one of them, laughed and turned around. Thankfully, i met a local who took me down an "easier" route, which resulted in only a few falls and tumbles and shaved off a couple years off my life.

Absinthe

Well, some call it "the green fairy", others (Poe/Van Gogh/Hemingway) refer to it as "inspirational". So hen I saw "absinthe drinks" on cocktail menu at a restaurant last night I was rather excited.
I was a little skeptical at first, but the waitress showed us the bottle - sure enough, made in France, looks green, smells of cough syrup, 60% alcohol. Just like the real thing.
We had a "fruit juice with absinthe" concoction - good, but too many papaya seeds. So the next one was "ask the bartender to mix it with some chocolate liqueur" (to hide the smell/taste). That was a little better. 2 drinks down, and still no green men showing up.


Such a find was to good to pass up, so after dinner we went to a nearby bar that had absinthe. There, the bartender offered us 3 options:

1. Absinthe cocktail
   
2. absinthe from Czech, 75% alcohol-by-volume
3. absinthe from UK (?) 89% a-b-v

The answer was clear - a little green bottle was presented to us, 2 shots of 178 proof absinthe poured.

Well, boys and girls - turns out absinthe is not exactly a "shooter". It's more of a "sipping" drink, illustrated by the painting above. Here's what I learned:

1. Singes your throat on the way in
2. Hits you with a shovel once it reaches your stomach
   
3. that's about it.
   

Can't say that I enjoyed my shot of absinthe, but the experience was educational. I did feel pretty drunk after one shot, but I'm sure everclear would have the same effect. And I didn't write any poetry. Or paint anything

Guess I'll need to find a store that sells it and experiment later.

Meat on a Stick

Since it's one of my last nights as an "expense account" tourist in NZ and I'll be eating "backpacker food" for the next week, I decided to front-load on meat and go to a Brazilian churrascaria, aka "meat on a stick" restaurant.


What a wonderful idea! Continuing my quest for "help with NZ sheep overpopulation problem", I had some lamb-on-a-stick. And other random food-on-a-stick (beef/chicken/pork). Unfortunately, no fish-on-a-stick - that is relegated to fish sticks, the staple of graduate student food.

well, isn't this post rather inane? Anyway, I re-affirmed the "stupid ugly obnoxious American" stereotype quite a bit today, asking for everything possible "on a stick". You figure that if you go to a fancy restaurant whose gimmick is "food on a stick" they'd serve everything that way, but they don't. No dessert on a stick - rather disappointing, actually. And the best part of eating in NZ? No tipping. It's already included. sweeeet.

Rotorua

My attempts at enlisting someone to drive me around failed, so I overcame my fear of driving on the "wrong" side of the road, got off my ass and rented a car. I wanted to go to Rotorua, to check out Maori culture "stuff" and (if there was time) to do some adventurous activitity.

On the way to Rotorua i drove through Hobbiton and a few other random towns.
North island isn't particular spectacular from the road (at least not central part). Looks like generic (but pretty) farmland.

Rotorua is famous for 3 things

1. it's north island adventure capital
2. geysers and other smelly thermal phenomena
3. Maori culture

Since I only had a day and I'll be doing adventure stuff on the south island for a week, I wanted to mostly see the Maori stuff.

I chose to go to the Tamaki Maori Village cultural experience show- it was billed as the best one, and it came in a form of "show and a dinner". My ticket there came with a "free trip" to a Hell's Gate thermal park- so i checked that out.
Hell's Gate was cool - but mostly a tourist trap. It's fun to walk through a bunch of sulphur lakes, smell the rotten eggs and watch little sulphurous lakes bubble up. I think i've seen thermal springs before, but it was still pretty awesome - the thermal park area is quite large.
The site used to be sacred to Maori, and there are a few legends (mostly unhappy maidens jumping into pools of boiling water) associated with the place.
I especially liked the clever signage.

The Tamaki Village tour was very interesting. You take a bus to the village (completely recreated), pick a "chief" and enter the village. You are greeted by a Maori warrior who challenges all visitors, exchange pleasantries (rub noses) and go inside.



The village is a "living museum" - it's completely recreated, it is run by a company (2 Maori brothers started it) that employs young Maori that "work" by acting like the ancestors. You arrive by bus, they do the "welcome dance", then you walk through the village where you see them perform "daily routine tasks", then go into a "meeting house" for another round of "song and dance", followed by a traditionally cooked feast (hangi), and a short visit to the "museum shop".

