17 April 09 - Ranfurly, New Zealand
Before 72 hours ago, I had always associated the word Ranfurly with the cheap New Zealand beer that comes in a black can and tastes the way burps do after you eat a bag full of over-ripe tomatoes. But now I associate the word Ranfurly with the place where my 2009 travel spirit was broken.
I don’t know what it is about getting stranded, but I am really good at it. I have dozens of stories to prove it. There’s the one about hitchhiking out of the Trinity Alps in North Central California during a freak whiteout snowstorm. There’s the one about hiding two of my friends in a mini-van that was getting towed while me and the fourth friend rode in the cab of the tow-truck so all of us could get back home for essentially free using my AAA account. And who could forget about my very first breakdown: my best friend and I, barely 17, snuck out on a school night and had driven 2 hours to the coast to see about some girls. The mission was a success up until my truck ‘threw a rod’ and left us stranded 40 miles deep in the Vernonia foothills at 1:30 am; happy was not how that one ended.
The latest tale to add to my resume of ridiculousness found Heather and I stranded in the one-horse town called Ranfurly. This little town is nearly the exact center point of the Central Otago Highlands on the South Island. Luckily Ranfurly is marked with a red dot on the map, which means that it has a service station. This is more than could be said for the dozen or so little towns that lie along route 85 between Alexandra and Palmerston; these little towns are marked with yellow dots. I came to learn that yellow means that the town has at least a pub, but not much more. This is a stressful way to learn how to read a map when your 1988 station wagon, on its maiden voyage, starts smoking.
Normally, I would have definitely shied away from purchasing a car just barely younger than me but I felt we had found a diamond in the rough. It only had 186,000 original kilometers (115,000 miles), drove straight and was even long enough that we could sleep in the back during our get away’s. It was so well taken care of, I was convinced that it was formerly property of a little old Kiwi lady who used it to go play bingo on Tuesdays and church service on Sundays. All the tell tale signs said it was reliable and we went for it. We had been saving what we could from our one-source-income for 2 months and bought a 1988 Mazda Capella for 13 salmon-colored and Lord-Rutherford-of-Nelson-faced hundred-dollar notes.
Our Easter Weekend Holiday started out wonderful. We were so excited. After we got on the road, we both felt like all our worries were finished; we had arrived! We even gave each other a dorky look and smile-nod as we hit the open road. We finally had wheels and were free to do what we had come to New Zealand to do; see spectacular scenery, drink world-class wine and eat the best dairy in the universe!
But being a believer in Murphy’s Law, I should have known something was askew in my universe when the little Larry David moments started popping up as the sun was setting on day one of our 3-day mini-adventure.
The first was when we stopped in Lake Tekapo, which is about the halfway point between Christchurch and Queenstown. The drive was spectacular to that point but we were hungry and ready to enjoy a scoop of chips, two fried fish and three to four beers. I had been daydreaming about it all day. I was imaging a romantic take-away picnic at the edge of Lake Tekapo as the sun was setting. But this was not to be as there were a couple factors that we hadn’t previously considered.
It was Easter Sunday and apparently no store in the entire country can sell alcohol on Good Friday or Easter Sunday. This blew me away. Prohibition is the most puritan law there is and it amazed me to find it here in one of the most realistically liberal places in the world. I’m sure even the Pope himself has a tidger of wine on Easter. And the law doesn’t make sense anyway. You can’t buy booze on Friday or Sunday but you can buy it on the day in between? I don’t know, but anyway, the fact that I couldn’t buy a beer was more of a bratty fit on my part. The bigger issue was that I was grumpy from not having anything to eat all day and the little tourist trap (which is basically all Lake Tekapo is) was crawling with tourists and for some reason all 350 of them at the time wanted fish & chips too.
While Heather dutifully went into the long, crowded and narrow take out shop to order the food, I waited out front on a bench that was set up against a souvenir shop. I was there for about 20 seconds when I heard a “thwap” on the window behind me. I turned around and squinting through the reflection, I saw into the shop. It’s full of New Zealand shaped glass designs, quirky post cards and little sheep trinkets on the windowsill. Next to the sill is an older man, probably 45 and Eastern European, who had his backed turned to me. I can remember thinking; “He’s probably annoyed and killing time until the wife wraps it up too.”
