Ki Ora from Kiwi-land!
My mind is so filled with all of the things I've packed into the past five days that I think this entry is going to be more of a jumble than usual. I'm also back on my different-hostel-every-night schedule so I'm not as focused as I normally like to be. Leaving Australia was bittersweet but, as I got on the plane headed for Auckland, I knew in my heart that it was time. After saying goodbye to whoever I could manage to track down in my last hours in Oz (and listening to their jokes about the hilariously large number of suitcases I struggled to fit into the back of the airport van), I flew three hours east to New Zealand's North Island.
New Zealand is a beautiful country and incredibly different from Australia. Being so isolated from the rest of the world, it's easy to assume one nation is indistinguishable from the other. However, New Zealanders enjoy a culture that is entirely their own. Not surprisingly, there's a strong rivalry between Aussies and Kiwis (named for the national bird of New Zealand) that has a tendency to rear its head everywhere from the rugby field to the inappropriate jokes they like to tell about one another. Just as Australian history dates back to the Aborigines, New Zealand was originally inhabited by Maoris and later colonized by Christian missionaries from Western Europe. New Zealand, in my opinion, is not nearly as Americanized as Australia and I have a feeling most Kiwis would prefer to keep it that way.
I was surprised to see how little Auckland, New Zealand's largest city with a population somewhere around two million people, resembled Sydney. I walked around the neighborhood near my hostel early Saturday morning looking for the skyscrapers. Where are the cabs, I thought? The kebab shops? The tim-tams? From what I've seen so far, I gather New Zealand is more similar to what Australia must have looked like before it opened itself up to the world. The North and South Islands are geographically very different from one another and separated by a ferry ride I've heard takes about three hours. The South Island is home to the extreme sports capital of the world and the famously beautiful Franz Joseph glacier. Peter Jackson, a proud Kiwi, chose a few locations in the North to film Lord of the Rings but mostly set his films in the south. Now, I fell asleep during the third movie so you'll have to forgive me for not being hugely understanding of why these movies are so popular. I did, however, have my picture taken next to a Gollum statue in the aptly named community of Hobbiton, a spot featured in the movies. I'm also typing this entry from my hostel near the ominous Mt. Doom! (Frankly, I wouldn't have recognized the mountain if I fell over it, which I happened to do today. Ask a Tolkien fan if you want to know more about it...)
New Zealanders enjoy a much more comfortable relationship with the land’s first residents than Australians. The Maoris have added an interesting touch of Polynesian flavour around the country and many signs are in both English and Maori, a language I couldn't begin to attempt if my life depended on it. Rotorua, a small city I visited the other day, is the centre of Maori life in New Zealand and a popular tourist spot on the North Island.
More exciting stuff to come later, take my word for it...
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