Dec. 8 - Hokatiki or thereabouts

December 8, 2008
somewhere near Hotakiki
pissing rain, 58 degrees

Major rain day. Took care of admin items and planning.
esoteria:

"ChCh" -- the abbreviation they use for Chistchurch. Am I the only one who thinks that "Christchurch" is kind of a severe name for a city?

"Dairy" -- this is what cornerstores are called

history of NZ -- is one of the shortest of any country in the world (not counting the Maori). Thus, the kiwis are very much New Worlders -- more so than Americans by 100 years or so. many of the references are English; however, the average kiwi is nothing like a Brit...way too friendly, low-key and simple.

no frontier -- there's no real "frontier" here, except for fjordland, I suppose. America has the West, Chile has the Atacama, Australia has the bush...but all of these are deserts which thwarted agrarian development. NZ, however, is wet and fertile throughout; no part of the country was left open and untouched. There reallly isn't much of a "cowboy/frontier" ethic here; no sense of there being huge tracts of unusued public land. Every place has a name and purpose. This, combined with the dense growth, means that the only place that you can just drive into and camp anywhere is the beach...this means that the droves of camper tourists stay in the RV parks every night. these places have TV, showers and Internet, but they are jam-packed full of euro-tourons, so i avoid 'em.

no radio signal -- the only place i have experienced this before is deep in the mountains, or down in Baja. here, with NZ' crazy egg-carton topography, and limited development, its common to have radio silence.....

4MM...that's the population of all of NZ. that's about 1/2 of the bay area. that still boggles my mind; I really am at a loss to understand how that is possible.

Rock snot, aka DIDYMO -- an invasive species in So. Island waterways that looks like, well, snot...nasty stuff, and they have "Educators" at the ferry line who tell you how to avoid bringing it to the no. island

Food -- damn, we have it good in SF. it is so hard to find good food here -- even in the supermarket, which has a lot of schlocky stuff. i have to come to realize that the average roadside restaurant is nasty, and plan accordingly. it's so bad that you look forward to McDee's. Yes, it's THAT bad.