Where are all the Kiwis?

Natural disasters are simply a part of life that must be dealt with, at least occasionally, by most places in the world. Whether it is a tornado, earthquake, hurricane, firestorm, tsunami, blizzards or sand storm these natural phenomenon cannot be controlled or contained by any technology that man has discovered as yet. The best that can be done is to predict and/or track it in hopes to lessen the casualties and damage by providing an early warning to those in the affected area. But everyone knows that these technologies are not fool proof and even with plenty of advanced warning, death and destruction can occur. The problem with the predictions for earth quakes and volcanoes and the like, is that scientist are forever predicting that “the big one” will be occurring. Initially, that prediction might cause people in the area to be concerned and take certain precautions to try to ensure their safety, but after a while “the big one” predictions works more like the boy who cried wolf. There is a volcano near Auckland that is supposed to wipe out most of that city when it occurs. As yet, Auckland still stands and most residents of the city put more thought into tying their shoes than about that possible future volcano. And what about California? When did the predictions begin that an earthquake would break it along the San Andreas Fault line and make it “fall into the Pacific”? So far it seems to still be hanging on to the rest of the US, despite many conservatives prayers that it would go ahead and take that plunge into the ocean.

In the central Otago region of the South Island of New Zealand, in which Queenstown is centrally located, they have been predicting that a big earthquake should hit at any moment. It is, they claim, more than thirty years over due but there is really not much that anyone living here can do to prevent an earthquake so what is the point of sharing this prediction with the areas residents? This is the New Zealand countryside where there are no buildings more than four stories tall, no large apartment complexes or shopping malls. The biggest problem will be that most of the houses are built into the hillsides surrounding Queenstown’s downtown area in order to create for each property better views of the lake. This planning scheme is great for a builder’s profit margin because who wouldn’t want an unobstructed lake view, but makes little or no sense in an area that suffers from occasional seismic activity. However, you can see the builder’s point of view as well because so far that big one hasn’t happened and the houses haven’t been tested. This is the whole boy who cried wolf problem.

Anyway, the people in this area know that occasionally earthquakes do occur. Usually, though, they are not big enough to even be felt by the residents of Queenstown. That is, until last night. I was sprawled out across my bed talking on the phone in what I’m sure must have looked like a scene from some 1980’s chick flick, kicking my feet in cliché fashion when I noticed that my bed was still moving even though I wasn’t. Strange, I though briefly but went back to my conversation without saying anything to my friend on the line. Then I noticed that my closet doors were gently swaying. So, I turned over and my windows were shut which meant it wasn’t the wind blowing that was making the closet doors move. Finally, I noticed that the lamp that hangs down from my ceiling was also swaying and the bed started to move again. At this point, I could no longer ignore what was going on so I asked my friend on the phone if she had ever been in an earthquake. When she said no I ran out to the living room to ask my roommates, who were watching TV, if they had felt the house move at all. Of course, they too had felt it and having been in the area longer than I have, knew that it was an earthquake. I was overly excited by this because I come from a land of hurricanes, not earthquakes and this was my very first earthquake that I have actually been able to feel. There was no rumbling or rattling like you hear in the movies or on TV and it wasn’t a very big earthquake so nothing moved or fell over, but still it was an earthquake. Immediately I got online to look it up. There is a website in New Zealand that lists all of the earthquakes that have happened in the past thirty days and gives the details on when, where and how strong it is. This earthquake happened a little over 100 kilometers west of Queenstown, out in the fiordlands and registered a 5.1. That sounds pretty big to me, but what do I know; this was my first earthquake.

Just so you know, I don’t mean to make light of these natural disasters. So many of them do cause serious death and destruction and with the Haiti earthquake disaster so present in our minds this may seem incredibly cold hearted, but please know that I do not mean it in that way at all. What happened in Haiti is truly heartbreaking and I cant even bare to watch the coverage of it on the news anymore. My heart really goes out to those people.

In most states in the US, you can get take the written test to get your permit to drive and 15 and can start driving as long as there is an adult in the car to supervise. Obviously different states have different restrictions on when and where you can drive at 15 and how long you have to hold the permit before you can get your license, but overall, it is a general permit to drive. Now maybe some of you know more about this process and maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t remember any restriction on what you could drive; automatic, manual, car, truck or whatever, as long as there was an adult in the car you could drive it. Then at 16 you can head on into the local DMV and take the practical driving test and as long as you pass you can drive anything you want (well maybe not a big 18-wheeler but you get what I’m saying).

Apparently, it is different in every other country. When you take your driving test in New Zealand, if you take the test in an automatic car, your license is restricted to driving only automatics. If you take the test in a manual, however, your license is unrestricted and you can drive either an automatic or a manual. But here is where it gets scary. If you have a driver’s license from the US, where we drive on the right hand side of the road and do not have to know how to drive a manual to get a full driver’s license, you can fill out a form and pay the $40 fee and get a full New Zealand driver’s license. Now, I don’t know about you, but I can barely drive a manual and even the idea of driving a manual on the left hand side of the road meaning that I would have to shift with my left hand terrifies me. And yet, my license would allow me to do just that.

