Mouth of the Fish

Kei Ora,

The Maori imagine that the two islands of New Zealand resemble a boat and a fish: The South Island is the boat, and the North Island is the fish. Wellington is the fish's mouth, and Wellingtonians say Auckland is the fish's butt hole. Aucklanders argue that Auckland is the tail of the fish, but Wellingtonians counter that the strip of land that heads toward Cape Reinga is really the tail, that Auckland is located just beneath that extention of land, and thus Auckland is where the poop exits the fish.

Saw an impressive Chinese movie last night at the Embassy Theatre, the theater where the "Lord of the Rings" films premiered here in New Zealand. As most of you already know, much of the films were filmed around Wellington and on the South Island. Before the premier of the first movie, Wellington spent $5M to rennovate the Embassy Theatre to return it to it's 1920's art deco glory. It's one of those old fashioned single screen theaters with a stage and a wide screen. The preferred seating area has comfortable leather seats. The theatre is beautiful: wood paneling, stained glass, lush tiles, a grand staircase. Even the restroom was gorgeous!

The movie is "The Curse of the Yellow Flower", by Zhang Yimou. The story is simple, but the cinematography is magnificent. The battle scene was unbelieveable. (The last great movie battle scene I recall seeing was the one in Kurosawa's film "Ran". Yellow Flower's battle scene was much more spectacular.) The most remarkable aspect for me was the quantity of extras used to make this movie. I suppose only in China could you actually hire and pay the quantity of extra people used to make this movie. Zhang Yimou triumphs again.

Wellington is so cool! Located at the bottom of the North Island, the city is surrounded by water on three sides, and so there is a combination of gentle sandy beaches and rough rocky shoreline. There are hills throughout the city, and houses are stuffed along these hills. Due to lack of space, earthquakes and wise urban planning, there are not many tall buildings. Most houses are one and two story, wooden colonial style houses. Colors tend to be muted. Many of the houses located at the top of these hills have their own private cable cars to move people and purchases from the lower street level to the house. There are lots of trees.

Art is very important important and is evident throughout the city. Art is on display in public spaces, and there are lots of art galleries. There are many cultural activities here as well. Lots of inexpensive theater as well as broadway style productions. Between the gardens and trees and art and natural beauty of the coast line, Wellington is an attractive city.

And there is at least one coffee shop in every block. There are more cafes per capita in Wellington than in any other city in the world. And like in Seattle, you have to work really hard to find lousey coffee.

Today I spent the day at Te Papa: the New Zealand Museum of Art and Culture. It's a huge museum that does an excellent job of displaying different aspects of New Zealand history, culture and art in an easy to understand and fun way. It's really kid friendly, too.

Actually, New Zealand is family friendly. If you can afford to fly your family here, there are ways to travel inexpensively throughout the country: renting a car or campervan, camping on many of the public camping grounds, staying at hotels and motels with cooking facilities or renting a flat for a week at at time. There's lots of nature and outdoorsy stuff to do that kids would love. Traveling between the middle of March and the end of May provides decent weather and prices (Fall) weather, as does late-September to late November (Spring). I'm sure you can get even better deals between June and mid-September, but it might be too cold to do some of the outdoor activities.

Tomorrow I catch the ferry to the South Island. EVERYONE tells me how beautiful the South Island is. I can hardly wait.

cheers,
Stacey

To Zorb or Not To Zorb

Kei Ora!

Greetings from Wellington, New Zealand.

Updating this blog in NZ has proven to be a bit challenging: cost and blogspot server accessibility being the two main issues. Cost: NZ isn't cheap, and that includes the internet. An internet cafe that charges $5 or $6 per hour is a bargin. Also, since NZ is about 17 hours ahead of the East Coast of the US, and the blogspot server is on Pacific Time, it is not uncommon that the server is not available when I am fortunate enough to find reasonably priced internet access.

Oh yeah, and sometimes the problem is me: I just don't feel like writing.

However, desire, cost and server access are all in alignment, so I'll fill you in on my exploits.

After Auckland I took a long distance bus to Rotorua. Rotorua is located about four hours south of Auckland, an the Eastern side of the island, about "an inch" (on my map) south of the Pacific Coast. Rotorua is famous for its boiling mud and hot springs, maori culture, and timber industry. And adrenelin junkies can get satiated here as well. There is zorbing, swooshing, sky diving (tadem and solo), white water rapids rafting and sledging, going over a waterfall in a rubber raft, and of course, bungy jumping.

