The World’s Smallest Dolphin

So after the issues at Doubtful Sound we were ‘compensated’ by G Adventures with a windy drive to the south of Christchurch to Akaroa to have (another) cruise. Now you’ve got to feel for the guide. This detour was a demanding drive but also meant that instead of getting to Christchurch at lunchtime we got there in the early evening. As a consequence she had to dump us at the hotel and then go and drop off the bus somewhere else in town. Before leaving the bus she had to clean it internally and externally, in the dark, and get back to the hotel to join us for our farewell dinner. If this wasn’t busy enough she then had to be up the next morning at Stupid O’Clock to get a flight to Auckland for the next tour. Let me tell you guides are not well paid, hence this and the weariness means that there’s a high turnover in guides.

However, back to the cruise… I also sympathise with captains who have to take passengers out to sea hoping to satisfy their desire for wild animals. Will you be lucky and find any? On the agenda were dolphins, seals, various birds including one called a shag and penguins. Well the captain got a full set apart from the penguins although Anna said she saw one. (I think not.)

The Hector’s dolphin was about the size of a large haddock in a decent portion of fish and chips. It was a very small chap.

As we’re peering over the sides expectantly one wag did bellowed… ‘ORCAS’. Of course he hadn’t seen one but the boat listed as 50 passengers bolted to starboard to look for a whale!

The captain had some good patter and my favourite was his advice for those on the bow to hold onto their hats in the wind. ‘If you do lose it then immediately raise your hand. Also any other passengers seeing this hat fly off should also raise their hand. You can then all wave the hat goodbye!’ Another piece of information he gave that was fanciful but he qualified it by saying ‘I did take a drop of whiskey in my coffee earlier. Nah, that not true, I don’t drink coffee.’

I wrote earlier about Christchurch’s earthquake in 2011 and the horrific loss of life. The town as a consequence consists mainly of one storey buildings and is laid out on a grid system. It looks like a provincial English town. The name originates from being named after an Oxford University college.

The guide did eventually make our celebration dinner and was feted for her work. Envelopes, with tips, passed across. I had a burger, obvs. One guest a few days earlier had said she’d asked her travel agent in Canada what was the going rate for tipping. ‘Well you could take something with you from Canada like, say, maple syrup.’ was the advice. Frankly if I’d been given a jar of syrup the donor would have needed surgery to have it removed. 

For her hard work and dedication over two weeks, between the two of us, we gave her £100. Judging by the ever so grateful personal WhatsApp we got back thanking us profusely there’s a chance I fear that the other guests were less appreciative and that she’s well provisioned with her pancakes for some time to come.

The party departed home in dribs and drabs with some literally getting up at 3am to catch planes the next day and others hanging on for a couple of extra days. Hugs and email addresses were swapped and then one guest, after departure, advised that she’d tested positive for Covid, a legacy and memory nobody wanted.

In our time we spun round Christchurch dining well and seeing the town, river, memorials and cathedrals. The original cathedral was damaged in the earthquake and that’s being rebuilt but won’t be finished until 2027. In the interim they’ve built a transitional one. This uses shipping containers and cardboard.

I’m not really much of a plant person but I was knocked out by the selection at the Botanical Garden. Not least my desire to eventually see a giant redwood tree. 

Christchurch is the largest city, port and airport for Antarctic access and several countries have operations based here. We visited the International Antarctic Centre that was quite interactive (read children running around pushing buttons and not waiting for the outcome before sprinting to the next button). Anna wasn’t very engaged with all the graphics explaining the history, exploration, geology, ice, wildlife etc and I did suggest that somewhere they’d be a room with photocopied outline pictures of penguins she could colour in with crayons and I could be left in peace to read all the walls without being urged to move along. However better than that she found real penguins, again these were blue ones and the smallest, of the breed, in the world and then a couple of huskies to stroke. In fact the dogs are a legacy as none, quite rightly (!) work in Antarctic any more.

