The first ten days in Dunedin have been busy finding a place to live, a car, a job for Philip, mobile phones (as cell phones are called here), and Internet. The usual trappings of a modern life. We also own a SodaStream machine, but more about that later.
We found success on the car first. We had a pretty specific budget and wanted neither a tin can lawnmower nor a jalopy, so we had some shopping to do. Esther (who, it turns out, is a bit of a petrolhead ;-) and knows lots about cars) and Kevin helped us over two days of car and house hunting. There's lots to learn about cars: age, mileage, and New Zealand New. That last one is significant because many cars are imported second-hand from Japan and so they don't come with any service or maintenance records, or a guarantee that the mileage hasn't been tampered with. We wanted something post-2000 and with fewer than 100,000 km on it (don't panic! that's only 60,000 mi). With, preferably, space for a dog, kids, and camping equipment. Just in case (no news there).
We looked at many cars, asked lots of questions, and took our first test drive. It drove like a boat floating on a big lake of chewing gum. We gave it miss.
Onwards and upwards: one dealer wrangled us a sweet deal based on Philip's parents 30-year history of buying and servicing cars there. That one had awful seats, which we were figuring out how to deal with, when Philip rounded a corner and asked, "hey guys, is that my hub cap? I think that was my hub cap." We stopped as soon as we could and verified that it was, indeed, our hub cap, so we picked it up on the way back. Kevin had to wave it at us from the other side of the very busy road because there were two hub caps lying beside each other. Busy day for test drivers, I guess. Continuing back to the dealer involved backing away from the curb, and the car started beeping, like a cement truck backing out of a quarry. Then "WAH CHING GUA HEI SHAJI" an angry-sounding Japanese woman's voice yelled at us. WTF?! No wonder people here don't want Japanese imports. To round out the day we also tried a VW that drove like a tank.
After later test-driving the world's largest old-school Nissan tuna-boat grampa wagon, and the world's smallest, tinny, Flintstone foot pedaling Kia hatchback, we ended up with a ... Ford! A Mondeo wagon, manual transmission, white. We were stoked and, honestly, a bit surprised to be buying an American car, since we usually seem to lean toward non-American brands. I know Uncle Don will be proud, and we love the car.
What a relief! Car: check, done, moving on. Well, almost. The dealer, a nice guy named Tony, didn't want us to pay the whole sum by credit card because he has to pay the 3% Visa transaction fee, so we only used that for the down-payment. In the meantime, we had the car checked out independently and it needed a couple of things done, such as making sure an apparent oil leak was innocuous. For the final payment, we logged onto Internet banking on the dealer's computer to do an account transfer. (Yup.) Only: the amount exceeded the daily limit! So the dealer said, no problem, just pay the rest tomorrow. And off we drove with our new wheels.
Next on the list was finding a home. We have lots of help with this one, Esther and Kevin, Andrew and Kathryn, and Philip's parents. Nonetheless, it turned out we couldn't find our dream home in the first weekend. As a guide, Esther looked at 88 houses and Kathryn at 70-some before signing on the dotted line. While the house-hunting continues, we thought, no worries, we'll just get a short-term rental. Despite fantastic company and food at Philip's parents's house, having lived out of a suitcase for the last two months meant we really wanted somewhere to unpack all of our stuff. As it turns out, finding a short-term, furnished apartment without dorm-style living is a big ask. There was, in fact, only one option. And it wasn't for lack of trying on our part. Luckily, we like the place, it has a view to the ocean a stone's throw away on one side, a view to a lagoon on the other, and hills and sky in between.
The rental agent, Jeanette, needed us to pay a pretty hefty damage deposit, called a bond here. And wouldn't you know it, that was the same day we were supposed to finish paying the car, and together- boom! - over the daily limit for account transfers again. So, with a little bit of creative accounting, and bringing the car dealer a medium-sized wad of cash to make up the shortfall, everyone was happy.
