Pined Over Down Under
by Andrea Strnad
After I graduated from high school I went to New Zealand for six months. I wanted to spend my life savings (painstakingly scraped together from years of bussing tables) on something that I would actually enjoy, rather than college, which I figured the government could pay for.
A quick primer: New Zealand is not an English colony, an Australian appendix, or a tropical island where people wear grass skirts. It's an independent country (though it was settled by the British) made up of two islands, creatively named the "North Island" and "South Island," and together they are roughly the size of Colorado with a population of about 3.5 million people (and 55 million sheep). They do have indoor plumbing and all the other wonders of modern life, and yes, they are obsessed with the kiwi. The people are called "Kiwis," kiwi fruit is everywhere, and New Zealand is the only home of the (endangered) kiwi bird.
I left home in July, which is the height of summer here in Cleveland (it gets up to a scorching 80° F) and the middle of the Southern Hemisphere's winter. Now, I was born and raised in the midwest, and "cold" here is two feet of snow on the ground. In New Zealand, however, cold is 50° F. Kiwis have absolutely no concept of cold, probably because of the fact that instead of a distinct seasonal weather pattern there is just one long, erratic springtime, at least on the North Island, which is a lot warmer than the South. The North has Auckland, the biggest city (a million people); lots of kiwi fruit; Wellington (the capital); Beethoven's Backpackers Hostel (the coolest one in the country); and lots of tourists. The South has mountains; Christchurch (350,000 people, huge by NZ standards); even more tourists, less kiwi fruit, and awesome beaches. For all you Outward Bound types, the South Island is the place to test your skills: there is a lot of land and few people, which makes it really easy to get lost in the bush.
Being a backpacker is very easy here, as tourism is the number one industry and there are youth hostels everywhere. Kiwis are generally very friendly toward young Americans and in six months of traveling alone I never felt unsafe. Probably the best thing about traveling in New Zealand is hitchhiking, a dead art in America, but still very common in New Zealand. I hitched everywhere and never had any problem getting rides, even in the isolated South. I found that because of the temporal nature of the relationship, people are generally very open with hitchers, and on a couple of occasions my driver was so open that I knew more about the state of his marriage in ten minutes than his wife ever would. I did encounter a few psychotic drivers, but nothing dangerous: one rather suspicious man turned out to be a born-again Christian, and I have a pocket-sized New Testament as a souvenir.
My other main source of amusement was hiking, or tramping as Kiwis call it. Because there is nothing else to do in New Zealand, the Department of Conservation builds huts in the National Parks (there are 12 of them) and you can tramp in, hang out in a hut for awhile, and come out when you feel like it. In the winter this is wonderful for us antisocially-inclined folks, as there is usually no one in the huts or on the tracks. I knew a trek was quality if I could drop my drawers anywhere and urinate without fear of being seen, and thus spent many blissful days hanging out eating instant noodles, contemplating the nature of existence and discovering how many natural substances can be used as toilet paper. Every hut has a hut book with a record of everyone who's passed through in the past year, and these provide hours of entertainment. I never got seriously lost, although New Zealand bush is pretty dense in some areas and the tracks are usually snow covered in the winter (the best time to go tramping). In the summer, however, the well-known tracks are crowded with camera-toting Japanese tourists, and it's best to either go somewhere obscure or take to the city. Don't plan on doing anything in December or January because everything is so crowded you can hear the shutters clicking for miles around.
New Zealand is a strange place: it has all the trappings of modern life and yet it's too small to really make a big dent in the big picture. Perhaps its the size that gives it a strange sort of underground: fringe political parties are everywhere, from the Legalize Cannabis party to the Natural Law folks ("Yogic flyers for World Peace!"). However, unlike America, these parties are very visible: while I was in Christchurch there was a Legalize Cannabis rally in the center of the city, Cathedral Square, that attracted quite a crowd. Unfortunately this spirit can't prevent McDonald's from colonizing the area, thus making New Zealand subject to the same deluge of foreign (read: American) "culture" that spreads like fungus to all corners of the globe these days.
New Zealand is a once in a lifetime thing for most visitors simply because it is so far away. I wouldn't mind going back, though, just to visit all the people I crashed with. It's a gorgeous place and a great way to avoid college for a while after high school, which is why we all travel anyway, right?
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