Dispatch from Lake Tekapo, May 4, 2005

As we come to the end of the New Zealand portion of our journey, we’ve noticed the travel fatigue that comes from spending every night in a different place, no matter how beautiful. So we decided to settle for a couple of nights in Lake Tekapo, in the high central plains surrounded by snow-capped peaks, but within three hours of Christchurch from where we fly out on May 6. Today was a day to catch up on laundry, do some flight and hotel arrangements, and catch up on our emailing—oh, and spend some time in the sun drinking tea.
After a few days of cooking our own stuff at backpackers kitchens, we found a pizza take-out here and ordered one to bring back to the envy of all out young fellow guests. A word about pizza here. Far- away New Zealand has, by far, the best and most imaginative pizzas we’ve ever encountered. It’s hard to find what in the US we call a typical pizza (pepperoni or sausage with lots of tomato sauce and cheese). Last night, for example, we ordered a large pizza, half with sweet potato and some other sauce, marinated venison, with plum sauce drizzled on top. The other half was a vegetarian delight with tiny tomato slices, basil, blue cheese, and lots of other subtly hidden tastes. And this is in the little town of Lake Tekapo (pop. 325). At another place we had a pizza topped with salmon and a delicate creamy cheese sauce. Unfortunately we took a few left over slices back to the hostel foir lunch the next day, labeled it properly, and someone stole it from our place in the refrigerator (the only such nefarious act we’ve run into in our experience here. Jeanne never quite got over it, and every day I hear about that so and so who stole our pizza. I think it was a case of the "rich American" syndrome, in which people think that being an American you’re so necessarily so rich you owe them something. The fact is the George Bush needs to prop up the dollar here—it’s not going as far as it was supposed to.
We’ve really become "backpacker" connoisseurs, which involves being able to decipher the descriptions in the guidebooks (watch out for "adequate," or "basic"), asking the right questions on the phone (heat in the rooms –yes we’ve done without when it was below freezing!), and just having that gut feeling. The place we’re staying last night and tonight is run by a Dutch couple who’ve been in NZ for 13 years. I may be a little prejudiced, but when I hear the backpacker’s is run by the van den Boch’s, I envision a tidy, well-run facility, which is exactly what it is. Mike, an avid gardener, has landscaped the yard with all kinds of plants and flowers, keeps a great kitchen, and supplies towels at no extra cost, which is a real rarity.
Now there’s a story. Have you noticed how couples can have very different ideas about how to spend their money. When you travel, this difference tends to come up quite regularly. For example, most backpackers don’t include towels and charge 2 bucks NZ for the service-- about $1.50 US. I’m ready to pull out my wallet, but Jeanne thinks this is an outrageous amount to pay when we have our own towels already, towels which she took along over my firm objections. Now, the towels of which I speak are "camp towels," the kind you order from the camping catalogues that make their way to our mailbox every other day. These are not "real" towels, but polyester fake chamois cloths, which, after you use them do little more than aid in air drying afterward. The other day, when I forgot mine in the shower, I asked Jeanne to please bring me "the thing you call a towel," which just seems to confirm her decision to take them. Two bucks for a real towel every night, that’s all I ask. Jeanne says they hold 20 times their weight in water – and if you add up 2.00 a night times 12 nights that’s 24.00 – enough for 3 desserts.
To be fair, there are also things for which I can’t stand to part with a couple of bucks, like a $5 pot of tea when we can make it ourselves as soon as we get to the backpacker in a few hours, or the dessert WHICH WE DO NOT NEED, at a restaurant. Traveling as a couple is in many ways an exercise in financial and emotional toleration. I’m glad to report that ours has grown wonderfully as the weeks go by. So I continue to use the towels (until they are somehow lost along the way) and I smile blandly when the bill comes for the overpriced cup of tea.
Of course, driving through some of the most stunning scenery in the world helps. It’s hard to be intolerant or short with each other when every turn in the road brings another postcard sight. We left Haast on the west coast on Monday in the rain, and it rained most of the time the whole day. In most cases that would quash the beauty of driving through a mountainous terrain, but a rainy day has its own beauty in the mountains here. Leaving Haast we drove up to a pass along a serpentine roadway lined with lush trees and ferns interspersed with dashing waterfalls. Coming over the pass, the landscape began to change from the lush rainforests of the coast to the more arid, mostly treeless brown hills of the central plateau. Even though it was often raining, the vista was so broad that you could always see areas where the light broke through and the clouds parted to reveal a white-capped mountain range. This play of clouds and mountains offered constant fascination, and the road wound around the lakes and mountains so constantly, that we began to hold our breath in anticipation of the next scene. We also pulled over often to jump out of the car to take it all in like a breath of visual air—and take some pictures.
