Luggage Reduced and Car Hired

Tuesday, December 29, 2009     Auckland, New Zealand

The next adventure is starting to take shape.  We have been exchanging email with Heather, a master gardener who is a friend of our friend Helen back in the US.  Heather and her husband have invited us to spend a couple of days with them at their house right on the coast near Tauranga.  So we have arranged to rent a car (in NZ it's called "hire a car") beginning Thursday, Dec. 31.  We will keep the car at least until the middle of February, taking it on down to the South Island with us in a couple of weeks.  When we were planning our NZ stay we thought we could get around by bus and train and avoid renting a car.  But when we really looked into the prices, it's not significantly more expensive to hire a car.  One can buy a bus pass that is good on most of the intercity bus lines.  It is priced by the travel hour, and can be refilled, or "topped up" as they say, and it costs NZ$10-12 per hour per person.  This makes it a reasonable deal for a solo backpacker, but since there are two of us, that's NZ$20-24 per hour.  Travel times between several of the major cities and attractions are on the order of 3-5 hours, so that's on the order of NZ$80-100 per connection for the two of us.  Our car rental is NZ$42 per day, including taxes and insurance.  Of course, we pay that every day, even when we are staying put someplace, but on the other hand it will allow us to get to lots of scenic places that simply would not be accessible if we had to rely on the bus lines.  And there is the issue of carting all that luggage we brought with us.  So, for the next six weeks we will be real gypsies, traveling from place to place, staying in a different town every night.

Speaking of luggage, despite our best intentions, we counted up a total of 8 bags to  manage.  Each of us has a check-through suitcase.  Tyler has a carry-on roll-aboard and a CPAP breathing machine (for sleep apnea).  Paula has a roll-aboard and a CPAP and a small backpack and a purse.  We got away with it on the flight over by stuffing Paula's purse in her backpack and calling that her purse.  The CPAPs are exempt from airline carry-on limits because they are medical devices.  Anyway, before we leave this place on Thursday, we are going to pack up as much as we can possibly do without (including some stuff we have acquired here) and ship it back home.  At the very least we need to reduce the weight of the stuff we're carrying around.  At best we may be able to send back one of the roll-aboards.

'Twas the Sunday After Christmas, and all through NZ...

Sunday, December 27, 2009     Auckland, New Zealand

We attended worship services at St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church, which is on the edge of the University of Auckland campus.  The beautiful old stone building was one of the first permanent buildings in Auckland, founded in 1847.  To get there we hiked about a mile from our hotel in central Auckland, including a vigorous climb up and through Albert Park.  Of course, there was an impressive statue of Queen Victoria in the center of the park, and some beautiful trees in full bloom with blue flowers.  Paula identifies it as jacaranda.

The church reminded us a lot of University Baptist Church in Champaign, Illinois, where we attended for four years while Tyler was in graduate school.  When the university is in session the congregation includes many students from many countries - - many from southeast asia and pacific islands.  But it is summer now, and the students are gone, so there were only perhaps 40-50 people - -- a couple of families with children, a few middle-aged couples, and several senior people in various stages of elderliness, like us.  The long-time pastor was the Reverend Harry Morgan (not the Colonel Potter from MASH) with a curious mixed accent of New Zealand, Scotland, and, believe it or not, American.  Some 30 years ago he and his wife spent a full year in Arizona.

After church we hiked another mile or so to the Auckland Museum for another look around.  Enough hiking for one day - - we took the bus back to the hotel.

Note the X on the pulpit, and also in the windows in the second picture - - the cross of St. Andrew, of course!

Merry Christmas!

As I write this, it is about 2:30 pm Friday, December 25 in Auckland, New Zealand.  Back home it is 8:30 pm the night before Christmas, Thursday, December 24.  Yesterday we looked around for churches, thinking that we might attend a Christmas Eve service, and were considering Christmas morning services, too.  But in the end we just stayed in the apartment.  There is a big St. Matthew's Anglican church nearby, but when we looked into it, it was apparent that their idea of the Christian faith was too different from ours for us to be comfortable.  Even within the range of Anglican congregations this one is clearly an outlier.  We read their website, where they were very helpful and forthright about what they believe: namely, anything you want to believe, as long as it's politically "progressive".  It might as well be a Unitarian church.  We have found another church more to our liking not far away, so we will visit them Sunday morning.