Exactly two months after we stepped out of our apartment in Fort Collins, we hung up our safari hats, kicked off our travel shoes, and slid the suitcases under a real bed. It has been an unbeatably awesome experience. This is not the end of the adventure, but the beginning of another.
Monday, January 17, 2011
Saturday, January 8, 2011
Go Travel, See the World
We'll say this for our Emirates flight: we saw a lot of airports. And we got there. So it wasn't all bad. Having said that, I'd never recommend that kind of flight, with lots of stopovers and short (6-hour) flights. On each one, it takes a couple of hours before the meal service comes around, then another hour for the trays to be cleared, and then a half-hour before landing the cabin starts being cleared again, so there's barely any time to sleep. And going through security at each and every airport along the way is, how'd you say, tedious. Grosi got to sleep quite a bit anyway, while Philip and I only got about 5 hours sleep during the whole trip. But we did get to watch a lot a lot of movies.
We were pretty much exhausted and relieved to find ourselves on the last flight from Christchurch to Dunedin. It's a commercial flight but it's such a short hop that it's more like the pilot taking a few of his buddies for a spin. No security. None. No-one to look into our bags, no x-rays, no grumpy-faced guards snarling at us to throw away all of our just-purchased water bottles. Just a sliding glass door that opens up to the tarmac, and smiling attendant scanning our boarding cards.
You can then imagine our surprise to hear the announcement, in addition to the usual instructions about what to do in case of an emergency: "We congratulate Kristi and Peter [close enough by New Zealand standards], sitting in row 5, who recent got married and are moving to Dunedin." The whole plane clapped - including, briefly, Kristi, before the announcement wormed its way through her exhaustion and she realized it was about us. The welcome in Dunedin was even warmer: both of Philip's parents, as well as his sister and brother-in-law, were there, holding a huge sign that read "Welcome Home Kristi and Philip," carefully lettered in Swiss German. We got home, ate some dinner, and collapsed into bed.
The weather the next day was classic Dunedin. It was misty in the morning, then the sun came out. But before I could get the camera out to take a picture of the harbour it was pouring down with rain. Then the sun came out. Then it was lunchtime and a huge thunderstorm passed overhead. Then the sun came out again, and by the afternoon it got really windy until sundown. My favorite part that summed up Dunedin was that it's summer here, but there was a street-corner vendor selling possum hats, scarves, and sweaters. And people were buying!
We were pretty much exhausted and relieved to find ourselves on the last flight from Christchurch to Dunedin. It's a commercial flight but it's such a short hop that it's more like the pilot taking a few of his buddies for a spin. No security. None. No-one to look into our bags, no x-rays, no grumpy-faced guards snarling at us to throw away all of our just-purchased water bottles. Just a sliding glass door that opens up to the tarmac, and smiling attendant scanning our boarding cards.
You can then imagine our surprise to hear the announcement, in addition to the usual instructions about what to do in case of an emergency: "We congratulate Kristi and Peter [close enough by New Zealand standards], sitting in row 5, who recent got married and are moving to Dunedin." The whole plane clapped - including, briefly, Kristi, before the announcement wormed its way through her exhaustion and she realized it was about us. The welcome in Dunedin was even warmer: both of Philip's parents, as well as his sister and brother-in-law, were there, holding a huge sign that read "Welcome Home Kristi and Philip," carefully lettered in Swiss German. We got home, ate some dinner, and collapsed into bed.
The weather the next day was classic Dunedin. It was misty in the morning, then the sun came out. But before I could get the camera out to take a picture of the harbour it was pouring down with rain. Then the sun came out. Then it was lunchtime and a huge thunderstorm passed overhead. Then the sun came out again, and by the afternoon it got really windy until sundown. My favorite part that summed up Dunedin was that it's summer here, but there was a street-corner vendor selling possum hats, scarves, and sweaters. And people were buying!
