PUNAKAIKI-PAPAROA NP
We had originally planned to
visit a friend who spends every February in her North Island New Zealand house, but she didn’t go there this year. Nevertheless,
we decided to go ahead with our plans to visit NZ. I had recently regained
contact with an old travel writer friend, Tamara, a Tasmanian native, who’s
always told me what great “bushwalks” (hikes) that island territory (state)
has. So, once again, we plundered outfitters’ itineraries for the two locales. We
reserved a campervan for NZ, packed a “chillie bin” (ice chest) with camping
dishes, and off we went.
SYDNEY
We spent two nights in the
Glebe neighborhood, filled with students, quirky shops and eateries, and
backpacking tourists. It is strange to stay in a youth hostel where you are at
least 20 years older than 90 percent of the customers, but the price is right.
We strolled down to the famed Sydney Harbour and saw a white-faced heron near the graceful
Anzac Bridge. Sydney strikes me as a very livable big city
with its spectacular docks, tropical vegetation, multi-ethnicity, and distinctly
British colonial-style homes with balconies and grillework. It is swarming now
with Chinese tourists; 10 years ago they would have been wealthy families, but
I suspect now they are all middle class.
Our first day, we took a
9-mile (all distances are round trip, or “return,” as they say down there) walk
to the downtown area with its museums, aquarium, galleries, statuary,
high-class shopping district – and our chief goal, the fabulous botanical
garden, or “domain.”
Australia is one of those meccas all serious “twitchers” (the vaguely
obscene-sounding British term for birders) must experience. Immediately, we saw
a bizarre sight: turkey-size white ibises with 6-inch down-curved bills begging
alongside pigeons and gulls! The ibises fill the same niche as our parkland Canada geese:
sneaking up on picnickers to beg, terrorizing toddlers clutching sandwiches,
foraging in trash cans. We also saw crow-like pied (black-and-white) Australian
magpies; purple swamphens, a coot with orange bill and legs; sooty (black)
oystercatchers with bright red legs and bills; that most-ubiquitous of tropical
birds, mynahs; and a yellow-faced, long-legged lapwing, or plover, I knew from
Southern Africa.
But the most extraordinary
birds in the domain were the parrots. The trees were filled with screaming
rosellas, small green-and-red birds. We couldn’t believe our eyes when we saw
flocks of large, white sulphur-(yellow) crested cockatoos raucously wheeling
through the canopy! An Aussie later told me that even in his country captive
cockatoos are worth $2,000-$3,000, and much more than that in ours. Later in
the domain, 10 cockatoos grazed in the grass not 10 feet away, then flew up
into a tree right above us. Having seen them in the wild, I can never again
look at a parrot sulking in its cage, plucking out its breast feathers as it
slowly becomes psychotic in 50 years of solitary confinement …
I noticed hundreds of large
hanging nests, like that of an oriole or oropendola. Imagine my shock when I
realized they were actually flying fox bats hanging upside down, waiting for
dusk to feed on fruit and nectar! Their bodies have the mass of a large
grapefruit, and their wingspan is close to 3 feet. They are cinnamon-colored, with
winsome, big-eyed, dog-like black faces that give them their name. I’ve seen flying
foxes in Cambodia,
but never so close in such numbers; indeed, the thousands of bats are killing
the park’s trees, and the city is trying to humanely eradicate them. We were so
fascinated, we spent at least a half-hour watching them fly around (landing
up-side down by their feet), fan themselves with their wings to cool off, and squabble
and shriek at each other. On our last night of the trip while taking the
airport shuttle back to Grebe, we saw thousands of the foxes flying
purposefully – unlike our insect-eating bats’ erratic flight pattern – out to
forage. Sydneyites are no doubt blasé about them, but seeing those bats was
truly one of my coolest-ever wildlife-viewing experiences.
BLUE MOUNTAINS NP
Early in his fight attendant
career, Chip flew into Sydney
many times. He wanted to again hike the limestone cliffs and valleys of Blue Mountains National Park,
a two-hour train ride to the east of Sydney.
It was a grey, drizzly day, but not prohibitively. The “blue” moniker is from
the bluish haze created by the dense eucalyptus forests; we must have seen 25
different eucalyptus species in mainland Australia
and Tasmania
(hereafter to be referred to by the natives’ “Tassie”). We set off on a 6-mile
loop that began with a near-vertical, 1,000-foot descent into a canyon down a
harrowing staircase. The canyon floor was choked with some of the densest rain
forest I’ve ever seen: myriad fern species, turpentine and eucalyptus trees,
strangler fig lianas. We passed under the Three Sisters karst monoliths, three
legendary women turned to stone for violating an Aboriginal “kapu” (taboo).