I almost zorbed. It would have been cool to have told people that I zorbed in New Zealand. Apparently you can't zorb just any where in the world. But I just couldn't overcome the imagined feelings of nausea of rolling hiney over head down a hill (down a straight or zig-zag track) strapped inside a huge, plastic ball. Or, you can do it hamster style: they don't strap you in and you run (or flop) free in the plastic ball down the hill. Water is optional(??????). Nope, just couldn't bring myself to do it.

Swooshing was definitely out of the question. You sit in a pod with two or three other people. The lift you high up in the air, between two towers. Your pod is attached to the two towers. A crane pulls the pod back/out as far as it will go and then releases. You swing back and forth between the two towers at a bizillion mph. Yeah. No.

I seriously thought about tandem sky diving. Yes, I understand the incongruency: I am unwilling to free fall to earth only a few hundren feet with a rubber band around my ankles, but I AM willing to hurl toward the earth from several thousand feet with a parachute on my back. However, with tandem sky diving, I can blame it on my partner if the parachute doesn't work.

As for sledging, I'm not exactly sure what that is. I think it's white water rafting, but somehow they pull you faster through the water. This means I can avoid slamming into bolders at a faster rate.

No, being the couch potato that I am, I went for the soaking in hot mud and hot spring water at Hell's Gate. Hell's Gate is a thermal reserve that is filled with boiling mud and boiling mineral spring water. The water gets as hot as 148 degrees celsius. Boiling mud is so cool! It looks and sounds like boiling oat meal, without the lumps. Lots of steam and ploping sounds. Sulfur Oxide makes the air smell like rotton eggs. After marinating in warm mineral mud and water, my skin felt so wonderful.

Other activities in and around rotorua included a sheep and cow performance, a visit to another thermal reserve (this one had a geyser and kiwi birds), a recently recovered village that had been buried when a volcano exploded in 1880, and a Maori Hangi.

The Maori Hangi was interesting. A performance group enacted a first time meeting between Maori tribes (their tribe meets YOUR tribe), demonstrated aspects of Maori life in a small village setting, performed several Maori songs and dances, and then served a dinner that was roasted in the ground. The ritual meeting was amazing. I can only imagine the astonishment the European explorers must have felt having been greeted by growling, stomping, spear-waving, burley, tatooed, Maori warriors. Their eyes wide open, their tongues sticking out, and growling. And if you didn't respond the correct way, you started a fight, and could possibly end up as dinner. (yes, Maori were cannibals). But if you were Maori, then you knew to expect this sort of greeting, so unless you came looking to start a fight, you knew how to respond. Any way, it was all very intimidating and wonderful to watch.

I had some amazing food in Rotorua. Food in NZ has been really good, but also really expensive. There's a restaurant in Rotorua called the Fat Dog Cafe. The coffee is perfect. And they make pancakes with blueberries and whipped cream to die for. I had pancakes two days in a row! And the restaurant's ambiance is fun. Poetry on the walls and on the back of chairs. Lots of bright colors.

After Rotorua I went to Napier. There's not much to say about Napier. Napier suffered a horrific earthquake in 1931 which destroyed the city center. The city decided to rebuild the buildings in an art deco style. So many of the downtown buildings are attractive. There city is on Pacific Coast, but the surf and undertown are too strong for swimming. The beach is black pebbles, not sand.

The area is also known for its vineyards. Did a wine tour one day. Had some good wines. Red are not that great in New Zealand. They tend to be thin in body. The best reds I tasted were syrahs, which tend to be less full bodied, anyway. The chardonnay's were excellent, very buttery. NZ is known for sauvignon blanc. This is not a wine I drink, so I will learn about this type as I travel through the country.

Now I'm in Wellington. Arrived last night. In a few minutes I will join a tour that will explore the greater metropolitan Wellington area. The only thingsI can report right now are: The city has lots of hills, and the building in the area where I am are pretty. Oh, and my bed has fleas.

Will tell you more later.
cheers,
Stacey

Hello From the Future

Keiora, (hello in Maori)

I arrived in Auckland, New Zealand last Tuesday. I can't believe that it's been only a week since I left South America. And it is still strange to hear English, instead of Spanish, spoken around me. Actually, I hear and see more Chinese around me, but more about that later.