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Switzerland
Since Africa, we've already spent two weeks in Switzerland. Our main goal was to visit Philip's family and catch up. The language barrier is really hard, often leaving me guessing as to what people are talking about. About Bärndütsch ("barn-dootsh"): it's unlike any language I've heard before. Not quite German, and it sounds like lots of throat clearings all at the same time. I was hoping to have learned more when I arrived, but I was pretty overwhelmed. Hopefully I did learn some in my two weeks here.
Most of our time has been visiting family. There was the big Christmas Eve dinner with one half of the family, when we had snow falling and watched the candles on the tree. Several of Philip's cousins and aunts and uncles invited us over for dinners and lunches. Ever since it started snowing, we've had just one sunny day, all the others have been gray and near-freezing cold. The frozen ground led to Aunt Vreni breaking her ankle when she slipped on black ice - not good! Not good at all, she needed urgent surgery and can't walk on it for the next six weeks. Poor thing. Philip was also very sick when we arrived, and I've had a pesky cough for basically the entire time here. Fortunately, neither of us had malaria.
The food here, however, has been fantastic. Here's a list of our favorites:
Rösti: A kind of thick, crispy hash-brown potato dish.
Fondue: You know what it is, but no-one does it like the Swiss! We must have each eaten a half-pound of cheese each. Yum!
Raclette: A specific cheese, grilled in a specific cheese griller. Get it hot and bubbly, add some garlic and onion, and eat it over baked potatoes.
Züpfe: A rich milk-butter bread eaten with - you guessed it - cheese. Or butter, I guess, or jam, or anything. It's yummy.
Addison, a cool chick that I met working at CSU, happens to be working in Spain and was able to come over for a visit over New Year. She and I explored Bern for a day, doing a cathedral tour, a walking tour, and visiting the history museum. The next day, Philip, Addison and I hopped on a train for a loop-visit around central Switzerland. We had hoped to see the famous mountains, but were plagued by fog for most of the way. We stopped in Lucerne (a quaint town on a lake), and tried to visit a glass-blowing place but we missed the glass blowers because it was New Year's Eve. We barely got into the place at all because it closed down right after lunch. The highlight for me was the train that climbed up through the fog and opened up to sunny skies and snow-capped mountains right along the train. Wow. After just half an hour at the mountain top, we descended through the fog again, to stop at Interlaken. This is supposed to be a town where you can see the Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau mountains, but we saw more fog. This was a city I was excited to see again because Sarah and I had visited 20 years ago and I had such great memories. I guess we'll have to try again in the summer. After eating lunch, we hopped back on the train and headed back to Bern.
It's hard to believe we're at the end of our trip, but tomorrow we'll be on a plane to New Zealand. The long way... We stop in Dubai, Bankok, Sydney, Christchurch, and finally, Dunedin. 36 hours later, hopefully, we'll be back in summer. We're looking forward to being in New Zealand and looking for a place to live. We've really enjoyed the road, but we're now ready to start settling down again.
Most of our time has been visiting family. There was the big Christmas Eve dinner with one half of the family, when we had snow falling and watched the candles on the tree. Several of Philip's cousins and aunts and uncles invited us over for dinners and lunches. Ever since it started snowing, we've had just one sunny day, all the others have been gray and near-freezing cold. The frozen ground led to Aunt Vreni breaking her ankle when she slipped on black ice - not good! Not good at all, she needed urgent surgery and can't walk on it for the next six weeks. Poor thing. Philip was also very sick when we arrived, and I've had a pesky cough for basically the entire time here. Fortunately, neither of us had malaria.
The food here, however, has been fantastic. Here's a list of our favorites:
Rösti: A kind of thick, crispy hash-brown potato dish.
Fondue: You know what it is, but no-one does it like the Swiss! We must have each eaten a half-pound of cheese each. Yum!
Raclette: A specific cheese, grilled in a specific cheese griller. Get it hot and bubbly, add some garlic and onion, and eat it over baked potatoes.
Züpfe: A rich milk-butter bread eaten with - you guessed it - cheese. Or butter, I guess, or jam, or anything. It's yummy.
