Beaucoup Fish

Wednesday 1^st December

Beaucoup Fish

Five weeks into my New Zealand adventure and I began to feel myself fully immersed in Kiwi culture. Among the numerous native experiences I was able to tick off were jandal-wearing (though I still can’t walk in them and still cringe every time I find myself saying the word – there’s a reason why my spellchecker keeps underlining it, you know), pukeko-watching (can I take one back to England please?) and Speights Ale-drinking (well, it’s nicer than Fosters), so I knew it would only be a matter of time before I got to indulge in that other favourite Kiwi pastime – fishing.

Though you might imagine that growing up on a small island like Great Britain would naturally make me an aficionado of all things fishery, my childhood in Loughborough - which is about as far away from sea as it possible to be in England - was entirely rod and tackle-free (no innuendo intended). I therefore approached my first ever fishing trip with no small degree of trepidation, imagining all sorts of potential horrors, from being yanked overboard as my feeble English biceps lost their battle with the thrashing snapper at the end of the line to coming face-to-face with an airborne Jaws.

Of course, I needn’t have worried about any such calamity and our fishing expedition in the Bay of Islands turned out to be one of my most relaxing New Zealand episodes so far. We were accompanied on our trip by Holly’s father (and keen fisherman) Philip Miller, who had kindly invited us to spend the weekend up at his beachside apartment in the sleepy Northland coastal town of Paihia. Poseidon had considerately taken it upon himself to be on vacation, leaving us with an unusually calm sea and cloudless sky as we headed out into the Bay on a small commercial trawler. A brawny, bearded Aussie and two red-headed Canadian ladies completed the cosmopolitan (and half ginger) crew, which was skippered by a young Kiwi chap who can’t have been long out of high school. Philip muttered darkly that this guy wasn’t the usual captain and his inexperience was possibly in evidence when the first two spots he took us to ushered up a grand total of zero poissons.

Fortunately, our third and final location proved to be more fruitful and we were soon dredging up a fair number of snapper and other local fish. It took me a while to get to grips with the line, which seemed to delight in spiralling out of control at the faintest mis-timed touch. I found it difficult to distinguish between genuine tugs on my bait and my own unsteady hand motions and amused my fellow crew-members with my apparently “unorthodox” style of holding the rod, which, I admit, might have resembled a certain toilet-based stance from certain angles. Thankfully, I was able to throw their mockery back in their faces as the gods of beginners luck helped me amass a ship-best haul of six snapper. Admittedly, none of them were actually big enough to take home (New Zealand’s fishing laws are rightfully strict on the catching of infantile specimens) but I was happy. In any case, the rest of the crew were barely more successful, our final count of fillet-able fish numbering a paltry two.

Overall, I really enjoyed my first fishing experience, despite the frustrations of the first hour when we caught nothing at all. The best part for me, though, was being out on the water amongst these beautiful islands rising majestically out of the sea. A completely different landscape to Otago and the coastal areas around Auckland, the Bay is a truly tranquil spot that should definitely feature high on every budding New Zealand tourist’s itinerary. Paihia itself is a quiet little town but has enough amenities and eateries to keep its largely tourist and second homeowner population happy and courtesy of Philip we enjoyed two lovely meals out at the local Thai restaurant and rather more distinctive Swordfish Club, on whose fishermen-laden terrace we gobbled up battered cod ‘n’ chips as dusk descended pinkishly over the outlying islands.

While we were there, we also took the opportunity to catch a ferry across to Russell, a historic coastal village on the other side of the Bay from Paihia. A lovely wooden church - every bit as striking in its own way as its more ancient stone counterparts back home - and a beach-side strip of cafes provided a pleasant afternoon’s recovery from the morning’s fishing exertions.

As with Otago, I found myself wanting to return to the Bay of Islands almost as soon as we had left it but the wonderful thing about being out here for a considerable length time - rather than just a whirlwind holiday - means that leaving these places isn’t half as depressing as it would be otherwise. And, indeed, we know we’ll be back in the Bay in January for a wedding, which will no doubt be an altogether more raucous occasion. Maybe I'll actually catch a fish we can eat next time – or, more likely, fall drunkenly overboard after one too many champers.

