Kia Ora!

November 17, 2009

There are so many crazy and unexpected things about New Zealand that I simply could never have imagined!

Let me start with my flight, because it was perhaps the best flight I’ve ever been on.  I left San Francisco on Air New Zealand at 9pm on Sunday night June 28th.  The plane was in a word -beautiful.  I had a window seat in a group of three, and the overweight woman on the isle had bought the middle seat for extra room so we were quite comfortable.  Taking off from SFO at night is so cool… While we waited on the tarmac for a takeoff slot, and I just stared out the window at the continuous stream of planes landing.  What would appear in the distance as a very bright star, eventually became yet another airplane, and they just kept coming.  When we finally took off I could see all of San Francisco lit up like Christmas, and the Golden Gate Bridge too.

There were more movies available on plane than at Blockbuster, so I settled in with something while we were served dinner.  A choice of very tasty NZ wines were available, served in actual glasses.  I had the Sauvignon Blanc with my chicken and pasta.  When the movie was over, I checked the flight status – it said 10.02 till destination.  I blew up my neck pillow, put on my eye mask, and went to sleep.  I slept more soundly than I ever have on an airplane, probably in part because the seats reclined further than usual.  Eventually the captain announced that they were getting ready to serve breakfast.  I sat myself up and checked the flight status.  It said 2.04 till destination!  I had slept for 8 hours!  It’s amazing.  Breakfast was not quite as spectacular as dinner, but tasty.  I turned on another movie, which finished just as the lights of Auckland came into view out my window.  We landed at 5am June 30th.  You do the math.

Straight away people were so friendly and helpful.  I did have to show my shoes at customs since I’d been in Muir Woods with my brother the day before.  Fortunately they were clean.  I had to wait a couple of hours for the bus to get up to Ohakune.  It was a 6 hour ride.  I slept most of the way.

Todd, my new housemate that I met through CouchSurfing, picked me up in his ambulance and brought me home.  The mountain had been closed that day due to bad weather so he was having quite a slow afternoon.  He’s got a dog, Angus, and a cat named Pat.  The cat is a fluffy, ginger thing, but he’s quite snuggly.  Angus is the most docile dog I’ve ever seen.  He’s a small curly-haired terrier of some sort, and he will literally lay on his back on Todd’s legs while he strokes his stomach.

Ohakune is the carrot capitol of NZ.  There are carrot farm everywhere.  Mt. Ruapehu is an active volcano, and the volcanic soil is so soft, that the carrots grow huge and straight down into the earth.

We’re on the south side of Mt. Ruapehu, so the snow stays hard and is good for racing, but we don’t get the sun coming up on the slopes till around 10.00.  The mountain is quite good for skiing, but because it’s a World Heritage Site they can’t do any kind of shaping to it.  It’s all rocks and cliffs and double fall lines.  More fun for free skiing, a bit challenging for racing.  I’m told though that as more snow falls the valleys fill in a bit with snow and they can push it around a bit to shape the slopes.  It’s actually illegal to move rocks, even if they’re in the race course.  You have to just set around them.

Somehow, I thought New Zealand was an expensive country.  In fact, compared to Europe, and even to the US, it’s dirt cheap.  If we could get good plane tickets for our kids in Lithuania, they could train in NZ for a month for what they pay for 10 days in Austria on the glacier.  And since I thought it was expensive, I was expecting Scandinavian standards.  I was so wrong.

Though it seems really far south, we’re only at 39°S.  Vilnius is at 54°N, so you can imagine just how far north Scandinavia is.  While climate is quite moderate, it is also very humid.  Everything is wet, and nothing ever really gets dry.  Winter in Ohakune rarely brings snow, but there’s lots of cold rain.  It’s gone below freezing only twice at night since I’ve been here, but I’ve never been so cold in my life.

It is cold because the buildings are not insulated.  They are built in the same way as up in Auckland or on the coast.  And the houses are all heated by wood stoves.  I’ve got a radiator in my room which I leave on maximum at all times and I’m warm in my bed, but if it drops below freezing outside, I can see my breath when I get up at 7am for work.  Even if the wood stove was on all day, the fire burns out over night and by morning the living room and kitchen is freezing.  Sometimes I sleep with my ski clothes under the covers (I’ve got a heated blanket) and have to jump up really quickly, splash some cold water on my face, change my clothes at the speed of Superman and turn on the kettle for my coffee.  I always kept my apartment in Vilnius at 18C, which I thought was quite perfect, but this is ridiculous.

The weirdest thing about NZ, is that despite how cold and wet it is all the time, the kids at the local primary school turn up in shorts and sandals in the middle of winter.  On the day we met our racers in a local restaurant, at least one girl was walking around barefoot.  Yesterday I saw a woman walking out of the cafe at up at the mountain wearing nothing but wool socks.  What?  Today we had a day off because the mountain was closed due to high winds and we went out for lunch.  I was wearing jeans, boots, a big wool sweater and my winter coat and mittens.  The next guy came in wearing shorts and a sweatshirt.

I’m learning to speak Kiwi, kind of.  I actually have used “keen” and “reckon” in real sentences and not on purpose, but I spend most of the time saying, “what?”.  It’s funny how popular the words ‘sweet’ and ‘cool’ are for all ages.  Not just kids.  The other thing they say is “sweet as” or “mean as”… which I kept hearing as “sweet ass” and was telling the kids not to swear!  The ski area on the north side of Mt. Ruapehu is called Whakapapa, pronounced, believe it or not, as fu-ka-papa.  When I first arrived, I thought, “Wow, the Turoa employees really don’t like them!”  Todd has a daughter who lives with her mom.  She’s four.  When she comes to visit, I can not understand a single word she says.

Filed under: Daily Life,New Zealand

Tags: funny, kiwi, Mt. Ruapehu, New Zealand, Ohakune, ski, Skiing, Sports, Travel, Turoa, Whakapapa