Aki Aora in Akaroa

We’re back! In more ways than one. It’s been a long time since our last blog post, but now that we’re both back in the US we’re going to work on catching up with our writing. We haven’t even scratched the surface  on all the adventures and photos we had while in New Zealand, so keep checking in for more! Like many other New Year’s resolutions that are unlikely to last even through January, we’re setting ourselves the goal to publish by the first of every month. That being said, let’s get to it!

If you recall from our trip to Rangitoto, we had a bit of a tight schedule getting to Stewart Island and the Rakiura Track, what with our trying to squeeze in two boat rides and a hike before catching the bus to the airport during rush hour from the center of downtown. As luck would have it, we had a similarly tight schedule on the way back: less than 24 hours after we had come stumbling out of the rainforest, wet and aching after a 3-day long trek, Stefan was in a clothing store swapping out his sweaty underarmor for a suit. The following morning, he was murmuring goodbye to a barely conscious Dagmar as he caught a 4am taxi to the airport. 

Despite all his unsuccessful attempts the year before, it seemed that all Stefan needed to do to prove irresistible to university hiring committees was move to the opposite side of the planet. With increasing unease about the environmental cost of all his jet-setting over the past several years (not to mention the looming prospect of a job offer cutting his year in New Zealand short), Stefan grudgingly acquiesced and flew back to the US for interviews at the Universities of Reno and Denver. Since the rapid-fire trips from Auckland to Rangitoto to Stewart Island to the US hadn’t left much room for preparation, the only time to prepare was essentially the night before each interview, leaving him fairly sleep-deprived for both. Difficulties were compounded in Denver when Stefan got lost in freezing cold temperatures with nothing but his suit jacket, which left him sprinting over 5 blocks in dress shoes to catch the train he had walked in the opposite direction of.

The competition must have been even more jet-lagged, frozen, and clueless, however, as he barely had time to catch his breath once back in New Zealand before getting a speedy job offer for both positions. Stefan was initially more pro-Reno: fewer responsibilities (the Denver position included coordinating other instructors and not just teaching his own classes) and more pay (likely because Reno is a bit of a dump) left Stefan dreaming about getting a cheap Tesla from the new factory going up nearby and disappearing to a secluded area of Lake Tahoe once a week, Starlink Dishy McFlatface in tow, to do his work out in nature. Having made a quick visit during his stay, he was very impressed!

Tahoe was beautiful! Reno…not so much.

Denver, however, was much more appealing to Dagmar, and the leadership position was overall a better career prospect for Stefan, so after a lot of deliberation, we decided for Mile High over Biggest Little. The presence of friends and family in Denver was also a strong draw, as several of Stefan’s undergrad friends still live in the area, alongside his uncle’s side of the family.

Visiting Aunt Carol and Uncle Larry for lunch while in Denver. Sadly, Larry has since experienced a very sudden decline with dementia, so Stefan is extremely thankful that he got this unexpected opportunity to see him again!

The topsy-turvy world of COVID hadn’t quite shown its ugly face yet (the Italian professor on Stefan’s interview committee seemed to be the only one with the foresight to see the US was likely going to go the way of February-era Italy), which had both pluses and minuses on this front: as of the time of writing, Stefan still hasn’t seen any of his friends, although he has house-sat for his aunt and uncle rent free for months! You can get a peak at its gorgeous insides in this Thanksgiving video we made.

The other bonus of the unexpected trip back to the US was another overnight layover in Hawaii! 

On the recommendation of a friend from grad school, he did what became one of his all-time favorite hikes, the absolutely breathtaking Mau’umae trail:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/SzYBJSu8h1pzuqFo7

Naturally, the battery ran out on his phone in the middle of that video, moments before it could record the incredible reward you get after several hours of hiking in the form of a completely isolated, dramatic view down a steep cliff face and over the other half of the island. It would have made a perfect place to propose if Dagmar had been there! (Spoiler: Stefan managed to get it done anyway…keep your eyes peeled for a future blog post for the story on that!). He instead contented himself with enjoying the views over a very well-deserved lunch.

While Stefan was doing his interviews in the US, Dagmar was on her own adventures in Dunedin. We met back up in Christchurch, which we proceeded to explore together. We both liked it, although it ended up being a bit of a ghost town. The city has been hit by multiple deadly earthquakes (most notably in 2011) which caused huge losses in terms of population and economics. 

