An Interesting Natural Experiment

Today is Friday, 1 October, which means that the new GST rate increase is now in effect. GST is New Zealand's Goods and Services Tax, which is applied to everything from bus rides to "white goods" like washing machines to food. Pretty much anything you can buy in New Zealand is affected by GST--in fact, if you look at your receipt (or "tax invoice"), you'll often see the amount of GST listed there.

The rate hike (they call taxes here "rates") is a change of 2.5 percentage points from the current 12.5%, which was established in 1989, to a new rate of 15%. This means that everything I buy will now be 2.5% more expensive, further depleting the value of the steadily sinking USD/NZD exchange rate.

A tax increase is not a new experience for me: a year or two ago, Massachusetts increased their state sales tax from 5%, which it had been all my life (at least as long as I can remember), to 6.25%. However, this was a rather seamless transition, and there are a few things about New Zealand that make the GST rate increase more interesting.

First, all prices displayed in New Zealand already have GST "baked in." When something costs $10.00 in a store, that's how much you'll pay at the register--not like the US, where sales tax is calculated on top of the displayed price. This means that increasing a sales tax in New Zealand involves physically going around and changing the price tags on everything in your store, and not simply programming your cash registers to charge a new sales tax rate. Economists refer to these sort of costs associated with changing prices as "menu costs." In fact, the large Countdown supermarket downtown is closing down overnight in order to switch all the price tags on their products--the extra labo(u)r required and lost sales are an example of menu costs in action.

Further adding to the complication is the fact that the smallest unit of New Zealand coinage is the ten-cent coin--there are no five- or one-cent pieces like the US. This makes calculating a 2.5% increase more interesting, especially because retailers seem prefer to display prices like "$5.00" or "$9.50" that are easy to make change from. With the new GST increase, something that originally cost $5.00 should now cost $5.13. Will this price be rounded up to $5.20 or down to $5.10?

So, this is a pretty unique opportunity to see a natural economic experiment in action. I can think of three likely scenarios, all of which will probably occur to some degree. There will be businesses that dutifully change their prices to reflect GST exactly, rounding up or down if there are any conflicts (as a general rule, if you're paying with cash and your total ends in five or lower, you get rounded down, and rounded up if the total ends in six or higher. If you're paying with EFTPOS, you pay the exact amount). As I was walking down Queen Street this evening, I saw a coffee shop owner erasing prices on his menu board and doing just that.

Some firms, of course, may find that the menu costs are too high to justify switching prices, Or perhaps they may determine that the demand for their products is highly elastic, and even a small change in prices would reduce demand. I saw an article about a dairy owner (dairy = convenience store) who said that he wouldn't be adjusting prices on beverages or ice creams because people already think they're too expensive (I agree...NZD$3.50 for a soft drink or a bottle of juice? Really?). These firms find it more efficient to simply take the 2.5% hit to their profits than change prices.

What I expect may happen is that businesses will take advantage of the opportunity and raise prices above the GST rate increase. I can imagine business owners saying "I'm going through all this hassle to change the prices to reflect the new GST anyway, why not raise prices another 50 cents or so? I've been meaning to do that for ages." So I think for some businesses, prices may increase more than just 2.5%.

At any rate, the economics side of me is very interested to see what's going to happen to prices here in the coming weeks. I'll try to keep you updated about how prices change, and if any of my predictions came true.

South Island Bus Adventure Day 6: Fox - Franz Josef Glacier

Wow, sorry for the long delay between posts! With my trip to Australia and all of my recent tests, I guess I sort of lost momentum for the blog. Never fear! I have plenty to say about Sydney, but I want to finish off my South Island trip report first. Then I can write about Australia and get back to blogging about non-travel things, like exam season and the upcoming GST rate hike on Friday.

Anyway, when we last left our story, I was asleep in the Ivory Towers lodge in Fox Glacier, Westland, when I woke up to a pitch dark room in the wee hours of the morning. I usually leave a curtain or something open when I go to sleep, so I'm not used to a entirely dark room--and this one seemed darker than any I'd experienced in a long time. In my sleepy grogginess, I wondered if I had gone blind overnight. I fumbled around for my phone and checked the time: around 4:30 AM. I soon forgot about the puzzle of the dark room and went back to sleep.

