Final Impressions of New Zealand

Now that I've blown past the one hour limit on the internet and am in unlimited range, I might as well throw in a few posts that will be a little more thoughtful than my earlier stuff in which I had to type like I was on deadline -- so this is a wrapup of New Zealand before we get to what I've been up to in Sydney.

The South Island of New Zealand, which I did a lap around two years ago, is visually stunning. There are beautiful lakes everywhere and snow-capped mountains pierce through the heart of the island and straight to the ocean. Most of you know the South Island from watching Lord of the Rings. The North Island, while scenic, is not nearly as breathtaking as the South. The landscape is more like New England, with rolling green hills -- and the odd volcano thrown around and large limestone deposits lodged in the sides of the hills like the volcanoes were lobbing shot puts around the country thousands of years ago. But what makes the North Island so special is you spend time there and you actually feel like you're in a different country. As much as I loved the South Island the only Kiwis I met were service industry types who I'd talk to for maybe a few minutes at a time. On the North Island, I of course met tons of backpackers, but I was able to mingle with the locals much more.

As you can gather from my last post when I stayed five nights at Scott's place, the generosity of so many of the people is vast -- and refreshing. My experience might've been extreme, but I've also heard plenty of stories about people hitching (a common practice) and getting taken in by the people who picked them up. Also, unlike the US and certainly Australia, you can socialize with the indigenous people (the Maori). As I wrote when I was in Rotorua, I had the opportunity to hang out with a bunch of them at a total dive bar with a couple girls from Scotland and Ireland. They were as interested in us as we were in them, and unlike many locals who meet foreign girls, they wanted to talk to them simply to be friendly and learn about them. As far as we could tell there were no bad intentions or underhandedness.

And that's my spiel on Kiwi land. For the next three months it's Australia, where the one ugly side of the culture (racism) is unfortunately getting real ugly in Sydney. Since I haven't been out to the beaches yet I haven't seen anything out of the ordinary, but things could get interesting since EVERYBODY goes to the beach on Christmas.