Visually, it was very eerie exploring a city where it seemed like all the people had simultaneously stayed inside for a nap (a visual which within just a few short weeks would be familiar to everyone experiencing COVID lockdowns worldwide).

The one place that wasn’t deserted was a cute little conglomeration of local restaurants called The Little High Eatery:

This place seemed to be swarming with people at all times of day, and it was easy to see why. There were all sorts of delicious restaurants in one tiny food court-style setting, from Thai noodles to burgers to Caribbean. We went there several times and the communal seating made for a great place to meet people (if you could find a seat at all!). We also had another heart-warming window into the security people take for granted in New Zealand when a Kiwi sitting next to us casually asked if we could watch his barefoot kid while he went and ordered. Try asking someone that the next time you’re in an American McDonalds!

One other food place worth mentioning was C1 Espresso. Just across the street from the Little High Eatery, this little hipster joint had the fun touch of delivering your food in a pneumatic tube. No word on whether the system is run by a pink demon elemental spirit summoned from the Land of the Dead itself. We frankly found the food itself a little lackluster, although we should have known better than to order fish and chips made out of banana peels. 

https://photos.app.goo.gl/nkT2dppd3rSr4pcQ7

While not exploring the city, we spent our time contemplating our new future in the US with marathon binge-sessions of videos on Tiny Houses. We both heard of this only recently, but the Tiny House Movement focuses on stepping back from the cultural expectation that the American Dream necessitates a house worth upwards of half a million dollars and a multi-decade mortgage. Instead, these Tiny Houses are effectively souped-up trailer homes that, even if you choose incredibly nice furnishings, only put you back 70-150,000 dollars while encouraging a more minimalist lifestyle. Especially after our experience living out of two suitcases for months at a time, we were really starting to get interested in the benefits of not accumulating so much junk. The unfortunate reality seems to be that local ordinances prohibit Tiny Houses in lots of metropolitan areas in the US, but we haven’t given up hope. If you’re interested in seeing some examples of the beautiful Tiny Homes people have made for themselves across the journal, we recommend checking out Bryce Langston’s “Living Big in a Tiny House” Youtube channel. With no small bit of irony, we watched the vast majority of those videos while lamenting that we were cramped up inside our AirBnB room while the host’s childrens ran amok through the rest of the house and are now writing about it while house-sitting a place so massive it has two dishwashers. Make of that what you will.

While in Christchurch we took a hike up the hills which separate the small town of Lyttelton from Christchurch, which the European settlers hiked up and over when immigrating to New Zealand.

Harry! I’ve reached the top!

Wow! What a hole!

Unbeknownst to us, we also saw the last movie in theaters we would for the rest of the year (and the foreseeable future). Fortunately, that movie was not Cats as I’m sure it was for many unfortunate people, but instead South Korean Best Picture winner, Parasite. Great movie if you haven’t watched it!

The major event of our stay, however, was adopting the newest member of our family, Fitz the Vitz.

Although we had successfully managed to get ourselves around through a combination of long waits, public transportation, and our HelpX hosts’ hospitality, we knew that traveling in the South Island would be a different story from the more population-dense North Island. While Auckland has a decent public transportation network, hitch-hiking is about as public as it gets on the South Island. We knew that whatever our plans ended up being, we would need a car of our own. We also had heard that cars sold for much cheaper on the South Island than in the North as tourists would fly into Auckland and look for one immediately, so ideally, we could buy low and sell high before we left at the end of the year. We obviously didn’t anticipate the massive drop in demand with COVID, but we still managed to buy the car for $4,500 and sell it for $3,200 after 7 months, which isn’t half bad! 

This is even more true when you consider some of the rough spots we put the car through. Less than a week after buying it, Dagmar’s efforts to park on New Zealand’s perilously narrow streets resulted in a crunched hubcap, which Stefan dealt the coup de grace to months later in Dunedin when doing an ill-advised U-turn. Oh and we needed a truck to haul the car out of a ditch in the middle of nowhere, but more on that next in the next blog post! 