Auckland Museum, December 24, 2009

The Auckland Museum is superb!  We got there about 3:30 pm and it closed at 5:00, but even in that hour and a half we saw some amazing things and learned a lot.  They have the  best collection (and instructive commentary) on Maori culture and history in the world.  For a stone-age culture that had no metals, it was amazingly complex and sophisticated technologically.  There is no doubt that their discovery of New Zealand was not entirely accidental.  They (and kindred Polynesian societies on other islands) had large twin-hull ocean-going sailing canoes, and they had the ability to navigate by combining several indicators, including the position of the stars, knowledge of the ocean currents and prevailing winds, behavior of sea birds, and subtleties in the pattern of ocean waves and swells.  The earlier ideas that the Pacific islands were settled by a random process of canoes getting accidentally blown away from the vicinity of their home island and finally, luckily, stumbling across a new unknown island, nearly dead from hunger and thirst, is clearly wrong, as is the idea that hundreds of such strays must have perished at sea for every one that successfully found land.  The Maori legends tell of one early explorer who discovered New Zealand, reprovisioned, and sailed back to his home island to tell about.  He recruited settlers and returned with 6 large sailing canoes, probably around 800 - 1000 AD.  He was followed by other waves of settlers.  One particular tribe in the Rotorua area traces their ancestry to a canoe that landed in 1347 - their legendary memory is that precise.  Although details of these voyages have been embellished and assumed mythical characteristics by now, there is no reason to doubt the veracity of the basic underlying legend.

The Maori's stone technology benefited because they had access to both obsidian (volcanic glass that can be fractured conchoidally to give razor sharp edges) and greenstone, a hard metamorphic rock consisting mainly of nephrite, a type of jade.  I haven't seen yet whether they had wheeled transportation, but I don't believe they had any large draft animals (oxen, horses), so they may not have had the wheel.  It was a highly aquatic culture anyway, and river  and coastal navigation were more important than moving stuff overland.

One historical factor I have not yet seen any mention of is the earlier people whom the Maori exterminated.  The Maori certainly don't bring it up in their cultural displays for the tourists, but I know from previous reading that there were people here before the Maori.  I need to read up about it.  See my comments in an earlier post about how the telling of history invariably reflects a point of view and is subject to "political correctness" controls.

Speaking of navigation, here is Tyler with his GPS trying to find his way from one side of the museum to the other.

Auckland, New Zealand Dec 23

Wednesday, December 23, 2009     Auckland, New Zealand

We have settled into our hotel apartment here in Auckland, and Paula went grocery shopping yesterday.  We still eat most of our meals in restaurants - - there are so many fine choices here - - but most days we eat breakfast here in the apartment.

The place is part of the Chifley Suites chain.  Ours is very conveniently located right in downtown Auckland.  It's a 24-story high-rise of recent construction.  There is no air conditioning, but there is a balcony with sliding doors that we can leave open.  So far the weather has been mild, staying below 25C during the day and cooling off at night.  Australia is in the grip of a heat wave right now (temperatures over 40C is several of the northern cities).  We got out just in time!

There is a problem with leaving the balcony door open at night.  It's very noisy.  Like the center of any big city, there are all kinds of vehicle noises, sirens, and voices of carousing drunks all night long.  But the one that takes the cake was this very loud whooshing whining motor sound that went on and on.  Paula eventually got up and looked out to see what was making all that racket, and observed a worker walking around with a leaf blower blowing off the sidewalks - after midnight!

Paula did laundry using the combo washer/drier right here in our apartment.  It's about a meter high and 3/4 meter wide and deep.  It's complicated and difficult to figure out, and there's no user's manual around - - just a rather cryptic instruction sheet posted on the top of the machine.  Paula much prefers her washer and drier at home, but they do occupy at least ten times the space of this little thing.  And it beats trying to find a laundromat!

Our best option for internet access is coffee shops and internet cafes.  Even the convenience stores have an area for computer users for a modest price, around NZ$4 per hour.  We tried the free internet at the library, but it was so slow as to be almost unusable.  But right next door - - in fact, attached to the library - - was an Esquire's coffee shop that offers excellent high-speed access if you just buy a cup of coffee.  It is also a Boingo hotspot, and since we have a Boingo subscription, we don't really even have to buy a coffee, but Tyler does anyway, and Paula likes their scones.

We are just beginning to try the bus system.  There is a free city circuit bus that covers some of the area, and there is a Link circuit bus that covers a larger area.  There are also many other city bus routes, and a system-wide pass is available for NZ$7.50 per day.  Tyler was frustrated that there is no master map showing all of the bus routes for the area, but Paula found a nice set of regional maps that does cover it all in about 6 subsets.  So we have identified the route to the Auckland Botanic Garden, and will spend most of a day there as soon as we check the weather report.

