The Long White Cloud

The Land of the Long White Cloud At least that’s what the Maori’s call it in their language, but you couldn’t prove it by me. I can’t even pronounce the names of towns…Whangamata is pronounced Fangamata, with the accent on the “ta.” Each vowel in the Maori language is a syllable unto itself and so it takes me a whole breath to say a single word. Although NZ has a British heritage, it was a Dutchman, Abel Tasman, who was the first European to set foot here. Not surprisingly, the British with their navy eventually annexed the place…”Rule Brittania, Britiania rules the waves.” We’ve had great weather and have been really lucky with it…Just before we arrived the bottom of the north island, Wellington, had at or near hurricane winds, Christchurch where we will be next week was flooded upon our arrival in NZ and Auckland where we were a week ago is facing a tropical cyclone, which is what they call hurricanes in another terminology. Situated along latitudes roughly between North Carolina and New Brunswick, but in reverse, NZ weather has a lot of variety…People say that being the weather forecaster is the easiest job possible because they are always wrong and so nobody blames them… they say that everywhere, but it’s a joke…here people are serious. So as we head across the strait to the South Island tomorrow where they say it “changes rapidly,” we now plan days by looking at weather maps first and then planning direction and activities accordingly instead of leisurely journeying south as we have for the past week It takes some patience for me to drive here. Not because the drivers are reckless or the roads are lousy, but rather because I can be accused of expecting more highway structure and I’ve been reminded a couple of times “We’re only 4+ million people.” I expected road conditions to be poor in Uzbekistan since they are an emerging nation, but I have to admit to being surprised at the narrowness of the roads and the lack of alternative routes…There are hills everywhere, so roads follow the valleys and gaps between them. So far the only 4 lane highways are within 20 miles of Auckland and the same distance here in Wellington, the capital. The speed limit is a max of 100kph/62mph and there are tons of trucks both in size and number on the highways…to their credit they have passing lanes which appear just about frustration time. Then, after passing the slower vehicles, you get some clean air for a while before the next truck looms in your vision to slow you down….they do scoot, to be sure, but New Zealand is very hilly at best and they don’t have the zip or oomph to go up the long grades at that speeds…we do have the aforementioned “slow vehicle bays” as well occasionally. Stan struggles to pass them in the short span of the passing lane…I’ve found it best to try to judge the “Passing lane in 400 meters” sign and hang back a little so that I can kick it at 400 meters and have some momentum when I actually reach the extra lane. Misjudging the distance means that Stan is destined to move aside as cars with more horsepower can zip around all of us once again proving Newton correct: “A car in motions tends to stay in motion, a car at rest tends to stay at rest.” The roads pass through lots of small towns along the way since New Zealand urbanization has developed In the lowlands and valleys…there’s not a lot of flat ground. So the congregation of people is more concentrated, I think, than in other countries…But there is a lot of civic and personal pride that goes with the culture here…The houses reflect the good life. They are individual, detached houses which are well cared for…flowers and horticulture are important to the people. There is a “neatness” to the place…things seem well-ordered and there is a very pleasant “calmness” to the entire ambiance of the nation. One thing that has really impressed me are the children’s parks. They are often mini theme parks with many activities ringing a city block square park with open space to run and play in the interior…There’s a really cool bungie bounce with a mini trampoline attached at the two bungies…it also swings and it looks like a lot of fun. Another park had a giant spider web with the mini trampolines which rises about 15 feet/5 meters high all connected with thick rubber tubing where kids can climb to the supported top. It’s like some rubberized tinker toy structure. The Wi fi situation seems to be a national joke and is my biggest frustration…everybody just rolls their eyes when you mention it…Hotels mostly charge for usage. My hotel in Auckland gave me vouchers to get on the web and they couldn’t have been actual prices to them because I went through about $130 worth of them in the time I was there…100 mb is $10, and that just loading a few pages here or there…then I had to go back and get another voucher. It was a real pain. At another hotel, they advertized free internet, but they turned it on at 7:30 p.m. and turned it off at 9:00 p.m….then on again atn7:30 a.m. and off at 9:00 a.m. other places the signal is so weak you can’t really function with it. Again, people just say “We’re small, remember.” We expected to see a nation of sheep, literally, not figuratively, but were surprised to find the enormous numbers of dairies. NZ, we are told is the 5th largest exporter/producer (I’m not sure which, but either way it’s impressive) of dairy products in the world and the landscape of good pasture land is dotted continuously with herds of Holsteins, Jerseys, guernseys and what I refer to as the velveteen breed….the hide looks different depending on the angle of the line of sight…on one angle it’s a light brown, almost a beige, while from another, it is like a dark chocolate. Only the large number of lumber trucks hauling felled trees exceeds the dairy trucks trolling up and down the highway. All the best land goes to dairy production while the less arable land is where the sheep “farms” are located. Indeed, as we headed towards the bottom of the north island and into the high desert and scrub vegetation, we began to see the large sheep flocks dotting the land. Romney is the most prevalent breed here in NZ and we remembered our Romney ram who always seemed to have a smile on his face, hence his name “Sunny.” I always suspected that smile was brought about by the fact that he was the only ram servicing our 30 ewes. Hobbiton is actually a working sheep and cattle ranch with over 6,000 head grazing on the hundreds of acres and 300 beef cattle, mostly Angus. Our visit to Hobbiton was fun, a nice diversion, but I was not in awe as most of the other tour participants since I’ve never seen a single one of the movies. That along with the fact that I never saw ET must place me in some category of culturally deprived individuals, and I think we are a small lot. But they have recreated the village of Bilbo Baggins very well, and it seems very lifelike and natural…It’s early Autumn here and hence the ground is dry and brown; looking like a California Central Valley October more than a NZ March. Like most things here, the tour is not a cheap afternoon throwaway. At $75 per person for a two hour tour, it is something you have to have real motivation to see, and my grandsons at home and ‘granddaughters’ in Uzbekistan all wanted to know about it with great interest. I posted several photos on my facebook page much to the approval of all.

Sign of the day on a freeway on ramp: “Merge like a zip.”