Overall, despite the aforementioned hiccups, we both did a pretty good job driving on the opposite side of the road. We certainly never pulled into the wrong lane of traffic, and adjusted fairly quickly to driving from the ‘passenger’ seat. This swapped position did have a curious psychosomatic effect on Stefan, where he initially felt a strange tugging on the left side of his face while driving for the first couple of weeks. He chalked this up to the bizarre sensation of having an extra 4 feet of car hanging off the left side of the wheel, but I suppose it’s entirely possible he just had an extended stroke. 

Even after we both got used to the opposite-side driving, road trips were very different from the ‘turn on cruise control and don’t touch the wheel for 160 miles’ in the US. In fact, we had at first made cruise control a non-negotiable must-have for our car, only to be told over and over that cars in New Zealand just don’t have that. Once you start driving, it’s easy to see why: the vast majority of highways are simple two-lane roads (that is, one car in each direction) that wind up and down hills through zero-visibility hairpin turns. The very occasional slow-lane pull-offs were oases in infinite deserts to both of us, who regularly had 4-8 cars pile up behind us, perplexed why we weren’t racing down the serpentine paths at 120 km/h like a rally car driver. As incredibly nice as Kiwis are under normal circumstances, we can’t help but think we inspired hundreds of xenophobic death threats on the road.

Another interesting difference was the lack of roadside pitstops. In the US, every interstate is peppered with hundreds of opportunities for food, gas, hotels, etc. New Zealand’s roads, however, all seem to go through completely desolate wilderness or farmland. You really need to plan out your stops according to the towns you drive through; setting out with a low tank of gas or a full bladder is a praying for a disaster (Dagmar in particular learned about the latter when she somewhat unceremoniously lowered the resale value of the driver seat upholstery…although we still did manage to sell Fitz, and the buyer seemed none the wiser!).

Our trip to Christchurch ended on a high note, with a visit to the beautiful volcanic peninsula of Akaroa. 

Just east of Christchurch, Akaroa hosts a small resort town sitting on a harbor. We visited, had some delicious French crepes in a restaurant crowded with tourists on a cruise, visited a local museum, and took an absolutely gorgeous hike along the Rhino Walk.

Named for one of the many lifesize animal statues which mark the trail (the first of which being a partially-hidden crocodile which just about gave both of us a heart attack when we first saw it), the Rhino Walk is absolutely gorgeous and highly recommended. As we walked, we enjoyed classic New Zealand scenery of rolling green hills and dark blue water, all while finishing up the Agatha Christie audiobook we had run out of battery for on Stewart Island.

On that walk, we continually saw a cruise ship anchored in the harbor, which all of the people surrounding us in the restaurant had apparently come from. Weeks later, as Stefan obsessively read the news during the Level 4 lockdown, he realized that that cruise ship was the Ruby Princess, essentially a ‘plague ship’ which had brought some of the first COVID cases into New Zealand. 

Here’s that photo from before, this time with Death circled in the background. 

Numerous passengers were already infected the day that we had been surrounded by them in Akaroa, so we really dodged a bullet there!

The next stop after Akaroa was a roadtrip back down to Dunedin, where we would eventually start HelpX #4 and spend Level 4 lockdown. On the way, we visited a cool steampunk museum in Oamaru:

Dagmar: “I DIDN’T KNOW WHAT STEAMPUNK WAS BEFORE GOING IN AND I PROBABLY STILL DON’T BUT IT WAS AWESOME!”

Taste like crab, talk like people

We also stopped by the incredible Moeraki boulders, which supposedly get their spherical shape in a similar manner to an oyster pearl. 

Without realizing it would be our last decent accommodations for almost two months, we spent two final days in AirBnB luxury on the Otago Peninsula, where we were prepared a delicious breakfast every day by an extremely kind host and enjoyed breathtaking sunset walks along the peninsula. As Dagmar saw when solo traveling, this is an absolutely gorgeous part of New Zealand which would be easy to miss if you’re in a rush. If you can spare it, try to make time to have a seat on one of the benches, listen to the water lap up against the shore, and watch the sun set over a part of the country which has won one of the top positions in our hearts!

Like the Marvel and Star Wars movies, we know our blog posts are better when the chronology is jumbled all over the place. We’ve already written a post all about the onset of COVID in New Zealand, so if you’re eager to know what happened next, feel free to check it out! Our next post, coming February 1st if not sooner, will cover what we did after lockdown lifted. So stay tuned, and enjoy a fantastic start to 2021!

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