New Zealand take 2

Every good sequel needs something. Whether it be a new character (Lando Calrissian) or a new take on an already established character (Robert Di Nero as Vito Corleone), there has to be something in a sequel to make it interesting enough for people to tune in to the same old scene. Well fear not, this particular sequel has both! Not only to you get the same main character in a different time (6 months older and wiser), but a new character as well. Everyone, I would like you to meet Tracy.

Tracy and I met over the summer in Oregon. I was working in a wine bar at the time and she was in town exploring the possibility of a harvest in Oregon. Thanks in no small part to the Newberg Taco Truck, we hit it off. She ended up working a harvest in Oregon at Torii Mor (while I was working once again at Cristom), and after harvest ended we both landed a spring vintage in Margaret River (her at Vasse Felix, me at Cape Mentelle). Needing something constructive (and ideally financially beneficial) to do in the meantime, we decided to head to New Zealand to do a bit of viticultural work at Felton Road in Central Otago. Turns out they didn't really need us until after Christmas, so we decided to head down a bit earlier and do a bit of vacationing before the work began. So we did.

I met Tracy and her mom Sue in LAX, having left Chicago that morning after spending Thanksgiving with my family in Geneva. Wanting to ensure that this bit of travelling would be as much of a marathon as the last go around, I was booked on the early flight out of Chicago (8am), meaning by the time I hooked up with Tracy and Sue in LA I had already been on the road some 8 hours (thanks to a stop-over in Tuscan). Mercifully we elected not to hang around the airport, heading for a nice early dinner in Santa Monica (after a brief detour through Inglewood). Given that both Tracy and I are vertically unchallenged, upon checking in we decided to try and snag an exit row for the flight over. As it turns out we were in luck. There would be no cramped middle seat with awkward chair leg placement for us. Not only were we in the exit row, we were on the upper level. A free upgrade to business class! Not only that, but the flight was undersold, meaning we had an entire row of business class seating to ourselves. Sipping on a complementary glass of red wine after a rub down with a hot towel, we both slipped off quite easily into the soundest sleep possible on a 777.

The Fiji airport was about as exciting as I remembered it (I forgot to mention we fly Air Pacific yet again, it really is the cheapest means to get to NZ), although this time around I knew that all the shops took American currency, something that would have made my last go-round far more interesting. Another few hours on a slightly smaller plane and we had arrived in Auckland, exactly 15 hours and two days after leaving the states.

I didn't really see much of Auckland the last time I was in NZ, electing instead to head to Australia immediately and drink some damn fine pinots at a wine festival. I had also largely bypassed the north island entirely in favor of exploring the more scenic and less populated south. Our mission was much the same this time around (find some damn fine wine and explore the south island), but we had decided to pick up some wheels for the journey and Auckland was the best place to do that.

I've heard that Auckland has about three quarters of the population of NZ within the city and the surrounding area, meaning it would be about 3 million people or so. A fair amount of concentration in a country the size of Colorado. We had booked three nights in a cheap backpackers/hotel (it really was a cross of both), which we hoped would give us enough time to track down a car and do a bit of sightseeing. Fighting off the jet lag, we wandered the city a bit that afternoon, having dinner at a small cafe in an area of downtown which resembled a European city more than anything else. We discovered exactly two things about Auckland immediately. It is a rather expensive place (especially for NZ), and it is full of Asian people. There were far more Asians than kiwis, or Maoris, or even tourists. The Sky Tower (Auckland's central landmark) was literally overrun with them.

Our second day in Auckland poured down rain, but we were so excited about being in a new place that we didn't care. We walked everywhere, exploring the artistic section, wandering malls and wine shops and cheese shops and bakeries and even a funny hat store. All told, we probably walked 15 miles before 3pm, before finally calling it quits in favor of over-priced beers and people watching. The night ended early, as we wanted to be up fairly early the next morning for the Auckland city car fair, where we hoped our chariot awaited.

Buying a car in New Zealand is rather different than buying a car in most other places. For starters, New Zealand gets lots of quality imports from Korea and Japan, both new and used, so most of the cars on the road are fairly reliable. The government also requires every car on the road to be completely checked over every 6 months to ensure it is in proper working condition. Plus, with the amount of backpackers and tourists that circle the country every year, the used car market is especially robust and cars tend to have a high turnover rate. In short, we were pretty confident that we could find a reliable set of wheels on the cheap that we could turn around and resell to other backpackers on our way out of the country. The best place to do so, according to several sources, was the Auckland city car fair.