Jonny

Tourist History

Sunday 21^st November

Danseys Pass apart, we found that Central Otago’s state highways were unexpectedly well-maintained and handily connected all of the area’s principal tourist spots. The Tolkein-esque scenery and Victorian villages were not the only points of interest en route, however, and our lengthy drives through the region took us through several other noteworthy locations. One trip brought us all the way out to the South Island’s eastern coastline, where we spent an hour exploring the famous Moeraki boulders, an extraordinary series of near-perfect spherical stones that stretch for hundreds of meters along KoeKohe Beach. Side-splitting photos of us pretending to roll the boulders along the sea front demanded to be taken.

A few miles up the coast, we discovered the delightful town of Oamaru, which boasts some of the country’s finest examples of Kiwi Victorian architecture and a street that rivals San Francisco for calf-straining steepness. While we were there, we stumbled upon an unlikely little art gallery housing fascinating exhibitions on Steampunk (think futuristic glass and steel cities re-imagined in copper and brass) and the 16^th century woodcut etcher extraordinary Albrecht Durer - proof, if any were needed, that New Zealand can do culture every bit as well as it does countryside.

We were rather less impressed by the humdrum town of Alexandra, which came across as a budget version of one of Auckland’s less attractive suburbs, but the place was rescued for us by the picturesque views from its river-traversing Shaky Bridge, not to mention the delicious carrot cake on offer at its neighbouring café. In mitigation, we felt that we’d earned ourselves a slice after a particularly precipitous walk up the adjacent hill, visible from miles around on account of the gigantic clock face built into its town-facing elevation.

Sadly, there were no such treats to enliven our visits to the rather lacklustre Ranfurly and Dunedin, though we might have looked more fondly on the latter had we actually bothered to stop and explore rather than merely driving up and out of the main street. Perhaps one for our near-certain second visit to Otago, as I hear the art gallery there in particular is definitely worth a look. One place we probably won’t be returning to is Wanaka, a grey little town that serves as little more than a thoroughfare for travellers wishing to drive along the lake of the same name. Despite travelling some distance out of our way to get there, a fleeting sandwich stop in a local café that doubled up as a radio recording studio was the only thing we found worth staying for.

Our sojourn in Otago ended in the same place where it had begun seven eventful days earlier, the popular lakeside resort of Queenstown. While many travellers come here for the adrenalised thrills offered by the Shotover Jet and myriad bungee jump operators, we opted for the gentler pleasures of the TSS Earnslaw, a fully-working anchor steamship that cruises elegantly across Lake Wakatipu. It was well worth braving the near-freezing on-deck conditions as the views out over the lake and up to the aptly named Remarkable Mountains were truly spectacular. Our only real dalliance with Queenstown’s extreme sports offerings was a ride on the chairlift and luge at the summit of the Skyline Hill that looms high above the town. (Yes, I do realise the luge might only seem “extreme” to five year olds but 100 meter freefalls aren’t really our bag.) My personal highlight was the walk through Ben Lomond Forest we undertook to reach the luge - otherwise known as the budget alternative to the exorbitant Skyline Gondola. Though undeniably the more circuitous route to the top of the hill, the steep, winding path took us past some breath-takingly lofty trees that swayed monstrously in the high winds and created fairy tale canopies over our heads. Our walk was well worth the effort in any case, as the views from the summit out over Lake Wakatipu and its surrounding mountains were truly awesome.

I had mixed feelings about Queenstown itself. Though a great place to spend a couple of nights eating and drinking out, I thought it was clean and pristine to the point of being clinical and felt that it lacked the soul and character of some of Otago’s finer settlements. It’s a town unashamedly geared up for tourists and almost everyone we encountered there seemed to be either doing casual work, holidaying or escaping a life elsewhere. I was also rather surprised by the number of Brits we encountered there, and not always the sort I’d necessarily wish to be associated with. Two “pommies” we were happy to converse with, though, were the amiable girls we encountered on the last bus back from the nearby settlement of Arrowtown who had moved over here from the UK a few years’ ago and set up their own B’n’B. It was comforting to meet some fellow ex-pats who had made a life for themselves here and their amusing banter reminded me how much one’s affiliation to one’s home country is derived from a shared sense of humour.

