Living Abroad

So today is Sunday and I am catching a bus to the closest airport where I'll pick up my last rental car of the New Zealand leg of this trip. I'll then be driving back to Wanaka and north to a town called Haast which lies on the west coast of the south island. From there I have ten days to drive up the coast and across the island to Christchurch where I fly out of in 13 days. I plan on spending most of my time in the Southern Alps where there are glaciers and additional ski fields to keep me busy.

The Wanaka leg of the trip has been wonderful. The whole atmosphere of this town falls nicely in between up and coming tourist town and remote, beautifully situated, local community. It does not have the build up of neighboring Queenstown and yet has just enough in terms of restaurants, cafes, and bars to keep me comfortable for my three weeks here. I'll give you guys a quick hit list of the people and general things that I've experienced the past three weeks.

General points -

A few things have happened in Wanaka that are side notes but worthy of mentioning. Now that I've stopped moving for three weeks I have picked up some bad or good habits (depending on your POV) that are lost when you are seriously backpacking every day. First, Chief among these is going out and drinking. Wanaka has a few great bars and one very fun club. With the friends I met over the three weeks here, the wine was flowing in ways it just did not when I was on the road. Second, I have had wifi in my lodge and I've had my iphone to play with. The simple ability to roll over in bed and check your email is something I think most Americans now know as commonplace reality, and it really was very nice not having this ability for the last six weeks. Its a love/hate thing, point is, Ive had the internet back on my fingertips, for better or worse. Book reading has taken a hit, largely because, you know, Ive had people to talk to. I finished a short story collection of Dosteovsky and am now back to Le Carre spy novels....midway through his masterpiece "A Perfect Spy".

People[b]

Well there was the Matterhorn crew. Apart from the natural revolving door feel of people who spend the normal 1-3 nights there were six or so people who were at the lodge when I arrived and are still there now.
Heath - an American guy from Vermont who is skiing down here for the season. Great skier and nice guy, who volunteers at the mountain for a free season pass. His home mountain is Jay Peak so hopefully I'll see him up there.

Sophie - a brit who is a children's ski instructor at Treble Cone. She is 30 and just got married, her and her husband are indefinitely staying in New Zealand. Its nice to have the older people around, as it makes me feel a bit less weird having late 20s and 30 something backpackers to talk to.

German girls - Isabel, Tabia, and Kristina - germans are an interesting breed, as I'll get into some more below. These girls are backpacking around and got stuck in Wanaka where they worked for free accommodation at the lodge the last five weeks. It took awhile to actually get to know them, but they were all very nice and became integral parts of our communal dinners as their German food was quite good. They also helped facilitate many of our drinking nights.

Melissa - a young French-Canadian from Montreal who came down to snowboard for the season. She arrived almost the same day as me and we hung out with Sophie and Heath for many dinners.

Apart from this crew we'd have good people stop in for 4 or 5 nights who would inevitable join forces with us. I wont deny that staying in the lodge for an extended period of time gives you that seniority feeling that comes with any territory that you 'feel' like you kind of have rights to. People obviously realized that we were the long-timers, which is inherently a dorky thing to say, but it was nice to have a little clique. This weekend I am leaving, the Germans left yesterday and Sophie is out in one week. Backpacking cliques are not meant to last.

Peter and Donna - The new managers of the lodge are worth a quick mention. Peter is 45, and has 2 foot long dreadlocks, Donna is his new wife (both second marriages). They are extremely nice people who, if I had to guess, are using this lodge as kind of a new adventure for both of them as a means of starting out a new life together. Peter is the quieter one, who works as a builder in town and is an ex-pat Brit, who has lived in NZ for 15 years. Donna strikes me as a partier. I mean, they both still put down a few bottles here and there, and its just nice to see them together and putting all of their energy into re-vitalizing the lodge.