Nothing was out of the ordinary and I didn’t see who tapped the window. I was a little confused as to what the “thwap” could have been. So I face forward but then I immediately heard it again. This time I swung around quickly to see who was messing with me (that’s what I was imagining in my paranoid mind) and find out what’s causing the racket. It was a little bird that had got himself trapped in the shop and every time he tried to fly out, he was ramming his tiny face into the window causing the “thwap” sound.
“Ah, poor little guy,” I thought as I watched his struggle. He would fly up to a hover at about mid window height and then give another go to escape but would be stopped by the glass every time. With each hit, he would drop down to the sill and stay down for about 10 seconds. It looked like he was getting more and more dazed each time. I watched him nail the window probably 4 times in row. I had David Attenborough’s voice narrating a live version of The Living Planet. For a moment I totally forgot about my troubles was carried away with this little bird’s troubled co-existence with mankind. This was until, of course, I noticed the older man on the other side of the window staring at me like I was an idiot. He had his hands out and he was looking at me like, “What? Why do you keep tapping the widow?”
I didn’t get it at first. I just kept smirking a silly smile because I thought for sure he saw the bird too but then I realized the bird had flown away further into the store as soon as he finally turned around. I could tell from the look on his face that from his perspective, I was just a smiling idiot tapping on the window for no good reason. I half-tried to say, “didn’t you see the bird too?” but I knew it didn’t matter. So I sheepishly wandered back to wait at the car. Heather found me embarrassed and ready to scarf down our long awaited fish & chips!
I couldn’t believe how hard Heather laughed when I told her about the little bird incident but that was about the end of the laughs for the weekend. It wasn’t that we had a terrible time for the rest of it but the other ‘highlights’ put a damper on things. It was great to be out roaming around but, overall, the excursion turned into a frustrating series of events that I felt paralleled my recent feelings about our current situation.
I waited on pins and needles like an obsessed girlfriend to see if I could even stay in this country and since finally getting the work permit, I’ve been nowhere closer to getting work than memorizing the response email that starts with:
“Mr. Madden. Thank you for your interest in the jally-wacker position but we regret to say…”
I even went as far as to snap back at one HR person who told me that I wouldn't be considered to clean the food troff at the Christchurch Casino's buffet. This is how that went:
Alexis,
I appreciate your response. I can take the casino off my 'job watch' chart.
The only restriction that I am aware of as per my work permit is that must not "take up permanent employment or undertake employment as described in immigration policy E7.40b" which states:
"E7.40 Effect of provisions of the Prostitution Act 2003
It is a condition of every temporary permit or limited purpose permit that the holder may not, while in New Zealand:
1. Provide commercial sexual services; or
2. Act as an operator of a New Zealand business of prostitution; or
3. Invest in a New Zealand business of prostitution."
So if the host position requires the performance of cunnilingus or fellatio, I cannot see why I would be eliminated at this stage of the hiring process.
I was just approved for this Work Permit and it doesn't expire until 19 Mar 10. My wife is a nurse at the ChCh hospital and we have no immediate plans of leaving for about another year.
But such as it is I supppose.
Thank you for your time. If any position opens up that I could be qualified for at the Casino, Please keep me in mind. I'm getting pretty desperate and heavily considering violating the one restriction of my permit...
Cheers
Mike Madden
I didn't get a response back.
Yet, while the whole process has been frustrating, I still keep the positives in mind and try to maintain a reasonable level of perspective. We’ve been doing a great job to stay up beat about it all in spite of having absolutely no lasting luck with being foreigners abroad trying to live like normal people. This is why finally getting to point where we could get a car was liberating. Hitting the asphalt into the open was the symbolic feeling of turning the corner out of this little culdesac-ish situation we’ve been in. I think that’s why the outcome of our weekend was so absolutely deflating.
The rest of trip was pretty much except for the big break down. Apperantly the radiator busted open and gushed out all of it's fluid. The mechanic we found in Ranfurly told us it was 'buggered' after doing a pressure test on it. A younger Mike would have filled it back up and taken my chances with pushing it to see how far it would go. I would have done the thing my best friend Dylan does in these situations: absolutely nothing. And, for some damned reason, he is successful most of the time. He is unreasonably lucky with this sort of thing, but I couldn't risk it. I imagined breaking down in the absolute middle of nowhere and having to pay hundreds of dollars to get it towed to the next town. I wasn't gonna be that foreigner to pass my problem off. Although the thought did cross my mind.