A red dot surrounded by some concentric circles

As it turns out, I was probably awakened by the Canterbury Earthquake that struck near Christchurch at 4:35 AM on the morning of Saturday, 3 September. The earthquake hit 7.1 on the Richter scale, and caused an incredible amount of damage in Christchurch. Incredibly, no one was killed and only a few were hurt--probably because it happened on a Saturday morning when no one was in the CBD. I found out later that a friend of mine in my maths class, who lives in Christchurch, had his chimney topple over and his swimming pool cracked by the quake.

In Fox Glacier, however, this was a temporary annoyance. The hostel owner bustled around trying to turn on a generator (the darkness earlier was because the town had lost power). My bus driver, Glenn, said that it was "probably a 4 or a 5" on the Richter scale, and assured me these things happened all the time.

I was Glenn's only passenger for the short 45 minute ride north to Franz Josef, so we had a little conversation. "I could have turned out going down your path," he said, referring to my time at university. Glenn was an A student at school who got disillusioned with the rules and left to go work in a foundary, travel, and do other odd jobs. After many years of doing this, "[he] met a woman" who convinced him he needed to clean up, get a haircut and a respectible job. He was drawn to driving coach buses, and had been doing so for the last seven years. Glenn also told me he continued to like studying, and that he was a "researcher" (I'm not sure of what). We had a long conversation about the balance of power in the US, and Glenn was convinced that there are people "behind the curtain" pulling the strings and controlling all the world's power.

Downtown Franz Josef village

When I got to the Franz Josef hostel, I watched the breaking news coverage of the earthquake in their TV room. The early impression was that it wasn't too bad, and not much was damaged. Only later on in the day was the true extent of the damage (billions of dollars) seen, and the CBD was cordoned off due to the risk of aftershocks. Isolated from this, I decided that even though I had seen Fox Glacier the previous day, it would be worth checking out Franz Josef later in the day.

I got a shuttle to the glacier and walked a kilometer or two to the point beyond which I would need a guide. Everyone was returning from their earlier trips, so it was mostly quiet in the direction I was walking. Franz Josef Glacier had an even larger glacial rock "bed" with cascading waterfalls on either side and the glacier in front. While this glacier didn't have Mount Cook towering overhead, it was still an amazing sight. When I got to the face, there was no one around. I sat down and took in what was around me. I think I'll let the pictures do the talking here.

While I was having dinner, I learned on the TV screen of the second of the day's catastrophes. A small skydiving plane had gone down in Fox Glacier, and nine people died. The Christchurch earthquake pushed this story to the sidelines, but it hit me very close to home. I had started out the day in Fox Glacier. Maybe some of those people had stayed in the hostel with me the night before (there was only one hostel in town). As if that wasn't enough, the Christchurch earthquake turned out to be worse than people had originally thought. I went back and checked my emails on the hostel computer, and found that the earthquake had made international news, and people were wondering where I was and if I was OK.

By this point, the news of the day's disasters had left me in a pretty agitated emotional state. After I sent replies to these emails and got over my guilt trip for not checking in sooner, I decided to reschedule my trip to avoid Christchurch and come back to Auckland a few days early. I didn't want my last memory of the South Island to be a ruined Christchurch, and even though the airport was operating, I didn't know if the city was ready for visitors or not. Plus, I was starting to get a little weary of staying in a different place nearly every night. I found a flight from Dunedin to Auckland on Wednesday night and booked it the next morning.

With that, it was time to say goodbye to the glaciers and make my way east through the Pisa Range to Queenstown.

We're going to AUSTRALIA!

Well, that didn't work. I was planning to have all of the blog entries for my trip report written before I left on my trip this weekend, but I only got halfway there. BLame my MATHS 255 lecturer--assignments and tests got in the way.

It's been a pretty busy and stressful two weeks, but now I'm super excited and ready to head to Sydney tonight for my birthday weekend. This was my present from my parents, my family, and myself: tickets to Sydney on Emirates one way and LAN Airlines on the way back. I'll be in Sydney for portions of four days (two full days) and three nights, and I have some cool stuff planned...including a visit to ANZ Stadium for the Preliminary Finals for the Telstra NRL Premiership (Rugby, a.k.a. Australian Rules Football), which just happened to be taking place on Saturday. I'm really looking forward to that.

