Departures: New Zealand 2004: To Kerikeri via Wellington

The farther I rode from Christchurch, the better things became.

Sat Dec 11 2004

I settled into my seat on the TranzScenic TranzCoastal train. The car was mostly full of a Japanese tour group so I tried to eavesdrop on them. Hirugohon... kohi... mitai... sugi no sugi... I caught bits and pieces, but mostly it was too fast. What little I understood just made me hungry.

The train moved through farmland. Though this was not the kind of scenery I'd hoped for on something called the TranzScenic TranzCoastal, a couple of things did catch my eye.

I saw a big sign: Sanitarium Health Food Company. A few days later, I would see a big box of Weet-Bix, made by Sanitarium. Oh, jeez, a cheap knock-off of the UK's Weetabix? Well, maybe not. When I look at the history of Sanitarium, they say that Weet-Bix was a competitors of theirs, starting in 1928, which they subsequently bought out. The UK Weetabix company didn't start until 1932. So actually Weetabix is a cheap knock-off of Weet-Bix. This still doesn't address the question: why would anyone want to imitate this stuff? (Maybe I shouldn't talk down about Weet*ix. Did I mention that NZ hotels traditionally give you some milk with your room? Since I'm not a milk-tea drinker, I bought cereal to have with the milk. Which cereal did I buy? The oh-so-available Weet-Bix. It was OK. I bought a 48-pack, and after I finished that, Weet-Bix was still OK.)

Then there was the PPCS Canterbury Food Processing Unit. This building caught my eye because at first I thought it had some covered conveyor belts. But though there were some angled constructions that connected buildings, they seemed too wide for regular conveyor belts. Might they be ramps? What kind of "Food Processing" went on here? Was I looking at a slaughterhouse? Hmm, probably.

In spite of these fascinating features, the Japanese tourists around me lapsed into slumber. Soon I had nothing to look at but fields and nobody to eavesdrop on. Maybe I should have caught this train further north.

There were fields full of deer. Either these farmers were losing their crops to a deer infestation, or else they were raising venison. There were fields, rolling hills, farms. I felt like I was in Sonoma County.

As we got into Kaikoura, things became much more scenic. I spent less time looking at buildings and more time looking out at the gorgeous coastline. I didn't take any photos, but plenty of other people have. In hindsight, I wish I'd spent one less day in Christchurch and used that day to bike around Kaikoura. Maybe next time.

We kept heading north. We went past pink salt ponds and a little mountain of salt. Through some vinyards, and then there was Picton.

Picton

At Picton, the train stops and you can catch the ferry. There's probably more to it than that, but I only had a few minutes to run around with my camera.

It looked like there was a pretty old schooner in the harbor--and there sort of was, except that it wasn't in the water--it was sitting on the ground, a cafe. So I didn't ask if they gave trips around the bay.

There were some parks that had views of this part of Marlborough Sound. I wanted to ride the ferry through Marlborough Sound; that was the point of this day. So this was a nice little sneak preview.

The Ferry Ride

The ferry ride was pretty.

The ferry ran late, but I didn't need to be on time for anything on arrival.

In whichever direction you looked, you would see some clear-cut. There were many non-native pines. But there was still plenty of pretty coastline.

This was a good part of the trip, so I'd like to write more about it. But no anecdotes emerged. Only some photos.

Wellington

Abel Tasman National Park had been a vacation from civilization. Christchurch had been a reminder of what was wrong with civilization. Wellington reminded me of what was right with civilization. I'm not just pointing out that my room at Quest On Johnston kept the wind out better than my room at Christchurch's Stonehaven did.

Soon I was sitting on the balcony outside the local Hell Pizza, listening to techno beats as I ate a pizza covered with spicy hot sauce. I leaned back in my chair and looked up at tall buildings, one tagged with the company name "Compudigm". The sky was the color of television tuned to a dead channel. I was back in civilization, and it felt good.

Sun Dec 12 2004

The Wellington waterfront is sprinkled with an unlikely number of monuments and civic improvements. How does the city afford to keep building them? It's the capital. Does the national government subject the nation to ruinous taxes just so that it can erect pretty structures by the bay? If so, it's going well.

