The best of Nueva Zelanda

Here’s the stuff that I’ll miss from this place.

1. amazing scenery.  It’s everywhere. north island, south island. everywhere.
   • but there’s a catch – a lot of it’s starting to look the same. Same quaint little seaside towns. Same quirky little small towns in the interior.
2. Wine. I thought Australia had wine regions! This country’s got them all over! And they do them quite well – sauvignon blanc pretty much put this place on the global wine map. But then there’s all the other varieties that each little climatic zone has targeted: Marlborough Sav Blanc, Otago Pinot Noir,
   Our favourites are:
   1. Rockburn [central Otago] Pinot Noir 2008, ~$50 (full-on good stuff)
   2. Mission Estate Gewurztraminer, $30 (a sweet, light gewurzt but with a bit of spice that makes it good)
   3. Montana Sav Blanc, ~$15 (we drank loads of this during summer mostly because it was always on sale at Foodtown)
   4. Omaha Bay Vineyard OBV “the Impostor” Flora, ~$25 (semi-sweet wine with citrus flavours)
   5. Heron’s Flight Sangeovese
   6. Matua Estate [Marlborough] Pinot Noir
3. Mac’s Sundance beer – I think this beer wins the “best of the trip” award. Surprisingly it’s a wheat beer (I usually don’t like ‘em) but it’s bloody tasty! 
   

   Quoth the bottle: “every season plays host to some sort of unhinged behaviour, and this year the sun has bake our brains long enough to give birth to SUN DANCE, Mac’s own summer ale. It’s not so much the wheat malts we’ve used to quench your post-swingball, pre-backgammon thirst, or indeed the Riwaka hops we added late in the boil for a suggestion of citrus and exotic fruits. It’s more the lemongrass.  Only in summer could anyone come up with an idea as crazy as pacific-rim fusion beer.”

   1. Close seconds: Monteith’s Radler (quite similar to above), Mac’s Gold or Speight's (just a good straight-up beer), Steinlager Pure (if you want a premium brew). For such a small country they brew an incredible amount of beer here! And for the most part, it’s all pretty good.
4. Cheese – New Zealand does dairy. New Zealand produces about 3% of the world’s dairy products, but Fonterra markets about 60%+ of the world’s export dairy products. Anyhow, yeah, the cheese here is good. My favourite is “colby”
   • I’m going to expand this to just say that they’ve got dairy freakin’ covered here. Cheese is one thing, but the milk is super – they’ve got this one brand that’s marketed as “milk for blokes”! Basically it’s low fat, skim milk but it’s creamy tasting instead of watery. Choice!
   • Cheese of choice is Mainland brand Colby (www.mainland.co.nz)
   • And then there’s the yoghurt.
     • Puhoi Valley yoghurt is so creamy and covered with fresh strawberries. (www.puhoivalley.co.nz)
   • And the ice cream…
5. Lisa’s Hummus: this stuff’s goooood. Look it up. somebody import it. please. The Jalapeno & Lime is probably our favourite one.  www.lisas.co.nz
6. Seafood: NZ’s an island, surrounded by ocean so naturally they’re going to have some good seafood here. Our favourites are:
   • New Zealand green-lipped mussels. Preferably in the pineapple/coconut-milk mixture @ Sahara. Else, they’re good in either a cream or tomato-based sauce.
   • Snapper: lightly breaded and fried at home, or deep-fried at a fish’n’chips shop.
   • Kingfish: we bought it on a whim from a fishmonger, grilled it up at home and it was deelish!
   • Orange roughy: same as the king fish, well no. Kingfish is like a steak, the roughy is light, fluffy and tasty.
   •  
7. Mackenzie Station Seed & Grain Bread. Thick cut, heavy on the grains, great taste. At nearly five bucks a pop it’s expensive stuff, but compared to the rest of the dismal-looking super-thinly-sliced stuff, it’s well worth it!
   www.mackenziebread.co.nz
8. Fashion. Julie was right – they do like to dress nicely here. Although, it’s all black for the most part.  I’m just impressed with the number of ‘home-grown’ clothing stores for such a small country. Barkers, Meccano, all sorts of woollens, IceBreaker (huge fan!), and others I can’t think of, but they’re probably all owned by some Auzzie outfit.
9. L&P. No, not Lee & Perrins Worchestershire sauce. Lemon and Paeroa. World famous in New Zealand, this soda is a cross between ginger ale and 7up. Tasty-as, it’s a perfect mix for New Zealand’s 42Below feijoa vodka.  Otherwise it’s just refreshing!
   
10. Flight of the Conchords; a comedy duo a la “Bob & Doug”. We’d heard about this show from Julie’s friend Candice, and we happened to catch an FOTC marathon on New Year’s Eve day and were immediately hooked. The two guys have a very dry humour, and you could say it’s similar to Canadian humour in that sense. Check it out: www.conchords.co.nz

 