So, probably no blog posts in the next four days. Hopefully when I get back I'll have some free time to finish up my South Island trip report, and then talk about Sydney, and then maybe even have some time to write about things other than where I've been! And who knows, maybe I'll run into Oprah in Australia...

South Island Bus Adventure Day 5: Fox Glacier

I woke up around 7:30 AM to the sound of my roommates, who were booked on the All-Day Glacier Walk, getting ready to go out in the rain to the guiding company building. Predicting that I would be tired after the early start and long bus ride the previous day, I had booked the afternoon Half-Day Walk, so I snuggled back under the covers and got another hour or two of sleep. When I woke, the skies were starting to clear--it would turn out to be a beautiful clear afternoon, the perfect weather for glacier hiking.

I headed to the little guide building on the main road, checked in with the staff, and bought my only souvenier of the trip: a warm winter hat to replace the thin one I had brought with me. As suggested on my confirmation email, I was bundled up to the max with two jackets, my new hat, and gloves, along with a backpack with muesli bars and a bottle of water.

The group was led into the "boot room," and we were introduced to our two guides: Sam and Pete. They told us what the day would entail: about a 4-4.5 hour trip with about an hour or so actually spent on the glacier. We exchanged our shoes for stiff boots and were outfitted with a blue rain jacket, long socks, and metal crampons that would be attached to the soles of the boots when we were up on the glacier to increase traction. Then all two dozen of us boarded a minibus for the 15 minute ride to the glacier. From the parking lot, Sam and Pete told us, it would be a 1km walk along flat terrain and then a climb of 800 or so steps through a rainforest to the glacier terminal face.

Fox Glacier itself was an incredible sight. When we pulled into the parking lot, it was clear that where we were standing had once been covered in ice. The glacier had receded over hundreds of years, leaving forested mountains fifteen-stories high on either side of us and a rocky gray expanse leading to the glacier face. According to the guides, the glacier is constantly moving: advancing or receding at up to ten metres per day. Behind the glacier, Aoraki (Mt. Cook) towered in the background.

We walked to the base of the glacier, past some barriers warning not to go any further unless led by an experienced guide, and into the rainforest. Fox and Franz Josef Glaciers are rare in this respect--usually glaciers are way high up in mountains, and it's rare to find them so close to sea level and surrounded by rainforest.

The rainforest beckoned, and we began our climb to the top. The walk consisted of 800+ wide, surfaced steps, most of them the height of two normal staircase steps. Remembering how tired I was the last time had climbed this type of terrain in Whangarei, I made it a point to test myself and try to stay directly behind the lead guide. To my surprise and enjoyment, I didn't find the walk to be too bad. I was behind the lead guide the whole time, and while climbing the stairs was tiring, it wasn't as breath-stealing as it had been in Whangarei. I guess all of the walking in Auckland (a walk to class and back is about 1 mile, so I probably walk 2-4 miles per day on hilly terrain) has paid off. We took a few breaks--one of which at a little waterfall where people could help themselves to cold glacial water.

I shed all of my layers on the way up and put the jackets in my backpack, leaving just my long sleeve T-shirt. It started to mist a little bit, which was a refreshing source of coolness amidst the physical activity. By the time we reached our final break, people were starting to grumble. A bus driver from Brisbane said that this was as much physical activity as he had had for weeks. A Malaysian girl, probably no taller than 4'10", seemed to be overheating--weighed down by a huge rain jacket that she hadn't removed. I was feeling great though--I had a muesli bar and some water and admired the view from up here.

We strapped on our crampons and grabbed a walking stick as we made our way along some narrow steps onto the glacier face. We had come a long way from where we started, and people standing at the base of the glacier were nearly indistinguishable from the rocks. Mt. Cook grew larger and larger as we walked up steps cut in the ice to a flat area on the terminal face.

If you had removed the glacier from its surroundings, it's really just a big pile of ice. It reminded me of a super-scale version of little snow hills left by snowplows at home. In its context, though, the view was incredible. Looking one way, Mount Cook rose from the snow, and looking the other, the glacier valley glimmered green.