I was struck by Captain Robert Falcon Scott and his achievements and ultimate demise in the Antarctic. He initially achieved the greatest distance in 1904 of getting toward the South Pole but was beaten to the actual pole by a Norwegian, Roald Admundsen, in 1912 by weeks. Ultimately Scott and his follow explorers perished on that trip. 

When you think of the clothing, nutrition, navigation technology, fitness, support etc that these men had it was beyond brave to attempt such a mission. I cannot imagine the deprivation and suffering ultimately leading to a terrible death.

From here we walked to the airport where our separation began as she contemplated the hell of three flights in Business back to Blighty and I revelled in the luxury of Economy. So goodbye New Zealand. Beautiful beyond expectation.

It was a long trip back back and I was bedevilled by unruly children, howling, seemingly unmanageable or small babies who wailed for hours dealing with weariness, the build up of pressure in their ears and the disorientation of clocks moving backwards and forwards.

Being one helluva guy I endured it through gritted teeth (for hours.) as I waded through my seven meals. As I type this a half dressed little three year old girl is running up and down the aisle at 15 mph. The good news is that she’s doing it quietly and, best of all, she’s irritating the stewardesses. It seems no one is claiming her; I wouldn’t. I’ve counted that she’s been past eight times in 10 minutes.

As always thank you for following the story (you have immense stamina.) I worry that I am too often curmudgeonly about folk and places I pass through but Anna and I had a wonderful time with lifetime memories and an appetite to revisit some of the places we’ve been. So where next? That’s half the pleasure.

PS  STOP PRESS – Fourteen times and counting

The Beginning of the End

The departure from Queenstown was, in reality, the beginning of the end as we started back north to arrive in Christchurch and a flight home. Today we were heading for Twizel, no not Twizzle, think of the same pronunciation as twilight. The heavens opened on leaving Queenstown but we had few complaints as the weather had been very kind throughout New Zealand with lots of sun and seldom nithering. The road north included a stop in Cromwell where I espied this cycling joy of a tool centre that could help you inflate your tyres or tune up the bike whilst en route.

The front passenger seat was vacant on the bus but if so inclined you could jump in and join the guide. One benefit apart from the better view was the opportunity to commandeer the music selection and so I plugged in my phone and treated the passengers to my eclectic record collection. They were captive, they had no escape for several hours.

One of the deficiencies about the bus, amongst several design flaws eg. no internal storage and seats as wide as Economy on a Ryanair flight was that you could barely hear in the front of the bus the music that was, possibly, blaring out in the middle of the bus.

The guide’s automatic reaction in any case, when moving, was to play music, not that she heard it! For the guests to drink in the views to a bit of hip hop, Meatloaf or ABBA wasn’t the right soundtrack for sumptuous valleys, rugged coastlines or gazing at those magnificent big wide open skies over the distant mountain ranges. She really thought she/we should always drive to music. A partial solution was at least to play some songs you liked, I took the initiative.

We had lunch in Twizel but afterwards continued to the end of Lake Pukaki where most of us embarked on a 6 mile hike to get closer to Mount Cook (named after the Yorkshireman).

At the end of the path we saw a lake with the remarkable sight of bits of glacier plonked within it, they had slid down here from the main glacier.

Unfortunately the top of the mountain was obscured in mist/cloud on this overcast day but it didn’t diminish the pleasure of the walk or the sense of achievement of adding another decent hike to our holiday.

One of the guests had wanted to organise a wine tasting evening as entertainment. Only New Zealand wines, of course, were to be considered. It was all ad hoc in arrangement and I have to ruefully note that the House of Ives unwittingly brought nearly 30% of the night’s wine to the party, for the 10 imbibers. Needless to say wine tasting turned into an elderly piss up whilst the five youngest didn’t attend!

It was a long night and during the merriment I personally had time to go into Twizel for a Thai meal with non-imbibers and return to find them still knocking it back.

I was very disappointed with Anna and her reckless pursuit of pleasure in my absence. In the end I dragged her back to the room as we had to get up and be away for 7am the next morning.