Halfway into the hike, it
began thundering then we had a 45-minute torrential downpour which our Gortex,
ponchos, and gaiters did little to fend off. Leeches immediately came out to
insinuate themselves into our shoe tongues and up our pant legs. Fortunately,
we had encountered terrestrial leeches in Thailand, so were en garde. On the
train ride home, it actually hailed, even though it was summer and only about
3,000 feet.
Next morning before our flight
to Tassie’s capital, Hobart,
we had time to run down to the Harbour again to photograph the iconic Opera
House in full sun – and ogle the bats and cockatoos once more. The Opera House
is truly one of the great wonders of the architectural world with its wing-like
partitions and gleaming white tiles. I never thought I’d see it in my lifetime.
TASMANIA
The idea of going to Tassie
intrigued me from the start as a place few Americans visit and reputably having
some of the best hiking in Australia.
Tassie is the huge island off the southeast corner of the mainland, and was
where the worst-of-the-worst convicts were originally sent. (I had to laugh
when the entry-visa card you fill out to enter Australia asks if you’ve ever been
convicted of a felony – hell, everyone in the country was originally a
prisoner!) I’d heard that Aussies look down on Tasmanians as hicks, like we do on
our Okies or Southerners. It’s also supposed to be 25 years behind the times, a
designation I saw proudly touted in a local newspaper. We found Tassie to be almost
tourist-free, charmingly rural, and full of wildlife.
Hobart is an old ranching and logging port with a now-trendy
waterfront area. We met Tamara and her “mum” at a very posh restaurant co-owned
by her younger brother. The prices were way out of our league, but we had a lot
of fun chatting with the women about their lives, country, and where we should hike
for three days. Tamara had just returned from a long stint of writing a guide
to Borneo.
In a rented Honda, we set off
for the interior highlands through sheep and cow pastures and yellow hills not
unlike California’s Central Valley. We immediately began seeing roadkill that we ascertained
were wallabies; the small, nocturnal kangaroos sit on the warm asphalt and get
killed. We despaired of ever seeing a live one. Currawongs, the equivalent in
size, look, and habits of our ravens, feasted on the corpses of the wallabies
and bush-tailed possums, vocalizing an odd bleat like a sheep or human baby.
Tassie is home to many famous
wildlife species: diverse marsupials; the world’s only two egg-laying mammals,
the duck-billed platypus and the hedgehog-like echidna; and the iconic
Tasmanian devil. Chip had a brief look at an echidna crossing the road, and we
examined a roadkilled devil: a cute, marsupial, black, knee-high cross between
a pig and a dog with white bands on its chest. Honestly, I have no idea where
the idea for the whirling, bipedal, human-like Tasmania Devil of cartoon fame
originated. Devils are like our badger, willing to take on prey much bigger
than themselves. The famous snarling gape is actually a reaction to uncertainty
or fear, not necessarily a threat. Devils are in big trouble now, with a
wasting fungus disease decimating the population.
This was also the home of the
Tasmanian tiger, or wolf, a doglike marsupial with striped back and legs. When
Europeans introduced sheep, the opportunistic tigers preyed upon them, so were
relentlessly hunted down. Within 200 years, tigers were declared extinct, with
rumored sightings up until the 1970s. Their story is one of the most famous and
sad of species extirpations.
We rented a tiny two-bunk room
in an old summer camp with a communal kitchen at the base of Mount Roland.
We took a steep, 9-mile hike up to the saddle of the peak through an
impenetrable jungle of ferns, tropical conifers, and eucalyptus.
By definition, “alpine”
vegetation begins where the soil can no longer support trees, due to the cold.
At 45-degrees latitude in the Southern Hemisphere, alpine habitat is at about
3,000 feet; in contrast, it begins at 10,000 feet in the Sierra and 12,000 feet
in Colorado!
On the way back down, we were thrilled to catch a glimpse of screaming blue-green
parrots and immense yellow-tailed black cockatoos. On our last morning at the
hotel, about 20 cockatoos were in a pine right above our hotel room, ripping
apart green cones with their supremely powerful beaks. Talk about a
died-and-gone-to-heaven birding experience!