It was morning, and I was looking at an informative plaque about the Pamir. Some other guy was reading the plaque, too. He turned to me and said that a friend of his had been interned on the ship; by the time I processed that information, he had turned and started walking away. Too bad. It might have been an interesting story.

Should I quote you my notes about the Pamir from Nelson's Founders Park again?

New Zealand's sole prize of war. Seized July 1941 at Wellington--it was a Finnish ship, and Finns allied w/Nazis. First voyage under NZ colors: bringing agricultural products to San Francisco. This is a square-rigged ship.

This plaque told me that the Pamir had been captured while carrying fertilizer from the Seychelles. Maybe that means that "agricultural products" is embarassed-curator-talk for "bird poop"? The ship was returned to its owners in 1948. In 1957 it foundered in a hurricane. When were people interned on the Pamir? Maybe I heard that guy wrong.

Te Papa

I wandered around the Te Papa museum for a while. This is a pretty good place to get started learning about New Zealand. And even if you don't especially want to learn about New Zealand, it's still fun, mostly.

I learned that waka is Maori for "canoe". This word is often qualified. E.g., waka taua is a river canoe, waka tete is a simple river canoe, waka wairua is a canoe for a spiritual journey.

I read about the Otago, a ship sent by the N.Z. prime minister to observe French nuclear tests at the atoll of Moruroa. It hosted many reporters. It broke radio traffic records sending photographs and reports out to the mass media.

If you seek Rutherfordiana, don't be fooled into seeing the "Golden Days" show, which promised some. "Golden Days" was a multimedia presentation summing up N.Z. history by showing film and TV clips. If I'd grown up in New Zealand, this might have been evocative. When the Rutherford segment came along--there were pictures, there was a bubbling of scientific equipment, over in seconds.

Southern Walkway

An unsteady mountain biker at Mt Victoria lookout point said, "That would have been much easier without that beer." I kept walking.

The Southern Walkway is a parklandy strip for walkers. It did not hold my interest long. Abel Tasman was still in my brain, and nicely-tended urban parks seemed tame. I bailed out early and walked back along city streets.

On the Town

I ran into a pretty art deco War Memorial. It looked like I could go inside. But I didn't feel like going inside a War Memorial--I was pretty dirty from bushwhacking my way out of the park when my "trail" had disappeared out from under me. But the Memorial was plenty impressive from the outside.

Behind it was a building claiming to be the National Art Gallery, but it was very closed up. It looked like it was no longer the National Art Gallery; perhaps it had been taken over by the nearby university.

23 Frederick Street was not always the headquarters of FilmNZ. It was once the headquarters of the Wellington Chinese Masonic Society, Incorporated.

I took a note:

It's not like there's always an old building or a mural or a nice tree to keep things interesting. But there is often enough so that it's fun to wander the streets.

Mon Dec 13 2004

I had an extra morning in Wellington. Mostly I wasted it: I started walking a historical trail. This drab building had been here since 1928. The sidewalk through this subdivision had once been a bridle track. This petrol storage tank was is at the site of a former flour mill.

I wised up and took a more scenic walk; but it was necessarily short.

Accidental Terrorist

On the flight from Auckland to Nelson, I was neither searched nor metal-detected nor X-rayed nor whatever.

On the flight from Wellington to Auckland, I was neither searched nor metal-detected nor X-rayed nor whatever.

Before the flight from Auckland to Kerikeri, there was a metal detector. It found the pocketknife I'd forgotten in my backpack ever since Abel Tasman. How embarassing. As an American, I'm supposed to be used to vigilant, even over-vigilant flight security.

And after I checked in my backpack, I felt like a dork wandering onto the plane, my pockets full of novels and water bottles and whatever else I wanted to keep with me that wasn't potentially lethal.

Fortunately, there were not many people on the plane to Kerikeri, so not many people laughed at my "cargo" pants.

To Paihia

The other fellows on the shuttle bus to Paihia were interested to learn that the Pipi Patch lodge was the partiest place to stay in town, with lots of cute Swedish girl caretakers. I didn't pay much attention, though. I wasn't going to be in town long, what did I care about fun times in Paihia?

Maybe I should have--when the bus came around the corner of a cliff and revealed the coast at Paihia, it was beautiful. I was almost sorry I wasn't going to spend more time there. Until I remembered that I was going sailing.

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