The night was a great success with all except the guide who had her own pre-arranged plans changed through the ‘grey’ drinking soirée. We’d had our third birthday fall on the holiday! In the guide’s world of pre-ordained responses this activated a cake, a communal dinner and singing. The fact that the latest guest to have this befall was really not bothered to celebrate her birthday; truth be told she’d already had quite a few before!

Given the ‘wine tasting’, dinner had to be cancelled and whilst I saw the cake it was never cut up or shared. (Chocolate for those interested.) To add to the woes of the guide she was booked by G Adventures into separate lodgings, a hostel, and appeared bleary eyed the next morning advising that her room was next to a crying baby’s (all night.) Given she was working so hard and not least driving hundreds of miles a decent night’s sleep seemed recommended?

The itinerary said we were off to Christchurch the next day but G Adventures had other ideas. They had diverted us, before Christchurch, to visit Akaroa. A delightful small town and harbour where we’d take a boat out to sea to see wildlife.

Why such largesse? Well the ship’s captain on our disrupted sail around Doubtful Sound had advised, over the tannoy, that we were all entitled to a refund. I really think that the guests were not bothered, the day hadn’t been a disaster and, truthfully, boat rides and scenery were just about max’d out by then for everyone. However, G Adventures, now presumably worried, about the prospect of giving us all over £100 each back and/or worried about getting hammered in customer reviews put on this boat ride and a free dinner on the last night. As it turned out the boat ride had its moments.

Play Time

Now quite a long way South on the island we were approaching New Zealand’s peak tourist town: Queenstown. However, the drive remained dramatic and first we dropped into Wānaka on Lake Wānaka. The town is an important leisure area not least during the ski season. It looked quite upmarket. For us it was a lunch stop in the bright sunshine.

Soon we were in busy Queenstown. The three storey bag haul was inevitable and when completed we trouped into town to check it out. There were now Chinese tourists again (and a maybe lots of other nationalities, I know, Katrina) but the sight of upmarket luxury brand shops reappeared such as Luis Vuitton. For those of more simpler interests ie. me, we found an Irish pub and I enjoyed a Guinness.

The focus of Queenstown is on adrenaline rush activities. Some of our party variously signed up to bungee jump, sky dive or indulge in a gut wrenching swing that threw you out from a high platform in a free fall experience. Their videos posted on the group WhatsApp reconfirmed their bravery and my conviction never to do something so stupid. We instead enjoyed Queenstown for its other delights, namely beauty and tranquility. We hired a couple of bikes. ‘Business Class’ maintained her ‘comfort’ stance and took an electric bike. I took something you had to pedal.

On purpose built gravel paths we rode beside the lake.

It was sublime, however, we struggled to find a coffee stop until Anna noted we were near a golf club. So we ascended a steep hill to partake of a coffee and bun in an idyllic setting with views across the water. This activated the usual pantomime sketch. It involves someone attempting to type into a till Anna’s drink order. ‘A decaf cappuccino with oat milk’. All venues could stretch to such a requirement but several repeats and clarifications usually ensued. The lady at the golf club was also slightly hard of hearing.

On the next table were some kiwis up from Invercargill, about as far south as you can go on the island. We talked about their lives and how tolerable their life was with the next stop being Antarctic. As one of the party was sporting a mullet clearly there are worrying mental health issues down there.

Back in Queenstown, much to Anna’s discomfort we took the gondola to top of the hill that overlooked the town. Even though the minimum age to partake of the luge was six Anna sat out the opportunity to plummet down two courses on a wheeled sledge.

The plan is to never brake and being heavier than the majority of the teenagers on the track I did descend quickly but I must admit to suffering the ignominy of a 13 year old passing me on my second go.

Such was the popularity that the queues were long and you had to share the lifts (that took you from the gondola to the luge.) I sat beside a pale faced young couple and enquired if ‘this was their first ride?’ Then followed the kind of pregnant pause that lasted so long that you thought about calling a midwife when they reluctantly volunteered that it was their fifth ride! They were Swedish; not a loquacious nation.

