This evening, we take our leave of Aotearoa…today the land of no white clouds, but instead blue sky and warm sun, the sort of day that's perfect for just about anything other than a silly amount of driving and a long plane ride. Which is exactly what we're doing. But there's nothing that can be done about it, and into our rental car go our suitcases and shipping containers full of wine. For the last time. It's not without a few sighs that we leave Taupo and once again head north towards Rotorua, then west towards the coast.
The familiar matchstick aroma that has been our constant companion the last four days fades with the roadside wind. Our windows are down, the better to enjoy the weather and our last look at the scenery. Towns roll by, the vegetation thickening and thinning as farms, herds of sheep, and tight tangles of semi-tropical plants roll by.
Eventually, in some nameless green space amidst fields and trees but with nicely-situated picnic tables, we stop for a brief breakfast and the dregs of the last few days' food and wine. I munch away at the crumbled ends of a bag of something I've not seen in the States, but have grown to love when available (and properly salted): chicken-flavored potato chips. Suddenly, Theresa lets out a startled and shocked cry.
Behind me, a colorful rooster is approaching with some speed, beelining towards our food with a greedy eye. Just as we're getting a good look at him, another approaches. Then another. And another. Soon, we're surrounded by a small coterie of coqs, letting forth the occasional boastful call and a few dominance-asserting pecks at each others' flanks. We toss them bits and ends as we eat, and I find some twisted amusement in feeding them chicken chips (though the finer moral problems of cannibalism seem lost on them, and they devour the chips with more enthusiasm than anything else we offer). Sated, they nap while we finish our repast, and they scatter forlornly as we return to the road.
The numbing effect of chicken chips
Not far from the coast, we emerge into a region thick with orchards, groves, and tilled fields. This is Te Puke, the "fruit basket" of New Zealand, and we're here because my wife wants to see a giant kiwi.
Fuzzy slice
Kiwfruit Country is a ridiculous theme park. Not only is the kiwifruit (what New Zealanders, a/k/a "Kiwis," call the fruit to distinguish it from their namesake flightless, and endangered, bird) an odd thing around which to build a series of attractions (is there a Radicchioland somewhere in northeastern Italy?), but it's really not much more than a smiling public face on Zespri, one of the major industrial powerhouses of kiwifruit production. Plus, there's that giant slice of kiwifruit at the entrance. Theresa has delusions of hanging from it, like she once did from the giant wheel of Munster outside its namesake Alsatian town, but while the slice allows interior ascension, it's a little too big for dangling. And so, we enter the park as the first, and very nearly only, guests.
Riding around orchards on a segmented "kiwi train" that makes me feel more silly than informed, we stop in a grove of fully-laden trees, and again in a factory where every aspect of packaging and New Zealand's dangerously-fading kiwifruit market dominance is examined by an enthusiastic guide. It's really not much different than any other major agricultural undertaking, and I'm a little bored, but Theresa seems fascinated. Sadly, there's no room for the massive gift shop's kiwifruit wine in any of our suitcases or carry-ons, and so a future opportunity for vinous merriment is lost.
The last skipper
Up the coast we continue, taking another detour into Tauranga and its active beachfront for a late lunch. It's our last meal in New Zealand, and wanting to make it a memorable one, we're in search of a highly-recommended restaurant called Harbourside. We park at the blocked-off southern end of "The Strand," a road that separates the local Pacific Ocean inlet from the businesses that front it, and search for our restaurant. In vain; it seems nowhere to be found, and we have neither an address nor a phone number, nor are there any informed locals that seem to know where it is. Giving up after a half-hour of searching, we wander a block landward into Tauranga's commercial district, eventually settling on a place still bustling with late lunch-hour traffic.
Now, I'm not the world's biggest fan of sailing, even after experiencing the frenzy of America's Cup qualifying during our three week stay. But even I know that American skipper Dennis Connor is not the sport's most admired personality, especially in New Zealand. Thus, it's somewhat surprising to enter Bravo (Red Square, Tauranga) and see a giant portrait of him on the wall. But this is a sleek, somewhat hip spot with a bar that hints at a certain amount of scenemaking in the later hours, and perhaps there's a finer point of irony that I'm missing. In any case, the food here is excellent, with the lunchtime focus on bizarre and insanely-composed pizzas that work, in their energetic Pacific Rim fusion sort of way. They also have a nice little wine list with some local Bay of Plenty names, and of course I can't help but partake.
We'll need a big spoon…
Mills Reef 2002 Gewürztraminer (Hawke's Bay) - Fresh and lively, showing bitter lychee, pear, and grapefruit notes with balanced acidity and nice intensity. There is, perhaps, a bit too much tannin, which can be a problem with this oft-overextracted grape.