Favourites
Best Day trip from Auckland	Waitakere Ranges (Piha & Bethels beaches, forest walks) Matakana (wineries and scenic coastline)
Best Boat Cruise	Haparanda Sailing (boat charter for Andrew’s birthday) Perfect Day Cruise (Tutukaka)
Favourite Winery	Trinity Hill (Hawke’s Bay) Omaha Bay Vineyard [OBV] (Matakana; great views from the hilltop over the bay)
Fave Restaurant (AKL)	Mai Thai (CBD) Sake Bar Rikka (Victoria Park)
Fave Restaurant (elsewhere)	Sahara Mediterranean, Orewa (www.saharaorewa.co.nz)
Best Farmer’s Market	Parnell Or Matakana is good too.
Favourite bar	The chain of Mac’s Brewpubs: Steamship Lines down on Quay street close to our place, Nuffield up in Newmarket and the new one in Kingsland. All have great interior design, and of course loads of Mac’s Beer on tap. www.macs.co.nz
Favourite Drive	Lake Tekapo to Milford Sound if you’re up for a solid 8hr drive through some majestic scenery. For a nice Sunday arvo drive, head east from Auckland around the coastal highway. Andrew thinks that the incredibly twisty road up through the Mangamuka Gorge was pretty fun.
Favourite mates	you know who you are Dylan the Villain and our other flatmate Becs Joel, from Vancouver Niall & Nadine Ty & Lauren, the other Canadians Doug & Amy, the “bohemian” Brits JP & Clare, the skydive specialists We’ll miss ya! and hope to one day play host for you in the tourist hot-spot of Winnipeg!

Farewell New Zealand, it’s been a blast!

cheers,

A&J

Happy 2009 Everybody!

Of all the party cities we’ve been through (Hong Kong, Macau, Bangkok, Sydney) we probably  hit the one dull one to spend New Year’s in. Luckily Julie was thinking ahead and booked us into a hung-over harbour cruise so the scenery made up for it. 

We started off the evening at the Patio Cafe whose patio overlooks downtown Auckland’s main drag – Queen Street.  It was fun people-watching as the crowds moved up and down from the harbour into town. We weren’t really that hungry so we just kept ordering rounds of appetizers after we discovered the biggest mussels we’ve ever seen – NZ green mussels are nearly 10cm long!  Since we didn’t have anywhere to go, we sat in the restaurant for hours, outlasting the other guests and waiting for the drizzle to end.

Auckland’s got it’s own version of the CN/Calgary/Sydney Tower, the SkyTower, and that’s where we wandered over to after dinner. There was a big crowd milling about and if you had tickets to the party then you were in, but we were denied at the door. We’d been through here earlier in the day and had spotted a small chapel that had been set up in the foyer where Elvis would be later. Julie got the great idea that we should go and get pictures taken in the chapel and send them home saying we got married by Elvis!  Unfortunately, like I said, we couldn’t get in the door. So no fake marriage to fool all you folks back home! But we did get to have our picture taken in the ol’Caddy parked outside that was to be used for the wedded people to “drive away in”.

Auckland plays host to some elite sailing competitions, and for one of them (the America’s Cup) the city revamped its harbour front and built it into what is now called the Viaduct. It’s a nice place, with a fancy Hilton hotel built over the water, loads of restaurants and bars, and parking spots for all of the big and fancy yachts that sail in here.  The Viaduct’s also got a reputation for being the place where young “bogans” hang out and cause a ruckus, so “mature” people tend to pass it off. But every time we’ve been there it’s been the “mature” people causing a ruckus. Go figure…

Anyhow, I digress… We found a small pub down there that had a live band and no cover charge, and they were serving Crown Royal for the same price as Canadian Club (that’ll make any Canadian’s day!) so we hung out for a bit. Julie smuggled in a small bottle of champagne that we uncorked as we watched the fireworks go off from the SkyTower.  Happy New Year!

 

The next day we played tourist and went on a harbour cruise to Rangitoto Island. (Fullers Rangitoto Volcanic Explorer) It’s the youngest of the volcanoes in and around Auckland at just over 600 years old, which means that the Maori people who were living here at the time saw it erupt.  The island is essentially uninhabited now as it’s been turned into a park. That and there’s not much to do there since the ground is not dirt but crumbled lava rock.  the native Pohutukawa trees seem to grow quite well though and at this time of year they are blooming there bright red flowers, hence their nickname of “Kiwi Christmas tree”.

Oh, and I managed to catch the highlights of today Canadian Junior victory over the Americans on tsn.ca – Sweet as!  (Kiwi slang for “good”, “great”, “right on”, etc)

Kia Ora! Welcome to Auckland!

A short trip across the Tasman Sea, or the “ditch” as they refer to it here, and here we are.  I had no idea what to expect when arriving here. As we flew in I saw the coast and beaches and then some trees and suddenly it was the city and we were landing. I had done next to no research on New Zealand before coming here, relying entirely on what Julie knew from her last trip here. So I didn’t even know where Auckland was situated, which would’ve explained why we saw beaches and then landed. Auckland’s located on a narrow isthmus of land between the Manukau Harbour and the Waitemata Harbour, or the Tasman Sea and the Pacific Ocean.  Realistically, if you flew in to almost any Kiwi city you’d land soon after seeing the beaches since the country’s just not that big. 

We were booked into a downtown hostel (Nomad’s Fusion Backpackers) and were treated to another uber-tiny room with a bunk bed. We’d also learn quite quickly that we were right above a couple of bars, so at night you either roasted in the sealed room, or slept with earplugs depending if you had the window open or shut.  Julie wanted out of there pretty quickly so she got right on task for finding us a place to live.  New Zealand’s answer to eBay – www.trademe.co.nz – provided most of our leads while scanning the bulletin boards at the surrounding hostels also gave a couple of clues.  In order to visit these places we did get to see a variety of neighbourhoods, learned that Auckland’s public transport system is annoying to use as Winnipeg’s and had to smile while backing out of a couple of places.

It’s New Year’s Eve tonight.  We didn’t plan ahead and therefore missed going to the big party out in Gisborne. The Rhythm & Vines Festival is where you go if you want to be the very first in the world to ring in the new year.  Beyond that we couldn’t really find much to do and did feel quite isolated since we didn’t know anyone.

* “Kia Ora” = Maori greeting, literally “be well”