Arrowtown was an altogether more atmospheric place than its larger neighbour and its historic streets, lined with enticing pubs and restaurants, set the scene for one of our trip’s most enjoyable evenings. After being dropped off there by an abnormally friendly bus driver (abnormal, that is, by the standards of their London counterparts, though probably not in comparison to their Kiwi colleagues, who, it has to be said, have been universally helpful and jovial), we spent an hour or so exploring the ruins of the old settlement on the town’s outskirts where a group of Chinese gold miners lived in dire poverty late in the 19^th century. Having been suitably humbled by the sight of windowless dwellings that many of us wouldn’t even find suitable for a tool shed today, we took a lovely dusky stroll along the river before settling next to a roaring fire at a cosy local ale house. Later in the evening, we somehow found ourselves on the front row at a gig that was taking place at an Irish pub down the road. In typically awkward English style, I cringed as the harmonising duo covered a variety of supposed rock and country “classics” while Holly clapped along courteously. Thankfully, the group of middle-aged women next to us more than made up for our rather feeble attempts to get into the spirit of the occasion by cheering, whooping and yelping in such an excited fashion than passers-by would have been forgiven for thinking that the Beatles had reformed here for a one-off back-from-the-dead concert. New Zealanders, it seems, sure know how to party.

And so came to an end our week in Otago, though with such an abundance of sublime scenery, historical heritage and heart-racing thrills I’m sure it won’t be long before we’re back there again.

Jonny

Mountain People

Friday 19th November

You may have formed the impression from my previous blog that central Otago is some kind of desolate, primeval wilderness almost entirely devoid of human activity. However, while it is true that parts of the region are – or, at least, feel – incredibly remote, we came to appreciate it as a glowing testament to man’s resourcefulness and endurance, both past and present. Certainly, there is far more history scattered amongst these hills than in your average New Zealand mountain range, not least because of the gold rush that took place here in the 1860s, when a glut of wealth-seeking miners descended on the Otago valleys to exploit the rich seams discovered here.

The relics of those bountiful times are hard to miss as one drives along Otago’s highways, the most visible markers being the unnaturally smooth hillsides that bear the scars of the miners’ gold-releasing sluice guns. Many of the settlements here were born out of the boom engendered by the mining operations and old parts of towns Cromwell and St Bathans have been almost perfectly preserved since the gold rush. After spending a month surrounded by the characterless architecture of central Auckland, it was a blessed relief to find good old-fashioned stone buildings populating Otago’s more historic towns and villages. Wandering the streets of Old Cromwell Town, with its cottages, stores and stables seemingly untouched in over a century, felt like stepping back into some lost Victorian England village.

These days, of course, the gold is long since gone and the only mining taking place here now is that of tourists’ wallets by the manifold museums and heritage sites set up to preserve and celebrate the region’s historic status. Despite that, though, life continues to flourish here in other ways and during our all-too-brief trip we were introduced some of the most open, welcoming people we had encountered in any country, let alone New Zealand. I suspect the uncommon cheer and friendliness of Otago’s 21^st century residents is due in part to a common need for solidarity and community as a form of self-preservation against the landscape. The 19^th century gold miners found the conditions during winter impossibly harsh, with many perishing in their first year, and it can’t be much easier for the people who work and live here now.

The sheer distances between Otago settlements would be enough to make even the most frustrated Auckland office workers think twice before moaning again about their daily commute. Entire days spent car-bound days were no problem for us, as we were taking in the jaw-dropping scenery for the first time, but you have to respect the locals who live more than two hours’ drive from the nearest airport and fully-equipped hospital. God knows how the farmers for whom Danseys Pass is their only route to civilisation survive through the winter. And yet, no sense of frustration or urban-envy was at all obvious from those whom we met down there, even from the landlady of the Oturehua ale house who revealed she had spent years of her youth in London. One might have imagined that even the stunning snow-capped mountains of the Ida Valley would seem rather passé if you were waking up to them for the thousandth time but Otago’s people genuinely seem to love their lives here and we were heartened that the eight-year-old granddaughter of a local farmer told us she saw her future here in the mountains and not in some faraway shining metropolis.