We were not disappointed.

It was the first car in the row, a well loved spray paint silver 1986 Mitsubishi Mirage 2dr hatchback. It may have been held together in certain areas with electrical tape, it may have had brakes that squealed like a banshee at every intersection, but it had a phil collins tape in the glove box and a red chili pepper hanging from the mirror. And it had that certain indefinable quality, like fate had brought us to this particular moment for a reason. Maybe it was love. Maybe it was the moldy smell. But we knew we had to have it. We talked its current owner (a British backpacker nursing a nasty hangover) down from $1400 to $800 and an hour later we were proud parents. Its previous owner had named it Micky. We christened it Moldy Milo.

Having sorted out the car in the morning, we still had the rest of the day free to do a little exploring. Tracy had read that one of the nearby islands had a budding wine region, so we booked tickets on a ferry that afternoon. After provisioning ourselves at a farmer's market near the harbor, we set out for Waiheke island.

There are about 30 wineries on Waiheke, making primarily Bordeaux varietals with a dash of syrah here and there for fun. We were a bit dissapointed with the majority of the wines, finding them rather overpriced and uninteresting, but the island itself was quite beautiful, sort of a mixture between South America and Scotland. We did find a beautiful lunch spot and ate quesidillas with a fine rose, and spent most of the afternoon hiking alternatively between vineyards and nature preserves. A ferry ride back at sunset brought Orca whales breeching in the harbor, leaving little doubt that this was a blessed day indeed.

Australia part 1

I had met Colin and Mary this past fall while working harvest in Oregon. Colin and I both worked at Cristom Vineyards (http://www.cristomwines.com/) while Mary worked up at Chehalem, although she spent a fair amount of time at Cristom as well (the harvest lunches at Cristom are legendary, especially in comparison to the standard lunch fare other wineries serve during harvest, usually a combination of hot pizza and cold pizza). Colin grew up in the bay area of California and was an artist before delving into wine, and he met Mary (a native Kiwi) while obtaining wine training at Lincoln University in New Zealand last year. They had left shortly after the Oregon harvest ended in November, having found impossibly cheap tickets to Australia and spontaneously deciding to do the spring vintage there. They both ended up finding work in the Mornington Peninsula, an up and coming Pinot Noir producing area south of Melbourne and invited me to come down and visit should I have some extra time before harvest. A few weeks ago I got an email from Colin saying that they had managed to land jobs pouring wine at the Mornington IPNC (http://mpva.com.au/), a wine festival that would feature many of the top pinot noirs being produced in Australia, Tasmania and New Zealand (with a few pinots from Burgundy, Oregon, and even Chile thrown in as well), and that they could get me a pouring gig as well. Great wine with beaches nearby and the chance to eat kangaroo? I'm there.

I booked a plane ticket on Pacific Blue (one of two no frills discount airlines in Oceania) to Melbourne, leaving the day after I arrived in Auckland. Despite having unburdened myself of some wine the previous day, I had kept a few bottles with me to give as gifts to wineries I planned to visit along the way (a trick I had learned in Italy a few years ago). The trouble was that wine bottles are rather heavy and classified as a terror-inducing prohibited carry-on item, so all of my clothing now became a carry-on item instead. God help us if some idiot figures out how to make a bomb out of cotton.

I passed the time in the airport figuring out rugby (the US even won a game, nevermind that they beat Fiji) and feeding the birds (yes, there are birds flying around in the international terminal of the Auckland airport). Turns out Pacific Blue is owned by Virgin Airlines, and both Virgin and Pacific Blue had the same curious habit of playing music during takeoff and landing. At first I thought this was to distract nervous fliers, but as it turns out the purpose is much more practical; the music choices reflect the culture of the place where they are played. On my Virgin flight from Seattle to LA for example, indie rock was played during takeoff and pop rock as we touched down. Taking off from Auckland indie rock was also the music of choice (albeit with a New Zealand twist), while touching down in Melbourne was the sort of mixture of 80's rock and techno that we all hoped died in Germany 10 years ago.

This wasn't the only thing wrong with Australia. The southern half of the country is going through one of the worst droughts and heat waves in recorded history, while the northern half is under water from flash floods. The vineyards here have already suffered crop losses of 30-50% due to sun damage, with the possibility of additional losses in the next few weeks before harvest. Things are so dry that brush fires have started breaking out all over the areas north and west of the city, and several vineyards and even a small town have literally been wiped off the map. Fortunately the place I was going was south along a peninsula with more of a marine influence, but things are clearly not going well for much of the area.