That day we decided to stay on the road a bit longer than usual since hiking in the rain wasn’t all that inviting. We ended up in a tiny town called Omarama, where we had our most unusual backpacker experience. We saw a sign for a backpacker facility on a sheep farm, so we turned off the highway on to a country road for a few kilometers, pulling into a sort of farmyard, or as their called here, a station. The woman who ran the place owned the station along with her husband, some 30,000 acres of grass hills and valleys for grazing sheep and beef cattle. I couldn’t even imagine 29,000 acres, So I calculated that the church lot is about 6 acres, so it would be 5,000 of them—a good chunk of South Bend.
The actual hostel was a refurbished out-building that was, and is used for the crews that come to shear the sheep twice a year. It reminded me of the old western movie "bunkhouse" where the real cowboys who herded cattle lived when not out on the range. The couple figured that they might as well use the place the rest of the 50 weeks, so they fixed it up quite nicely, and put it on the backpacker circuit.
We arrived at dusk in a driving rain (a rarity in those arid parts), and rang the buzzer for the proprietor. There being no other car or person in sight, I thought I’d check things out a bit before the proprietor came. I looked in a sleeping room--OK, then opened the door to what appeared to be the kitchen and dining room. There sat a lovely, and surprised, young woman, who, we later learned was a student from Switzerland. That’s the backpackers life in a nutshell, meeting a sophisticated French-speaking young woman from Switzerland on a remote sheep station in the new Zealand outback. It turned out this student liked to travel alone, had been dropped off by a bus at the junction and stayed there because she wanted the experience and loved the solitude.
There were a couple of down sides to this place, remote and mysterious as it was. The room was heated, but the electric radiant heater never quite won the battle with the damp cold of that frosty night, and the old sheep-shearer’s bed had a definite "trough" down the center. Still, it was fascinating to wake up to the moaning of the cattle outside our window, and watch the clouds give way to sunshine on what turned out to be a glorious day while we "cheated" in the kitchen by turning on the oven full blast a half hour before we went in to make some breakfast.
This is getting too long, and I’ve been avoiding the best part, afraid it will turn into a travel brochure or a travelogue minus the pictures. After leaving the sheep station we traveled along the straightest roads yet in this high country. The clouds first hung low over the hills, but the sun gradually burned them away, revealing the breathtaking vista of New Zealand’s central highlands—McKenzie country. We drove along looking on a panorama of more than 180 degrees of an unobstructed view of one freshly snow-capped range after another. After a few miles the mighty Mt Cook/Mt, Aoriki began to dominate the horizon. The Maori name, Aoriki means "cloud-piercer," and that’s what we saw as we approached in the mid morning. This peak, drawing a mantle of clouds around its shoulder, and bathed in brilliant sunshine, pierced above the rest of the surrounding range. It’s the tallest mountain in all of Australia/Asia. We hiked to its foot that day, and as we neared this grand mountain through a deep valley, we reached for words, but ended up with the overused awesome—one of the few sights and experiences that deserve the word. It’s understandable that the Psalms so often speak of God in terms of the majesty, grandeur and immovability of a mountain.
Leaving Mt Cook and driving to Lake Tekapo, range after range of white mountains spread across the horizon as far as you could see. As we come to the end of the New Zealand section of our journey, it seems as though, without planning it that way, we had saved the best till last.
Often in the morning, especially when we’re on the road, we like the prayer for the ways in which takes us beyond the usual ‘traveling mercies," to the consideration of the many people we meet along the way.
Merciful God, giver of life and health, guide, we pray, with your wisdom all who are striving to protect travelers from injury and harm. Grant to those who travel consideration for others, and to those who walk and play a thoughtful caution and care; so that without fear or misfortune we may all come safely to our journey’s end, by your mercy, who cares for each one of us; through Jesus Christ our Savior