None of this should make any difference at all because I don’t have a car in Queenstown because it’s just not that necessary here. Almost everything that I could need or want is within a 20-minute walking distance (except for my job and the Wal-Mart like Warehouse store which are about an hour and a half walk away but that doesn’t really matter because I can always take the bus). Here is the kicker, though; I work for a camper can and car rental company. Who cares? That’s what I thought at least until I realized that occasionally I was going to have to drive these giant 6 person camper vans and cars. Ok, still not too bad, I mean I had a camper van for a while when I first got to New Zealand so I can drive on the left hand side of the road if I have to. I will inevitably hit the windshield wipers every time that I try to use the indicator/blinker but that probably wont cause to much damage in the over all scheme of things. The damage will come when they ask me to drive the manual camper vans or cars and they have and I have laughed at them. If they want to keep those nice shiny camper vans and cars nice and shiny, they really need to find someone else to drive them. Apparently, however, that will not be an option for long and I am going to have to learn to drive a manual, not just a manual car but a manual camper van 3.3 meters high and weighing well over 3000 pounds. That does not sound like a safe idea. I hope that their insurance is completely up to date.

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls let me take just one moment to tell you that I do not want this blog to be a diary of my day-to-day activities. The reason that I started this was to be able to share some of the adventures and experiences that come along with traveling and living abroad, specifically in the fairy tale location that is Queenstown, New Zealand. My hope is to bring you all along for the ride and to share with you the wonders that come along with living in such a fantastic place. I am a self-confessed day dreamer and have always loved to live vicariously through the people and characters that I’ve come across either in real life or in novels, but living here, I am no longer living through others but instead living a life of my own. Its terrifying to take that first step out of the front door and embark into a life in the unknown but it will always be worth it. Even if you don’t succeed in the way that you may have planned, the life lessons and experiences will be worth the struggle and even, what others may consider, a failure. So, every now and then step out of your comfort zone and enjoy what life has to offer. This concludes today’s unexpected inspirational moment (sorry I’m not sure where that came from); we now take you back to our regularly scheduled programming.

After weeks (two and a half weeks to be exact) of scouring (well at least looking when ever the local papers came out) the Queenstown job market, I have finally secured full-time employment with Tourism Holding Company, Ltd, New Zealand’s largest tourism company. Sounds glamorous, doesn’t it? Ah, well let me disabuse you of that romantic notion; I work for a camper van rental company at the Maui, Backpacker and Explore More desk in the airport. Not too bad, I mean it’s no corner office at the law firm but that was not exactly the reason that I came out here to begin with, though, if I’m honest, as the days dragged on and employment seemed still just out of my grasp I seriously began to consider selling myself to a local law firm as a legal clerk just to have some sort of job. But in the end it didn’t come to that. I really have no clue what this job is going to entail. What I do know is that this job is about 8 or 9km from my house so I think that I am going to have to break down and buy a bike. Could be fun though, right? It will be good exercise if nothing else unless I get lazy and start taking the bus, although I think that my cheapness will always win out over my laziness and I will end up walking rather than paying the $5 or $6 each way for the bus. What I have been told, however, is that as a front line employee (one who deals with the tourists face to face and Queenstown is, first and foremost, a tourist town) I will be able to do many of the activities here in Queenstown for free because they want me to be able to tell the tourists how fabulous the activities really are. Oh and they are not wrong; I can be bought like that. I will tell everyone who walks up to my counter that the bungy was the most amazing experience of my life if they will let me jump for free rather than pay the insane $250 or whatever it is to actually go out there and jump. So, that’s where it all stands today, a job and possible free fun. Does it get any better than that? I mean, who really wants a corner office and a six-figure paycheck and health insurance anyway? Not me, I want to throw myself off of high places and be scared out of my mind for free! Though if someone wanted to pay me a six-figure salary I would not turn it down. I’m not crazy despite what some of you may think.

New Zealand is a paradox balancing precariously between the 1950’s and the modern era. All around are signs of modernity from new flash cars and plasma screen televisions to jet boat rides and heliskiing. There are certainly none of the social stigmas of the 1950’s with women keeping their place in the home while the men go out to work a la the Cleavers in Leave it to Beaver. Women’s top priority in life is not to be married straight out of school but rather to see the world or at least to spend the winter skiing the mountains in the area or hanging out by the lake. Gone are the poodle skirts and leather jackets replaced long ago by tank tops and Northface jackets.