We stayed on the glacial face for about an hour. People scurried around taking pictures, and the guides barked out occasionally to keep people from wandering too far. I gave my camera to a couple from DC (Woodley Park/Adams Morgan) to take the money shot:

We started our walk down a different path to the bottom of the glacier. Apparantly, glacier conditions had changed just enough to open this new path over the last six months. We passed by other interesting ice formations on the way down--probably about a 1.5 hour walk back down to the waiting van.

Again, it's impossible to convey in photographs the feeling of being in these valleys with the glaciers right in front of you. Climbing Fox was one of my most memorable parts of the trip, and definitely one of the things I'm going to look back at fondly when I come back from New Zealand.

South Island Bus Adventure Day 4: Nelson - Fox Glacier

Sorry for the several-day break between posts. I needed to study for a few tests (or "tists," at it would be pronounced here).

My route from Nelson to Fox Glacier was a ten-hour journey along the South Island's West Coast. First we'd travel west from Nelson to the town of Westport, and then south along the shoreline, past Punakaika, Greymouth, and Hokitika before reaching Franz Josef and Fox Glaciers.

I had heard that the West Coast was the rainiest part of New Zealand, and the first few hours of the bus trip reinforced that stereotype. It was dumping heaps of rain as bus driver Frank negotiated some pretty tight turns on a road that looked like it was carved out of the side of a forested mountain. Small natural rainfalls were a common sight along the side of the road, spalshing water down next to us as we drove by. Eventually the terrain started to even out, and the hills opened up to gray-blue lakes adorned with more waterfalls. The winding roads and constant turning seemed to have taken its toll on some passengers, as some people needed to move past me to the front of the bus to overcome bouts of nausea.

Over two-thirds of the passengers got off at Westport, leaving only six of us on the bus. Frank turned us around and started to drive south on roads that were no more than 100 metres from the coastline of the Tasman Bay. The rain slowed to a drizzle and then abated, leaving only threatening gray clouds overhead. As we climbed higher around the coast, I got sight of some of the best views of the day, overlooking the rough seas of the Tasman.

After lunch in Punakaika, we continued south to Greymouth, a terminus of the TranzScenic train network that runs daily from Christchurch. We switched buses and picked up some more passengers before heading south once more to Hokitika, where we took our final break as Frank waited for the delivery of newspapers and other cargo items to be delivered to the far flung towns we would soon visit. I used the time to take a walk to a small beach a few minutes away from the bus stop and use the last ATMs I would see for several days. I don't remember why now, but I took a photo to preserve the moment.

For the last four hours of the trip we moved slightly inland into forested terrain. After an hour, the forests opened up. It had stopped raining, and the sky was blue at this point--revealing my first look at the South Island's snow-capped mountains. I jumped between the aisle to the other side of the bus several times to get pictures as we whizzed by the scenery.

As we approached Franz Josef, the townships started to get smaller and farther apart. We'd stop at each one in front of the town cafe/general store, and Frank would run inside with a bundle of newspapers or a small package or two for the shopkeepers. I guess these daily Intercity services were more convenient then sending a postman out to these small townships. Nine hours after we left Nelson, we pulled into Franz Josef township, the larger of the two glacial towns. The town greeted us with a vibrant rainbow over the main street.

From Franz, it was just a 50 minute drive south to the terminal point of the bus route and my destination: Fox Glacier (population ~350). As far as I could tell, Fox Glacier had exactly two roads, four cafes, several motels, a general store that closed at 7pm, and one hostel. It was probably the smallest town that I've ever spent the night in. Even though it is a tourist town, it felt more homely than Franz Josef--I had the feeling that people actually led their lives here, albeit a different life from the one I was used to.

I would be sharing my room at Ivory Towers Lodge with the other passengers from my bus: a Taiwanese guy named Wallace that I would run into at several other points on my journey, and two Americans studying at the University of Otago. During the obligatory introductions, I found out that one of the Americans was good friends with one of my friends in middle school and high school--a guy who I've been playing fantasy baseball with for years. Small world.

I actually really liked Ivory Towers. It seemed to be entirely made up of short-term travelers (not long-term working residents), and people seemed friendly and wanting to get to know each other. There was a wood fire burning in a common area, and I read through "A Wild Sheep Chase" for a second time after playing chess with one of my roommates and an Israeli guy. It was a cold hostel, however. It didn't have central heat, and the only warmth in the bedrooms came from a small floor heater that turned off every hour. This was remedied by a warm, comfortable duvet blanket, and I got a great night sleep before my glacier walk the next day.

