If you spent the last five minutes doing anything but planning a trip to New Zealand, you just wasted five minutes.
I don't know how else to say it. Just go. Is there any other country that lingers — year after year — at the top of so many travelers' wish lists? Just mention the name and you get a lot of you-lucky-dog looks and I've-always-wanted-to-go-there sighs. But the flight is endless and expensive, they complain, especially from the East Coast. The seasons are flip-flopped and it takes an act of algebra to figure out the time difference.
All true. After all, it is just one stop short of the South Pole.
But having just gone through all that for a mere nine-day visit (my first since a three-month walkabout I made there 20 years ago), I say this: Go. Find the money. Damn the distance. Make the time. If you do, here's a near warranty: New Zealand will go from being the place you most wanted to visit to the best place you've ever been.
The same but different
These days, the travel buzz around New Zealand is reaching a hornet pitch, thanks to the country's boffo performance as Middle-earth in "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy. After three blockbusters and a clean sweep at the Oscars in February, the passport control lines at the Auckland airport are jammed with tourists eager to follow in Elijah Wood's wide Hobbit footprints.
“Good old New Zealand, she's getting a lot of attention these days,” says the passport officer, reflecting on the hubbub as she stamps my visa in early March. She's a sunburned blonde who looks like she'll be out bungee jumping after her shift. “She's a bit hot to trot these days, eh,” she says, sliding my passport back. In New Zealand, this is what passes for surly officiousness.
After the 13-hour flight from Los Angeles, Auckland's Victoria Park is good place to stroll out the coach-class kinks and begin yanking your brain into a new time zone. More importantly, it's a place to begin decoding New Zealand's core paradox: Everything here is familiar, but nothing is quite the same. Auckland, where about a third of the country's 4 million people live, is like a small-scale Seattle, with a modest clot of waterfront high rises surrounded by undulating neighborhoods of frame houses and high-street shopping. In Victoria Park, overlooking downtown and the sailboat-crowded harbor, the concentric paths and formal gardens could be anywhere in the British Commonwealth; that clock tower would look at home in Oxford.
But wait, the swirly carving on the tower is not so much Anglican as, what, Polynesian? And these massive waxy trees waving in the Pacific breeze and those towering ferns around the statue of Queen Victoria, they don't grow anywhere in London or Toronto or Boston. And that otherwise ordinary steakhouse by the ferry dock specializes in thick cuts of . . . ostrich. (“You want it medium well,” the waitress advised. “Cooked any more and it's tough. Any less and it's like eating raw ostrich.”)
It's this patina of the bizarro on the commonplace that makes New Zealand so endlessly interesting. A rolling, velvety baize of pastureland here could be a patch of Ireland's County Cork, except for the swath of Hawaiian forest that borders it. And what looms above both? A snowcapped mountain peak clipped from a postcard of Switzerland.
“This is nothing like Bavaria,” marvels Benedikt Schendel, a young German brewer on a six-week hitchhiking tour of New Zealand. I'm giving him a ride from Auckland to Rotorua, a tourist town about halfway down the North Island. He mulls the shifting agricultural scenery out the rental car window as I concentrate on staying on the right — which is to say the left — side of the road. “I think I may move here,” he says finally. “I think I could find work in a brewery.” He's been in New Zealand three days.
Halfway to Rotorua, Schendel indulges me for a stop in the small village of Matamata, one of hundreds of low-rise, nondescript farm towns scattered around the countryside. For decades, this sleepy hamlet was known, if at all, as a dairy center and the hub of New Zealand's small horse training industry. Now, it's a tour bus magnet.
“Welcome to Hobbiton,” brays the sign at the edge of town. Along the once-quiet street, fish-and-chips stands and snack bars are crowded with foreign tourists. “We need lemons,” pleads a hand-drawn sign on one cafe window. Across the road from the feed and seed store, a new plywood entryway in the shape of a round Hobbit door is being built onto the small visitors center. I buy a $50 ticket (about U.S. $30) and board a bus for a two-hour pilgrimage out to the only existing film set from "The Lord of the Rings."
“We heard they were making a movie at the Alexander farm and figured it was just some made-for-TV thing,” says Jan the tour guide, after we disembark in the middle of a comely 1,250-acre sheep farm 20 minutes from town. “It turned out to be a bit more than that.”
Once director Peter Jackson picked the Alexander farm for the location of Bilbo Baggins's home town, the government slapped a no-fly zone over the property, the army built a road through the rolling hills and a few thousand carpenters, engineers, caterers, gardeners and veterinarians began building Hobbiton.
Five years later, what's still there is the unmistakable backdrop of the trilogy's opening scenes, including the massive party tree still hung with a single fading streamer from Bilbo's 111th birthday fete. The bare facades from seven round hobbit homes remain, but only as unpainted frames. By agreement with New Line Cinema, the Alexanders can bring tourists here, but they can't restore the painting, stonework, planting or other details from the finished film.
“It needs color,” says Leanne Faulkner, 14, a self-described "Rings" fanatic visiting from England, as we look down on the quiet veld. She says she has seen each of the movies “four times in the cinema and hundreds of times at home." Suddenly, an electronic sample of "Lord of the Rings” theme music erupts in the windy quiet and Leanne scrabbles for her cell phone.
"She's mad for Orlando Bloom," whispers her mother, Irene.
Leanne listens to the tour guide's anecdote-filled spiel with wide eyes, and as we climb the hill to Bilbo's very house — the only one large enough to actually enter — she's on the phone again. “I'm serious. I'm in front of his house right now!” she bubbles internationally.