Back in town we dined royally at an upmarket restaurant. I have to say our guide is a burger, fish and chips or pizza kind of girl (or ‘woman’ if my eldest daughter is reading this.) It is a shortcoming in her steady stream of information, advice and hopeless folksy tales about the Māoris. (Often a lake or mountain is introduced to us with the Māori folklore of its origin. An illustration would be that some hole was carved by immense mythical Māori who dragged a giant stick gouging the earth to leave such a feature that water poured in and it is now a lake.)

In some towns the choice of food is limited but after a while you do yearn for something else better cooked and not starting life from a freezer. One irritating dodge is the NZ addition of a tax to your bill on public holidays. In Queenstown it was Easter. This tax is to cover the higher wages of hospitality staff for working on these days. At this restaurant it was 20% and then you’re invited to add a gratuity! Kerrrching! Like the rest of the world NZ is experiencing staff shortages. This is one way to try and retain them (at the customer’s expense.)

The following day was the first misstep of the tour’s itinerary. We were bused to catch a ferry and then take another bus to catch a ship to cruise around some fjords. We’d now seen so much scenery and previously enjoyed cruising that to spend another day doing this was not a crowd pleaser.

The day had it’s challenges. We had the second bus (not ours) breakdown and that delayed the cruise starting. The ship we were allocated also had a mechanical issue and we were put on another vessel! This was slower and was unable to go to the fjord’s sea mouth in the time available. Frankly, the surprising highlight as we slowly slid beside cliffs looking at the vegetation was a 10 minute drift in silence where we were told to stop talking, put away our phones and enjoy the surroundings with their peace and quiet. Delightful.

Doubtful Sound was identified and named by Captain Cook on his first visit in 1770, however, he never entered the fjord. A ‘sound’ is carved by a river and a ‘fjord’ is carved by a glacier. He got this identification wrong, apparently. On his second voyage to New Zealand, in 1773, he had to rest up just along the coast for five weeks at Dusky Sound whilst his ship, HMS Resolution, was repaired. He’d returned from sailing through the Antarctic and also the crew were exhausted.

From here we retraced our steps of bus, ferry and bus back to Queenstown for fish and chips (with a surcharge.)

The Long And Winding Road

This organised tour of both islands concentrates mainly on the south. As a consequence today was mainly about eating up the road miles to get to our jumping off point for the south island, Wellington. This is New Zealand’s capital city.

To ease the toil of being sat in the bus all day we stopped at a few attractions on our journey south. The weather has dried up and temperatures are late teens and sunny. The route is the main State Highway 1, a single lane carriageway for most of its length and only developing into a dual carriageway when it got near the sprawl of Wellington.

Our first stop was a waterfall that was memorable.

Next we stopped for about an hour at Taupo. This town on the lake had a terrific and relaxed vibe with many outdoor cafes. I could well imagine spending a night or two here. One of its memorable attractions is the McDonalds restaurant that includes dining space inside the fuselage of a DC-3 (otherwise known as a Dakota or Skytrain.)

Back in the bus we had a brief stop at Foxton. Here they had created a tourist attraction by importing and erecting a windmill, as you do. An interesting decision!

I noted this sign on a window to a visitor/community centre. The gangs allude to some seriously violent groups who are involved with controlling and selling drugs. The ethnic mix swings across all the people of NZ and can involve firearms. Quite a surprise really and it seems, with my brief research, to have started with Hell’s Angels in the 1960s.

Our hotel in Wellington was in the heart of the ‘downtown’ on Cuba Street. This busy strip was full of bars and restaurants. Finding a Mexican restaurant was a really welcome change but this had to wait until we watched the climax and finish of the Australian Grand Prix. It made a change to watch the race at the end of the day Down Under rather than at dawn in Yorkshire.

The promised rain made an emphatic appearance the next day and I wandered off to see the National War Memorial, a wonderful monument that seemed completely fitting of the sacrifice of so many servicemen.

