Final Thoughts on NZ

Obviously we really loved our stay in NZ. I thought I would share some random thoughts and observations that may or may not be of interest to anyone else, but I want to record my thoughts for myself. I'll ask the rest of the family for their input too.

When I said random, I mean random.

• Bare feet: Kiwis like to walk around in bare feet. Kids, adults, at the mall, at the bank, down the street, everywhere. Jack says they must have hobbit-feet. No, that's not meant as an insult.
• Food: prepared, packaged food definitely has less salt and sugar than Canadian packaged food. We don't really buy a lot of that stuff, but crackers, for instance, are often less salty than home. Tomato pasta sauce is another good example. It's less sweet and less salty.
• On that note, sugary kids' cereal is advertised as a treat, not breakfast. In the commercial kids have it after school as a treat, and they say 'treat' in the commercial. Love this. Don't know if it's an Aussie or NZ thing or both, but I love that mentality.
• Ketchup is tomato sauce. They also have ketchup. I'm not sure the difference.
• Grabbing a meat pie or sandwich at a bakery is way better than any fast food restaurant, and it is quite reasonable (though fattening!). There are bakeries in even the smallest towns, so this is good. Fish and chips (fush and chups) are also available in dairies (convenience stores) everywhere. You pay extra for the tomato sauce, so we always had our own ketchup.
• All kids wear uniforms to school, and I love it! Many schools are single-sex.
• Jack likes L&P, NZ's own lemon-flavoured pop. Ginger beer is way better than ginger ale. Bundaberg ginger beer is Australian though.
• If you are planning a trip to NZ and you plan to drive through the country, start in the North. The roads are much easier and safer.
• That said, on our last day in Coromandel (North Island), we counted 49 turns in 4 km of road. At least they have guard rails!
• In NZ you obey the speed limit. If it says 25km/h and you go faster, you may very well drive off of a mountain. If it says 15km/h, you may want to go much slower and keep your eyes on the road not what's beside you. On the South Island, even if it says 100 km/h, unless you're a Kiwi, you might want to stick to about 60km/h. I'm really not exaggerating. That said, I feel I can now spot recently arrived tourists by their driving, and I will be unbeatable in MarioKarts.
• I am by no means claiming to be any kind of expert on the Maori people, just making some observations. First of all, the Maori culture is a big part of NZ culture, far more than our Native Canadian culture, and I feel it really enriches the tourism trade. Many Maoris seem to be making a good living by offering tourist opportunities. On the other hand, when we went to Rotorua which has a high percentage of Maoris, you couldn't help but notice that most of the people wandering around downtown and those at the community outreach facilities (in the neighbourhood of our holiday park) were, in fact, Maori. That was too much like home, and saddened me.
• At the Te Papa museum in Wellington I read as much as I could about the Maoris. I had assumed that the Maori relationship with 'the Europeans' was friendly. I read the Waitangi Treaty which formalized the agreement between the two. Though it sounded pretty fair to me at first reading, as I read more I learned that the Maori tribes really had no understanding of 'sovereignty' and so didn't really didn't appreciate what they were giving up; that is, chiefly power of the various tribes. In the '60s and '70s there were all kinds of protests about land, and ultimately the government made a formal apology for unfairly taking land from the Maoris -- many years ahead of the Canadian 'apology' for the residential school disaster, I might add. By this time, the boys were ready to move on, so I didn't get to read beyond that point in NZ history! Story of my life...
• Let's get less serious. Everywhere we went had lots of hot water. We could all shower and have hot water to spare. Do they have monstrous hot water tanks? Tankless tanks? I don't know. Our current Australian house is great too. Though the hot water is very hot and not very energy efficient, every toilet I've used is dual-flush. Curious.
• Kiwis seem to be very resourceful. Too many possums? Add their fur to merino to make fantastically soft wool. Too many deer? Gather them up and farm them. That said, NZ was originally home to only birds and lizards. All of the mammals were introduced, and brought lots of problems with them. Possums (NZ's little speed bumps) are a big problem because they eat kiwi eggs, among other things.
• Kiwi birds are physically closer to mammals than birds. Interesting.
• For such a small country with a small population, they do a lot of manufacturing and production in NZ; everything from food, to clothes, to toiletries, to souvenirs. I'm always looking at labels to see where items are made, and many of them are made in NZ. Perhaps this leads to higher prices, but maybe that's not always a bad thing.
• Huge sections of the grocery stores are devoted to fresh dog food. It often comes in big tubes, like we sometimes see ground beef in, but much larger. I guess this is the stuff that goes into the hotdogs and sausages at home. Ick.
• Speaking of hotdogs, Kiwi hotdogs come battered and deep fried on a stick. Fish batter, not like a Pogo.
• Kiwis seem to really like Steve Martin. Everywhere we stayed that had DVDs, had a full stock of Steve Martin movies. (Un)fortunately, the boys are now fans too.
• ...to be continued