Instead, I took the $30 the mechanic offered me and told Heather to go down to the Information Site and get us some bus tickets home. I had to wait while the guy went to get some change of title papers. Heather came back down and told me the last bus comes at 1500. It was 1435. I told her to go stall him if I was running late.
At 1453, the guy comes back (the $30 was important because, after all, it was all we really had left) and I sign the papers in a furry. I grab my bag and my share of the couch cushions (it seemed like a good idea before we left to take the couch cushions from our living room couches so we would have some padding in the back of the car when we camped) and started sprinting. I had about a 300 meter run and about half way down, the prong from my left jandal (kiwi for flip-flops) broke, but I didn't have time to fix it. So I kept sprinting down the empty street with a huge backpack, three couch cushions tucked under my arms and one jandal on, with the other wrapped around my ankle because it had slid up my leg. (A ridiculous scene if you can imagine it).
I got to the station just as the bus pulled up. We rushed on board and took our seats. I looked over at Heather and she was crying.
THAT WAS IT!
I literally felt like shouting like Lloyd Christmas: "We've got no food! We've got no money! Our pets heads are falling off!"
but at least we had our couch cushions...
This is me siting with our shit waiting for our connecting bus from Dunedin.
Me walking barefoot just before our first bus connection. My jandals were done for.
Our final destination was Queenstown. If you don’t know any better, Queenstown is basically Heaven’s version of what people think when they hear the word “Aspen.”
Seriously.
Lloyd Christmas was talking about this place when he said,
“I'll tell ya where we'll go, Harry. Someplace warm. A place where the beer flows like wine. And beautiful women instinctively flock like the salmon of Capistrano. I'm talkin' bout a little place called Ass-pen”
If you are young, single and love the outdoors, Queenstown is for you. It is not only the most stunning place in New Zealand, it is the most ‘EXTREME’ place in the world. To give you an idea of what a day could be like in this place, given the right timing, you could, in one day, do the following (or all – believe me, it’s possible):
Wake up to, what has to be, one of the world’s most delicious Mochas (known here and probably the rest of the world outside the US as a “Mocchiato”). Then jump onto a Gondola that takes you 1,000 feet straight up from the city’s floor to Bob’s Peak. From here, involve yourself in a moment to appreciate the absolute splendor of what Mother Nature can do with about a billion years and a couple glaciers. Before moving your way to Hang Glide down from another 1,000 feet above, take a couple runs on a 3-course luge track. After gliding back into town, you can hop on a bus to grab lunch while on a 7-winery wine-tour; all before noon.
After, why not head over to one of the world’s highest bungee jumps at a mere 440 feet (134 metres). This is the one where you jump from a cable car that’s suspended a thousand feet above the Nevis canyon. Once your testicles have re-established their spots in your body, you can head back to town to do another bungee jump from a parachute being pulled by a speedboat going 90 miles an hour on the massive V-shaped lake, Wakatipu, that cuddles Queenstown in it’s nexus.
If you think you’ve been extreme enough for one day, why not get promiscuous? Any of the town’s 4-dozen hostels attract hoards of young, beautiful travelers looking for that “crazy time abroad” each day. In fact, the more popular hostels bring new buses, capacity full, of travelers, ages 18-35, on every single one of the 365.25 days of the year. The city literally brims with possibilities; if that’s what you’re into.
Even if you’re on a budget, married and in love with the person of your dreams, you can find a special time in Queenstown. On our visit, we found a bottle store that was offering a deal on a local version of Chardonnay (pronounced Card-En-ay); two for $9.00! We sat on a dock surrounded by yachts, emptied the bottles and talked about our future. We talked about how awesome it’s going to be to be home for the holidays. We talked about any of the places we could settle down in and buy our first home. And we talked about trying to remember what it’s like to know you cannot easily call up friends and loved ones to hang out even when you so badly want to when you live so far away. We talked about all of these things. It was a shared moment of clarity and we decided to use the positive momentum of our time in Queenstown towards our future time in NZ.
Looking down on Queenstown from Bob's peak.