Coming up next: A day on Fox Glacier.

By the way, I also finished editing the video from my trip--I'll post it up on Youtube and make another post at some point so you can see moving pictures from NZ.

South Island Bus Adventure Day 3: Wellington - Picton - Nelson

Day 3 was another travel day, and my introduction to the South Island. I checked out of the hostel, took a bus to the Railway Station, where a shuttle bus was waiting to take me to the Interislander Ferry Terminal. I checked in, got my ticket, and sat down in a large waiting room waiting for my ferry, the Arahura.

For whatever reason, ferry travel has never been as interesting or exciting to me as bus, train, or air travel. I found an empty seat, got a sandwich (roast vege) and a bag of Bluebird chips (salt & vinegar) from the on-board cafe, and watched the scenery go by. It was a gorgeous day, the perfect weather for a ferry crossing with visibility all the way to the horizon. After ten minutes of sailing in Wellington Harbour, there was a clear line on the water where its colo(u)r shifted from murky green to azure blue, which it remained for the rest of the trip. After I had lunch, I went up to the observation deck to get some photos.

The North and South Islands aren't really that far apart (you can see the South Island from high points in Wellington), so the 3.5 hour ferry crossing spends more time traveling horizontally than vertically. The Arahura arrived in the coastal town of Picton ahead of schedule. The sight of Picton was a harbinger of the amazing views to be found in the South Island. Imagine if you took an ice cream scoop and dug a nice big crater of green ice cream, then popped a town in the centre of that valley. That was Picton--surrounded by tall green hills and a tiny access to the Cook Strait.

My destination for the day, Nelson, was a 2.5 hour drive away, through a road that started in the flat vineyard country before snaking its way through narrow valleys, surrounded by mountains and green hills filled with sheep and cows. I can provide pictures of this place that I took from the window of the bus, but I can't reproduce the feeing of being there, surrounded by the high hills of the countrysides. It was as if I was being enveloped by the Earth--it was easy to become disoriented and forget where you were.

Nelson itself had it all--a coast on the Tasman Bay, mountains on two sides, and an easily walkable downtown grib with shops, restaurants, and nightlight. It's no surprise that the city is well known for dozens of high quality backpackers hostels...although I was left to wonder which came first: the hostels or the city?

In the parking lot of the Intercity bus terminal, several hostels had representatives there with signs and vans ready to whisk you away to your accomodation. Uli, the manager of the hostel I staying at that night, was there too with a golden yellow, rickety van. "Traveling light, huh?" he said as he loaded my small bag into the bag, which made me smile. I take a lot of pride in traveling with small luggage, and I love when people acknowledge my efforts.

The backpackers itself was set in what seemed to be a big old house, although it could have just as easily been a purpose built hostel. It was about 10 times smaller than the 300-bed YHA in Wellington, and the ground floor was a comfortable living space with couches, a wood fire, and a giant world map on one wall (I couldn't help noticing that I've seen so little of it). I sat in a comfortable chair and recharged batteries--both my cell phone's and my own--while completing the first read-through of my book. It was a very agreeable space--the fire provided some much needed warmth, tasteful music was being pumped in at an appropriate volume, and Uli served hot chocolate pudding (basically just chocolate cake) and ice cream at 8 PM. It reminded me of the living room I hope to have one day.

The room was a 4-share, and by the looks of it, my three roommates had been staying here a while. Their stuff was strewn about the floor, and it looked like they had settled in for the long haul. Two of them were Spanish guys who barely spoke a word to me, and the third was still asleep in bed when I arrived at 5 PM. He was up reading when I went to bed later on, but he talked like someone who'd been fighting a cold or some other illness for several days. "Sorry I have to get up so early," I told him, as my bus left at 7:15 AM the next morning. "No worries," he said, "the other guys get up at 5 AM anyway." And that they did.

So Nelson became simply a place to spend the night--I had a ten hour bus ride waiting for me the next day.

Coming up next: Nelson - Fox Glacier, and a bus ride to remember.