Addison, a cool chick that I met working at CSU, happens to be working in Spain and was able to come over for a visit over New Year. She and I explored Bern for a day, doing a cathedral tour, a walking tour, and visiting the history museum. The next day, Philip, Addison and I hopped on a train for a loop-visit around central Switzerland. We had hoped to see the famous mountains, but were plagued by fog for most of the way. We stopped in Lucerne (a quaint town on a lake), and tried to visit a glass-blowing place but we missed the glass blowers because it was New Year's Eve. We barely got into the place at all because it closed down right after lunch. The highlight for me was the train that climbed up through the fog and opened up to sunny skies and snow-capped mountains right along the train. Wow. After just half an hour at the mountain top, we descended through the fog again, to stop at Interlaken. This is supposed to be a town where you can see the Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau mountains, but we saw more fog. This was a city I was excited to see again because Sarah and I had visited 20 years ago and I had such great memories. I guess we'll have to try again in the summer. After eating lunch, we hopped back on the train and headed back to Bern.
It's hard to believe we're at the end of our trip, but tomorrow we'll be on a plane to New Zealand. The long way... We stop in Dubai, Bankok, Sydney, Christchurch, and finally, Dunedin. 36 hours later, hopefully, we'll be back in summer. We're looking forward to being in New Zealand and looking for a place to live. We've really enjoyed the road, but we're now ready to start settling down again.
Mountains above the mist
Swiss Mountains
Dinner with Grosi and Addison
Goodbye, Africa
We had one more surprise on our final drive before we left the park in the afternoon. We were lucky enough to have it just be Philip and me with Michelle. The weather was perfect, and we were soaking in the atmosphere of the park, enjoying every minute of it. On other drives they had seen the big male lion who is really special for his big black mane. I was dying to see him. Along the drive, I spotted the head of a female lion, and on pulling off the road, we discovered that she was lounging - with the male! There aren't that many lions with black manes, as they come from a specific part of Africa, and man, was he majestic! They didn't care about us at all, so we snapped pictures and just watched them for at least a half hour. As we've discovered, lions mostly just lie around during the day, and that's exactly what these two were doing. She was snoozing, he was gazing royally into the distance, looking like the king of the jungle.
After our fabulous two weeks on Thanda (which, incidentally, is pronounced "Tanda"), we decided to treat ourselves to a fancy hotel near the airport with an awesome hot shower, a huge white bed, and no gecko poops. We watched a movie, ordered in room service burgers with a fresh salad, and enjoyed being, you know, clean.
What a honeymoon! A week in the wetland park with crocs and hippos, two weeks with lions and rhino, and a night to unwind.
After our fabulous two weeks on Thanda (which, incidentally, is pronounced "Tanda"), we decided to treat ourselves to a fancy hotel near the airport with an awesome hot shower, a huge white bed, and no gecko poops. We watched a movie, ordered in room service burgers with a fresh salad, and enjoyed being, you know, clean.
What a honeymoon! A week in the wetland park with crocs and hippos, two weeks with lions and rhino, and a night to unwind.
Lion and Lioness
I am ... Royalty
Leopard!
Rhino Capture
By the second week on Thanda, we'd settled into a routine of anticipating unplanned things to crop up on any day, at any time. A large part of the last several days revolved around C1: A white rhino cow that we needed to find, dart, and load into a truck to be transported to another reserve. Wait, what?! We need to load a rhino into a truck? Isn't that ... difficult?
It turns out that finding a rhino, despite it being the largest animal on the park after the elephant, isn't easy. They like grazing in the bushveld, where they disappear into thin air behind bushes that are, oddly, almost exactly the same size as the rhino are. We drove around the park a lot. Six hours one morning, four hours that night. Every once in a while we'd find a rhino or two, but not the one we wanted, as identified by ear markings. We'd rattle along the dirt road, spot a hulking shadow in the distance, screetch to a halt and kill the engine. Then get out the binoculars and strain through the scrub in the fading light, waiting for the rhino to turn his or her head just so, so that we could see both ears at the same time. The only thing that made it easier was that our cow was most likely to be hanging out with another cow, but since they were neither mother-daughter nor sisters, that wasn't guaranteed either.
