Limestone caves, magical glowworms, the Surf Highway and white mountains are just a few reasons to travel to New Zealand.
By: Scotia W. MacRae
The air never seemed so fresh, the grass never seemed so green, the sky never seemed so blue and the sea never seemed so vibrant as it did the day we walked along King Edward Parade, the sea wall in Devonport, a 12-minute ferry ride from Auckland, New Zealand. Perhaps it was because the light is different or because there’s less pollution or because we had gotten off a plane only recently, and were happy for the brisk fall day in May and the sweater-and-jacket weather. We left May 15 and arrived May 17, having crossed the International Date Line on the way. They call it the land of the long clouds for good reason – not a lot of puffy fluff in the skies above.
As instructed by the guide Footprint New Zealand (Footprint, $25), which we used throughout the trip, we had packed layers and rarely got out of jeans – I didn’t once wear the skirt I had thrown in the bag. I did, however, use the short- and long-sleeved shirts, two sweaters, raincoat, hat and gloves I had packed.
We had decided to treat ourselves on our first day to an elegant bed and breakfast, Braemar on Parliament Street (aucklandbedandbreakfast.com), an Edwardian townhouse (1901) in the central business district of Auckland ($112 to $185), and our hosts John and Susan Sweetman graciously took us in at 10 a.m. We needed a walk outside after being cooped up for so long – we had spent more than 30 hours traveling – so we walked down to the wharf and popped over to the suburb of Devonport.
The monuments along the sea wall – where pine trees and palm trees stand sentinel over the bay – commemorated an event we don’t think much about – the Boer War – and the Victorian wooden houses overlooking the sea are reminiscent of San Francisco. We walked to North Head, an inactive volcano honeycombed with chambers and gun emplacements erected in the world wars, then had a delicious lunch near the fireplace at the Esplanade, one of the oldest hotels in the Auckland area, built in 1902.
When we returned to Braemar, John and Susan took us for a tour of the city in our rented car, up Mount Eden, an inactive volcano, past schoolchildren in their uniforms, to a spectacular view of the crater and the whole city.
We couldn’t quite believe we were there. When my daughter, Aurora, decided to spend a semester of her junior year in college in New Zealand, I hadn’t anticipated visiting her. But then came the ad in The New York Times – Air Tahiti Nui ("nui" means "large" in Tahitian) was offering tickets at half price ($800 round trip) to inaugurate their nonstop flights from JFK to Papeete (13 hours) and from Papeete to Auckland (six hours). The special ran through the end of May, which is autumn in New Zealand, the off-season. The French Polynesian airline (www.airtahitinui-usa.com) also has special fares to Paris from New York.
A word of warning: the staff of Air Tahiti Nui give you fresh Tiara Tahiti, the fragrant gardenia that is a national symbol, as you get on the flight, and these must be disposed of before you leave the airport in Auckland or you could be subject to a stiff fine. I thought I had thrown mine away on the plane, but I was busted by a flower-sniffing beagle in the airport who found one that had fallen into my tote bag.
We made our arrangements, including car rental, through Aspire Down Under (www.aspiredownunder.com), although I wish we had gotten more information about auto insurance before we left. When we arrived in Auckland, we were told that unless we paid another NZ $300 for insurance, we would be responsible for any damage to the car for whatever reason. We didn’t want to take any chances, so we paid, but I wish the U.S. agent had explained the situation to us. Gas is expensive, and don’t forget that New Zealanders drive on the left side of the road. If you don’t care to drive, public transportation is also an option. Buses and tours go almost everywhere, and scenic train rides are available.
Before we left the states, we had purchased senior cards for those 55 and over ($18 for two years), which saved us money on trains, ferries, some motels and museum admissions and ferry fares (www.seniorscard.co.nz). For this article, I have calculated the exchange rate at 62 cents times NZ $1.
How to spend our two weeks? We decided to drive from Auckland to Wellington down the east coast of the North Island, take the ferry from Wellington to Picton on the South Island and drive to Christchurch. On the return, we drove from Wellington to Napier along the sea, and then through the center of the North Island past Lake Taupo, and Rotorua back to the Auckland Airport. We tried to keep our driving time to no more than five hours a day. Our priority was to see the outdoors, a living museum of inspirational natural beauty and plate tectonics at work.
While New Zealand is a staging area for outdoor sports from rugby, the national obsession, to skiing to skydiving to fishing, and for zany activities such as bungee jumping and zorbing (which involves getting into a huge clear plastic bubble and rolling downhill) you do not have to do any of those things to enjoy it.