South Island Bus Adventure Day 2: Wellington

If Auckland is the city of sails, Wellington is the city of wind. Throughout my day in New Zealand's capital city, wind was a constant companion. Sometimes the wind was pleasant, and made good company, other times it was harsh and oppressive. Fortunately, my day for exploring the city was clear and precipitation free, and I didn't have to worry about rain blowing in my face.

My first stop in Wellington was Te Papa, New Zealand's free national museum. It's the "no-brainer" tourist activity in the city--everyone who goes to Wellington for tourism visits Te Papa. And for good reason: it's a pretty good museum, documenting a lot of New Zealand's history, especially its natural and geological history. There are a few odd exhibits--they seemed very excited about a giant squid, one of the largest ever found, that now sits preserved in a table of murky preserving solution on the ground floor. But for the most part, Te Papa was enjoyable to walk around. The museum was on the waterfront of Wellington Harbour, and provided good views of the city from the ground level.

The exhibit on showcase in Te Papa was Paperskin: the Art of Tapa Cloth. The exhibit featured paintings and other sculptural works on and made of tapa cloth, a paper-thin, natural substance. It was a well put together display, with various tapestries of different length and size (some the size of a standard painting, others must have been over 50 metres long) hung in a pleasant, wood-floored gallery. The music piped in to the gallery was recorded by a local artist/DJ, and was composed using PVC pipes and synthesizers, supposedly inspired by the tonal qualities of the art. It all created a very pensive, mysterious experience, especially since the purpose of some of the masks and sculptures was unknown. I couldn't take pictures inside the exhibit, but here's one of the samples from the website.

After Te Papa, I wandered to Wellington's city centre/CBD/business area, where governmental workers and other office types were rushing around on their lunch break. I found a fast-food donburi shop that promised to make my meal in 60 seconds or less. The workers even shouted "Irasshaimase" (welcome) whenever a customer entered the restaurant, which was a nice authentic touch. Sure enough, my kakiage vegetable tendon came in 60 seconds in a very Western chinese takeout box, and I enjoyed it with a non-alcoholic Schweppes Ginger Beer (basically ginger ale). The ginger beer here is much less "spicy" than the ginger brew style beverages they sell at Whole Foods and elsewhere in the US.

I continued to roam the city. I took one of Wellington's other attractions, its Cable Car, to a higher area in the city near Victoria University, but, upon finding nothing but the city's Botanical Gardens and residential areas up there, headed back down to the CBD. On such a clear day, I was able to take advantage of the height to take some pictures of Wellington from a higher vantage point.

I was getting pretty cold and tired of walking around by this point, so I returned to the hostel. I went down to fill up my water bottle in the hostel kitchen, and ran into Denis, my roommate from the previous night, in the lobby. I thought he had checked out the previous night. Denis told me on my first day that he was having problems securing his working visa, due to problems that a certain visa officer in Auckland who had made a mistake on Denis's application that he was unwilling to fix. Denis thought that he would have to move on to Australia, but he received an email in the morning saying that he could possibly get the New Zealand visa after all. This saga led to him sitting in the hostel lobby at 3:00 PM, not having checked out after all.

After we had talked about his visa plight for a bit, Denis produced a brochure for a place called Zealandia from his backpack. "I heard this place is having a 2-for-1 winter special on their night tours," he told me, "and you get a chance to see a kiwi. It would only be $37.50. It's a nice day. Would you want to do it with me?" I looked at the brochure. Zealandia was a bird sanctuary and preservation area just ten minutes from the city by bus, quite near the Botanical Gardens I had walked by earlier in the day. They claimed to be one of the only places in Wellington to have kiwis in the wild, and that you could go on a nighttime tour with them to see kiwis and other birds. Not wanted to pass up an opportunity to see a kiwi, and because I didn't have anything else going on at night anyway, I said sure, and Denis called the place to make a reservation.

Two hours later, we found ourselves hustling for the right bus to the sanctuary. Denis, with a plate of hot fish and chips in his hand, knew the city a little better than I did, and we chanced upon the right bus that would take us to Zealandia. Once there, we joined a group of ten others from various parts of the world, were given red LED Maglites (apparantly the birds get affected by regular white light, but the red light they either can't see or aren't bothered by) and shown a little prepared video and exhibit. Apparantly Zealandia used to be home to the town's water supply, and a private getaway spot for the Governor-General. Now it was being used as a conservation area, and a specially designed fence had been erected outside to keep out rats, cats, ferrets, and other predators. A young guide named Tracey and an older volunteer named Cheryl, equipped with larger Maglite torches (flashlights) led our group into the increasingly dark forest trails.