So why, with all of the surroundings of modern people living modern lives, do I often get the sense of camaraderie with my grandmother? Perhaps it’s the fact that home life here with its boring daily chores seems more akin to what our grandparents did than what I am used to back home. My house has a dishwasher, its true, but no one ever uses it because it costs too much to run it and we don’t have enough dishes to wait until it fills up to start it. So, we all do our dishes by hand. Seriously, did you know that you could actually do dishes by hand and that they would still get clean enough to use? Now, I will admit that I have pre-washed some of my dishes before I put them into the dishwasher back home but I don’t think that I have ever not put the dishes in the dishwasher and I certainly wasn’t worried about the cost of the electricity or water to run it because that was just what had to be done. Dishes had to be washed so we ran the dishwasher. But it’s not just the hand washing of dishes that seems a bit antiquated. No one has a clothes dryer; instead line drying everything. Again, I have line-dried clothes before. In fact just last year I had a clothes line installed in my back yard so that I could do just that, but it wasn’t because I didn’t have a dryer, it was for some hippy notion that I was helping the planet by not using the power to dry my clothes when it was sunny outside (and because they smell so nice air dried and call me weird by I like the crispy feeling that the fabrics have when they come off the line). If it rained or if I was just too lazy to hang them, they went into the dryer without a second thought. That is not an option here. You actually have to plan your washing ahead of time because of the time that it takes for things to dry. Need to wash sheets or towels and only have one set? Well you better get those washed and hung out first thing in the morning or they wont be dry by the time you need them to go to bed and heaven forbid it start raining. These are just things that no one really takes into much consideration back home, or at least I didn’t.

Lest you get the wrong impression, there are good things that come along with this such as a real sense of community and friendship that is often times lacking back in the States. People rarely sit alone at home and watch TV instead opting to sit outside on someone’s balcony or patio and have a drink and chat. On the rare occasion that you do sit around and watch TV, it is almost always with someone else and more time is spent talking over the TV than actually watching what is going on, unless of course its American idol that’s on. In that case, silence reigns supreme so that everyone can revel in the undoubtedly horrendous voices and freaky dancing that comes with the audition rounds. Once the real competition begins, however, it will lose much of its appeal and the conversations will recommence.

Whether this lifestyle is better or worse is not the point. The point is that things are different here and its those differences that make traveling and living abroad such a rush and worth any of the hassles that come along with hand washing dishes and line drying clothes.

Having watched them through the bedroom window for most of the day yesterday, I must say that there is something completely unnatural about the whole idea of paragliding. The participant straps himself to the jumpmaster who is wearing a parachute that is opened up behind him and they run for a few meters across an open area on the top of the hill and then lift their collective feet and off they go. It’s not exactly as if they are jumping off the side of the mountain, which must make it less scary initially, but their feet just slowly get higher and higher off the grass until the next thing anyone is aware of they are floating 1000 meters above Queenstown. Calling it a fall would be too simple as they spend the first minute or so actually going higher than the mountain off of which they have just come. The red, white and yellow parachutes fill the sky and come down tumbling and twirling in a variety of different fashions. Occasionally you can hear one of the passengers scream as they start to come in quickly to the rugby pitch next to the primary school where they land. The whole thing just seems insane.

Now some of you might say, but Steph you jumped out of a perfectly good airplane in September so who are you to talk. To that, I have several answers. First of all, I jumped from 15,000ft not 700 meters and while that sound even more insane to some, think of it like this. The higher that you start your jump, the more time that you have to deal with any problems or situations that might arise during the fall. Second, on a skydive there are up to three parachutes attached to you when you fall, the main chute, a backup chute and another chute that opens at a pre-set altitude if the other chutes have failed. Paragliders just have the one and I don’t know about you but I think that three chutes are better than one. Finally, there is the whole safety record thing to consider. The skydive company that I jumped with has a 100% safety record. Their jumpmasters have had to make over 4,000 solo jumps before they are allowed to take participants. Even their camera guys have to have made several hundred jumps and all they do is take the pictures of the participants. I take comfort in all of that experience. What I don’t take comfort in, are all of the horror stories that I have heard about the paragliders and hangliders in this area. Rest assured that these stories are very likely completely trumped up and more likely than not being retold from person to person as first hand accounts of something that they only heard through the grapevine to begin with, but here it goes with the preface for both being allegedly (I didn’t go to law school for nothing. So I will pass on any possibility of getting in trouble for libel or slander thank you). As for the hangliders, rumor has it that last July, the bar that they hold onto broke mid-flight and the hangliding instructor and the participant both died. Uh scary! The paragliding rumor is that last year, one of the jumpmaters misjudged his landing and he and his participant ended up getting caught in the power line next to the rugby pitch where they were supposed to land. Again, scary! Now, to be fair, I have no idea if either of these stories are true but rumors often have at least some basis in reality, so you be the judge.

However, if I am completely honest, I would not turn down an opportunity to paraglide if it was put in front of me. What I am saying is that given the fact that paragliding and skydiving are about the same price, I am not rushing over to take the gondola up to paraglide when I could go skydiving again instead.