After spending a week in one of central Otago’s remotest spots, we began to understand exactly why its residents are so happy here. Despite a very real sense of isolation that was no more apparent than at night when the only sounds – and I mean only – were those of moths fluttering alarmingly against our bedroom window, the manner in which the people here had forged such a contented mini-community across this vast, wild terrain truly fired the imagination as to what it was possible to achieve away from hustle and bustle of city life. Former NZ poet laureate and Oturehua resident Brian Turner apparently finds such inspiration here and an evening spent in conversation with him ended up being our trip’s most thought-provoking episode. Summoned by Margot and Steve for drinks from his nearby cottage, Brian entertained us with a fascinating discourse about mankind’s wastefulness and selfishness and advocated a greener, more self-sufficient lifestyle. Though we took him to task on exactly how one could realistically return the modern world to a simpler, more altruistic age, he certainly gave us food for thought and made us wonder if it were truly possible to live a happy, fulfilled life out here in the lonely mountains.

Jonny

Over The Hills And Far Away

Tuesday 16^th November

I suspect I’m not the only non-Kiwi out there whose formative impressions of New Zealand were fueled by Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. It’s ironic, of course, that Tolkein’s stories should now be synonymous with this country, even though they were envisaged by their creator as representations of his native England. But having now experienced some of the locations used by Jackson in the movies for myself, it is impossible to imagine Middle Earth being filmed anywhere else but in New Zealand, so perfectly do the landscapes here convey the epic grandeur of Tolkein’s fantasy world.

While the green and hilly countryside around Auckland recalls the gentler scenery of The Shire – home of the Hobbits - it is the spectacular vistas of New Zealand’s South Island that best evoke Middle Earth’s most dramatic locations. I remember salivating at the prospect of visiting there when I watched a documentary on the making of Lord of the Rings almost a decade ago so a trip there was near the top of my New Zealand wish list. Luckily, we had been in the country less than two weeks when Margot and Steve - Holly’s mum and partner - were kind enough to invite us down to their other property in the South Island’s central Otago region, affording us an unexpectedly early taste of New Zealand’s most awe-inspiring landscapes.

Our plane journey from Auckland to Queenstown proved to be a mouth-watering appetiser for what was to come as the flight path took us right over the Southern Alps and New Zealand’s highest peak, Mount Cook. Clear skies allowed us some fantastic views over the snow-capped mountain range while the English Middlesbrough-born lady sat next to us proved infectious with her wide-eyed enthusiasm for the region, to which she’d emigrated some 20 years ago.

The prospect of a two hour drive from Queenstown airport to the house where we were to stay in Otago had not, I must be honest, filled me the greatest sense of excitement. Such lengthy car journeys back home can be mind-numbing in their tedium, so rarely do the motorways provide any opportunity to admire the beautiful English countryside they carve through. Thankfully, New Zealand’s country road planners have had to good sense to place their highways in such a way as to maximise travelers’ enjoyment of the scenery. Indeed, the landscapes here are almost certainly best viewed from a car, from which one can experience hundreds of miles of stunning views in a single day. We spent the majority of our all-too-fleeting week in Otago on the road and witnessed some of the finest natural sights we have ever seen.

From towering white-peaked mountain ranges to giant crystal-blue lakes, Otago is top dog when it comes to heavenly scenery. Indeed, one evening, as we drove back to the house from Dunedin via the famous “Pig route”, the setting sun cast such an other-worldly glow on the land around us that we could quite easily have believed we had been transported to paradise.