Our strategy was to stay inexpensively at backpackers’ lodges, in ensuite ($40 to $60), meaning a private bath, and splurge once in a while. Rooms in the backpackers are basic – bed, bath, towels (no phone, usually no soap, TV extra) – but clean and comfortable, and easy to get in the off-season. My one complaint is that the lighting can be bad for reading, so bring a flashlight. Nomads Backpackers (www.nomadsworld.com) has locations throughout the country. In the off-season, many lodgings are less expensive and, since they were not full, our rooms were often upgraded. Most towns or regions have I-Sites, where you can stop to get information and book a place to stay.
We picnicked frequently and ate periodically at good restaurants, especially at lunch, when you can get the same dishes served at dinner much less expensively. Good espresso and cappuccino are available in cafes in the smallest hamlets, and delicious salads and vegetarian options are easy to find. The cheeses are made in New Zealand, and the best are typically English ones, such as cheddar, while the Brie and Feta are bland. Seafood, which I love, is plentiful and well cooked; lamb is not a favorite of mine, so I didn’t partake, but the beef and chicken were good. Good New Zealand wines – both red and white – are available at very reasonable prices, including sparkling varieties, as is beer,
Highlights on the drive from Auckland to Wellington were the Waitomo limestone caves ($13 per person), illuminated by magical glowworms unique to New Zealand – these are two-winged insects at the larva stage of their life cycle – and the Surf Highway. It winds around the stately and breathtakingly beautiful Mount Taranaki (also known as Mount Egmont), which stood in as Mount Fuji during the filming of The Last Samurai with Tom Cruise. The highway ends around Hawera, with its architecturally significant buildings from the 19th and early 20th centuries – and an Elvis Presley Memorial Room, which we missed.
Most towns have a library where you can check your e-mail ($1.25 for 15 minutes, a standard rate), since wireless is not readily available. The most economical way to communicate by phone is to buy a prepaid card.
On May 19, we arrived in Wellington, the capital, where, like Trenton, because of the one-way streets and dearth of signs, "you can’t get there from here." All the museums in the city are well worth visiting, especially the Te Papa Tongarewa ("Our Place"), one of the largest national museums in the world. It gives an excellent idea of the country’s culture, from the Maori, who arrived about 1,000 years ago, to the British, to more recent immigrants.
The exhibits on the natural habitat remind you that New Zealand is the result of a collision of the Earth’s Pacific Continental Plate and the Indo-Australian Plate, resulting in the volcanoes of the North Island and the alpine fault line of the South Island, and that earthquakes have had a significant effect on the history of the nation.
The Katherine Mansfield Birthplace is special. Although she left the country when she was 19 and died at the age of 34 in 1923, she left an impressive literary legacy that drew deeply on her New Zealand roots. The house is filled with objects to which she alludes in her stories, and the BBC video shown is revealing. Her work is worth rereading and not just because she was a friend of literary lights such as Virginia Woolf, T.S. Eliot and D.H. Lawrence and his wife Frieda. Irish author Frank O’Connor called her "the brassy little shopgirl of literature who made herself into a great writer."
There are many good restaurants in Wellington, among them Astoria Café, 159 Lambton Quay, for brunch ($13 per person), the elegant Shed 5 ($35 per person, lunch) on Queen’s Wharf and Fidel’s ($16 per person, dinner), a student hangout, on Cuba Street, of course.
Jason was our guide for a jolly two-and-a-half-hour mini-van tour of the city ($16 per person) that takes you up Mount Victoria, where one of the first scenes from "The Lord of the Rings" was filmed. He told us that at first the filming was a secret. Then, although the crew had obtained all the proper permits, no one had thought of the consequences of turning on the fog machines. Fire engines and citizens raced up the mountain to fight a blaze and discovered hobbits. Director Peter Jackson’s cover was blown.
The tour also takes you through historic suburbs, including the one where Jackson lives, with his Oscar peering out a large window overlooking the road, to the Red Rocks seal walk, the South Coast beaches and the Botanic Gardens, from which you can return to the center of Wellington by cable car, first built in 1902. We embarked on the early morning of May 23 for the South Island ($25 per person, $68 for a vehicle), a three-hour ferry trip across open ocean. Be sure to bring your own food – you can get cappuccino at the bar, which is a pleasant place to sit.
The ferry ride ends at picturesque Picton on the South Island. The Karaka Wood Gallery on High Street is a great place for unique gifts, including jewelry made from the blue-hued paua shell, related to the abalone. It is found only in New Zealand coastal waters and used by the Maori in woodcarvings. Much of the stuff in tourist shops is unimaginative and pricey, so if you are off the beaten track and see something you like, adhere to the "Moscow rule of shopping" and buy it – you may not find another like it.