From here I found the Museum of New Zealand (Te Papa Tongarewa). I love museums and this was a truly an excellent celebration and explanation of the peoples, wildlife and geology of New Zealand. As regards the latter there was a small room that behaved as if an earthquake was happening ie. it shook and rocked for several intense seconds. I chose to experience this on my knees under a table in order to ‘live out’ the experience. There was much merriment amongst the other occupants of the room that an elderly nutter was sheltering under furniture!

I learned a lot but also gained a real appreciation of how young the country was even though the Māoris had been here several centuries more than the Europeans. The introduction of so many species of animal and plant now seemed fraught and I read that the innocent introduction of goats had proven calamitous and the attempted cull and control had worked out at NZ$250/goat! For an economy dependent on food production you can appreciate the controls that exist at the borders.

The Gallipoli campaign in WW1 was an attempt to invade Turkey along the Dardanelles after the country joined the conflict on the side of the Germans. The invasion in April 1915 was up steep cliffs held by existing (underestimated and disrespected) Turkish troops. The Allied forces were mainly Australians, British and New Zealanders. In Australia and New Zealand this failed campaign saw a horrific bloody agonising loss of life in a hopeless set of attacks against well held strongholds. The Allied forces had also to deal with heat, dehydration, disease, infestation and on occasion a shortage of supplies whilst contained by the enemy above in cramped spaces on the shoreline.

It was catastrophically ill-conceived, on distant shores, and personifies Alan Clark’s phrase for other WW1 battles as Lions being led by Donkeys. The lions being these young men slaughtered endlessly in attack after attack. The Turks fought bravely to defend their country and after months of stalemate, deprivation and loss the Allies withdrew exhausted and, frankly, beaten.

Nations can be built on this type of sacrifice, ironically. A spirit and resolve develops as heroes are made and legends written. Gallipoli is tragically the hill that New Zealand (and Australia) died on yet represents how magnificent they can be as nations. It was, however, never worth the price of nearly 9,000 Australians and 3,000 New Zealanders dead. The Turks lost 87,000 and the British, Irish and French also lost tens of thousands.

The exhibition worked its way through the campaign and told the story of the experience through soldiers, an officer and a nurse.

In the area of the graphics and models there were videos and accompanied by stirring yet melancholy music that fitted the funereal atmosphere. I was so touched I nearly shed a tear. Gallipoli is not a new story but relaying the spirit, initial false optimism, injury, death, squalor and family loss is a difficult task in a world where we’ve become probably hardened and indifferent to tragedy. Wellington is a long way to go but it would be worth the trip to see this exhibition. I won’t forget it. So powerful.

Later that night was another holiday highlight as Anna and I met up with Paul.

Paul and I knocked about and shared a student house in 1974 to 1976 in Altrincham whilst both at Manchester Polytechnic. We hadn’t met up since the late 80s in Amsterdam. Apparently our regular contact lapsed because I unfollowed him on Facebook? Something I can’t recollect but maybe guilty as charged.

Paul now lives mainly in Wellington and continues to work in IT, a very global and transferable profession. Candi Staton has a line in a song… ‘people change, but not much’. As I meet and still have contact with old friends I can confirm it is true. Sadly we all look different and life shapes our budgets, relationships and locations but the values, interests and affection never changes.

We had a couple of beers, a bottle of wine and an Italian whilst Anna and I interrogated Paul about the intervening period. Discoveries included his energetic love of cricket and an ability to play the ukulele. It was great to reminisce about days back in Manchester and the ability to park for free near the Poly. This included finding a parking meter and then feeding several handily available ring pulls off the pavement into the meter!

Music was always a common interest and spookily it seems Paul relatively recently went to see Nick Lowe in Pocklington. We were also there, oblivious to his presence! We’ve ensured that doesn’t happen again and plan to meet up when he’s next in the UK.

Kia ora

It’s unusual and unwelcome to wake up to the smell of last night’s fish and chips. However, were sharing a lodge with two bedrooms and the lady in the next room was heating up the remnants of last night’s meal in a microwave for breakfast. She’s Canadian, which might explain this eccentricity.

It was an early start down to Rotorua for more activities, unfortunately zorbing, zip lining and something else expensive and energetic didn’t appeal to ‘Business Class Hiawatha’ and we were to take a walk into town when we got there as our activity.