Max the German - Max is a younger guy who stopped into the lodge about two weeks ago. He looks like one of the Aryan henchman you'd see in James Bond film, cast as the main villian's muscular body guard. I can make a joke about the Third Reich, but it would probably be in bad taste, so I'll just paint this picture. He is a mountaineer and a cyclist who, when we met, was 700 kilometers into a 2,500 kilometer bike trip around the south island. Yea, the kid is biking around the mountains down here, doing about 7 hours a day on the road. He inserted himself into our little group at the lodge and before I knew it he had invited himself to come skiing with me the following day. Turned out to be great, as he kept up admirably and we had a good day skiing the back country which is best done with someone else. What I kept thinking was how Max the German was really the person I wish I had met to be my travel partner. He is a serious mountaineer and had summited a few mountains I wish I had done on the North Island. Of course, he had a partner to the climbs with, which I never found. Instead I got Ryan the Jew, who if you read back a few posts was about as far from a german aryan muscular sports guy as possible.

Fitz and one-armed Peter - This is a good one. I met Fitz and one-armed Peter on the Saddle Chair at Treble Cone. Fitz is 64, sports a poorly trimmed mustache, and talks to you as if you've known him your entire life. By this I mean, he'll reference his buddies and places and things he's done even though I have no idea who or where he's talking about. He lives in Utah, and skis Snowbird and Alta 130 days out of the year. He is the quintessential life long ski bum. He moved from Maine to go to Vail University in the last 60s, bought some property, and has lived off those investments the rest of his life. All he lives to do is ski, and in the last ten years he has become a ski racer on the elder circuit, which is how he met Peter, while he was racing in NZ.

Peter is a Kiwi and has one-arm, due to a car accident when he was two. What he lacks in appendages he makes up for in money. He and his wife own New Zealand's most successful sushi chain restaurant. He is an adventurer and life long skier who races in the handicap races.

So I met these two guys on the chair, Fitz starts talking incoherently about skiing in Utah, he realizes I am an American and as we get off the chair, Fitz is still talking so they invite me to do a run with them. Two hours later, and I've skied all afternoon with these two guys in their sixties and really am not quite sure what to make of either of them. Peter is about to call it a day, so they invite me back to Peter's Porsche Cayenne (the Porsche sport utiilty vehicle), for a few beers before heading back to Wanaka. I oblige, figuring I can bypass a few runs for this experience. I got to the Porsche we unload our gear, and Peter opens up his cooler filled with Heineken's and wine. It dawns on me that Peter is an important fellow as we end up going into Treble Cone's front office and having a beer with the mountain director. It also turns out that not only is Peter a millionaire, one-armed skier, he also happens to have a drinking problem. One thing leads to another, and Im back at Pete's mansion in Wanaka where I hang out with Fitz before heading back to the lodge for dinner. The takeaway from the whole thing is that Peter is a millionaire who likes doing this stuff. He tells me that he loves meeting the travelers in Wanaka and showing them a good time. Yes, its a bit strange that I met a one-armed old guy who in the course of an afternoon decides to go on a bender with me, but apparently, he does this thing often. Fitz was the strange guy who has seen just a few too many sunrises through bloodshot eyes, and can't stop talking about that epic powder day he got in 1984. Point is, good times were had.

There were many other people that made the time in Wanaka memorable. As for the total take away, I wanted to spend time in a ski town because I regret never having lived a full winter on a mountain. In the end, the feeling I now have departing Wanaka is that three weeks is not enough, a full season may not be enough, and ultimately when I see people like Fitz I pause and wonder if I can do it, if I could just live in the middle of nowhere and ski forever. Despite the fact that I am like a pig in shit whenever I am skiing I still do not think I could handle the isolation. Even Wanaka which has its array of culture, bored me after awhile. I can't really answer the question that I pose. I love it out in the mountains, and really could delete the rest of my itinerary and just stay here for another four weeks, but at the same time, I do not really want to be Fitz in 30 years.

A last note on photos, I have been waiting to fill my 2GB memory card before burning pics to a CD, which only then allows me to post them online. Since I have had very little to shoot apart from the town and the ski mountain, pics are going to have to wait. They'll be up soon.

I have had a lot of things swirling through my head lately. Not surprisingly the fact that my pace has all but screached to a halt these past two weeks has left me, for the first time in months, with time to just think. Since I lost my job in mid-March I can point to many factors that kind of made the lead up to the trip a whirlwind of issues. Once on the road I really did not stop to breathe for six weeks. Of course I took my time, and during the non-stop adventure of each day it felt as though I was relaxing and taking the whole experience in, but now that I have lived in Wanaka for two weeks I can say that only now have I truly stopped both physically and mentally to the point where I can sit back and ponder how I got from point A to here.