New Zealand is about 17 hours ahead of the east coast of the USA (or about 12 hours ahead of my friends in Europe). I say "about" because they went on Day Light Savings Time, and the US went off DST (or is it the other way around), so I'm not exactly sure how far into to tomorrow I really am. This means that when folks back home on the East Coast of the US are waking up and starting their day at 6AM, it is 11 PM that same day, and I am getting ready to go to bed. [just in case you are wondering, the future is looke good from my perspective: Monday, April 23, has been a perfect day here]

Auckland is beautiful! Green and lush, with with rolling hills (after so many months in the Andes, I just can't bring myself to refer to this hills as mountains). Auckland is in the middle of the peninsula on the Northern Island, and has the Tasman Sea on the West/Left and the Pacific Ocean on the East/Right. There are many islands and gulfs and bays and alcoves and such around Auckland. It's a watersport and beach person's paradise: fishing, boating, swimming, beaching, surfing, diving, as well as hiking and camping (and bungey jumping off the Sky Tower, the highest structure in the Southern Hemisphere). You have the big city excitment of Auckland, and within thirty minutes you can have small island solitude. The weather has been sunny and in the mid to high 70's (20-22 degrees Celsius).

Auckland is big city. I don't know the population, but it is relatively crowded for New Zealand. And it is ethnically diverse. People of European descent make up the majority of the population at 50%, Maori are 30% and Asians (1-Chinese, 2-Indians and 3-other Asians) make up the balance. When I first arrived, I thought I was staying in the Chinatown section of the city. There are so many signs in Chinese, and it looke like one in three people on the street were Chinese-looking. I hear lots of Chinese spoken around me. On the plus side, there is plenty of inexpensive and delicious Chinese, Japanese, Thai and Indian food all around me.

I spent three days in Auckland before heading up North to the Bay of Islands. The Bay of Islands is comprised of 145 islands, and is where Captin Cook arrived when he came in search of New Zealand. Abel Tasman, a Dutchman (and after whom the Sea, Island and Devil were named), found New Zealand first (New Zealand is dutch for New Sea Land), however he never stuck around after being greeted by the Maori with the traditional Maori greeting. Imagine a dozen large, burly, tan skinned and heavily tatooed men, dressed in grass skirts and carrying spears, squatting and stamping the ground with their feet (think Sumo wrestler, the move, not the size), sticking their tongues at you and yelling as loud as they can. How would that make you feel? Abel decided to leave, but wrote about his experience. Captain Cook decided to check the place out, brought a Maori translator (Maori inhabited Hawaii and many other Polynesian Islands), and thus knew what the proper response to the above described Maori greeting should be if you don't wish to start a fight (slowly bend over and pick up the branch placed before you, never breaking eye contact). The rest is history. The British claimed New Zealand as a colony in 1840, at a site just outside of Paihia (Pie-heeya), and the initial capital of the country was in a city located across the bay from Paihia. Kokorareka, today known as Russell.

Anyway, I won't bore you with more fascinating history of the Bay of Islands and the North Country. I spent three days up north, exploring the area by catamaran, airplane, 4x4 bus, and an amphibious "duck" boat (they even gave us a kazoo to quack at pedestrians as we passed by). I went as far north as is possible in New Zealand. The area is spectacular: rolling hills, clear multi-hued turquoise water, white, golden and black sand beaches. And of course, perfect weather -- not too hot, not too cold. And not too many tourists. Tourist season is over, and it is the perfect time to visit this area. Eating was pricey, but the food was superb. Lots of great seafood.

Today I'm back in Auckland, and tomorrow I start my journey down south. The next stop is Rotorua.

Today I mailed a package home. And what a joy that experience was. No, really. Mailing packages from the various countries I've visited over the last year has been a special kind of hell. But not so in New Zealand! The people who work at the post office are pleasant and reasonable. And compared to what I've spent to mail stuff home from countries that are much closer to the US than New Zealand, postage was cheap! And they accept credit cards!!!!!!!! It was a truly DELIGHTFUL experience.

And that's a little of what I've been up to. I like it here, at the other end of the world.

cheers,
Stacey

Iguazu Falls

Hola,

Iguazu Falls are amazing! Yeah, yeah, Niagra is nice, but Iguazu Falls are amazing! There are over 200 falls in Iguazu Park. Iguazu Falls are not as high as high as Niagra, but it is much wider, with more falls.

There is the Argentine Side, and the Brasilian Side. You have a panoramic view of the falls from the Brazilian side, and you are IN the falls on the Argentine Side. I visited both sides. The Argentine side was clearly more fun. There are three circuits that guide through out the main portion of the park, and give you spectacular views of the major falls. At the end we took a small boat that takes very close to the Throat of the Devil, the major cascade. Of course you get soaking wet, but boy is it exciting.

