Travels in Kiwiland

We got a flight from Santiago to Auckland, skipping out the 14th March altogether as we passed over the international dateline. The short film we were shown on arrival in New Zealand was quite amusing. Complete with the sound of a prison door slamming shut, it made it clear that a tourist trying to smuggle an apple into New Zealand would be treated in much the same way as an international terrorist or a drug smuggler in other countries. Forewarned, we handed our tent in for inspection, just in case any foreign mud was accidentally sticking to it.

Initially, we were both quite disoriented in Auckland due to our lack of sleep and it seeming strangely like England but not like England at the same time.

After a good night's sleep we headed straight off to Matamata to look at the place where Hobbiton was filmed for the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Most of the original set had been removed but you could still see some of the Hobbit holes and the tour took us on a pleasant walk around the area, which was very pretty. Though we didn't realise at the time, this was the only day so far in New Zealand where we would be lucky enough to see the sun shine!

After Matamata we took the bus to Rotaroa which is famous for its Maori culture and hot springs. Rotaroa is a pretty ugly looking place, if you thought of Milton Keynes smelling of rotten eggs (because of the sulphur) then you wouldn't have it far wrong. We dived straight into the pools at the Polynesian Spa and soaked in the hot water which was pretty good fun.

The next day we went to the Wai-O-Tapu thermal wonderland near Rotaroa. With its bubbling mud pools, geyser and weird colored pools it should have been spectacular. However somehow the hordes of other tourists, modern visitors centre, safety notices, fences and well marked paths seemed to detract from the experience. It was the complete opposite of our trip to the Bolivian Salt flats where tourists posed unsupervised for photos standing on the edge of boiling pools of water with geysers shooting up all around them!

Our next move was to Turangi, a little place with just a few houses and a gas station spread out around a roundabout. We were there to walk the Tongariro Crossing, an 18km trek across volcanic landscape that is supposed to be one of the most spectacular day walks in New Zealand. It was in this area of New Zealand that the scenes of Mordor were filmed in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

We were dropped off at 8am in the morning at the start of the trek. Unfortunately so were about three hundred other walkers, making the track more like Oxford street on Christmas Eve than a walk in the wilderness. Initially we saw quite an interesting volcanic landscape with Mount Ngauruhoe (Mount Doom) on our right hand side. Unfortunately as we climbed higher into the cloud, we saw nothing whatsoever and walked past all the craters and other sights none the wiser.

The following day we got a bus to Wellington where we went to stay with Eleonora, Marco and their daughter Elena. Eleonora is the sister of a friend of ours from Italy, Giambattista, and she kindly offered to put us up. After a delicious Italian meal Steve quizzed Marco about his job, he works as a computer animator for the company that did the special effects for the Lord of the Rings and King Kong. As I know very little about graphics I probably only understood about 50% of what they were talking about but I was dead impressed by the large model figure of the King of the Ring Wraiths that Marco kept on a shelf!

The next day, after making that upsetting discovery that after spending five months talking Spanish I can no longer talk Italian properly, we headed into the centre of Wellington. It was raining so much that we ended up wearing waterproof trousers as well as rain coats. We went to the Te Papa museum which had very interesting exhibitions on the flora and fauna of New Zealand and its history, complete with a large Maori war canoe. Maybe it was the rain, but I didn't find the centre of Wellington very appealing. Apparently most of the historic centre was knocked down in the 1970s to make way for a shopping centre.

It was still raining the next day when we took a ferry to South Island. After a bit of a choppy crossing we arrived in Picton, where we took a water taxi to Hopewell hostel in the Malborough Sounds. A very nice holiday resort masquerading as a backpackers hostel, Hopewell hostel is set in a very beautiful and isolated location
in wooded fjords. We spent a couple of days relaxing at Hopewell, our room looked out across the bay and we could hear the waves lapping at night. Although the weather was pretty gloomy, we went sea kayaking along the coast which was fun and relaxed in the hot tub. We also ate lots of mussels, which the hostel provided free in large quantities to guests every other night.