From Picton, we drove along the beautiful coast road to Kaikoura, and found lodging at the Old Convent, built for an order of French nuns in 1911, and now a B&B loaded with charm and character ($53-$134). Proprietor Gordon Cockerell told us about a stream walk that takes you up the side of a mountain to a magical place – a rock pool fed by a waterfall – where baby seals hop up a rock-filled stream by day to play, and go back down to the sea and their parents each night.
Kaikoura is one of the best places to go swimming with dolphins or whale-watching, but like the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland, we had no time. On the drive to Christchurch, the light over the hills and fields, dotted with sheep and cows, had a special quality, probably because of the angle of the sun, bathing everything in a golden glow. While there are only 4.5 million people in New Zealand – and 2 million of them are in and around Auckland – the country appears populated with small towns that look much like the United States in the 1950s and 1960s before the big box stores took over.
From Christchurch, we took the scenic TranzAlpine train ($60 per person round trip, about 10 hours), and were delighted that we had been advised to spend time in the Southern Alps, rather than ride all the way across the island to Graymouth. We spent about five hours in Arthur’s Pass, a small mountain town with a lovely chapel, a ranger station and a few stores and restaurants.
The Devil’s Punchbowl trail, which seemed like yet another set for "Lord of the Rings," took us amid mist and moss to yet another beautiful waterfall. That evening we ate at the Torenhof Café housed in an old brick building, which specializes in Belgian beer with a menu to match. We did not have much of a chance to see the city in the light of day, since we had to head back north the next day.
Past Kaikoura on the coast highway is Kederengu and a restaurant called The Store, a must-stop because of the setting. The delicious and reasonably priced food is served on the large wooden terrace overlooking the ocean.
Retracing our steps to the North Island on the ferry from Picton, we headed north from Wellington to Napier, a city that had been destroyed in an earthquake in 1931 and rebuilt by 1933 entirely in Art Deco style, chosen not just because it was fashionable but also because it was relatively inexpensive and earthquake-proof. We arrived in the late afternoon of May 27, and I was transfixed by this town that boasts the world’s largest collection of Art Deco buildings.
By the sea are the Marine Parade Gardens and the Veronica Subway, a plaza built as an outdoor auditorium with its soundstage, a Radio City Music Hall in miniature. At night the lights in the Parker Fountain make magic as they change colors, illuminating the Norfolk Island pines that are shaped so perfectly that they seem artificial. That evening we dined at the County Hotel (www.countyhotel.co.nz), a boutique hostelry in what was formerly the Hawke’s Bay County Council Building, one of a handful of structures that survived the 1931 earthquake.
We started at the Churchill Bar, where we instructed the bartender in the art of making an American martini (she did well) and admired the young people in fancy dress, there for a special occasion. We proceeded to the Chambers Restaurant, where we had a delicious dinner ($40 each), then retired to Wally’s Backpackers ($38) after a visit to the Hawke’s Bay Museum. From the fascinating Art Deco walking tour, we learned that in 1980s, Napier was in danger of losing its heritage when several architecturally significant structures were demolished.
The Art Deco Trust (www.artdeconapier.com) was formed to lobby for preservation, and its shop was one of the best places we found for gifts, such as paua-shell Deco-style earrings. We also met the charming Bertie (Clarence Bertram St. John Fitz Montague), ambassador for Napier, who will arrange a driving tour in a vintage auto (artdecobertie@clear.net.nz). If you happen to go Feb. 15 to 18, you can participate in Napier’s Art Deco Weekend.
That afternoon, we drove north through the resort town of Taupo, to Rotorua, known as "Sulphur City" because it is the thermal and volcanic capital of New Zealand. Although the guidebook says it is one of the "most visited" places in New Zealand, it was not my favorite. We did not have the time on May 29 to spend half a day at Te Puia, a Maori Cultural Centre, or to go zorbing. We did go to the Government Gardens and the Rotorua Museum of Art and History, located in the Bath House, a luxurious spa built in 1908.
It was then a sprint back to Auckland to prepare for the next morning’s departure to the States. Before you leave, you must pay a departure fee ($16 per person). I do not recommend buying gifts at the airport. They are more expensive and less imaginative than you can find other places, although I did spend my last cash on two bars of mud soap ($2 each) from Rotorua. We left New Zealand on May 31 and 24 hours later arrived in New York on May 31. The psychological lesson in distance is that New Zealand once seemed a long way away in time, space and expense. Now that I’ve been there, it doesn’t seem so remote – a bit of a trek to be sure, but much closer to home. And my daughter found herself a summer job in Hawaii which, with only seven hours’ difference (instead of 16), now seems right next door.