With that said, the stopping is a strange phenomenon. Ultimately, it has made me thankful that the once proposed idea of living in New Zealand and working here never came to fruition. Its not that I could not live here, its just that the stationary aspect of 'living' rather than 'traveling', now that I have experienced both, is not really what I was prepared to do. I am happy to have days here to rest and do nothing, days to just sit by the lake and take in the whole place. Perhaps it would be different if I was employed in some capacity down here but ultimately, the daily adventure that is backpacking, the planning, pushing yourself to see more and go further, brings about a natural high that the stationary life of working and living in one place, even if that place is 14,000 miles from home, fails to do. I am already itching to move on, and have picked up the guide book and begun planning the next stage of the journey to fill the free time I have here in Wanaka.

Onto some observations and updates about living down here.

1. The skiing[u] Oh boy. I guess I am thankful that I have had years and years of ski trips dampered by weather, years of impending snow storms ruined by a nice coating of rain, years of mid-February thaws to coincide with my week in Colorado because it makes what has happened down here much easier to laugh away as a simple fact all skiers and boarders acknowledge - you can't control the weather. If you recall I did have about 4 days down here that rivaled in various ways the best conditions I had ever had (kinda). About a week after my arrival, the freezing level rose to about 2000 meters (not good) and a storm rolled in dumping about 14 inches at the top of Treble Cone and rain at the base. For the next day or so the conditions were tolerable with wet, heavy snow that had yet to freeze meaning you could basically just bomb down everything on the mountain as it was soft, almost too soft. Unfortunately, immediately following this storm, the entire area saw a warm up that the locals say normally does not occur until September. Think highs in the mid to upper 50s lows in the 40s. The effect this has on a purely above-treeline mountain is it de-thaws the entire base. More than 2/3rds of the mountain has been shut for the last week due to extremely high avalanche concern. Basically one wrong turn on the base could trigger the entire winter's snowfall careening down the mountain. Already 3 heli-skiers have died in the area due to avalanches, so the warm up is dangerous and just shitty. All of what I would deem the interesting and challenging parts of Treble Cone have been closed. I am taking it all in stride. We had a cold front move in tonight and the entire mountain was briefly open all morning today. The snow is strange, in parts its a sugary and fun but heavy, in other parts its a crust that is impossible to turn in. I would be pissed if I was here for a two week ski vacation, but the nice thing about long term travel is that hiccups like this can never fully take the wind out of one's sails. And as I previously mentioned, I have quite a bit of experience with shit weather on ski trips....I'm still going to get in more than 10 ski days in the middle of August.

2. Chairlift conversations and Hitchhiking[u]. Both activities have provided the most fertile grounds for good conversations with locals and other vacationers down here. On the lifts I see largely Australian tourists, but its a total mix of Europeans, Canadians and astonishingly a few Americans as well. In fact Wanaka has a high concentration of Americans, mostly west coast, doing the double winter thing and heading back to the Rockies so ski back home in a few months. The only real negative on hitching is that it costs me about 30 minutes in the morning to hike over to the spot and wait a few minutes for a ride. The idea of giving out rides here is linked both to an eco-consciousness and to a general local townie friendliness. Locals feel as though they are supporting the 'green' culture of the area by helping people up the mountain and thereby reducing emissions. Vacationers pick up more for the conversation. Either way, the activity has netted me conversations with an array of personalities - chefs, financial analysts, mountain guides, lawyers, retirees, and on and on, just a different cross section of society each day.

I'l add more to the next update....

on my travel partner Ryan --

Lets start out with some humor, boy did I get myself into a bit of jam with this one. Mind you, I wanted a travel buddy, I had been on the road, alone, for 5 weeks, and the thought of a partner in crime, if only to defray the cost of the rental car seemed worthwhile. After 11 days on the road with him, I do not regret it. We get along just fine. He is more or less like a little brother. He is the type of person that needs the stars to align to get motivated to go out and experience the world. How many layers should I wear? What should I eat, my stomach doesnt feel great? I'm tired? I have a headache? Are we there yet? ----- yes, times that by 10 and you have a kid how would be better off sipping wine in france than backpacking through new zealand. I say that because he intended to go to europe but could not find appropriate work. He is not meant for New Zealand and he is actually leaving 3 months earlier than he planned.
He isn't all bad, he's a wine and beer wannabee expert and he plays in a band. He is a prep school educated, whiny jew from philadelphia, but he is just one character in my story and every store needs some characters, so I'm guiding him along with a mixture of disdain for his prevalent whines accompanied by motivation to get him moving.