That night, as I was walking
to the bathroom along the “carpark,” I saw shadowy forms in the basketball
court: about 10 wallabies seeking the pavement’s warmth. They were wary little
guys, bounding off effortlessly in single 6-foot leaps. Next night, we staked
them out -- odd herbivores with deer-like faces and ears, seemingly useless
little dangling forelegs, and huge hindquarters containing their jet-propulsion
muscles.
CRADLE MOUNTAIN NP
We headed to Tassie’s most
famous NP on what the Irish call “a fine soft day”: light drizzle and fog. We
started out on a 9-mile loop to the summit of 4,500-foot Cradle Mountain.
It was odd to be in alpine habitat at the same elevation of my Nevada house. Marian’s
Lookout was a bowl of pea-soup fog, but as we started to climb the half-mile of
talus to the red limestone summit of Cradle, it began to blow off. On the way
back, we had super views from the lookout of alpine lakes, distant peaks, and
flower-spangled moors.
FREYCINET NP
We drove down the west coast
to stay in the tiny beach town of Bicheno and
access Freycinet NP and its WineglassBay, named by Outside
magazine as one of the world’s most-beautiful beaches. In our hotel’s communal
kitchen was a funny map of a gigantic Tassie dwarfing its territory, the
mainland, with acerbic comments as to why Tassie is superior.
Bicheno is just enchanting;
think 1960 BodegaBay in “The Birds.” We
took an 8-mile walk along a beach path past powerful blowholes and rocks with a
unique, picturesque red lichen. I examined a dead masked booby, then we saw
sooty (“redbills” in the local vernacular) and pied oystercatchers, two gull
species, shags (aka cormorants), and breeding colony of black-fronted and
crested terns on a close-in island. We walked down white-sand beaches with
turquoise water to a spit over which we walked to Diamond Island
in low tide.
When we checked in, the hotel
owner asked if we were here for the penguin tour. Fairy penguins, the world’s
smallest species at calf height, come up the beach rocks at dusk to feed their
chicks hidden in burrows. You can pay a fortune to go with a group, or simply
go to the areas the hotel folks pointed out to us. As luck would have it, there
was a full moon, so visibility in the dark was good.
We waited for a half-hour in
the designated spot then decided to try another. As I started over the rocks, I
almost stepped on two penguins hidden in the shadows! Then we realized that the
continual peeping we were hearing was the chicks’ locater calls. The birds’
eyes are photo sensitive, so Chip was frustrated that he couldn’t take flash
photos. But from 15 feet away with my binoculars, I could clearly see many
penguins creeping up the rocks and feeding the chicks by ramming regurgitated
fish down their throats. I have seen penguins on islands off of Peru and in a breeding colony south of Cape Town, but Chip
never, so needless to say, we were thrilled.
Next morning was foggy again
for our 6-mile loop around WineglassBay. Still, the bay was
gorgeous, rivaling any famous Hawaiian or Caribbean
white-sand beach. I examined a dead albatross, which I had never seen, and we
watched two currawongs gleaning insects from kelp and heard the evocative
“tock-tock” of a bellbird in a marsh.
In another bay, we spotted six
wallabies in the bushes – at last, a close, daytime encounter with live
specimens! Chip took a million photos as they allowed us to get within 10 feet;
we later found out they actually beg from beachgoers. NZ has introduced five
introduced wallaby species, but Tassie’s were the only ones we were to see.
(FYI, the difference between a kangaroo and a wallaby is simply weight.)
It finally cleared on our
drive back up to Hobart to catch our Christchurch plane, and
we saw many more gorgeous beaches in brilliant sun. I had Chip stop so I could
examine a cat-size roadkilled, marsupial bush-tailed possum with pink “hands”
and full, prehensile tail.
NEW ZEALAND ECOLOGY
I had bought a guide to all
of NZ’s wildlife and plants, which proved extremely helpful in our identifying
efforts. NZ’s ecological history is fascinating. Before the advent of the
Polynesians who became the Maoris about 1,000 years ago, NZ was a nation of
birds. Its sole mammals – two bat species – were “birds,” and its most famous
bird was a “mammal,” the moa, which was the size and shape of a juvenile
giraffe, minus the front legs. The Maoris exploited the moas and their eggs so
efficiently that the 9-foot-high, largest birds in history were long extinct by
the Europeans’ arrival in the 17th century.
