The terms tracking, trekking, and tramping are common words to describe exploring Australia and New Zealand by foot, usually in remote rather than urban areas. In early 1994 I spent a month hitch-hiking and tramping around New Zealand with a 31-pound backpack. (I had prepared for this trip by walking an hour a day for two mont with a 35-pound backpack.) It was a wonderful adventure. Since I generally plan my day and week carefully, it was unusual for me to start each morning with everything on my back and no idea where I would go, or when I would eat or sleep next. What follows are random observations about my time in New Zealand.
My planning for this trip started a little over two years earlier when I made mail contact with a person having similar interests, through a club to which we both belong. I also explored my computer network, and found two other people there who shared some of my interests. Through these people I met and corresponded with yet others, so I now have a mini-family of New Zealand friends. They are all clustered at or near one of three universities (Auckland, Massey, and Canterbury.) At those universities I was able to access my own home computer, and communicate with family and friends by email.
New Zealand and California are roughly the same size, are both oriented approximately north-south, and are about the same distance from the equator. In each place, the area closest to the equator is semi-tropical and dry, and as one goes toward the nearest pole the climate gradually becomes temperate and the vegetation greener. The North Island is like Southern California, and the South Island is like Northern California and Oregon.
My brief summary impression is that:
The best of New Zealand is like Oregon,
with friendlier people and better food.
Such a simplification of course needs some elaboration. First of all, let me say that I have found many friendly people in Oregon, and only a few with a 'go back to California' attitude. The vast majority of people I have known in Oregon are great - but all of the people I met in New Zealand were at least three times as friendly. I had far more offers of places to stay and home cooked meals than I was comfortable accepting. Food is a more personal matter. I am a plain meat and potatoes person, and there was a greater variety of meat (beef, pork, lamb, venison) available on menus than in Oregon. Fish, fowl, and pasta were available too, but generally only incidentally to the meat part of the fare. There was also a full range of foreign and fancy cuisine available in the larger cities, but I elected to skip over those opportunities, with the exceptions of some excellent lamb curry, and sweet and sour pork.
Here, I drink ice tea with almost every meal, but I had to change my pattern in New Zealand. If one orders ice tea there the response is similar to someone here ordering a dish of melted ice cream. First, the waiter thinks he misunderstood you, and asks again; then, when the words are clearly understood, the concept has to be processed a bit until the solution is found by bringing you a pot of hot tea and a glass with ice cubes - if the restaurant has ice cubes. Ice cubes are not found in every restaurant, and then generally only in the larger ones having a bar attached. Without ice, soda fountain machines don't cool the drinks, so soft drinks are usually served from a can or bottle that has been cooled in a refrigerator. I grew tired of soft drinks after a week, and switched to beer for the rest of the trip. I probably drank more beer in New Zealand than I have consumed here in the last 10 years. (In the two months I have been back I still haven't had an urge to order beer yet, but with the warmer days of summer I'll try one to refresh my memory of my time in New Zealand.) The pepper one finds on the table next to the salt shaker is a very mild, almost white variety, and not at all like the black pepper in the US. What is served as salsa with Mexican food would here be described as a bland tomato paste.
Aside from the food and people, I also associate New Zealand and Oregon because of the topography. I have vacationed in Oregon for years, both winter and summer. Both places have forest-covered mountains, snow-capped peaks, fertile valleys, winding roads, rocky coastlines, sandy beaches, raging rivers, gentle streams, rustic settlements, and many beautiful and remote places to find quiet natural beauty. In both cases it takes me about 16 hours from my front door to get there - by plane to New Zealand, or by car to Oregon. Both trips are tiring, and the drive to Oregon is easier for me because I can stop and stretch my legs or eat whenever I want. I wish I could drive to New Zealand. I flew Air New Zealand, and the level of service (even the food) was the best I have ever experienced on an airplane.
Although I rode buses, trains, and ferries, most of my traveling was on foot. I either hiked trails and old roads, walked along railroad tracks, or hitchhiked. Altogether I had 28 rides from strangers who picked me up along the road. Without exception they went out of their way to be friendly, helpful, and caring. I received offers of places to stay; people bought me food and drink over my objections; and they drove out of their way to show me attractions near the route we were traveling. They drove beyond their destination or turnoff to take me to an intersection where I could get a ride better. When traveling near meal time I bought dinner and drinks when the drivers would allow me to do so. I was surprised to be picked up along the road by women as well as men, and one woman in her 20s even had her very young children in the car as well.