on travelling alone -

So much to be said, but what I will say is that of all the decisions, the questions, the insecurities, and the fears that I had prior to booking my ticket, I never once thought that being alone, thousands of miles from my friends and family, was a reason not to go. I had friends come up to me, applaud my decision, and in the same breath tell me that they could never do it. Not for lack of finances or wanderlust, but because they could not be isolated and alone. Is the 'alone' factor, actually the non-factor I had assumed? My answer is a qualified yes. I have missed many people, Jess, my family, and a few close friends all come to mind. There have been countless moments I wish I could have shared with any number of you. And at times, the loneliness has, as it should, reared its ugly head. But.....am I functioning just fine, am I enjoying myself immensely, yes. Is the 'alone' aspect a factor, of course it is, and I am a fool for not realizing it before I left. Yet I made the right decision, I can handle myself just fine on my own, and while I do feel like a have a life that is waiting for me, a life that in some sense requires me to wander only so far and for so long, I am confident that 3 months, or 4 months is not too long.

on the backpacker circuit -

Germans; they are everywhere. I got into a conversation with a german about their social policies toward the university graduate crowd. Simply astonishing. I could be wrong, but basically Germany subsidizes both your education, but also your life after you graduate, meaning basically that you can get handouts from the German government akin to American unemployment benefits without ever having worked a day in your life.

where are the Americans -

I can go on forever about this. As my mind likes to wander, it often wanders back to all the decisions, all the pressure, and all the misgivings I had about taking this trip. I blame you. I blame all of you Americans. When I look at the way American society prioritizies life, I am left acknowledging the obvious benefits we stand to gain from our birth-school-work-(maybe live a little when you are 55-65)-death mentality. Sure its not so black and white, but generally, we are a nation of insurance hungry, fear of the future, worriers. If you give a 23 year old American $5,000 that he earned in his first job after school, the wise thing to do with that money is invest in a Roth IRA, get that retirement fund going early. You give a 23 year old German, a Canadian, a Aussie, a Kiwi, or any other westernized nation that cash and they book their round the world ticket and worry about the consequences later.
Do we have a higher standard of living then those nations I named? Yes. Is it worth it to basically sacrifice your 20s to prepare yourself for your 50s and 60s, you all know my answer.

In defense, I will say that Americans, unlike many international travelers, have the benefit of traveling in the states and seeing such a vast country that you could argue that you get the same experiences domestically as abroad. It would be a terrible argument, but I can understand why Irish people need to get out of their country, it's, from what I hear, rather mundane after awhile.

backpackers lodges -

No, I do not really feel well rested. Conversely, nor do I feel that backpackers lodges are a substandard way of travelling - a jab I often receive from my friends back home. You can't do what I am doing without these places, and I'd argue that there is no other way to see a country such as New Zealand other than driving around and staying in quiet towns. Could you double your nightly budget and stay in motels by yourself? Sure, you then have to eat out every night. You need the kitchen facilities. I see families staying in many of the quieter lodges, many places I have had rooms to myself. Is the communal aspect a bitter pill to swallow at times? Absolutely. So I then book myself into my own room, done and done. Its true that people are naturally distrustful of what they do not know, and I realize that in America we do not know backpackers/hostel accomodations. But they are not the devil folks.

Music down here -

Not as bad as originally thought. In the woods you have the weird allegience to death metal as all backwoods hicks tend to do, but in mainstream society the trend is to reggae and dub. I hear as much Beyonce and Eminem down here as I do local artists. If anything its amazing how strong the American influence is so far away. I was on the ferry to Stewart Island, literally 5 people on the thing, in the middle of nowhere, and MGMT's Electric Feel comes on the radio. For my parents and those not in the know, MGMT was an underground band from L.A. that struck it big about this time last year....just crazy to hear them on the radio down here.

Sleeping -

Nope, I dont need as much as most people apparently. Its now 10:52 at a semi-full backpackers lodge. I am the only person in the common area. People go to sleep earlier than me, and sleep later. Perhaps I'm still on lawyer time, which really only requires 6 hours of sleep a night, but I just do not feel great lying in a communal room for 9 hours. So I right non-sensical blogs instead.