Auckland has its own Sky Tower, which they claim is the tallest building in the southern hemisphere.  They proudly state that it is 18 feet higher than the Eiffel Tower in Paris.  Here are some photos from the top.  Note the vertical steel cable in the picture.  That's a guide cable for the bungy jumpers who leap off the top, above the observation deck!  We caught one of them on video.  They say it's quite safe.  Even if the bungy cord breaks or you slip out of the harness, the long fall doesn't hurt a bit.  The sudden stop at the bottom, though, is a real killer!

Restaurant Prices in Auckland

Monday, December 21, 2009     Auckland

Last night we had a very good dinner at Auckland's finest Mexican restaurant.  The food was some of the best Mexican I've ever had.  The prices, though, are cause for reflection, so I'm going to lead you through a bit of algebra to compare NZ restaurant prices with what you might expect in the US.  Our initial impression is that all NZ restaurants are a lot more expensive than what we usually see in the US, but the  prices are computed differently.  For one thing, the price listed on the menu includes the 12.5% sales tax.  For another, tipping really is optional in Australia and New Zealand, although 10% seems to be the convention.  In the US we typically tip 18-20% when we are pleased with the service.  So let's do a comparison. 

Tyler had a glass of Sangria (NZ$8.50), a very large and excellent appetizer of mussels in spicy tomato sauce (NZ$15.50, called an Entree here), and the main course was enchiladas with rice, beans, and pico de gallo (NZ$22.50, called the Main here).  There is also another class of smaller appetizer that they call the Starter.  So the entire bill for Tyler's dinner was:

NZ$46.50 plus NZ$4.65 tip for a total of NZ$51.15.

The exchange rate has been right around NZ$1.40/USD, so that is equivalent to US$36.54. 

In the US such a meal would appear on the menu as a certain price P.  When we get the bill, it has 6% sales tax (T) added to it, and we generally add another 20% of the sum of P+T to get the final amount.  So the algebra problem to work out is this:

The final bill F=US$36.54 is composed of the menu price P plus the sales tax T plus the tip B.

F  =  P + T + B

T = 0.06*P

B = 0.20*(P + T)  =  0.20*(P + 0.06*P)  =  0.20*1.06*P

Thus F = P + 0.06*P + 0.20*1.06*P   =  P*(1 + 0.06 + 0.20*1.06)  =  P*1.272

Therefore P = F/1.272  =  US$28.73   This is the equivalent menu price, using US (MI) sales tax and tip rates.

So, considering that this is better than your usual Mexican restaurant, and included the Sangria (which would cost at least $5.00 in the US), perhaps the price isn't that much higher than in the US.

At sea, Tauranga to Auckland

Saturday, December 19, 2009     at sea from Tauranga to Auckland

Yesterday, Friday, Dec. 18, we were in port in Tauranga, which is both the largest port in New Zealand and the fastest.  With docking fees of NZ$20,000 per day, they can unload and reload a container freight ship in one and a half days - the record for all of New Zealand, and darn good for any port in the world.

We took a full-day excursion to the thermal area of Rotorua to see the gysers and several Mauri cultural events.  This area sits atop an upwelling of magma, which is responsible for the same sort of features you see in Yellowstone National Park - gysers, bubbling mudpots, steaming hot springs, and sulfurous smells permeating the air.  I'm sure it impresses visitors from outside the US, but for us it pales in comparison to Yellowstone.  Plus, Yellowstone has the added attraction that it is actually the remnant caldera of a still-active hotspot supervolcano that is due to erupt again any day now - - i.e., at some totally unpredictable time in the next few hundred thousand years!  The thermals around Rotorua are of a different character.  They arise because all of New Zealand is part of what is known as a typical volcanic island arc that develops just beyond a subduction zone - - in this case, the Pacific plate is diving beneath the Australo-Indonesian plate.  Similar geology is responsible for the islands of Japan, and for the Aleutian Island ark in Alaska.  God is great!  The mountains proclaim His glory, the rocks cry out in honor of His name!

During an informational meeting this morning about procedures for disembarking in Auckland on Sunday, the cruise director related some of his favorite questions from passengers.

"Do the elevators go both up and down?"

"Will this elevator take me to the front of the ship?"