Apart from the land itself, the most remarkable thing about this part of the world is just how few people there are here. We literally drove for hours without seeing another soul - let alone passing another car on the road - though in retrospect this should not have been such a surprise on our journey across the legendary Danseys Pass. Up to this point, the roads in Otago had impressed us with how smooth, straight and well-maintained they were so we had little trepidation as we mapped out an apparently innocuous shortcut from the historical town of Oamaru back to the house near Oturehua. Faint alarm bells started ringing when we were greeted by a sign announcing that the Pass was “open”, suggesting a potentially more hazardous route than those we had become accustomed to. Nevertheless, we proceeded undeterred and the opening stretches, while winding, were not especially troublesome to navigate. The higher up the road led us, though, the narrower and steeper it became, and when the hitherto even tarmac gave way to tyre-anathema gravel we really did start to worry. It soon became apparent exactly why the Pass was subject to periods of closure, for even the most confident and experienced of drivers would struggle to contend with the road’s most gruelling sections in even slightly adverse weather conditions. At one point, I was having to manoeuvre the car (not, I must add, our own but one we had rented at the airport) around 90 degree turns with a sheer drop on one side and a jagged rock face on the other and the early evening sun shining straight into my eyes. Thank god we didn’t meet another car coming in the opposite direction as there was barely enough space for one vehicle to pass through there, let alone two. Not that anyone else would have been foolish enough to attempt such a journey in anything other than the most sturdy 4x4…

In the end, the staggering views of the mountains – one of which we went right up and over the top of – more than compensated for sweat-inducing terror of the drive, though we weren’t half grateful for the pints of Speights Ale we treated ourselves to at the closest country pub when we finally emerged the other side.

Jonny

Exit Into The City

Wednesday 3^rd November

In these formative days of my New Zealand experience, I have to confess to being in two minds about the city where, mostly for reasons of convenience and job prospects, we’re more than likely to end up living next year. Auckland is a strange place. Half of me really likes this hip, vibrant metropolis that boasts more quality bakeries (that’s bakers for those of you back home; patisseries for you Francophiles) than you’d find in the whole of the UK put together and offers up such delightful suburbs as Parnell and Devonport. But the other half of me is perplexed by the way that its architecture often steadfastly refuses to compliment the awesome beauty of the countryside around it and disturbed by a primitive public transport system that drives the entire population into a twice-daily log jam on the notorious “Spaghetti Junction” (and let’s be honest, anywhere that takes its inspiration from Birmingham’s eyesore of a road network needs to seriously rethink its transport policy.)

So, let’s get the bad stuff out the way first because I hate being negative, especially about somewhere that I might be living in the none-too-distant future. While not quite the “concrete jungle” that one of Holly’s relatives once described it as, Auckland, it is fair to say, won’t win too many prizes for architectural splendor. While a handful of individual buildings are of noteworthy design, many of the major streets are bedeviled by cheaply-built, single-storey blocks plastered over with bland facades and tacky signage. Of course, there are plenty of towns and cities in England to which this description could equally apply but they don’t have the spectacular scenery of Auckland’s surrounding countryside to take as inspiration. The limited capability of the bus and rail networks is also a source of some frustration, not least because it means limiting ourselves to a couple of drinks whenever we go out for dinner. But it strikes me more as odd that a country boasting such precious natural resources would make such a paltry effort to get people out of their gas-guzzling cars. Trams, I’m sure, would go down a storm here.

On the upside, I’ve seen some very lovely areas of Auckland, areas that dovetail respectfully with the natural scenery around them and all but make you forget that you’re in a big, sprawling city. The seafront suburb of Devonport is one such example, with its modern, beach-facing apartment blocks and tranquil village-esque shops and cafes providing a tasteful contrast with the harbour around it. The sleepy Sunday afternoon we spent there - and on its adjacent North Head hill that looks back out to the city - has been one of my favourite NZ experiences so far. The hills (or, more accurately, dormant volcanoes) that surround Auckland provide a welcome contrast to the greyness below, not to mention great opportunities for some serious calf exercise. Mount Eden and Cornwall Park, for example, provide stunning views out over the city and act as little havens of natural beauty far above the madness. The curiously-named “Domain”, too - a vast area of greenery in the middle of the city that houses both the botanical gardens and the one indisputably great piece of design here, the Auckland Museum - shows that for all of my above reservations, it’s a city that is, at least in part, still in touch with the land on which it is built.