The "Native" Species Crisis

So I got into Auckland and was told by the DOC (Dept. of Conservation) that a few outlying islands were closed for pest removal. A week later and I still was not sure what that meant as I had heard the term a few more times. It was not until the boat tour during which I asked my guide what exactly where native species and what constituted 'pests' that I came to learn the truth. New Zealand never had any four-legged mammals until Captain Cook discovered the place a few hundred years ago, and decided to release pigs on the island for hunting purposes. Later on, Australia gave the gift of possums to New Zealand. In addition, mice, rats, cats, deer, and dogs are all considered pests as they are not native and in one way or another damage the only two native elements of the country - birds and plants. Today there are over 70 million possum in the country and they are hated with a passion as their toll on the environment is well documented. Rather than conducting fundraisers where you walk for charity, Kiwis conduct possum hunts to raise money. Their hatred of the animals borders on obsession. And really, the only wildlife that is preserved in the country are birds and marine life. If you walk on land and you are not a human or an animal on a farm, you are a pest and can be shot at any time. I find the whole thing a bit strange as the Kiwi's implicit love of their natural surroundings seems at odds with their inclination to kill just about everything that walks on their land. Understandably, its all unnatural species so they do have a point.

Driving on the left

Not a big deal. The circles are weird and the cars themselves require a rewiring of the mind as the wiper lever and the turn signals are switched around, I often turn on my wipers when I want to signal a turn. The craziest thing, which I have received unsolicited confirmation of from other travelers are the speed limits and driving habits of the locals. In New Zealand there are two speed limits 50kph and 100kph. Sometimes you'll see something in the middle but basically in towns its the slower one and everywhere else its 100, this includes twisty sea hugging roads that you locals whip around. Basically they see the rental car insignia on my car and pass me as soon as they can, which is fine. What it comes down to is that there are no speed limits as the limits that do exist can rarely be reached on many roads.

Additionally, many roads are not paved. I have a Nissan Sunny, which I have never heard of before but can analogize to a 95' Nissan Sentra. Completely fine on the highways, a bit dodgy on unpaved, potholed mountain roads. Its held up so far, and I get a new car on the south island, so I just need to get this one through another 10 days of rough driving.

The People

Kiwis tend to be far nicer than most other nationalities. I once thought of it as a skill to walk through a foreign area and not stick out as a traveler, the blending in with the locals was, I believed, and still do believe an asset in terms of avoiding trouble and facilitating communication. Down here, I find it unnecessary. Locals like to here where I am from and I rarely initiate the conversations. The whole New York City thing (yes I do not say NJ, I know, I know, I lie to myself still) usually gets a good response, and all in all I find conversation easy with the locals. They love to tell me where to go and take a pride in their country as a place that so many people from so many areas of the world come to.

This is not to say that Kiwi society is a utopia. I find myself suffering from the grass is always greener complex whenever I end up in nice foreign areas. One look at the daily newspapers here shows amples news stories of gang violence, lots of gun violence, and a rampant meth. problem. The country is going through various growing pains linked to the environmental consequences of urban sprawl and the continual issues they have with cultivating long term energy supplies. I read about fights over installing marinas and new condominium developments. As a whole, the country is greener than the greeniest areas in America. The general attitudes of a Portland, Oregon or San Francisco are mainstream down here. The country struggles with carbon emissions as everyone here drives a lot. (a problem I do not see easily rectified, as there simply are not enough people to justify mass transit systems).

Culturally, the divide between white and brown (native Maori) is not as bad as the Native American history in the states. Maori are not displaced and remain a part of everyday society, however, although a national minority, they constitute the majority of prison inmates, gang violence, and drug addiction. Its not all rosy down here, and the idea of a city struggles I think. What I mean is that the towns and rural areas are well set up, but the cities are poorly designed and suffer from sprawl.

Costs

The NZ dollar tumbled against the US dollar this week. Basically Im spending 60 cents to the NZ dollar, so in other words Im saving 33 to 40% off the prices quoted here. It makes many things much cheaper, but I would not say its a cheap country by any means. The towns I am in are affluent and with the rich comes expensive food and expensive coffee along with other inflated items.

Thats all I can think of for know.....