Passing through customs proved a rather annoying experience. While New Zealand took no time at all and even included humorous anecdotes about preserved vegetables, Australia was much more intense, demanding to sift through my camping gear and checking to make sure that I hadn't surpassed my wine allowance. They even made me pull out my unopened pack of trail mix to determine whether I had devised a new way to introduce invasive species via dried cranberries and nuts. It was around 7pm by the time I finally made it through, and I still had to find my way to Dromana, a tiny beach suburb about 40k south of Melbourne where Colin and Mary lived. I had instructions to get there via train to Frankston, which departed regularly from downtown Melbourne. I shouldered my backpack, found a shuttle downtown, and settled back to take in the city.

The city is quite large and modern, with a river knifing through skyscrapers reminiscent of the loop in downtown Chicago. Its the second largest city in the country (after Sydney) with just under 4 million people in the city proper. It is relatively young, having only been founded around 1850, but still retains some pretty interesting stone architecture and green spaces that seem to be lacking in a lot other modern cities of similar size. Although at the moment I had other places to be, Melbourne is a place where I could see myself spending a bit of time. Maybe I will.

The bus station was still sweltering despite the late hour, but I managed to track down the train station without too much trouble. On the train ride south I observed that Australians certainly have their own style, some of it borrowed (the women seemed to have just figured out the little black dress) and some of it entirely their own (the men still wear the same flashy t-shirts made famous by the extras in Crocodile Dundee). Colin and Mary met me in Frankston, and we drove the 15 minutes south to their place in an ancient Renault that looked like it had been on the losing end of a chase scene with Inspector Clouseau.

Colin and Mary had found accommodations for the harvest with an Australian artist named Jill, who was in her early 50's and had two children (one around my age and the other still finishing college in Perth). The house itself was fantastic, full of eclectic pieces of artwork and very comfortable, with a back porch that had a distant view of the ocean. There was a second building in the backyard with two rooms, one that Colin and Mary were staying in and another that housed Jill's studio. They had set me up with a mattress in the studio, which was a welcome surprise from the camping mattress on hardwood floor I had expected. The studio had a window near the ceiling that faced west, and around midnight the full moon shown through it and filled the room with soft light. Awesome.

We headed to bed rather early, having to get up around 7 to make it to the wine festival the next morning. The festival itself was at the Lindenderry Resort (which also had its own vineyard), and featured about 35 different wineries, mostly from the Mornington Peninsula (it was their festival after all). Turns out that one of these wineries just so happened to be Escarpment, the vineyard where I'll be working harvest in New Zealand next month (http://www.escarpment.co.nz/). And Larry McKenna, the winemaker I'll be working for, just so happened to be the guy that was showing their wines. I met him for the first time that morning, and was pleased to note that we shared a similar taste in footwear (teva sandals). He may not look like a winemaker (more of a rugby coach or a retired army drill sergeant), but the man makes some damn good wine. He was very pleased that I wasn't a scrawny hipster from the NW, although he did comment that he planned on putting more meat on my bones. Given his reputation for drinking and eating well, I couldn't be happier.

The keynote speaker for the festival was Jancis Robinson, who among her other accolades is the editor for the Oxford Companion to Wine, my bible during the early days of working in the tasting room at Cristom. She is, quite simply, a legend. We spent the day polishing glassware and pouring wine for the morning and afternoon tasting sessions, trying our best to stay in the air conditioned places and escape the 114 degree blasting everything outside (a new record!). After the glasses were set and the wine poured, we would retire to a back room and press our ears against the wall, listening to the same lectures and sipping the same wine that the attendees had paid $900 for. Granted we were working for free, but a few hours of polishing and pouring in exchange for musing over which vintage of grand cru burgundy is showing better sounds like a good deal to me. And while we didn't get to attend the posh banquet that night, we were allowed to take home any of open wine that was left over (it gets dumped anyway). I daresay we had a far better time that evening eating pizza and conducting our own private tasting (featuring 24 different pinots from 5 countries) than we ever could have in some decadent hotel full of largely pretentious and stuffy people. Life is good.

The festival ended Sunday afternoon, and we spent the remainder of the day lounging around with Jill before enjoying a fantastic dinner. The only thing I really had planned for this part of the trip was the wine festival, and as my flight doesn't leave until the afternoon of the 14th, I have some time to kill. I have a feeling the beach will factor largely into this equation, although Tasmania is only about an hour away by plane...

