April 10: Rotorua to Auckland and home

Previously: April 9

One final breakfast with Vivien, then off home. Because she was leaving for a tennis game before it was time for us to leave, we said goodbye after breakfast, packed our stuff, and got ready to go. We had a ca. 3-hour drive today to get back to Auckland so we could return our car and catch the rental agency’s shuttle to the airport. Nothing special to report: smooth sailing, no problem finding the car dropoff, and I’m writing this at the airport, with about 4 hours to kill before our flight leaves. It would have been nice to spend some of that time doing some final touring, but then there would have been more time pressure at the airport end of the trip (the last shuttle from the rental agency left around 4:30), so we took the simpler solution and just aimed to arrive early afternoon.

Lunch at the airport was at the Blue Marble pub: we shared a sautéed lamb flatbread with fries and a seared tuna steak with piquant dressing, with a shared pint of Monteith’s “Barbers”, a slightly bitter lager. Interestingly—and a rare occurrence compared with previous travel—the food prices were about the same as we’d paid in non-airport restaurants rather than the usual grossly inflated pricing. Still not cheap, but... Of course, that pricing is by New Zealand standards, which are about 25% more expensive than North American. The food portions are also significantly smaller, which mostly reflects the fact that North American portions are grossly excessive by world standards. After a New Zealand restaurant meal, I rarely felt guilty about ordering dessert.

After lunch, we spent half an hour checking out the shops to see whether there was anything worth bringing home. We particularly ogled the “Icebreaker” merino products, which are high-end natural wool products for hikers and have the reputation of being more effective than even modern high-tech fabrics in terms of keeping you warm, even when wet. Icebreaker’s quality is impressive, but at ca. $100 for basic long underwear and up to $500 for ultralight, ultrawarm jackets, a wee bit outside our comfort zone. Remember Imelda Marcos and her infamous over-the-top shoe collection? I’ve written elsewhere that if money were no object, I’d be the Imelda Marcos of outdoor gear.

As we wind down from our vacation, a few thoughts in hindsight:

Before coming to New Zealand, we’d thought Australians were (on average) the happiest and friendliest people we’d met while traveling, but they now merit only an honorable mention; Kiwis take the title. (I note that this does not imply tha the people we've met in other countries are inhospitable or unfriendly. It’s just that Aussies and Kiwis raise the bar.) One possible side-effect of this attitude is that the small cities we’ve visited have generally been remarkably clean: no broken glass, no dog poop on the sidewalk, no litter. Among other things, this may lead to more people walking around barefoot than you’d expect. Of course, it helps that there are no poisonous critters in New Zealand, other than the occasional wasp, so you don’t have to worry about stepping on anything dangerous.

New Zealand has discovered craft beer, with many brewers producing many really good products. We particularly liked Speight’s beers, but I don’t think we ever had a bad beer. A few that weren’t to our taste, but since everywhere that has beer on tap will offer you a taste before you order a full pint, it’s easy to avoid beers you don’t like and choose something you’ll enjoy. (Of course, some restaurants only offer bottles, and you have to guess and hope. We had good luck with bottles too.) We can’t comment on the wines, as we didn’t really try any, other than one white that Shoshanna rather liked. But there’s no shortage of vineyards in New Zealand, so there are lots of options for wine lovers to try.

Speaking of drinks: We North Americans love our coffee—in quantity, as in “by the pint”. New Zealanders have instead embraced barista culture, which means tiny cups of strong coffee. To be clear, it’s really good coffee and you can get it diluted (“Americano” style) to about half of what I consider a decent mug. But it’s just not enough, and as in Italy, they look at you askance if you ask for six shots in one really big glass. (Also, that’s gonna cost you around $24 and leave your limbs trembling the rest of the day. Nope. Not going to happen.) For me, it’s not about the caffeine content per serving, which is likely comparable to that in North American. It’s just that I want a mug that will last me an entire meal, and it’s hard to get that: no free refills in New Zealand or in any other country that does the barista thing. In a couple hostels, they provided French presses in the kitchen so we could make our own coffee, but most places didn’t. So in future, we’ll plan to bring our portable French press. Most supermarkets sell decent ground coffee, so all we’ll need to be happily caffeinated is the press and a kettle.

I’ve mentioned long hikes several times. We tend to take longer than the advertised average not because we’re getting old, which we are, but because we both believe in slow tourism: if you race through a hike just to get it over and done with, you’re not taking time to savor the experience (the journey!), and you end up with cardiovascular fitness and a few photos, not profound memories. We’ll have a few really good memories, particularly sea kayaking, the spelunking we did in Waitomo, and the Tongariro crossing.

It didn’t take long to get used to the narrow, twisting roads and the fact that Kiwis like driving faster than we do by a considerable margin. We once again resorted to our practice of periodically pulling over to let a bunch of cars pass us, or taking my foot off the accelerator as soon as we hit a passing zone to make it easier for the tail-back to pass. But given how many tourists won’t be experienced with such conditions, the roads must be dangerous during the high season. I’m not a road expert, but did take a short course on road design and worked with road engineers for a little over a decade back when I worked for FERIC. So I can spot obvious problems like insufficient cut and fill, insufficient straightening, and too many curves with variable radius of curvature. (The ideal curve should have a constant radius so that you move the wheel once, then hold it constant in that position throughout the turn. Badly designed curves use a tightening radius, so you have to keep turning the wheel, and at some point, may find yourself going faster than the design speed.)

Some of the “bad” design is arguably necessary given the nature of the terrain and the fact that with a population of only 5 million, there isn’t enough of a tax base to create something as high-end as the U.S. Interstate system. And to be fair, there are a few really good divided highways in high-traffic areas like Auckland, not to mention many rural highways in North America (e.g., the Trans Canada Highway west of Ottawa) that aren’t easy or safe to drive along. But in crash-prone areas, better road design would help. As woul more consistent and reliable signage. There are signs everywhere to slow down because "there are many crashes!!!", but some of these undoubtedly result from the fact that people learn not to trust the warning signs that suggest an inappropriate speed for turns (in practice, limits that are too fast or too slow).

Shoshanna stumbled across a cartoon that does a pretty good job of describing our approach to tourism. That is, we’re willing to accept a certain measure of danger in exchange for memorable experiences. Nowhere’s perfectly safe, and we accept that and try to be prudent about our risks.

Will we return to New Zealand? Probably in a couple years—maybe for my 60th birthday. The biggest problem about going so far is the distance—on our trip home, we left for the airport at 10 AM, arrived around 5 (7 hours), and then spent 24-some hours in transit. That 30-hour journey makes economy-class tickets an uncomfortable ordeal. It always takes me several days to recover, even if I’m diligent about getting up during the flight and exercising. The problem is that I just can’t sleep if I’m vertical, even with chemical help. So in a couple years, we’re hoping to have enough air miles accumulated to purchase business class or first class tickets. If I can get horizontal and actually sleep on the plane, the distance won’t be such an obstacle.

Stay tuned for next year’s adventures!