Mills Reef 2001 Merlot/Cabernet Sauvignon (Hawke's Bay) - Soupy, herbal, green, underripe, and not at all good in any way, except maybe as a mixer for Chartreuse. There's some oxidation, and so I ask for a second glass from a new bottle. It's presented to me, opened tableside…and exactly the same, sans oxidation. A shame, as I've heard good things about this winery, but their range is extensive and perhaps I've just not tasted the better stuff.
On the way back to the car, we spot a previously-missed sign for Harbourside. It's no more than twenty steps from our parked car, but completely hidden by surrounding trees and rocky outcroppings. We laugh, and begin the final stage of our trip.
Packing heat
The highway widens and straightens, adding lanes and traffic, and soon we're racing up the sleek, modern throughway bisecting the North Island's center, heading towards Auckland. Signs of modernity are all around. Turning towards the Auckland airport brings a long series of malls and heavy industrial warehouses, and it's almost as if we're being eased back from our Middle Earth idyll into the realities of modern American life.
At the airport, all is painless until we get in line at the Qantas desk. It's a short line, and we figure we'll sail through.
Not so. First, we're flagged for special examination by security (not a big deal, and probably less painless since the tossing of our TNT shippers). However, when we're finally done unsealing, unpacking, repacking, and resealing everything, we find to our great dismay that the line has barely moved.
…or a lot of little ones
A good 45 minutes later, we finally reach a harried desk agent, only to be informed that our luggage is too heavy. This despite only one checked suitcase and two 12-bottle wine shippers between the two of us. It must be our innocent faces that persuade her to let us go with a warning rather than the rather hefty fee they'd normally charge.
Now tired, slightly aggravated, and somewhat sweaty from stifling air at the check-in desk, we can finally make our way to the small departure gate. It's a perfect mood in which to begin our homeward journey to Los Angeles and then, with little delay, to Boston and home; a night-to-day flight that, thanks to the International Date Line, will mean that we'll get to revisit the entire day we've just experienced, eventually arriving in Boston scant hours "after" our departure from New Zealand. The longest day, indeed.
New life
But it is, perhaps, instructive that though I remember being in the Los Angeles airport, I remember neither the surrounding flights nor any of the details between our arrival at the departure gate in Auckland and a small part of the taxi ride that takes us to our front door. Nothing. Not a moment. And I wonder, then and now: why the massive memory lapse? But then and now, the answer is easy.
Nothing can compare to New Zealand.
Of all the places I've been, there has never been one that pairs majesty and comfort so well. That its natural wonders are incomparable is well-known; it really is, unquestionably, the most beautiful place I've ever seen, and my much better-traveled wife agrees. What is not so well known is the wonder of its people, perhaps its greatest natural resource. To be a traveler in New Zealand is to be invited inside, to experience the warmth and generosity of a land and a people who cannot help but be open, because anything else would be incomprehensible. Food and wine, as important to me while traveling as any site or monument, are of a standard of matched quality and ingenuity that are a constant surprise to this cynical collector of gustatory experiences. The only thing it lacks is history, but this becomes not a weakness but a strength, as - unbound by tradition - the country's best and brightest seek not just the relentless pursuit of modernity, but a careful stewardship and reserve in all new things that will, one day, become a tradition and a history as worthy of praise as any other.
Before my journey, someone gave me a warning of sorts. He said, "if Australia is ten years behind the United States, New Zealand is twenty years behind Australia." For three weeks, I've had the opportunity to ponder that phrase, and what it might mean. Here, at the end of it all, I may finally have an answer.
New Zealand is not "behind" in any of the ways that might easily occur to the observer. Technology, popular culture, food and wine, business; all are as up-to-date as any Western-style economy can provide. "Behind," in this case, is not so much a trailing of the leading edge as it is a reflective pause along the way. To say that there is a prevailing naïveté among New Zealanders might sound insulting, but rather, it is a compliment of the highest order. For the relentless cynicism and negativity of the world "ahead" of them has either been rejected or has passed them by without effect. New Zealand is the modern world stripped of the mindset that holds it down in a miasma of gloomy pessimism, and it is the old world stripped of the dead weight of history and its own suppressive tendencies. It is truly alive in a way unlike any place I have ever been. New Zealand is life, in the most positive and uplifting sense.
![[Theresa & rooster]](http://www.myspeakerscorner.com/forum/user_images/tci_theresa_rooster.jpg)
![[wine & rooster]](http://www.myspeakerscorner.com/forum/user_images/tci_wine_and_rooster.jpg)
![[giant kiwifruit slice]](http://www.myspeakerscorner.com/forum/user_images/tci_theresa_giant_kiwi_slice.jpg)
![[golden kiwifruit]](http://www.myspeakerscorner.com/forum/user_images/tci_theresa_golden_kiwis.jpg)
![[kiwifruit]](http://www.myspeakerscorner.com/forum/user_images/tci_hanging_green_kiwi.jpg)