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

Oh the joys of budget traveling...in the last 56 hours I have boarded two trains, 6 buses, 2 shuttles, and 3 airplanes, traveling a total of around 8000 miles to arrive here on the other side of the world. What's more, today I get to board another plane to Melbourne (we'll throw in a train ride too for fun). Despite wandering into this travel marathon with the tail end of a cold and a mild hangover, I don't feel too bad at all...thanks to the mysteries of the immune system.

I'd spent the better part of the last month prepping for this trip; booking reservations and plane tickets, investigating national parks and wine regions, fixing bicycles and all the while visiting friends and transporting myself from one gracious couch to the next. And yet despite all this preparation, I still found myself running around past midnight the day before leaving trying to tie up last minute details. Inevitable maybe, but to date I haven't really thought of anything major that I forgot. In fact, the morning I departed I was running through lists and checklists and feeling pretty proud of myself, that is until I blew a red light in downtown Salem and came about 3 feet from an accident. A good reminder perhaps, the rest of the world cares little for my plans and itineraries, so I'd better be paying attention.

Made the train to Seattle after switching trains in Portland, and was surprised to learn that not only was there an in-ride movie, but that it was a recent show of Cirque de Sole, something I knew of but little about. The 35 minutes I watched before dozing off was pretty interesting, almost as interesting as the half-asleep dreams it prompted (a mixture of trapeez artists, satan, and the lion king in an airport security line). Met my buddy Bill in Seattle, had a great dinner and headed to a local college pub near his place for a few drinks (ill-advised maybe, but then again it was my birthday). Realizing that our time-sense was losing ground, we set the Mambo Number 5 alarm on the jutebox and headed out.

I declined an early ride to the airport the next morning and chose to sleep in and navigate the Seattle bus system instead. I needed to get to LAX that evening for my flight to New Zealand, so I had booked a really cheap ticket on Virgin Airlines that afternoon. Despite carrying 75 pounds of gear and needing to catch 3 buses to get to Seatac, the trip was without incident. Made a few goodbye phone calls from the terminal (I was shipping my phone back to Salem from LA) and boarded the plane. The plane was unbelievably awesome. Instead of the harsh and sterile (ha!) white lights of a typical plane, Virgin's cabin lights were purple, which contrasted red and white seats. And though this was a domestic flight, every seat came with a touchscreen in-flight entertainment system, which allowed you to watch movies, tv shows, music videos, and even order food! If only I had been flying Virgin to New Zealand...

The contrast with the futuristic plane and LAX couldn't have been starker (like walking out of a movie theater after watching Star Trek and realizing you're still in 1984), the terminal smelled and was badly in need of renovation. Aparently someone else agreed with me, as the international terminal was very much under renovation, and had English been my second language navigating it would have been a nightmare. After checking my bags through, I had about three hours to figure out a way to mail my cell phone back to Oregon (it would be useless in NZ). Before leaving I had prepaid a small box and the postage and needed simply to drop it into a mailbox. Sounded simple enough, except that since 9-11, all post office drop boxes in the US were removed from airports. I had no choice but to venture out into LA to try and find one.

The information desk informed me of a post office across the street from the Hertz rental car station. Thinking I was home free, I went out to wait for the Hertz shuttle. However unlike most car rental companies, the Hertz buses were for customers with reservations only, and the driver wouldn't let you on board without a reservation number...well most drivers anyway. I wandered down to the domestic terminal thinking that there would be more passengers there (too many to check), and three shuttles later managed to slip aboard. I remember wondering why Hertz was being so elitest with their reservation policy, but as the rental lot came into sight I realized it wasn't so much elitest as a security measure. The place looked like a maximum security prison, complete with floodlights and electrified razor wire fencing. Not the kind of place to be wandering around in jeans and hiking boots with a car thief sized black bag at night stammering about mailing a cell phone before leaving the country. For a moment I thought about hoping another shuttle back to the airport and figuring out another way, until I remembered something I read in a spy novel once. The key to not seeming suspicious is to do everything with complete confidence, even if you have no idea what you are doing. So I shouldered my bag, walked straight to the exit gate and walked briskly through, head held high above the curious looks from the security guards.

The post office was across the street (thank you information desk) and the cell phone in the mail, I needed to figure out a ride back to the airport, some 5 miles away. I didn't dare try my luck twice in Fort Hertz, but I needed to find another airport shuttle someplace where security wasn't quite as tight...but where? The TSA employee parking lot. Strolled through the gate after nodding to the guard who questioned me in broken English about a permit and hopped the nearest bus with our nation's finest security team, all of whom were in uniform and didn't seem to think twice about what a guy in hiking boots and blue jeans was doing on their bus.

