They're Taking the Christians to Isengard!

We returned to Ha Noi from Sa Pa for an international flight, and took a night or two to further explore the city’s nightlife offerings. The “party” hostel we stayed in afforded some cheap beer and recommendations on where to go for our last 48 hours in Ha Noi. We accepted the beer, and ignored the recommendations. We’d done a bunch of the cultural stops, and found posting up at a cafe with a Vietnamese coffee and people watching to be far more enlightening and entertaining.

There are some people who enjoy flying. Good on them. From our perspective it’s hard to see the upside to a 19 hour airplane marathon. But, it’s impossible to reach New Zealand from pretty much anywhere in the world without enduring a very long time crammed into a flying sardine can. Dana survived the flights despite nursing a bad cold (seriously…what is our luck with flying?) and at long last we spotted the snowy peaks of Middle Earth jutting out of the clouds beneath us! We touched down in Christchurch tired but so excited to finally be here! Dana’s parents honeymooned in New Zealand, so she grew up hearing about how beautiful this remote country is and has always dreamed of visiting. As huge nerds, we were of course also looking forward to hunting down some Lord of the Rings filming locations.

Compared to Southeast Asia (and compared to most cities in the world actually) Christchurch seemed positively empty. There were few cars, almost no one walking around on the streets, and when we tried to grab dinner at about 9 PM, the bars and restaurants were practically deserted, and most were shutting down! It was a jarring contrast to the chaotic streets of Ha Noi. We later found out that the city is still recovering from the bad earthquake that hit in 2012, and downtown is just starting to recouperate. Most of the buildings are brand new, and shipping containers still stand in for many stores and restauarants in parts of town. Right after the quake, shipping containers were apparently stacked up next to buildings to keep them from toppling, some of the buildings that were still standing, and many of them can still be seen bolted to the sides of the older brick structures.

On our second day in Christchuch, we went to pick up our biggest splurge on this trip: a campervan! We had heard that a campervan is really the ideal way to see this beautiful country, so we did some research and found a good deal on a van that the company needed brought to the North island before Christmas. Perfect! That gave us three weeks to get from Christchurch to Auckland, exploring as much as we could along the way. The van turned out to be a bit bigger than what we strictly needed for two people, and it felt quite luxurious!

We lumbered out of the city, Justin driving with white knuckles at first on the narrow roads as he got used to the agressive left-steer (it was badly in need of an alignment) and absurd height of the van. We spent our first night in a field by a lake, taking advantage of one of the great features of NZ: free camping! There are spots all over the country where, if you have a self-contained camper, you can camp for free for a few nights. It’s a really fantastic benefit of camping here, and we took advantage of as many of these spots as we could for our three weeks in the van.

Seeing the sun set over the golden hills spotted with sheep, watching the locals playing with their power toys on the lake, smelling the air scented with sun-warmed dirt and green things instead of car fumes, we took a deep breath and felt a little more at home than we have in months. There is no doubt about it, despite the stunning scenery around us, camping in the countryside in NZ felt a lot more familiar than Prague, India, Nepal, Thailand, or Vietnam. No surprise there! But it was nice to experience after a few months away from that comfortable familiarity. As we were enjoying a dinner of fish and salad and watching a truly stunning sunset, a couple of locals with fishing rods walked up to their car, which we were parked next to. We asked them what they’d caught, and they showed us a glistening brown trout wrapped in an animal feed bag. Then came the unexpected:

“You want it?”

We laughed, thinking they were joking, but they told us they were sick of trout, and that they liked fishing more than they liked eating fish. We promised to “give Kiwis a good name” as they put it, and gratefully accepted the big fish (which they had kindly already gutted), along with their instructions on the best way to grill it. This was just one example of how friendly the locals were. Even though their tiny country is full of clueless tourists navigating big white RVs that they’ve got no clue how to drive around the narrow roads, we still felt welcome. You could easily see locals getting jaded towards tourists, but for the most part, at least externally, it didn’t seem that way to us.

The following day, we made the stunning (and very windy) drive to Mount Cook, the tallest mountain in New Zealand. Along the way we passed several alpine lakes, glistening an unreal robin’s egg blue between the jagged peaks. The scenery here was out of this world, so we’ll let the photos do the talking.