The Brazilian side is mearly a single circuit that gives you different view of the Falls. The whole visit takes no more than two hours. The Argentine side took a little over eight hours.

Officially, you need a visa to enter Brasil to see the Falls if you are American. It is payback for the visa fee their citizens have to pay for a US visa. But, if you find the right taxi, you pay him and he takes you through. I did this, and crossed over with no problem. It was amazing how easily it happened. Gotta love tourism and entreprenuerism.

On the morning of my last day, I went to the Iguazu Forrest. There I did the Zip Line - you zip through the tree tops in a harness on a cable. Also rappelled down a small waterfall. Both were easier than I had imagined. I had a blast.

Gotta run and catch a plane.
I´m off to New Zealand.
Chao.
Stacey

It´s Pouring and I¨m Sick -- Again

Hola,

It´s pouring rain, and I have another head cold. But this is all new since my last entry.

Last week was short on work and long on vacation. And the weather was spectacular. Last week was Santa Semana, which can be translated as Holy Easter Week, more or less. I worked only two days. Monday commemorated the war over the Malvinas Islands, a.k.a. the Faulkland Islands. You may recall the war between the Argentines and the Brits in the 1980´s over who owned the islands. Argentina lost. And they remain unhappy about this outcome some 20 years later, understandably so. Tuesday and Wednesday I worked. Thursday and Friday I did not, Something Thursday and Good Friday. Whatever. The weather was spectacular, and I used the time to explore the city further.

Ayacucho is famous for its Santa Semana celebration. It´s a week long affair (that really started 8 weeks ago) with processions everyday. They observe Painful Friday, on which day grandparents flogg their grandchild first thing in the morning with branches, and people stick each othr with pins and nails. Dodging water balloons and shaving cream during Carnival was bad enough. I´m am SO glad I´m no longer in Ayacucho.

Unlike the Peruvians in Ayacucho, the Argentines, also predominantly catholic, are much more mellow. You wouldn´t really know it was Easter weekend. Many businesses worked on Friday thru Sunday. I was even able to attend Tango classes on Easter Sunday night. No Easter baskets, chocolate eggs, special dinners, nails or shaving cream. Life as usual.

Porteños (natives of Buenos Aires) tend to leave the city during this week, taking advantage of the extra days off from work. As a result, there was less traffic and fewer people on the streets, in the parks, at the street fairs. And as I said, the weather was perfect, perfect for walking and just hanging outside.

Things I did include:

Attempting to add more pages to my passport. The US Embassy is ALWAYS a joy to work with -- NOT! Waited an hour for service, and then two more hours only to be told that the computers were down and to come back NEXT WEEK. They didn´t know they had computer problems three hours earlier!!!!!!

Went to El Tigre, a town near the coast, about 30km outside of BA, where five rivers intersect. It´s kinda like the Thousand Islands north of Syracuse. There are lots of islands and rivers and streams. It is vacation spot were people keep summer homes (camps for you CNY folks). Travel between homes and islands is by boat. The area is beautiful.

Took two tango lessons, and much to everyone´s amazement, I was actually able to learn the steps fairly quickly. But two lessons does not make one a tango dancer. Much like lindy, you need to learn and practice a lot to dance this dance. I had taken a couple of classes a few years ago in Syracuse, and just couldn´t get it. But last week something clicked and I did very well. I might have to give this dance another try when I get home.

Saw a Tango Show. A Tango Show has music, singing, and of course dancing. All threee parts were excellent. The dancers were phenomenal. I am continually amazed that no one trips or gets wounded doing this dance.

Also saw two drag queen shows. Both were different in character. The first was more interplay with the audience and male dancers revealing their assets. The second was more entertainment and dance routines, with more clothes. While both were entertaining, it was clear that I was not the target demographic.

After both shows I went dancing and stayed out until the wee hours. I´m usually waking up for work at the time I arrived home. This city never sleeps. At 3 AM, people are sitting in outdoor cafes drinking like it's 7 PM. It´s wonderful.

Well, I need to go in search of food. The rain has let up a bit.

Tomorrow I go to Iguazu Falls, and then I leave for New Zealand. My Latin American tour has come to a close. I probably won´t write again until I hit New Zealand.

I added some more pictures to older posts.

cheers,
Stacey