"Does the ship generate its own power?"  (No, ma'am.  We have an extension cord all the way back to Sydney.  Besides providing power to the ship, it helps us find our way back.)

"Where does the water in the swimming pool come from?"

"Well, ma'am, we take the water from the sea, filter it, and convert it to fresh water for the pool."

"I thought so!  That must be why the pool is so rough and sloshing back and forth."

"Does the staff stay on board during the whole cruise?"

"No, ma'am.  Every night a big helicopter comes to the ship and takes all of us ashore to a nice hotel for the night.  Then it brings us back early in the morning, along with the fresh bread and pastries."

"Well, that darn helicopter has been waking me up every night!"

Soon after all of the passengers had embarked on the first day of the cruise, the cruise director was mingling with the passengers and saw one gentleman who was obviously fit to be tied - - pacing angrily around, red-faced, with a scowl on his face.  The tour director approached him and asked, "Welcome aboard, sir.  Is there anything I can do for you?"  The man didn't say a thing, just motioned for the tour director to follow him.  They arrived at the man's stateroom, a nice outside room with a large window, and the tour director could see a nice view of the dock and the activity around the pier outside the boat.  The tour director asked, "What seems to be the matter, sir?"  Finally the man replied, "I clearly requested an ocean view room!"

We sailed around White Island this morning.  It is the only currently active volcano in New Zealand.  You can see steam rising from one of the vents and sulfur deposits around it.  A little further to the right in this view is an area forested with the pohutakawa tree in full bloom, also called New Zealand's Christmas tree because it blooms right around this time of year.

 Here are some nice close-up pictures of the beautiful flowers.

Wellington, New Zealand

Wednesday, December 16, 2009     Wellington

This was the day for the Lord of the Rings excursion.  Director Peter Jackson's home is in Wellington, as well as his movie studios and the WETA Workshops and affiliated companies.  WETA did most of the props, costumes, prosthetics, and computer graphics for the films, and is clearly one of the top creative organizations in the world in all of those specialties.  Before we came to New Zealand we had rented and watched the entire Extended Release DVD set of the Lord of the Rings, which included something like six additional DVDs of documentary and explanatory material, in addition to several important additional scenes that had to be cut from the commercial theater release.  Paula also bought a single-volume paperback edition of the Tolkien trilogy to read over the next few months (Tyler had already read Tolkien several years ago.)

The following is for our special friend Rachel.

Mt. Victoria is a large park reserve and high point on the outskirts of Wellington.  Several forest scenes were filmed here.

We had a great 360 degree view of Wellington from the top of Mt. Victoria.

Kaitoke Regional Park was one of the most beautiful locations we visited.  Besides having a lovely babbling brook, it is set in a bowl, just as described by Tolkien for Rivendell, the settlement of the elves.  The name Rivendell is now officially and indelibly attached to this place because of its use in the movie.

There is nothing left of any of the movie sets in any of the natural filming locations (i.e., the sites out in nature, not in a studio building or lot).  Peter Jackson and crew really went out of their way to document the site before they started work, and to preserve and restore it after they were finished.  In addition, in many of the sites they spent additional time and money to add trees and other enhancements for the benefit of the public.  As a consequence, you really need to see the sites with a knowledgeable guide and a good imagination.  Our guide was very good, and carried a notebook of photographs showing how the site appeared in the movie.  He would point out the corresponding trees, for example, and also explain what was altered on the site or added post-production by the miracle of editing, superposition, and computer graphics.  He told us that he was the only professional actor in New Zealand who did NOT appear as at least an extra in the movie.  Several of the other guides with other bus groups had served as extras, but I doubt that those groups got any better narrative than we did.

Picton, New Zealand

Tuesday, December 15, 2009     Picton

The small port town of Picton is at the top of the South Island just across the straits from Wellington.  We got up at 5:30 this morning to catch the sunrise during our approach into Picton Harbor.  Tyler set up the camera on a tripod and took a sequence of stills, shooting one every three seconds.  Then, using QuickTime on the MacBook Pro laptop, he was able to convert the sequence into a time-lapse movie of the sunrise.  We're not sophisticated enough with the WWW to be able to figure out how to publish it so you, our fans, can see it, but we may be able to do so before we return home.

Our shore excursion visited wineries and gardens in what is called the Marlborough Region, one of the two principal wine producing areas of New Zealand.  Here is the Wither Hills winery.

This is the flower of the bottle brush tree, a prolific plant in this region.

Here is Our Favorite Botanist in an aMAZing country garden.

