For some, New Zealand is associated with small furry fruit, sheep farming or the All Blacks rugby team. Those who spend time in the country get a different perspective, involving bungee jumping, whale-watching and snowboarding. Tanja and I endeavoured to discover the real New Zealand. What we found was enough to convince us that 18 days was far too little time to spend in the country, and that there's a lot more to sheep farming than meets the eye.
New Zealand is the thrill-inducing, stomach-curdling adventure capital of the world. The birthplace of the bungee jump, this country specialises in creative ways to endanger one's limbs . . . with abject humiliation and terror as optional extras. Having conquered the world with bungee jumping, the Kiwis have continued the tradition with activities such as rap-jumping (abseiling down a building head first) and zorbing (rolling down a hill in a plastic ball). Not to mention such "mundane" activities as skydiving, river-sledging and black-water rafting.
New Zealand is also an ideal place for trekking - or tramping, as it's referred to by New Zealanders - with national parks and scenic walks aplenty. Winter sports are another big attraction, and as the country is split into two islands, there is plentiful use made of water for further sportive purposes.
Having run the tourist trail in Australia, we had decided to avoid the same mistake in New Zealand. We eschewed tourist buses, and hitch-hiked our way around. We had heard that New Zealand was a relatively safe country and that hitching was widely accepted. As we were together, low on funds and wanted to meet the locals, we did it. And lived to tell the tale.
New Zealand, not unlike Dublin, has its own northside-southside rivalry, involving the two main islands. Put simply, southerners are adamant that the scenery is unparalleled in their neck of the woods and that northerners are idiots. Northerners, on the other hand, believe they are more civilised. We flew into Christchurch, the largest city on the South Island. Extremely negotiable and picturesque, Christchurch is also a good starting point, with roads leading to Dunedin, Invercargill and Queenstown, and across the mountains to the west coast. It may sound ludicrous to emphasise the roads, but the South Island is divided down its horizontal axis by a mountain range known as the Southern Alps. Crossing from coast to coast can therefore necessitate a circuitous route involving the mountain passes, some of which aren't always open for through traffic.
These passes are impressive, with beautiful snow-capped mountains, meandering rivers and countless trickling waterfalls. However, we were there in winter, and passed through these supposedly stunning passes in vision-impairing banks of rain. The weather was trying and, combined with the lack of cars, it tested our personal stamina during our 10 days there. With just over one million inhabitants in its 151,000 square kilometres, there are not a whole lot of people on the South Island, and even fewer cars. We spent a lot of time on roadsides, wearing every item of clothing in our backpacks, and this may have coloured our view of this undoubtedly beautiful part of the country.
I have infinitely fonder memories of the North Island, with its warm breezes and plentiful traffic. But, despite the misery of waiting by the side of the road and the uncertainty of where we'd end up when darkness fell, hitching did bring us into contact with the real New Zealanders - all of whom contributed to a fuller picture of the country. From a professor in geology, we learnt much of New Zealand's economic difficulties and that Methuens was the best beer. Isabelle, who also informed us that there are more sheep than humans on the South Island, told us all about sheep farming.
But it was our encounter with Jean and Abel Gordon, elderly couple, which made us realise how pathetically easy our modern-day travel was. They left home for Australia on a whim 40 years ago with four children, on what was known then as "the 10 dollar boat", which took six weeks to reach its destination and was promptly sent to the scrap yard on arrival.
An 80-year-old resident of Lake Taupo inspired us with his unquenchable thirst for travel, as he told us of his plans to spend six months in Alaska. We were picked up by truck drivers, school teachers, dairy farmers and fishermen, all of whom were friendly and informative, and many of whom went out of their way to bring us to our stated destination. In Waitomo, a place famous for its limestone caves filled with glowworms, we were even picked up by a local celebrity - granddaughter of the Maori chief who had first discovered the caves.
Hitching also led us to small towns in the middle of the New Zealand countryside that the guidebooks don't even mention. We camped in Darfield (in minus temperatures, might I add), watched the All Blacks beat Scotland on TV in a pub in Waipara, received hearty offers of accommodation from the local rugby team, and dined on dry muesli and popcorn in a lonely motel in Masterton.
In between all these "alternative" spots we did manage to include some of the more popular areas. We spent a day hiking on Franz Josef glacier, an enormous river of ice that moves steadily towards the Tasman Sea. Having had enough of minus temperatures, we headed north to the geo-thermal wonder, Rotorua, where hot mud pools sizzle beside erupting geysers and sulphuric steams. It was in Rotorua that I also learned how to enter a marae - a Maori meeting place - without being decapitated.
In my final analysis, I decided that New Zealand's national treasure was the Kiwi: not the small flightless bird, or the round furry fruit - but the New Zealander. It was the friendly, laid-back people who took us home for lunch or offered us places to sleep on encountering our bedraggled figures on the side of the road, which for me outstripped the beautiful scenery and cultural heritage as New Zealand's greatest resource. It's the Kiwis who will draw me back to this hospitable, amicable country for a further, longer stay. But next time it will be during their summer.
roundtheworld@irish-times.com