Turns out that in addition to being smelly and confusing, LAX is also incredibly expensive, even by airport standards. Two sandwiches and a snack for the plane ran about $35, and I was being thrifty. I briefly considered a beer before the flight, but $7 Budweiser was just too much (I didn't even venture a glance at the microbrew section).

My flight to New Zealand was aboard Air Pacific, and included a stopover in Fiji, having found the tickets at SkyAuction.com, sort of like the ebay of travel websites. I saved a considerable sum of money on the tickets, and quickly found out why. Let's just say that Air Pacific isn't Virgin Airlines. For starters I was in the middle seat of the middle row of the plane, and some clever airplane designer had decided to place the leg of the seat in front of me center-right of what traditionally had been considered leg space. And while equipped with an in-flight movie system, I could only manage to get the left side of my headphones working (not that it really mattered, the movies were all unknown to me, although City of Ember was pretty good). Dinner was served as lasagna (meat-based airline food options are never a good idea) in marinara sauce, a sauce that was repeated on "eggs" the next morning. And of course, within 3 minutes of taking off the guy in front of me immediately put his seat all the way back, and left it there for the next 12 hours.

The guy sitting next to me was friendly, a former flight controller for NASA named Joe who was spending a free month in Fiji working for Tony Robbins (the lifecoach). We talked a bit about traveling (he'd traveled pretty extensively throwing on a backpack and wandering Europe for 3 months in 1989, witnessing the Berlin wall come down) and other things before finally attempting sleep. I managed a few hours and awoke in time to see the sunrise over Fiji.

The Fiji airport was pretty tiny and we were the first flight of the day. I briefly wished this had been my final destination walking into the terminal being greeted by a tropical band, but the prospect of spending a few months surrounded by nothing but foreign tourists sort of ruined the appeal. A couple of Americans in line behind me (one of whom wore a hat with the geographical map of the US against a stars and stripes backdrop) started grumbling about the band almost immediately, wondering why the government would allow panhandlers in the airport (after concluding they were all from the same poor family). This didn't stop them from ridiculing a man who danced briefly with the band for not giving them a tip. No wonder American tourists have a bad reputation abroad...

I had originally thought about trying to slip out and find a beach during my three hour layover in Fiji, maybe drink something out of a coconut on a beach chair, but it wasn't to be. Instead I amused myself wandering the small airport (which was really a big duty free shop) and trying to guess the Americans in the crowd, as well as those who had been on my flight and those who were leaving after a holiday. I attempted more sleep, and finally dosed to the competing sounds of the native band (who were now playing in the departure terminal) and a duet of "I will survive" between Beyonce and N'sync playing from one of the music shops. For those of you who might be interested, the carpet in LAX and Fiji is exactly the same.

The flight from Fiji to the US was largely uneventful, my seat companion this time was a Field Biologist from Fiji who had grown up in Africa. The flight pulled in early and both bags made it. I breezed through the New Zealand immigration (its a pretty casual country as it turns out) and tracked down my hotel. My second piece of luggage was a large box of wine and harvest gear (not the type of thing a weight concious backpacker needs to haul around for a month), so I grabbed a taxi to the post office a few miles away and mailed it to my future employer. It was a brilliant summer afternoon so I elected to hike back to my hotel, stopping along the way to explore a tiny national park and buy some strawberries and ice cream. Returning to my hotel, I gloried in the value of the American dollar and ordered room service twice before passing out for about 14 hours.

I have learned exactly 6 things since being here:
1) Apparently if you are the first person to arrive at customs from a flight you do not get a pickle (although I am unsure as to what number you have to be to receive said pickle).
2) Wealthy people in New Zealand drive Fords.
3) At crosswalks, walking signals are accompanied by a sound that is precisely like a laser in Star Wars.
4) New Zealand cabbies would rather take exact change than make change, even for a tip.
5) The hot and cold faucets are backwards (still haven't determined the opposite swirl down the drain thing yet).
6) After watching Cricket for 2 hours, I still couldn't figure out the point.

Today I'm off to Melbourne to visit my friends Colin and Mary, attend the Mornington IPNC wine festival, and sleep on a beach for a week. That is, if all goes according to plan...

Pictures will be coming just as soon as I find a computer with a USB port!