Soon after getting underway we stopped at Tairua to buy some pastries and coffee for breakfast. I had great expectations of my pick yet it was neither cheesy or particularly marmite tasting. I absorbed the blow as the bus trundled south.

What was clear was that apart from near the large cities it was single carriageways all the way and in this part of NZ lots of cattle in the fields. In fact dairy products and meat still remain the major export with this and other products going to their largest buyer, China. The UK and Europe are negligible as buyers nowadays but I long remember ‘New Zealand Butter’ as a popular brand back in Blighty. The other great export to the UK was lamb. This has declined as we can get lamb from nearer home now and fewer folk wear wool or eat sheep meat. When was the last time you ate lamb?

The economic importance of China comes at a price I read. As Australia kicks back against China’s growing regional military threat and takes actions such as the AUKUS submarine initiative then New Zealand chooses to emphasise its ‘independent’ foreign policy in order, probably, not to antagonise the inflow of Chinese dosh (£11 billon pa or about half of all exports.) The Chinese are also developing a greater profile and increasing subsidy of the Pacific Islands such as Samoa. Access to these countries could be militarily useful to a roaming Chinese navy and loan indebtedness to China helps solidify the loyalty of the island governments. These islands have traditionally looked to New Zealand as a developing or defensive partner.

The countryside remained very verdant, and rolling, as rain started to fall. It was the first time in a few weeks since we’d seen the heaven’s open. Rotorua is a largish town of over 50,000 and apparently 80% of the population is Māori. The town sits on the edge of a large lake and has considerable thermal activity. A reminder is the pungent aroma of bad eggs that greets you – sometimes as a faint background smell or occasionally quite halting. As a settlement it has loads of hotels but the town held little charm apart from a striking early 20th Century Bath Hall.

This was built to develop the therapeutic attraction for visitors of taking the waters. The visitors being of European descent. Throughout New Zealand the Māori heritage is emphasised and a ‘catch up’ appears to be underway to atone for 19th and 20th Century European settler racism and abuse such as suppressing the culture and language with the inevitable marginalisation. Unlike Australia these Polynesian people only beat the Europeans by 5 or 600 years to the land mass but when the white man got here, with his superior weaponry, the Māori independence and way of life was to be fatally eroded. Formally the Treaty of Waitangi of 1840 made all the 500 tribes cede sovereignty to The British Crown. I think we can well imagine that wasn’t an arrangement that was between two equal partners. White settlers had differing attitudes, and laws, as to land ownership and the type of farming. The deforestation is awful to behold from the 19th to the 21st Century.

There are over 850,000 Māoris in NZ today (out of the 5 million) but despite the fine words, positive law provision and increasing promotion of their indigenous identity and rights many Māori people have their challenges socio economically. This manifests itself with lower educational achievement, higher substance misuse, worse health outcomes and high levels of penal imprisonment. However, away from this misery the tour party had a splendid night of Māori culture.

We were driven to a ‘village’ where some of the tribal traditions were explained, formal greetings were demonstrated between tribes and there was much wonderful singing and dancing. In our introduction we were asked to repeat Māori language words, the first, a welcome greeting of ‘Kia ora’. Yes, this phrase does not originate from a carton of orange squash I regularly consumed at The Odeon during the 1960s.

After this we were given a banquet where the meat had been cooked traditionally underground.

To elevate this ‘exchange’ we finished on a Q&A session with our Māori host. Merrill, she of the 7.30am fish and chip persuasion, cut to the chase and asked him about racism from the whites!

Being a class act he decided against being honest and making all the white tourists, who made up the couple of hundred guests in the room, uncomfortable and talked about the open approach of the Māoris with all people they interfaced with instead. He did identify the government as a ‘difficult relationship’. I suspect that may stretch all the way back to Queen Victoria in 1840 and the multifarious abuses and back sliding the Māoris have endured for well over a century afterwards.

Stuffed with food, culture and wiser we returned to the hotel.