From Hopewell we went back to Picton where we got a train to Kaikoura further down the coast. Kaikoura is famous for its marine life because of the currents that bring nutrients to the area. The continental shelf rapidly drops to over 800m off shore from Kaikoura, meaning that whales can be spotted not far out to sea.

We booked onto a whale watching trip which initially felt more like a whale hunt!
The captain was in radio contact with other boats looking for whales and also had a whale listening device. The boat would stop to listen for a whale for a while and then shoot off at great speed, in quite a stormy sea, towards its supposed location.

Eventually, we were rewarded with sightings of two sperm whales, one after another. Our boat stopped at a reasonable distance away from the first sperm whale and we were able to watch the large brown creature, lying like a strange sea monster, on the surface taking in air. After a few minutes he dived back down into the ocean flicking his tail into the air as he went.

Every one was then hurried back inside to see another sperm whale that had been spotted nearby. It was difficult to really get a proper idea of the scale of the whale from the surface (they are about 18m long and dive deeper than any other whale) but it was great to get an opportunity to see this magnificent creature in real life.

Sadly, while whales are protected in New Zealand waters a number of nations including Japan, Norway and Iceland continue to catch them in ever increasing numbers. Japan even goes into supposedly protected Antarctic waters where it catches endangered species of whale for allegedly scientific purposes. Perhaps not surprisingly most of these whales seem to some how end up on supermarket shelves.

While we have been enjoying our time in New Zealand, so far we haven't had much luck with the weather and the scenery for which New Zealand is so famous has been almost entirely obscured by low lying cloud. The people here are very friendly however. The tourist industry seems to be mainly run by cheerful and motherly middle aged women who do everything from driving mini buses to serving free extra portions to weary looking travellers at late opening fish and chip shops.

Next we are heading to Queenstown in the Fiordland National Park which is supposed to be one of the most beautiful areas of the country. Unfortunately for us the weather forecast is predicting showers and cloud for the week ahead...

Easter Island (Rapa Nui)

We flew from Santiago in Chile to Easter Island, which is one of the most isolated places on earth.

Easter Island was settled by the Polynesians who arrived in wooden canoes from across the sea. As the nearest inhabited island Pitcairn is over 1200 miles to the west they would have had a pretty long journey. The triangular shaped area that was settled by the Polynesian people is bounded by Easter Island in the east, Hawaii in the north and New Zealand in the west.

Easter Island is famous for the huge stone statues or moai found across the island that were erected on stone platforms called ahus. It's believed the moai represented important chiefs from the different tribes. At a certain point deforestation began to occur on Easter Island. Eventually there were no large trees left on the island at all. This meant that the moai could no longer be easily transported from the quarry to their ahus. More importantly large sea faring canoes could no longer be built, effectively trapping the people on the island. By the time the first Europeans arrived on the island on Easter Sunday 1722, many of the moai had been toppled during warfare between the different clans and the population of the island had fallen to about 3000 from a peak of around 10000.

The Rapanui people did not fare very well in the years after contact with the Europeans. As a result of introduced diseases like smallpox, slave raids and forced immigration by the beginning of the 20th century only about 100 islanders remained.

Today there are nearly four thousand inhabitants on the island, including immigrants from mainland Chile. Most of the Rapanui are of mixed descent but are still proud of their traditions learning to speak the Polynesian Rapanui language as well as Spanish. Tourism has also made many islanders wealthy!

On our first day we went on a tour of the main sights of the island. To start off with we saw some ahus that had been preserved with the moai still toppled over. We then went to the moai quarry which was pretty amazing. You could clearly see the shapes in the cliffs where the moai had been carved out.