The air was soon filled with a chorus of different bird calls. Tracey, with her torch, pointed out a feeder where six or seven Kākā, an endemic, endangered bush parrot, were hanging out. They were smart enough to know to step on a little metal bar in the feeder, which would dispense a food pellet. Zealandia had carefully introduced a few Kākā into the sanctuary, and now they were breeding and doing well. Later on the trail, a Kārearea, a New Zealand falcon, flew overhead, much to the delight of the guides, for whom this was a somewhat rare occurance. A loud owl hooted in the background as it got darker in the forest. My camera soon lost all usefulness in the dark.

Just over 20 minutes into the 2.5 hour walk, the elder volunteer Cheryl, who had been at the back of the group to make sure no one got lost in the woods, shouted "Tracey!!" to the other guide. We all collected near Cheryl, who said "I just heard a kiwi over here." We all pointed out Maglites in the direction of a small patch of brush at the intersection of two trails. Tracey moved up along the second trail, and motioned for us to be quiet and follow her. And then, there it was, a real Little Spotted Kiwi, poking around in the brush. We all stood in awe for 15 seconds or so, crouched down on the trail as the kiwi moved around. Then, it ran off across the path, the crowd (myself included) gave a collective "oh!" as we saw it in full view as it crossed the path, and then off into the woods. It was a very cool experience, like seeing something I wasn't supposed to see displayed right out in the open in front of me in the dark, illuminated only in red by the Maglites.

After our initial excitement wore off, I walked with Denis and the rest of the group deeper into the forest. In a path near the water resevouir walked another rare find: a Brown Teal duck, or Pāteke, another endangered bird. According to Tracey and Cheryl, seeing one of these was rarer than the kiwi. We heard tuis singing their complex song in the background. Having seen one before, even I was able to recognize its call. The sanctuary held other treasures besides birds--giant bugs called Wekas and shimmering blue glowworms illuminated themselves in the dark. We even saw another kiwi hiding in the brush later on.

On our way back, Denis and I marveled that such a cool place could be hiding close to the CBD of a major city. Denis said that some other people he knew had spent a lot more than $37.50 on expeditions looking for kiwis, and that they didn't see any. Zealandia was an awesome, unplanned, memorable addition to my trip. If you want to see more about it and more pictures, search on Wikipedia for Karori Wildlife Sancturary.

Coming up next: Wellington - Nelson and the ferry across the Cook Strait

South Island Bus Adventure Day 1 of 10: Auckland - Wellington

A view of Lake Taupo, our first lunch-stop

The trip began with a brisk walk to the Intercity bus terminal at the base of SkyTower. I had on my back a backpack lightly filled with stuff--mostly toiletry items, chargers for my electronics, a bottle of water, and my only reading material for the trip: the library's copy of Haruki Murakami's "A Wild Sheep Chase." My only other luggage was a small duffel bag packed with clothes, my shaver, shower sandals, and the like. The bag, I would later find out, weighed about six kilos, and probably another one or two for the backpack. This was the eight kilos of stuff I would be depending on for the next ten days--and it already seemed to be weighing me down on this cold morning. I shifted the bag from one hand to the other, and jammed the free hand in my pocket to give it some warmth. As it turned out, this was to be the perfect amount of luggage: I used everything I brought with me at some point in the trip, and didn't regret leaving anything in my dorm room.

Having rushed out of the dorm with no brekkie, I grabbed a rock-hard chocolate chip cookie from the bus station cafe (they had no muffins, which were a mainstay breakfast/snack item for me throughout the trip) and waited for the bus. The coach was a double-decker bus driven by James. James loaded the luggage into the bus, and I grabbed a seat on the top deck. Like every other bus ride I'd take during the trip, the seat next to me was empty, and the coach was about 1/3 full. We left at 8:00 AM on the dot for the 11 hour southerly journey to Wellington, by way of State Highway 1 and the towns of Hamilton, Taupo, Bulls, and Palmerston North.