Right at dusk we found her (and her buddy). We drove home happy in the knowledge that we had at least a vague idea of where to start looking the next morning. The morning was grey and heavy, and it had rained at night, so we packed our rain gear. But it was no match for the day. We found our rhino and radioed her location and waited for the game capture crew to roll up with their transport truck. And we waited. And waited. The rain poured on, the rhino grazed its way through the thickets, and we sat on the truck in the rain, keeping a keen eye on the rhino so as not to lose her. It rained, we waited. For hours. We got occasional updates from the others, murmurs of delays and the truck getting stuck. To shelter us, Michelle parked the truck under an acacia tree just by the side of the road, so we waited in slightly less rain, in the cold, and watched little white worms dropping down into the truck and onto us. By this time, we were over this rhino thing and ready to go home, but we'd waited so long that we didn't want to miss the action when it happened. It was only when the crew radioed that their truck had got stuck that Michelle finally threw in the towel and called off the operation. She's a tough cookie, that girl.
So, the exercise of finding C1 started all over again the next day. We briefly looked for the dogs, established a rough location for them, and started driving around the park again. That day it was unbearably hot, the sun beating down from a clear blue sky. We drove all day, with four trucks all looking for her by the afternoon, racing the clock to try capture her that day. The sun lowered to the horizon, shadows lengthening. No sign of the rhino. It was pretty clear to us, though, that unless she were right on the road, we had almost no chance of spotting her. We also had no idea which part of the park she'd be in, since they can cover a lot of ground in a day. The sky turned red, the sun went down, we went home.
On our final pass-by of the water holes, we saw the lion, and a short while later, we squealed in surprise as we saw a leopard leap across the road! Full brakes, kill the engine. The leopard had already disappeared into the grass, but we patiently waited, in complete silence, for her to calm down after her shock of seeing us. Eventually, gingerly, she lifted her head just above the grass and eyed us cautiously. They're super shy animals, so we were unbelievably fortunate to have spotted her. Michelle pulled out her hyper telephoto lens and captured identification photos while we were all mesmerized.
The rhino capture was starting to cost the park and they decided that if we couldn't find her by the next morning, they'd call in a helicopter crew to find her. We were on the road at 3:30, even earlier than usual, to start searching at absolute first light. Prepared for another super-long day, we'd packed peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (again) to augment our peanut butter and jelly toast breakfast (again). In the way of these things: C1 was right on the road. We could have driven into her. What luck! We radioed the crews and waited (again). C1 isn't a cow that hangs around, so she and her buddy started her on-the-move grazing (again) and we tried to follow her, but we lost her and found her again many times through the thickets. By this time, another three vehicles showed up to help. With teamwork and Michelle's excellent knowledge of the roads and tracks, the capture team (a team including a vet and specialists in wild game transfers) finally darted her.
They radioed us where she'd stopped running in her half-daze, and we rolled up to help with the second part, loading into the truck. When she was down, she was much bigger than the B5 bull we'd worked with the previous week. This girl was huge. The dart crew brought her half-back to awareness and instructed us to help push her back to her feet and help her walk toward the truck. Surprisingly, this worked. With a rope tied to her horn guiding her direction, cattle prods (ouch) making her move forward, and four people to a side stopping her from falling over, we got her to the truck. A final push up the ramp, and she was in. What a morning! - it wasn't even 9 o'clock yet.
It turns out that finding a rhino, despite it being the largest animal on the park after the elephant, isn't easy. They like grazing in the bushveld, where they disappear into thin air behind bushes that are, oddly, almost exactly the same size as the rhino are. We drove around the park a lot. Six hours one morning, four hours that night. Every once in a while we'd find a rhino or two, but not the one we wanted, as identified by ear markings. We'd rattle along the dirt road, spot a hulking shadow in the distance, screetch to a halt and kill the engine. Then get out the binoculars and strain through the scrub in the fading light, waiting for the rhino to turn his or her head just so, so that we could see both ears at the same time. The only thing that made it easier was that our cow was most likely to be hanging out with another cow, but since they were neither mother-daughter nor sisters, that wasn't guaranteed either.