In a predator-free
environment, many of the birds evolved as flightless, and thus became fair game
for introduced mammals, starting with stowaway rats in Maori canoes. NZ is a
biologist’s nightmare of why introduced species are so damaging. Nearly 50
percent of the islands’ 41 endemic bird species have become extinct due to
predation of flightless adults, nests and fledglings by rats, possums, stoats
(a weasel-like animal), ferrets, goats, foxes, dogs, and feral cats. The Department
of Conservation (DOC) has declared war on predators in an attempt to save
species, establishing barrier fences and pest-free outlying islands to raise
endangered, captive-bred birds for re-release. We saw many stoat traps baited
with eggs, and gulped at a very graphic DOC poster of a possum and rat chewing
on endangered fledglings pulled from a nest. Even NZ’s most famous bird, the
flightless kiwi, is severely threatened: 95 percent of fledglings in the wild
do not survive.
NELSON LAKES NP
In Christchurch, we picked up our very basic
campervan with comfy foam mattresses and bedding. We had brought my
single-burner Coleman stove, assuming we could find the proper fuel canisters.
Alas, they were unavailable, so we had to shell out $30 for a stove that used
very expensive butane cans. At trip’s end, we donated the stove to the DOC for
use by its predator-control field biologists.
We spent our first night in a
private “holiday park” (campervan campground) en route to Nelson Lakes NP in
the north-central area. This was our intro to NZ’s very peculiar campground
situation. They collect your fees, but since the spaces are undesignated,
people just cram in wherever, as close as they can in the more-popular DOC
campgrounds. As people who avoid campgrounds virtually entirely, this was an
irritant to which we never became accustomed. The worst example was two Israeli
kids who erected their tent 3 feet from our table!
Next day, we camped at Lake Rotoito,
a large, deep, textbook glacial lake. We hiked a steep, 6.5-mile loop up a
ridge above the lake in alpine meadows then dense rain forest. We encountered a
flock of fantails, which follow hikers to catch the insects attracted to them.
The tiny birds bounced off branches all around us, flashing their
black-and-white tail “fans.” Harrier hawks soared above the ridge, and we saw
yellow-green silver-eyes and a cute little NZ robin that’s totally unlike the North American species.
We drove down the island’s
west shore to hike the Hawaii-like rain forests of Paparoa NP near the town of Punakaiki. In an 8.5-mile
loop, we waded across one river then went up over a ridge to walk back alongside
another. The number of fern species was mind-boggling -- NZ has 65 species –
including ones with 6-foot fronds and 20-foot tree ferns. We spotted our first
flightless bird: two brown, chicken-size wekas begging at picnic tables. We
also saw purple pukeko swamphens and white-headed paradise shelducks.
Punakaiki is famed for its
very powerful blowholes surging among the “Pancake Rocks.” Layers of limestone
and a softer material were deposited along the shore. The softer material has
partially eroded away, leaving odd columns resembling stacked flapjacks.
OKARITO
Our guidebook sang the
praises of Okarito, a beach town down a gravel road so tiny it has no stores.
Folks rent kayaks to bird its jungle-lined lagoon. We camped in a funky,
town-run campground a block from the beach and walked to the start of a trail
up a ridge with views of pretty beaches and the lagoon. Okarito is the sole
habitat of a severely endangered brown kiwi. Kiwis are nocturnal, flightless,
and chicken-size with stiff feathers and a 6-inch beak with the nostrils at the
end. The closest we came to seeing one was a joke shot Chip took of me training
my binocs on a “kiwi-crossing sign.”
Next morning, we set off for
four hours of kayaking at the same time as a nice young NZ couple, the male of
which was a bird professional. We had long, close looks at many white egrets;
white-faced herons; barred godwits; crested terns; pied stilts with impossibly
long, hot-pink legs; both oystercatcher species; kereru wood pigeons; and huge
white spoonbills. I’ve seen roseate spoonbills in Florida
and Central America, but it was a first for
Chip. The lagoon was the birding highlight of the trip.
THE GLACIERS
This was to be our best
“full-body workout day” when we ran down the coast that afternoon to take the steep
7-mile hike up to the base of Franz Joseph Glacier. Now NZ looked like Alaska, with surging
rivers opaque with “rock powder” silt in broad, desolate beds of moraine
gravel. On the jungle trail, we crossed swing bridges and climbed over roots
and slippery rocks. Finally the glacier vista opened up: a huge snowfield with
endless, sheer cliffs of bluish ice hemmed in by sheer peaks. It reminded me of
walking out on Mendenhall Glacier near Anchorage
in 1976; nowhere in the Lower 48 can you get so close to a glacier as this.
