I don’t know how they did it, but these people knew what they were doing…and they stayed! They defended their new homeland against a number of “invaders” for quite a while, but like many other parts of the world, the Anglos (in the form of people that could read Captain Cook’s maps) moved in and for a time everyone got along.  But of course greed came into the picture and that caused a good deal of ill-will for all concerned.  Now it’s a hundred or so years later and there are still wounds to be healed, but things are fairly calm now and everyone gets along. 

Now I know packing all of our belongings, including not one but TWO copies of “Monty Python’s Holy Grail”, neatly getting into a 40 foot container and climbing onto a semi-comfortable jumbo jet and flying thirteen hours to a small dot in the South Pacific doesn’t quite measure up to the original migrants efforts. But we’d like to think that we have some kind of kinship to those early New Zealand colonists. Yes, we knew (sort of) where we were going…we did follow the road “signs” to the airport…and yes we had an idea of what we were going to do when we got here…Sandy had a job offer…but like everyone here, we came from somewhere else.  Plus we brought a couple of animals (our two cats) and sure they don’t lay eggs and we can’t eat them, in fact I think their appetites are as big as ours, but doesn’t that count? I mean we aren’t really warriors and we didn’t row small creaky boats across thousands of miles of uncharted ocean to get here, but we do feel like we’ve beaten quite a few odds on this great adventure. And to be honest, the original settlers didn’t have to deal with the formidable New Zealand Immigration Service. We’re sure none of whose members would have been the least bit intimidated by scary tattoos or frightening war chants!

So we haven’t had to learn a new language like many of our expatriate cousins and most of the people living here look a lot like us. This keeps us from being noticed at the checkout line at the supermarket,  that is until we open our mouths to explain to the cashier that we thought that was a fifty-cent piece, not a token from the nearby casino. (Gambling in several forms is legal here…you can even place bets on sporting events with your TV’s remote control!). When we do speak some people take notice and ask if we’re Canadians.  We tell them ‘Sure we are, eh?” Well, after what’s been going on in America for the past few years, we’ve really considered it.  But we’re still proud to be Americans so of course we carefully explain to them that we’re from Rotorua!  That’s the town we first settled in when we moved to New Zealand. “Don’t you know a Rotorua accent when you hear one?” I say. Most people get a kick out of that…at least that’s what I tell my wife as she rolls her eyes into the next room. 

So being in New Zealand just isn’t that much different than being in the United States really. They do drive on the other side of the road and consequently the steering wheel is on the right side of the car. But I’ve done really well at learning not to turn on my windshield wipers when I mean to activate my turn signal.  You do have to be sure to “look right!” before pulling out in front of a semi truck barrelling down the highway is all

So I guess it’s the small things that make the biggest difference. This is a land where a lot of people still leave their doors unlocked. I don’t say that to encourage ne’er-do-wells to move here and take up a life of crime. It’s just that the place is, in general, so small that outside of a couple of larger cities, most people would notice anyone that doesn’t belong. It’s small-town America in a big way, an entire country more or less. Of course some of the larger cities like Auckland (population about 1 million), Wellington, Christchurch, etc. have their share of criminal element, but no where near the scale that Americans have gotten used to.  Guns (except for hunting) are generally illegal here so most of the violent crimes involve fists or knives at worst.  Murder, any murder anywhere, makes the opening of the national six o’clock news and front page headlines.  Traffic accidents take more lives here than anything else (they didn’t listen to their mothers about “looking right!”).  But in a country of about 4 million people, there just aren’t that many bad guys or girls.  Like everywhere else, things are getting a bit worse…and we don’t want to blame America’s violent influence on everything, but it can’t be ignored…however with the population this small and the values of the Kiwi people being what they are, bad behaviour is growing at a much slower rate.  Most children still listen to their parents and teachers, tend to be fairly well mannered and behave themselves.  This keeps the NZ prison population to a fraction of what it is in the United States and we really like that “small” difference.

Shopping is more of a challenge here.  Although there are a few warehouse-sized stores in the larger towns, most commerce is conducted with the smaller specialty shops.  Butchers are still favoured over buying meat products in the supermarkets. The local hardware store still has a friendly clerk to help you figure out that project you’ve been meaning to get around to. (“Honey, when can we use the toilet again?”).  Being that most things are shipped in, your choices of products are not nearly as great as they are in the U.S.  You won’t find sixteen different brands and forty-two different flavours of spaghetti sauce on the grocery shelves.  But you can usually find what you’re looking for.  Many American brands are sold here…Best Foods, Heinz, Old El Paso (I’m not making this up!)  We’ve both gotten very creative with mixing things together to quench our pallet’s desire for variety.  And after all, isn’t that what the corporate food conglomerates do anyway?  It’s just a matter of being imaginative when it comes to shopping for food. 