I have somewhat mixed feelings about it. The experience is both fairly educational - and at the same time extremely contrived. Definitely a tourist trap, but a really well made one. Most importantly, it didn't feel patronizing towards the performers. So of course, i didn't see the "true" Maori life - just recreation. It felt a little funny to see people perform their natives customs for you, then sit down next to you and answer any questions.
As is said, though, it wasn't particularly patronizing - the performers (or employees?) seemed like they were having fun. Most importantly, although contrived, it's a great way for Maori to recreate/preserve (although possibly rewrite) their own culture - all the "villagers" were young Maori who looked liked they wanted to learn more about their culture.

Anyway, overall it was fun. Aside from welcoming us with a 'warrior challenge', they showed us a few traditional games and dances - all targeted to make people better warriors. Interestingly, the whole practice of spinning poi was not just ritualistic dance, but was also an exercise to strengthen arms/wrists. Maori men would spin poi made of rocks, instead of the soft balls modern hippies use at burning man :)

We saw a haka - a dance Maori do to psyche themselves up before battle, or to celebrate afterwards. Mostly it involves stomping around, making scary faces and chanting. Pretty mezmerizing, actually. The coolest thing is that one such 'haka' has been adopted as the fight song for NZ national rugby team. The one thing i've noticed is the fierce association of Maori (at least the ones on the tour) to NZ. Seems like a much better deal than tthe disenfranchised Native Americans got in US. So that's really cool.

Anyway, at the end there was a "hangi" feast - cooked in the traditional Maori way, in the whole in the ground, on the rocks under some sand. Not a bad way of cooking, really - dig a hole, put some hot rocks there, throw your food in, cover with sand and walk away for 3-4 hours. And, as they say, if it comes out undercooked - just throw it in the microwave. for a few minutes.

so that's my Maori experience. keep in mind that all the punditry is not meant to belittle or patronize anyone, i'm just trying to sort out my thoughts.

more pictures and videos of the haka are here

RamaRama

Apparently, some people are a lot more famous than others.
There's a whole town named after you-know-who 50km south of Auckland

Driving (for real)

I got over my fear of driving and rented a car to go to Rotorua (more in a separate post)

Turns out the key to driving a right-hand drive car is simple: get an automatic.
I got a Nissan Pulsar (tiny 4-door compact car). Thankfully the signals/wipers were on the same side as my Integra, so that really wasn't a problem.
So really, driving is a non-issue, aside for these few things:

1. You always invariably approach the wrong side of the car the first time
2. You always grab the non-existing seat belt on your left
3. I kept trying to rest my left hand on the "window"
   
4. You keep drifting to the lane on your left. Good thing they have sound strips that alert you when you do that
   

Other than that, it's all cake. I ended up doing about 600km in one day (arguably, i didn't take the shortest road) and it was fun.
Roads in New Zealand are fairly slow, the "highways" are just 2 lane roads (one way each way) but they are fairly empty (at least at night).
Oh, and they don't believe in stop signs - there are roundabouts everywhere. Since I didn't know the exact rules of "right-of-way" i always had the right-of-way.

Hobbiton!

So I actually didn't see any hobbits. But i did drive through Makamata (which for a brief period was renamed to Hobbiton). There's a tour that takes you to the movie set where the "city of hobbits" was filmed.
However, the tour takes about 2.5 hours, i'd have to wait for another hour until the next tour would start, and i didn't have that kind of time.
Since i don't particular care about LOTR lore, i just had a gratuituous picture taken by some retired russsian tourists from SF (coincidence?) and moved on to Rotorua.

For the record, this is my obligatory homage to hobbits and LOTR stuff. I think i'll concentrate on adventure/scenery from now on.

Zorbonaut!

This wekeend i made it to Rotorua, both the "adventure" and Maori culture capitol of North Island.
So of course i went zorbing.
It's a rather ridiculous experience - you climb inside a giant ball and roll downhill. The zorb is a "dual" ball - there's a big bouncy outside ball and a smaller ball inside where you hang out.
My particular flavor of adventure was a "hydro zorb" - that's where you get in a zorb ball that has about a bucket of water inside, and you are not strapped in. As a result, when the ball rolls down you feel like you are in a giant washing machine. It's quite hilairious, the ball rolls down the hill in a zigzag so you slide all over the place.
The best "zorbing"experience, apparently, is when you are in the same ball with someone else. I tried convincing the 3 college freshman from University of Delaware that were "next" to climb in the ball with me, but somehow i didn't succeed.
Anyway, this is arguably the most ridiculous and stupid thing i've ever done, and of course, i loved every second (out of about 45) of it.

And Graham, this one was for you!