The quarry area was littered with moai that had been broken in transit. There were also perfectly formed moai that had been buried in the ground at different heights making the whole area look like a surrealist sculpture garden. The most likely explanation is that by the time these moai were carved there was no longer enough wood to transport them to the ahus so they were buried where they stood.

We then went to visit some restored ahus at Tongariki and Anakena where the moai had been placed back into a standing position. It was quite strange to think that people who lived on a tiny island in the middle of nowhere and didn't even know how to make ceramics had gone to such trouble to make these enormous stone monuments.

During the remaining two days on the Easter Island we saw quite a few more moai. We also climbed to the highest point on the island, at the top of the now extinct Terevaka volcano. The 360 degree view of Easter island surrounded by the sea was very beautiful and confirmed that we were in fact in the middle of absolutely nowhere.

One remaining highlight was the bird man village by the side of the Rano Kau crater.
The village was made up of round stone houses with tiny entrances and turf tops with magnificent views both out to sea and into the volcano crater.

The bird man cult became popular at some point after the toppling of the moai. Chiefs of the different tribes, their representatives and the priests would gather at the village at the beginning of spring. Eventually a representative for each chief would climb down the cliff from the village, swim 2km to a nearby island and wait to find the first egg of the sooty tern. The first to return with a egg (unbroken clearly) would win the competition and his chief would become birdman for the next year.

Since we got back from Easter Island we have been relaxing at Hostal de Sammy in Santiago. The hostel is named after the owner´s dog Sammy who sadly died shortly after the hostel was opened. However, they now have a cute puppy called Sausage who was found abandoned on the street outside. The only problem with the hostel is that the collection of DVDs available to watch is so large and the atmosphere so friendly that it´s hard to actually get around to going out and seeing Santiago.

Tonight we are flying to Auckland in New Zealand. We are now half way through the trip and we both feel quite sad to be leaving South America behind as we´ve had such an excellent time here.

Queens of Mendoza

Quite accidentally we arrived in Mendoza, the heart of Argentina´s wine growing region, just in time for their annual Vendimia (harvest) festival, which made finding a hotel room quite tricky.

Each year 16 girls are elected to represent the different areas of the province of Mendoza. This tradition apparently started when the prettiest girl picking grapes would be crowned Queen of the harvest. Nowadays the 16 chosen girls take part in processions through the streets of Mendoza and after a huge sound and light show in a theatre near to the town the winner of the competition is elected Regina Nacional (national queen).

According to some girls that we spoke to, hardly anyone now wants to enter the competition as winning means having to take a year off college to represent Mendoza. This didn't stop this years winner, Andrea Regina aged 18, (strangely her surname actually means queen in Spanish!) starting to cry and saying that she had dreamed of this moment ever since she was a child.

We quite enjoyed watching the beauty queen parade. The streets were crowded with Mendozians of all ages and booklets were handed out with pictures of the 16 competitors. Each region had a different float to transport its beauty queen on, one float was complete with a live cow in a pen looking on while four dead cows were grilled and steak sandwiches handed out to the crowd.

We managed to get tickets for the grand finale of the competition, which is known as the Acto Central. The theatre was packed with about 20 thousand people with more sitting on the hills above. The first sign we had that it wasn't going to be so fun was when we realized that they didn't sell wine, strange for a party celebrating the grape harvest, and that everybody else had brought a picnic.

The actual show had the theme of Tierra Magica (magic land) and was apparently something to do with nature and grapes acted out in dance and mime by hundreds of people. It was a bit like an Olympics opening ceremony crossed with a school play. Mainly my attention was caught by the painful spectacle of a truck dressed up as a beetle that got stuck on stage for ages, interrupting other scenes, before finally managing to reverse off.

After the show the Queen was elected, which unfortunately involved slowly reading out all the votes that had been cast over a one hour period. Eventually the whole spectacle wound up with some pretty good fireworks and everyone in the stadium joining in enthusiastically to sing their local song, Mendoza, Mendoza, Mendoza...