Though the likes of Ponsonby Road – a fashionable street in the west of the city – are not much to look at from the outside, they more than make up for it with the staggering volume of excellent shops, cafes and restaurants contained within. I struggle to understand how such a small population manages to sustain so many eateries – none of which ever seem to be full - but I’m glad that they’ve somehow found a way. It makes the experience of drinking one's long black (a slightly-bigger-than-espresso-sized coffee, fellow Brits) so much more pleasant when you can actually choose which table you want to sit at and aren’t being blasted by the inane chatter of your fellow café-goers.

So like I said, it’s still early days and there’s still plenty for me to explore before I can really make a judgment on the place. Like all cities, Auckland seems to have its pros and cons but at the moment I’m thankful to be living out in the country while still being close enough to the city to make the occasional expedition. Now if someone can point me in the direction of a pub where I can watch the football at 2 in the morning then I might just want to spend a little bit longer there…

Jonny

Heavenly Waters

Friday 29^th October

Call me snobbish but I’ve never been the biggest fan of seaside holidays, least of all those in my own country. I’m afraid I find something faintly depressing about many of the coastal towns in the UK; a sense that their glory days as major fishing ports or glamorous tourist destinations are long since past, but that someone forgot to tell them. The peeling paint of crumbling promenades and ghostly organ themes of empty fairground carousels are impressions as hard to shift as old barnacles but there are, of course, vast stretches of English coastline that remain in a gloriously wild, unspoilt state, unimpaired by the tourist tat that mars the likes of Great Yarmouth and Scarborough.

The wonderful thing about New Zealand’s beaches is that they’re almost all wild and unspoilt, even those within a few miles of a big city like Auckland. I realise I’ve been lucky enough to experience the likes of Muriwai and Leigh at their best – in sunny weather and when the kids are at school – but still, the absolute desolation of some of these places is quite staggering for someone who’s more accustomed to beaches where the sunbathers seem to outnumber the sand grains. The fact that much of the coastline around Auckland has been carved out by millenia of volcanic activity lends the beaches a distinctly unearthly quality. Sometimes it’s enough to make you feel like you’re walking on the surface of the moon. But with palm trees.

Apart from the odd toe dip, I haven’t actually sampled the waters themselves as yet, partly because, even in this late spring season, the sea is still bloody freezing, and partly because I know my pasty English body isn’t yet in a fit state to be seen in the company of my inevitably buff Kiwi swimming companions. But to be honest I’m more of a beach walker than bather anyway and a casual stroll along the sea front is more than sufficient to taste the atmosphere of these places. In any case, there are so many unique sights to experience in and around the coast here that spending an afternoon lying face down in the sand would be doing a massive disservice to the landscape. From the geometrically aligned gannet colony that breeds annually on a couple of rocks off Muriwai to the tropical-esque views across to verdant Goat Island at Leigh, there is more than enough to keep even the most defiant non-swimmer happy.

Probably the most awe-inspiring coastal experience I’ve had so far, however, was not actually by the sea but by the creek about a kilometer up stream from it at Bethells. Having parked the car, we followed the creek’s course backwards via a black sand path that barely hinted at the epic vista just a few minutes’ walk away. Suddenly, the path, which until that point had been surrounded by lush vegetation, opened up onto a vast stretch of sand dunes that seemed to rise up at almost impossible angles all around us. As we clambered up and over the dunes with calf-straining purposefulness we felt like we were walking through a universe of stars, so brilliantly did the sand glitter in the midday sun. The final set of dunes banked down steeply to a misty blue lake that disappeared enticingly around the back of another tower of sand. The whole experience was incredibly surreal to me and were it not for the illusion-shattering sunbathers we glimpsed in the distance, I could have quite easily believed I was on another planet. (For the record, that's a compliment).

Jonny