Christchurch, New Zealand

Monday, December 14, 2009     Christchurch and high-country excursion

Our shore excursion from Christchurch headed west into the high country toward Arthur Pass.  From a jet boat we saw this bridge over a gorge.  It is part of the TranzAlpine (sic) railway, which we intend to ride from coast to coast when we return to this are around the end of January.

This is one of the other tour busses.  They do like their bus art down here.

Here is Our Favorite Botanist amidst some of our favorite scenery.

On the drive back to Christchurch we came upon a hailstorm just after it had passed by.

That evening, and every evening, we returned to our stateroom to discover a work of towel art prepared by the cabin steward.

Dunedin, New Zealand

Sunday, December 13, 2009     Dunedin, in the state of Otago, South Island

Dunedin was settled by Scottish settlers and still shows the influence.  It is the home of the University of Otago, and was the departure point for us on an excursion visiting some wonderful country gardens in the region.  Here is a photo of the best flower in the garden.

This is First Church of Dunedin.  It's Presbyterian, of course, in contrast to the dominant Anglican influence in the rest of New Zealand.

This is the restored train station in Dunedin.  The architect clearly had more fun with this than is typical for public buildings.

Milford Sound (or Fiord)

Sunday, December 13, 2009     Dunedin, New Zealand

Yesterday, Saturday, we cruised through the famous Milford Sound and the Dusky Sound.  The weather in the morning was overcast, foggy, and raining, so I don't have any photos of Milford Sound  - - lousy weather for photography.  I do have some nice pictures of the Dusky Sound, further south, but they're still in the camera.  I'll post a couple of them in a few days.

We learned that there is a difference between a sound and a fiord, and that the "sounds" on the western side of the South Island are misnamed.  They are actually fiords, just like in Norway.  A sound is a flooded river valley, which happens when sea level rises and/or the river valley subsides.  River valleys are characteristically V-shaped, with walls that do not exceed about 35-40 degrees in steepness.  This is what the solids mechanics engineers call the "maximum angle of repose".  Fiords, on the other hand, were carved by glaciers during one of the recent ice ages.  They are characterized by a U-shaped cross-section, with potentially very steep or sheer cliffs toward the top, and by the presence of "hanging valleys", the truncated end of a former tributary river which has been cut off by the erosion of the advancing main glacier flow.  This results in spectacular waterfalls as the stream runs out of riverbed and plummets over the edge of the sheer cliff face.  The New Zealish "sounds" are actually glacial fiords.

Tasmania

Wednesday, December 9, 2009     Burnie, Tasmania, Australia

Tasmania is a large island off the southeast coast of Australia, and is one of the 6 states of Australia.  Burnie is a small port city of about 20,000 on the north coast.  We took a bus excursion overland to the southwest into the heart of Tasmania, to the Cradle Mountain National Park.  Tasmania is hilly-to-mountainous, and the landscape ranges from lush and verdant to semi-arid.  Something like 80% of it is tied up in protected wilderness areas and national parks.  The rest hosts some very productive and important agriculture, including high-value crops like pyrethrum (for natural insecticides) and opium poppies (for legitimate pharmaceutical intermediates).  It is the home of the endangered Tasmanian Devil and several other unique species.   Here is a picture of a wild wombat which was kind enough to pose for the camera.

One of the stops in the national park was the reconstructed chalet of one August Weindorfer, a pioneer in the area in the 1920's and 1930's.

Throughout the forests in this part of Tasmania there are prominent stands of dead trees with white bark.  The tour guide explained:

"Several years ago we had a young, inexperienced botanist come through these parts planting trees - - only he planted many of the seeds upside-down and the roots came up, which is what you see today."

There's another story that the seeds came from the northern hemisphere and they were just putting out their roots in what they thought was the proper direction.

On the way back from the national park we stopped in the village of Sheffield, known as the Town of Murals.  They have had several competitions whereby international mural artists submit plans for mural paintings they would like to produce, in each case proposed for a particular blank wall on a building in town.  The proposals are judged, winners are selected, and the artists produce their mural paintings, for which they are paid.  Here is one illustrating the "post office tree".  In the late 19th century this was commercial timber country - rugged, with only primitive trails for the logs and the loggers.  The men would be out in the forest for several weeks at a time, but they would receive mail from loved ones, and would write letters to send.  So twice a week the postmaster in Sheffield would ride out on his mule and leave the mail in marked hollowed-out tree trunks, from which he would also pick up outgoing mail.