NOTE: It’s taken a while to get my act together & start posting about our North Island trip, which actually took place during the last couple weeks of April. But now that I’ve started, hopefully I’ll be adding entries on a regular basis. Also, we’re trying to figure out a system that lets both Sara & I add notes about the trip. So from here forward, you can assume all of the brilliant, poetic observations come from her.
UPDATE: Lost the map first time around. Not sure how. Anyway, here it is…
Having successfully navigated around the South Island of New Zealand during our first few weeks here, our next big adventure was a tour of the North Island, planned for the girls’ two-week fall holiday during March. The trip was a huge success, and we took plenty of pictures, so I’ll break up the narrative into bits, just like I did for the South Island Trip.
First, though, some thoughts about the North Island vs. the South Island.
It’s probably not surprising that when you have two regions of a country with such obvious geographical boundaries, you end up with slight variations in culture and at least a little bit of rivalry. I’m hardly an expert on NZ geography/culture, but I think I’ve learned a few things worth passing along. Maybe Katie’ll get her Kiwi friends to read this post and teach me a thing or two in the comments.
First thing to note is that the North Island contains more than 3/4 of the country’s population, as well as its capitol (Wellington) and largest city (Auckland). Pre-European settlement was also mostly in the North Island, and even now that’s where you’ll find most of the Maori in New Zealand. (Interestingly enough, that was not the case for the early European settlers, which is why the South Island was once, and is still, called “the Mainland” – though I imagine with a touch of sarcasm these days.)
When you couple the low population density (even low for New Zealand) with the larger land area, you can see why the South Island has a more “bush” (read: backwoods) feel to it. The Dunedin beer company Speight’s (“Pride of the South”) has a “Southern Man” marketing campaign which is a lot like the old Marlboro Man, but with a bit more wry humor. (I was going to embed a couple of Southern Man Speight’s ads that I found on YouTube, like this one or this one, but I can’t for the life of me understand what they’re saying.)
So while the South Island has beautiful scenery (like the Fjordlands) and a couple of big cities (like Dunedin), the North Island is more a combination of big cities (like Auckland) and beautiful scenery (like the Northlands). Hopefully now you’re straight on all that.
Day 1: Getting There
Our first day’s trip was a long one. The goal was to make it from Wellington (A) about 6+ hours north to Rotorua (D), a tourist town known for its hot springs, steam vents and mud baths. On the way we passed through Foxton (B), and happened upon “Foxton’s Fantastic Festival of Murals” there. The town square had eight or so murals-in-progress and we duly voted for our favorites. I might not have mentioned it except that later in our trip I noticed another small town was having a mural contest. Murals, it seems, are all the rage these days.
Watching the muralist at work in Foxton
We had hoped to make it to Lake Taupo (C), which is pronounced “Toe-poe”, before dark, but we got a later-than-originally-planned start and then hit an honest-to-goodness traffic jam on the highway going north. North, remember, is warmer down under, and it was Good Friday; it seems that we weren’t the only people heading out for the Easter holiday. So we ended up going through Taupo well after dark and simply imagining its beauty. But we made it safely to Rotorua that night, with minimal complaints from our passengers.
Day 2: Spluttering Mud: Rotorua
The first full day of our trip was split into two halves. In the morning we dropped by a park full of steaming vents mostly because, well, wouldn’t you? I mean, the idea that it’d be necessary to fence off parts of a city park in order to keep people away from the boiling hot steam rising from the ground sounds like something fit for downtown purgatory. And the smell only emphasizes the analogy.
Steam vents in the park
We then enjoyed the parks and playgrounds surrounding what used to be a Rotorua Bath House, the kind of place rich Britons would go to improve their health. The building itself was huge and gorgeous, but my favorite part was the croquet grounds. We were able to watch what I can only assume was croquet the way it’s supposed to be played: the grass was completely level & well-groomed, and while one player took his/her turn, opponents stood to the side in the shade under lean-to-like covers politely clapping or discussing the difficulty in finding scullery maids these days or something.
Note from Sara: This (the Rotorua Bath House and cricket grounds) is one of the few spots I remember vividly from visiting when I was Katie’s age (when we went on sabbatical to Australia). It felt, and still feels, very colonial, which felt romantic when I was young.
Rotorua Bath House
After some rest time back at our bed & breakfast we headed off for Te Puia, “New Zealand’s Premier Maori Culture & Geothermal Visitor Experience”, where we experienced both Maori culture and geothermal activity. Who’d have thought?
The guy on the left made it all worthwhile
Te Puia Woodcarving
Kids in the Mist
I like this evening shot
Bubble, bubble, boil and trouble
As always, there are plenty more great pictures on our Picasa website. Check ‘em out!
New Zealand is known for its birds. People come here from all around the world for bird watching. As we’ve travelled, I’ve found myself wishing on several occasions that I knew more about birds so that I could get excited about seeing, for example, a white-bellied puffin (if such a bird exists, I’m sure it lives here).
The funny thing (what inspires this post) is this: The news program Radio New Zealand (their equivalent of NPR’s Morning Edition) ends every show with a bit called “And now, the bird.” The announcer says “and now, the bird: a red-throated mukatuku” followed by about a minute of that particular bird call (which in radio time is quite a significant chunk of time). They don’t tell you anything about the bird other than its name. Then the show is over.
It feels like one of those things that encapsulates what it means to be a New Zealander, and I love it.
This morning, at around 10:30am, as we were both working hard at our chosen professions, Sara suddenly asked me if I wanted to blow off our work and go see the new Star Trek movie at the The Embassy in a half hour.
Wow, that’s a tough one.