The people who gave me rides included a sandal maker, a lecturer in psychology, an industrial salesman, two students (one of philosophy, the other of 'tourism'), a union organizer, both an active and a retired hotel keeper, an upholsterer, a taxi driver, a moss gatherer, two geologists, a house painter, a telephone installer, a gunsmith, a beekeeper, and various others with strange and unusual experiences they shared with me.
I relied on my thumb most of the time, but did travel by train, bus, and ferryboat now and then. I not only rode modern trains, I sought out museum and historic trains to ride because of my lifelong interest in railroads. I followed railroad tracks on foot, explored railroad yards, and even visited some model railroad displays. I didn't hop any freight trains, as I have done here in the US, but I accepted an invitation to ride in the cab of a steam locomotive. It was a coal burner, and a first for me since all the other locomotive cabs I have ridden in were oil burners or diesels.
The buses were similar to Greyhound, except that they did not have an on-board rest room. The space used for a rest room on a Greyhound coach was a luggage-storage compartment, accessible only from outside the vehicle. A brief stop was made every hour or so, and about every three hours there was a 45-minute meal stop. Unlike my Greyhound experiences, the drivers were all friendly and cooperative.
Smoking seemed widespread in outdoor public areas, but was much less common inside buildings. Non-smoking areas in restaurants are appearing, but are still the exception.
The ferryboats (used for the 3-hour trip between the north and south islands) were quite large, handling perhaps 100-150 cars, and around 500 passengers. They included a bar and cafeteria, and an extra-fare auditorium wherein a video was shown. There was plenty of deck space, and on the trips I made in sunny weather several passengers stripped down to their decency essentials for sunbathing.
I generally stayed at youth hostels - sometimes 6 to a room, usually in a room by myself. Most of the others there were about one third my age, but there were a few 'mature' trampers also. Many of the hostel residents prepared their own food in the kitchens, but I ate all my meals in restaurants. When tramping I ate stuff I carried, or went hungry until evening. Sometimes I stayed in 'pub accommodations' which are small rooms above or adjacent to a pub. Reportedly, these suites of rooms were formerly whorehouses attached to the pubs, and in modern times refurbished into modest accommodations for low-budget travelers.
The costs of my month were about as follows:
Plane, LA to LA $1,200
Transportation in NZ 250
Lodging 300
Meals 400
Miscellaneous 250
Total $2,400
One very personal insight I obtained on this trip was the role that stress has been playing in my own health. Before this trip I had attributed most of my occasional-to-frequent headaches to departures from my regular eating and sleeping habits. On my trip to New Zealand, however, I had a month of very irregular diet and sleep, and I did not have one headache the whole trip. As soon as I got back home, sad to say, the headaches resumed as the stress of my normal life returned.
One of the nicest things I found, at least twice a day, was that the rest rooms in New Zealand are always clean. Whether at a remote roadside snack stand, an urban bus depot, or a working-class pub, I always found the rest rooms well-stocked and clean. The most consistently irritating inconvenience that I found everywhere in New Zealand was the use of separate faucets on basins and sinks. If one wants to wash one's hands under running water, the choice is all cold, or all hot. The idea of a central spigot fed from a hot-water valve and a cold-water valve, so that one can adjust the temperature of the water flow by changing the mixture of hot and cold water, has not made much headway there. It is also still fairly common for homes to have only one source of heat (in the living room,) so that in cooler weather one goes to bed in a cold bedroom, and awakens the next morning in an even colder one.
New Zealand has been a large exporter of agricultural products (lamb, beef, butter, cheese, etc.) for much of its modern history. Starting about ten years ago, however, New Zealand's farm products found it increasingly difficult to compete in world markets, as the trade barriers around the British Commonwealth began to be lowered. The resulting financial strain lead to increased international borrowing, and then difficulty in repaying the loans. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) applied pressure on the New Zealand government to balance its budget, and a very unusual social change is underway. Both the major political parties seem to agree that womb-to-tomb government welfare entitlements have to be scaled back, and a market economy emphasized. Many former government agencies (railways, phones, mail, etc.) have been sold to the private sector. Adjustments are being made good naturedly by the population, probably because both major political parties agree they are necessary. While I was in New Zealand the question of free medical care for wealthy senior citizens was being debated, and it appeared that the government was adopting the position that (as here in the US) senior citizens must utilize their own resources for medical care before becoming eligible for welfare. The opposition to this change is apparently coming from the younger generation that believes it is 'entitled' to inherit its parents' wealth undiluted by parental medical expenses.
A personality characteristic I noted in many New Zealanders was discomfort expressing preferences or rankings. If people were asked to name the three most recent restaurants they had eaten at, there was no problem naming them. If then asked which one they liked the best, and which the least, there was a pause, some evident discomfort over the question, and then a calm and rational recitation of the good and bad points of each restaurant. |