Alas, the experience was marred by the incessant drone of sightseeing
helicopters jockeying for position. Yeah, yeah, I know the access-for-all
argument, but why is it always at the expense of hikers’ enjoyment? In a DOC
campground that night, we heard NZ’s only endemic owl, named for what it
clearly hoots: “more pork!”
Next morning, we walked
almost to the terminus of nearby Fox Glacier. With my binocs, I could see
50-foot cliffs of that otherworldly blue ice high on its face. At another
overlook, trees draped with red-flowering rata vines framed a dazzling look at
the glacier completely surrounding the base of 11,000-foot Mount Tasman.
MOUNT ASPIRING NP
Heading south, we drove the Haast Highway alongside
the glacial HaastRiver with views of
snow-covered peaks. We camped in a DOC facility with beautiful views of
8,000-foot snowy MountBrewster. The first
afternoon, we took a 3-mile hike across a swing bridge to the Blue Pools, perfectly
clear, aquamarine, glacier-fed river pools, so ice-cold (as we found out when
we tried to swim) as to support no life. Next day, we took a hike along a river
then over a ridge in the MakaroraValley. Another flock of
fantails latched on to us, so tame they actually alighted on my outstretched
arms!
MILFORD SOUND AREA
Now we headed to the most
famous and widely photographed part of NZ: the Southern Alps and Fiordland NP. We camped alongside the vast, white-capping
Lake Te Anau then drove the twisting 50 miles to the Sound in intermittent rain.
This area receives as much 7 meters – yes, 21 FEET! – of rain, so we did not
expect to see the Sound in clear weather. Indeed, the swirling mists and
vertical falls pounding down into the Sound we saw from its forebay are its
essence.
On our way back to the Divide
(the lowest pass in the Alps) hiking area, we
stopped at a tunnel to look for keas. The DOC constantly warns you about the
large rascally parrots’ propensity to chew up things – windshield sealing,
motorcycle seats, tents -- with their powerful beaks. Three of them descended
on a tour bus, begging and preening their bronze-green and red plumage while
the cameras snapped.
It was clearing as we hit the
Routeburn Track, the only one of NZ’s nine multi-day Great Walks we would trod,
for a 7-mile hike. We ascended among dense, moss-covered trees above mists
swirling over the HollyfordRiver Valley.
We passed the backpackers’ Howden Hut, and were glad we had decided not to join
the 23-year-old Germans and 20 Singapore
high schoolers there for the night. We lunched at 525-foot Earland Falls,
one of countless falls and freshets cascading down the canyon walls all around
us.
Next day, we returned to the
Divide for a steep, 6-mile hike up to Lake Marian,
reputedly one of the park’s prettiest. We paused at the “gantry” (viewing
platform) over a stupendous cascade. I gasped when we got to the perfect tarn
of Marian: pure blue under swift-moving clouds and a textbook glacial hanging
valley bordered by steep, snow-capped peaks.
Back in Te Anau, I wanted to
see a lakeside DOC wildlife center that houses rare, endemic birds. We got
another close look at keas, and at two other parrots we did not see in the
wild: the large, green-and-red kaka and the small red-crowned parakeet. But the
bird I most wanted to see was the takahe, a turkey-size, purple swamphen with
red legs and beak. Another flightless victim of the insatiable introduced predators,
takahes were believed to be extinct until a tiny population was stumbled upon in
1948. Captive- and predator-free island-breeding programs have brought the
population up to a precarious 300, only 30 percent of which are currently in
the wild. The center’s sole takahe was very old, sad, and slow. Watching her, I
got the same lump in my throat as when I saw Hawaii’s state bird, the nene goose, of
which there were also only 300 left, at Haleakala in the mid-1980s.
ROY’S PEAK
Queenstown, beautifully
situated on huge LakeWakatipu, has become the
ultimate active-tourism destination, with a smorgasbord of rec offerings.
(“Q’town” was the original bungee-jumping site, but, no, we didn’t indulge.) We
spent the night there en route to Wanaka, on the shores of yet-another large,
gorgeous glacial lake. We did a 9-mile hike up 3,000 feet of switchbacks in
sheep pastures to the ridge below Roy’s
Peak. The views of Lake Wanaka’s islands and peninsulas and glacier-bound 9,100-foot
Mount Aspiring were stupendous.