So we’ve just returned from a completely spontaneous visit to the gorgeous movie palace where Lord of the Rings premiered to see a fantastic re-awakening of the whole Star Trek universe, and well, I just want to say:
I love you, Sara.
ps When I say “palace”, I mean “palace”. Just to give you an idea: here’s a snapshot of the restrooms I took from wikipedia:
I’m about to send out a mass-email to a bunch of old friends and I directed them all to this blog, so I’m thinking it’d be smart to write a quick re-cap post for those who’ve not been following along for a while:
#1. Marriage: Sometime this February, Sara & I passed the (Good Lord) twenty-year mark of being a couple. And I can honestly say we’re still going strong. If it weren’t for these annoying middle-aged bodies we’ve somehow been saddled with, it’d be just like it was when we first met.
#2. Kids: We have three girls: Katie (15), Megan (9) and Alison (2). All of whom are bright, beautiful, fun, above-average, and could beat up your honor student / cocker spaniel.* We love them.
#3. Jobs: Sara is an associate professor of criminology sociology, concentrating in the criminal justice system, at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Dug’s career has veered in so many directions that it’s difficult to keep track of, but has mostly involved computers, politics, and games of late.
#4. Home: Although Boulder, Colorado is our home, we’re currently living in Wellington, New Zealand for Sara’s septi-annual sabbatical. We’ll be back in Boulder this August. This blog is a journal of our time away.
I think that about covers it. Questions?
* This is a somewhat obscure reference to “My child could beat up your honor student” / “I (heart) my cocker spaniel” bumper stickers. If you’ve not seen the bumper stickers, it’s probably not that funny. Actually, it’s probably not that funny if you have. But in any case, I want to make it clear that my children don’t usually beat up cocker spaniels. Or honor students. Usually.
During our seven-month stay in New Zealand, Sara's on sabbatical while I'm (let's say) "between commitments". I decided early on to use this time to brush up on new technologies; specifically, Microsoft's Silverlight platform, which is basically Microsoft's answer to Adobe Flash. Just to give myself a project and hard deadline, I decided to write a Silverlight-based game (called “Spin Poker”) and submit it to a Microsoft Silverlight game contest. It’s a two-stage contest, and it turns out that I’ve cleared the first stage. Which is where you come in.
Would you be willing to take ten minutes to help me win?
There are sixteen finalists remaining in the contest, all of whom have submitted a Silverlight-based game to the website. Part of the final round of judging (20%) will be based on the number of times that the public at large (that’s you) play each game, and how well it is rated (one to five stars). Every little bit helps, so it makes sense for me to ask all my friends and colleagues and family, and friends of friends & family, and family of colleagues’ friends, and people I’ve not talked to in dozens of years, and basically everyone for whom I have an email address to help me out. It’s pretty easy, and you might even enjoy it.
How to help:
[UPDATE: You’re supposed to be able to automatically install Silverlight if it’s not yet been installed on your system, but that doesn’t seem to be working for some people. You may want to install Silverlight first, by going to: http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/resources/install.aspx.
Also, after reading the System Requirements page, it would seem that it works in Internet Explorer 7 or FireFox on Vista and XP, but for some reason only in Firefox or Safari (not Internet Explorer) on the Mac.]
#1. Register at the Microsoft ServerQuest Contest website: http://www.serverquestcontest.com/register.aspx. As of this writing, this page looks like it applies only to those who want to submit a game, but you need to register in order to rate the games as well. So it’s easiest to register first.*
[UPDATE 2: In order to rate the games, you just have to click on the appropriate star just under the game title on the game page. This is, unfortunately, not exactly obvious unless you’re used to such rating systems. So, just to take a completely arbitrary example, if you wanted to rate Spin Poker as 5 stars, you would click on the fifth star (see picture). If you would like to rate Spin Poker as 1 star, then please click on the little red box with the X in it in the upper right corner of your web browser.]
#3. If you’re willing, please pass this message along to others you know so they can register, play and rate the game as well.
That’s really it. Feel free to check out the other games in the gallery, write me with comments/ideas for Spin Poker, and so on. If you enjoy it, please bookmark it and return to play often over the next month. Then we’ll find out (on or around May 25th) whether my mass-email entreaty had any effect. In the meantime, I hope you get some fun out of it. (And enjoy the surprise family videos – you’ll see what I mean when you play.)
Thanks much!
Dug
*NOTE: Some of you may be understandably uncomfortable with registering. However, the point of this contest is to find good games they can use to promote Silverlight, not to spam a lot of unsuspecting game players, so I don’t think you have much to worry about. And Microsoft is good about removing you from lists if they do start sending you messages. Besides, it’s Microsoft: if they’ve not got your email address by now, what kind of lame evil empire would they be?
It’s hard enough to make friends as adults, but it turns out it’s even harder overseas and on sabbatical. It just doesn’t feel like it’s worth putting a lot of effort into it, since we’re just here for such a short time. So, I’m REALLY missing my friends, and I think we’re all missing our friendly neighborhood.
On the other hand, we’ve had a heck of a lot of time together just the five of us (or four of us after about 7:30 p.m.), and have been playing a lot of games (KT, Meg and I are playing lots of cards this week), dancing around the living room looking totally ridiculous, and just talking. I’m trying to fill my personal bank with Katie time, since it’s so hard to get time alone with her in Boulder (if only she were less popular…). Dug and I even had a “date” last night; we got a movie, took chairs and a coffee table upstairs (our bedroom is the only room on the third floor), ordered Indian, and spent three hours totally alone. It was lovely.
Having successfully navigated around the South Island of New Zealand during our first few weeks here, our next big adventure was a tour of the North Island, planned for the girls’ two-week fall holiday during March. The trip was a huge success, and we took plenty of pictures, so I’ll break up the narrative into bits, just like I did for the South Island Trip.