Fresh produce abounds here and it’s really quite good.  I was quite spoiled by all of the good quality veggies and fruits growing up in California.  When I moved away I was shocked at how pathetic some vegetables and fruits were elsewhere. In that sense, New Zealand is a veritable Mother Nature’s smorgasbord. The area we live in is somewhat rural (like most of the country) and we drive past many small farms and orchards on our way to and from town. Many of these have roadside stands that sell almost everything you would need for a grand salad and more.  We buy freshly picked avocadoes, juicy oranges, crisp lettuce, sweet corn, tasty asparagus, ripe, red tomatoes, potatoes, jumbo eggs and of course kiwi fruit directly from the source.  An “honour box” sits there on the little wooden display stand, right next to the just-picked delectable edibles and you drop your coins in (the smallest form of paper currency here is a five dollar bill…so coins are very popular) and you’re on your way, no standing in line, no bar code scanners…what a concept!  Many of these farms have been “spray-free” and free range since they first cleared the trees to grow things here.  Organic farming isn’t anything new here either.  There are plenty of sugar-coated, high fat, high carb snacky wacky’s at the store, (so my wife’s dark chocolate addiction can be maintained) but you can live a very healthy lifestyle in New Zealand should you choose to do so.

Another pleasant and delicious surprise for us was the quality of wines that can be found in New Zealand. Having lived near Wine Country most of my life I was also spoiled by the wonderful vintages of the Napa Valley. We’d make trips to the wineries as often as possible and even have a full-blown wine cellar to prove it! We’re not wine snobs…good wine is good wine in our book…but to be honest, we were actually concerned about what we’d do about a nice Cabernet or Merlot here. We knew that we’d find some good Oz (Kiwi for Australia) vino, but California wines are very rare here. In fact, we’ve only seen them in Taupo at a magnificent wine store there called Scenic Cellars.  If you visit, ask to see the not one, not two, but three stories of underground wine cellars!  We’ve never seen a larger wine store…anywhere!  We’ve been happy to find that, although young, New Zealand is building a very respectable wine industry. About fifteen minutes drive from our house are two wineries that have won multiple awards for their products. Mills Reef, one of our favourites, was recently named “New Zealand Wine Maker of the Year” by “Winestate” Magazine. This is after taste-testing over 10,000 wines! (How do you get that job?)  Acknowledged as the toughest competition these awards recognise the best wines produced from all over Australasia.  Many of the country’s whites have won world-class competitions and the reds (our favourite) although not up to Napa standards…yet, are quite nice as well.  The Hawks Bay region of the North Island has some great wine tours if you’re planning a trip. The really great part is the pricing!  The wine “fad” has yet to reach these shores, so a decent bottle of wine can be purchased for about half of what you would expect to pay in the U.S.! And since New Zealand is the home of Cadbury Chocolates, we can often be found whiling away the twilight hours on our deck indulging ourselves in some of NZ’s finest home-grown specialties.

Okay, back to being healthy…although the nation as a whole is getting a bit heavier…you won’t see the mass obesity here that you would walking down most American streets.  Kiwis tend to get outside and do things more than their American cousins and why not?  With the countryside you saw in the Lord of the Rings movies beckoning, it’s hard to sit in front of the television. (TV being pretty lousy here helps too.)  The weather is somewhat cooperative most of the time allowing people to simply take a walk and breathe in the fresh air or go for some of the more extreme sports many of which were invented in New Zealand.  There are literally hundreds of square kilometres of unspoilt (as they say here), untouched fern and Rimu old-growth forests to explore, miles of pristine beaches to walk and truly awesome mountains to climb. The south island’s Southern Fiords offer world-class skiing and you can join New Zealand’s Prime Minister Helen Clark when she scales a glacier. I’m not making this up…she actually does these things! If you’re more of an “underground” personality, there are large and small caves to wander or “abseil” (repel) down into and scuba divers can visit underwater treasures too.  And if you like boating or fishing I’m told there is no greater place to do it than in New Zealand. This is evidenced by the fact that almost every house it seems has some sort of aquatic craft parked somewhere around it.  But again, the place is so big relative to the population that the beautiful calm bay that we see from our deck rarely has more than a dozen or so boats or jet skis plying the blue waters. 

River rafting, swimming, sailing, hiking, angling, bike riding (considered an extreme sport here as the shoulders of most roadways are about as wide as one of my father’s old ties), kayaking, bungee jumping, sheep shearing, sky diving, gliding, exploring of any nature…it all can be done and done in grand fashion here in New Zealand. (We didn’t say “grand fashion” where I grew up either…but it sounds good here.)

So no one thing is really a big deal here in New Zealand. It’s just that a lot of things are good, some great.  It’s not perfect, but I really can’t point to any one thing that I really don’t like. We used to spend a good part of a conversation talking about the things that we didn’t like in the U.S. We’re not really complaining and know that the good things still outweigh the bad there…but given the choice, we’d rather have more good things to talk about and that’s the case here in New Zealand. 

The great thing about all of this is that all of these things and activities are within a day’s travel, many of them only a short distance from most people’s homes.  Now I know when my wife reads this she’ll gently remind me of that fact the next time I’m oozing into the sofa watching last year’s episode of “24”.  “Okay, okay honey, we’ll go exploring…tomorrow!  Are we out of chocolate again?”

Until next time we’ll lift our glasses to you…good health and cheerz!

The following are Rick's previous articles for the magazine:

• New Zealand ~ Some Not-So Important Answers To Some Important Questions!
• Life In New Zealand ~ Six Months Later
• We Did It! ~ Escaping To New Zealand
• We Did It! - Part Deux ~ Moving To New Zealand 
• We Did It! - Chapter Three ~ The Magic Of New Zealand
• Life In New Zealand...So Far ~ Cars And Fish

http://www.immigration.govt.nz/migrant/
http://www.emigratenz.org/
http://benz1.com/forum/index.php?s=2b5a621987b160a0bac291321e62297d

To contact Rick Click Here

Return To Magazine Index