We spent that night at a working
sheep and cattle ranch, or ‘station.” The guidebook said owner “Tony shares his
kitchen and lounge as well as his theories on farming and politics,” and, boy,
did he! A recent widower, Tony rents out rooms in his house and camping space
in his lovely garden to supplement the ranching business and assuage his
loneliness. After 10 days of DOC camping, we were grateful a hot shower and the
use of his cooktop and doily-covered dining table, musing at the chintz-covered
armchairs around the big-screen TV. As we sat down for dinner, Tony came out
and talked our ears off all about how destructive the previous prime minister’s
policies were toward agriculture, how small NZ farmers are being swallowed up
by multinational conglomerates, and his son’s trip to Italy to sell
the station’s merino wool for suits. He also described the social ills of NZ
and the problems of the Maoris, which are very like those of our urban blacks.
He was a bright, astute guy, and it was one of those rare travelers’
opportunities to question a native about his country.
AORAKI/MOUNT COOK NP
We headed up long LakePukaki to NZ’s most
popular national park, Aoraki/Mount Cook. It is dominated by Aoraki (“Cloud
Piercer” in Maori), aka Mount Cook, Australasia’s
highest peak at 12,350 feet. Twenty-two of NZ’s 27 mountains over 10,000 feet
are in the park. Aoraki and the nearby ridge dominated by Mount Sefton
form the backdrop to the camping area, with that ethereal glacial blue ice
right above you.
Perpetually swathed in
rapidly moving mist, Aoraki is one of the most picturesque mountains I’ve ever
seen, with an abrupt double summit surrounded by ice fields. It is also one of
the most dangerous to climb, and was not summited until 1884. For the first
time, I got a gut feeling about how dangerous and unpredictable is ice climbing;
we heard several avalanches in two days. The visitors center had three books filled
with memorials to hundreds of climbers who have been killed on Aoraki or
Sefton.
As soon as we changed money
in Christchurch,
I recognized on the $5 bill that most famous of beekeepers, who would be
knighted for his Himalayan-climbing feats: Sir Edmund Hillary. A big museum in
the park dedicated to NZ’s national hero opened just weeks before his death.
Hillary learned to ice climb on Aoraki, even bringing Sherpa Tenzing Norgay
there to train before they conquered Everest.
Our first afternoon, we did a
10-mile hike up the valley formed by Hooker Glacier, at the base of Aoraki. We
crossed a swing bridge over the opaque river emanating from the glacier, and
marveled at blue icebergs floating in the pool at the terminus of its
dirt-covered ice field.
Our last day of hiking on the
trip, up to the Sealy Tarns lakes and Mueller Hut, was our most difficult, not
so much because of its 3-mile, 3,000-foot gain up talus as for the intense
wind. As we neared the ridge, I was almost literally swept off my feet. We spent
a shell-shocked half-hour lunch in the hut recovering and steeling ourselves to
go back out into the gale. But the close-up views of Seton’s dead-blue ice
cliffs were worth it. Chip left our snug campervan the next dawn to capture
images of the Cloud Piercer in rosy mists – a fitting end to a trip suffused
with natural beauty.
________________________________________________
MILES HIKED: 144 in 17
non-traveling days. NZ’s trail system is marvelous, with trailhead map boards,
clear signage, informative hiking brochures, and good route maintenance. At the
end of the trip, I asked Chip, “What do non-hiking tourists do in New Zealand?
What a shame to experience the country simply from a tour bus.”
LANGUAGE: First, Aussies
really do say “G’day” (pronounced “good-eye”) and “mate” (“mite”) all the time.
I enjoyed using the former to greet oncoming hikers throughout the trip. I
feared I would have trouble with the extreme NZ accent, but quickly got used to
it. I was amused when a New Zealander complained about how he hated the Brit
accent, which sounds so refined to us! NZ vocabulary we loved: jandals=flip
flops (Japan+sandals),
judder bars=speed bumps, sweet as=similar to our “fantastic!”, tramping=hiking,
track=trail, no worries=no problem, Enzed=New Zealand, nappies=diapers -- and
our all-time favorite expression, “Rattle your dags.” Dags are the turds
clinging to a sheep’s ass, and to rattle them is to hurry up. Kiwi has three
uses: kiwi=the bird, Kiwi=a New Zealander, kiwifruit= the fruit we know.