Right at dusk we found her (and her buddy). We drove home happy in the knowledge that we had at least a vague idea of where to start looking the next morning. The morning was grey and heavy, and it had rained at night, so we packed our rain gear. But it was no match for the day. We found our rhino and radioed her location and waited for the game capture crew to roll up with their transport truck. And we waited. And waited. The rain poured on, the rhino grazed its way through the thickets, and we sat on the truck in the rain, keeping a keen eye on the rhino so as not to lose her. It rained, we waited. For hours. We got occasional updates from the others, murmurs of delays and the truck getting stuck. To shelter us, Michelle parked the truck under an acacia tree just by the side of the road, so we waited in slightly less rain, in the cold, and watched little white worms dropping down into the truck and onto us. By this time, we were over this rhino thing and ready to go home, but we'd waited so long that we didn't want to miss the action when it happened. It was only when the crew radioed that their truck had got stuck that Michelle finally threw in the towel and called off the operation. She's a tough cookie, that girl.
So, the exercise of finding C1 started all over again the next day. We briefly looked for the dogs, established a rough location for them, and started driving around the park again. That day it was unbearably hot, the sun beating down from a clear blue sky. We drove all day, with four trucks all looking for her by the afternoon, racing the clock to try capture her that day. The sun lowered to the horizon, shadows lengthening. No sign of the rhino. It was pretty clear to us, though, that unless she were right on the road, we had almost no chance of spotting her. We also had no idea which part of the park she'd be in, since they can cover a lot of ground in a day. The sky turned red, the sun went down, we went home.
On our final pass-by of the water holes, we saw the lion, and a short while later, we squealed in surprise as we saw a leopard leap across the road! Full brakes, kill the engine. The leopard had already disappeared into the grass, but we patiently waited, in complete silence, for her to calm down after her shock of seeing us. Eventually, gingerly, she lifted her head just above the grass and eyed us cautiously. They're super shy animals, so we were unbelievably fortunate to have spotted her. Michelle pulled out her hyper telephoto lens and captured identification photos while we were all mesmerized.
The rhino capture was starting to cost the park and they decided that if we couldn't find her by the next morning, they'd call in a helicopter crew to find her. We were on the road at 3:30, even earlier than usual, to start searching at absolute first light. Prepared for another super-long day, we'd packed peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (again) to augment our peanut butter and jelly toast breakfast (again). In the way of these things: C1 was right on the road. We could have driven into her. What luck! We radioed the crews and waited (again). C1 isn't a cow that hangs around, so she and her buddy started her on-the-move grazing (again) and we tried to follow her, but we lost her and found her again many times through the thickets. By this time, another three vehicles showed up to help. With teamwork and Michelle's excellent knowledge of the roads and tracks, the capture team (a team including a vet and specialists in wild game transfers) finally darted her.
They radioed us where she'd stopped running in her half-daze, and we rolled up to help with the second part, loading into the truck. When she was down, she was much bigger than the B5 bull we'd worked with the previous week. This girl was huge. The dart crew brought her half-back to awareness and instructed us to help push her back to her feet and help her walk toward the truck. Surprisingly, this worked. With a rope tied to her horn guiding her direction, cattle prods (ouch) making her move forward, and four people to a side stopping her from falling over, we got her to the truck. A final push up the ramp, and she was in. What a morning! - it wasn't even 9 o'clock yet.
Rhino on the road!
Rhino in the bush
Game capture crew
The sleeping, darted rhino, ready for loading into the truck. The cloth, lightly wrapped around her eyes by the red straps, is to calm her.
Push! Puuuush! Good girl!
Success!
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