I should mention that highway driving in New Zealand is very different from the US. Probably only thirty minutes of my entire trip was spent on a US-style divided highway. All of the rest of the numbered roads in New Zealand are one lane in each direction, with a speed limit of 100 km/h. Perhaps similar to U.S.'s Route 1, the highways wind through towns (during which the speed limit drops), around mountains and lakes, and through grasslands. It's certainly not the Jersey Turnpike.

We drove past the gigantic Huntly power plant, through Hamilton, and stopped in Taupo for lunch about four hours later. The buses would take toilet breaks about every two hours, and lunch breaks of 30-40 minutes for journeys over six hours. It's enough time to grab a sandwich or something small and either eat it at whatever roadside cafe you've stopped in or bring it with you on the bus.

Taupo is a town that abuts Lake Taupo, which on this clear day was shimmering blue. I snapped some pictures through the window, and quickly learned of the challenges of taking pictures of scenery through bus windows. The glass reflects in your image, and the camera likes to choose slow shutter speeds that make the images blurry. I got better as time went along, but I apologize if any photos from the bus are blurry. Just think of it as artistic license.

I also made it a point to take at least 20 seconds of video from out the bus window on each of the days I was traveling. I hope to edit this together into one video and put it on Youtube or something so you can see the sort of scenery I was traveling through and give you a perspective of what it was like to sit on the bus. Look for that in the coming days.

Once we left Taupo, the entire bus seemed to fall into a post-lunch haze. I got a little sleepy myself, and dozed off for no more than 10 minutes. When I woke up, the sapphire water of Lake Taupo was gone, replaced by an arid grassland. High density power lines ran adjacent to the road. A sign cautioned that this was a NZ Army training area, and to stay out of certain parts of the landscape. To my left was a small mountain, to my right was cinnamon brown land. Tufts of grass, burgandy and goldenrod in colo(u)r, sprouted across the landscape. It seemed a very desolate environment. And as so often happens here, it started to rain lightly.

We drove through various small towns before reaching Wellington. Of note were the small township of Bulls, whose town buildings were labeled with signs containing a stylized bull (the town icon?) and a witty phrase based on the building: "Bank-a-Bull" outside a bank branch, "Const-a-Bull" outside of the police station, "Relieve-a-Bull" outside of the public toilets.

A public toilet (present in every town) in Taupo

We also passed through Palmerston North, a city that John Cleese once described as "thoroughly, bloody miserable." "If you wish to kill yourself but lack the courage to," he said, "I think a visit to Palmerston North will do the trick." Regardless, the city didn't seem to bad. I've never been to Boise, Idaho, but I imagine it'd be a lot like Palmerston North. I don't know why I got that feeling, but that was the first city that struck my mind when we drove through town.

Eleven hours after we had departed, the sun started to set near Wellington. We let some passengers off at various suburbs of the city, and pulled into the Wellington Railway Station exactly on time. I thanked James, grabbed my luggage, and set off to find my hostel in the rain. I had read on the hostel website that I could catch a bus from the railway station to Courtenay Place and walk from there. I had no idea where Courtenay Place was, but I jumped on a "1" bus, said "Courtenay Place, please," popped down my money, and off I went. Another guy on the bus asked for the same destination with the same amont of uncertainty, so I assumed he was heading to the hostel as well and got off when he did...400 metres away from Courtenay Place. Nevertheless, this is what maps are for, and I easily found the hostel, checked in, and had a late dinner.

This hostel was a YHA hostel, part of the Youth Hostelling Association chain. There are 180 or so YHA hostels across NZ and Australia, and they all offer relatively clean, dependable, if somewhat soulless accomodation. This YHA was huge: 300 beds, almost like a hotel or apartment building. My roommates for the two nights I stayed in Wellington were Denis, a former IT worker from Munich who had been in NZ for several months, Roy, a British student from Manchester studying abroad at the University of Otago in Dunedin, and Craig, a teacher/writer/retail employee/Renaissance Man from New York. I was continously surprised throughout my trip about how many people were simply here in New Zealand to hang out and work, as supposed to just traveling for a short time. Do people really do that? Just pick up and leave their lives behind, go to a foreign country, and just chill out and try to find odd jobs for months at a time? That sort of lifestyle really has no appeal to me.

Coming up next: A day in Wellington--Te Papa, cable cars, and kiwis.