| (Sit down
and be quiet! Stop rocking the boat (ha, ha)! Don’t
make me turn this boat around young man!) Following various “signs” such
as the odd bird that flew by, they finally came upon the shores of Aotearoa,
or in Maori, the Land of the Long White Cloud.
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:
Information
On Emigrating To New Zealand
http://www.immigration.govt.nz/migrant/
http://www.emigratenz.org/
http://benz1.com/forum/index.php?s=2b5a621987b160a0bac291321e62297d
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