"We call them Ringons," says Jonathan Lea, a tour guide in Queenstown, down toward the bottom edge of South Island. His company, Nomad Safaris, retooled its basic jeep tour of the stunning mountain countryside around Queenstown to include some of the major filming sites. Business has doubled each of the past two years, largely thanks to visiting "Ring" nuts. “They're furious about information and trivia. They'll be quoting to you in Elvish.” He looks panicked. “Or is it Elven.”
But Lea is no “Ring” neophyte himself. He's a well-read J.R.R. Tolkien fan and his four-hour tour is a proper lecture on the great man's biography, mythos and how these craggy mountains — aptly named the Remarkables — stood in for his fabled lands: This leafy creek bed is where the black riders chased Liv Tyler on horseback; this spectral valley was the dreaded road to Mordor; that line of peaks was a stand-in for the Misty Mountains.
North vs. South
It's an eye-grabbing, cinematic landscape for sure, “Lord of the Rings” or no. And these panoramas are slightly different than the smaller scales of the North Island. “Up north,” as South Islanders say, the country is a more populated, more settled, a little rainier. But it's also more volcanic. Rotorua, a ticky-tacky tourist town near the center of the country, is New Zealand's Yellowstone. Hundreds of geysers and steam vents and boiling mud pits pock the countryside, including some right in town that perfume the air with sulfur. Almost every tourist visits Rotorua , and it is pleasant to soak in the thermal pools — if you don't mind smelling like a matchbook for the rest of the day. And, as a center of Maori culture, Rotorua does teach visitors a lot about the Polynesians who, a thousand years ago, were the first to discover what a nice place this is to live. (And who still stamp the culture with such town names as Paraparaumu and Paekakariki.) But they have begun to call the place “Roto-vegas” for a reason — the density of motels and gimcrack places is near the tipping point. I gave it a night, being more eager to linger over the urbane museums and cafes of Wellington and the hippie-dippy arts scene on Waiheke, a by-ferry-only island in Auckland Harbour.
On the South Island, where I had flown halfway through my all-too-brief Kiwi quest, the skies are bigger and the geology grander generally. Queenstown is New Zealand's recreational capital (and here, that means a lot). In the winter, which is to say June, July and August, it's a ski center. Now, in the sharpening autumn air of March, tourists still fill the lakeside tables and walk in short sleeves among the wool shops and Maori art galleries. They ride jet boats on the lake or take coach trips over to Milford Sound, the dramatic 13-mile-long fiord on the Tasman Sea.
And they jump off things. New Zealanders have a thing about jumping off things.
“They reckon more than a million people have jumped off that bridge,” says Lea, pointing to a 19th-century suspension bridge over the turquoise Kawarau River (just below the gorge where the towering statues of the two kings stood in The Movie). From a platform at the center of the span, we watch a small figure tip off and plunge 141 feet to the glacial waters, then snap back up like a Barbie on a rubber band. This is where commercial bungee jumping was born in 1988. Now, just around Queenstown, you can bungee off a 334-foot bridge, a platform suspended 40 stories above the Nevis River or even from a parasail being pulled behind a boat. In Auckland, you can also legally leap from the bridge that soars over Auckland Harbour (or, if you're timid, you can just strap on a safety harness and climb up one of the suspension towers for the view).
Adrenaline is a national addiction. In Christchurch, New Zealand's university center and one of its prettiest cities (it's my favorite, with gardens galore and a core of stone architecture), I accepted an invitation to dinner with some Kiwis I had met on the long flight from L.A. Neil and Angela Cameron seem a settled and professional couple with two young kids. But they had been skiing in Colorado the week before, at a Melbourne Grand Prix three days ago and were taking me for a rowdy neighborhood game of touch rugby before dinner. “If you've got time tomorrow, we might get the jet boat out of the garage,” Neil said.
It's funny — New Zealanders look like nice, quiet British folk.
Shepherd for a day
The drive across the South Island — endless vistas, empty highways — cements my growing impression that only isolation protects New Zealand from its own perfection. Drive an hour and you'll cross half a dozen fly-fishing streams, a few wineries, the odd town with smart cafes, witty theater and cable TV. They even speak a sort of English. If New Zealand could be towed a thousand miles closer to the Northern Hemisphere, 100 million people would live here.
Fortunately, the only population boom is of sheep — there are about 40 million of those — and I'd like to spend some time with the livestock. After all the movie glitz and high-city living, it will quiet my soul to walk the pastures with a genuine shepherd, his quiet flocks and his beloved dogs.
“Gus, you ignorant bastard,” Rusty Houston shrieks into my ear, causing me stumble over a grassy tussock. “Sorry mate,” he says more quietly. My fault, really, for getting between a farmer and his dog, which at this minute is barking frantically at a herd of bulls a hundred yards away. Gus, a muscular black collie, charges back and forth, slowly steering the cattle up the creek bed in response to Houston's calls, whistles and occasional profanity. Three other dogs, Brave, Dark and Shade, mill frantically around our legs, begging for the signal to charge into the fray. When we climb back into the rattletrap Range Rover to trail Gus from the ridgeline, the dogs trot expectantly at wheelside. The earth smells good under a light rain. Massive rainbows have been soaring across the sky all day. One of the farm's many flocks of sheep look on from a distant rise, unmolested for now.
“New Zealand would be stuffed without dogs,” Houston says, sticking his grizzled head out the window every few minutes to bellow at his team. “A few years ago, the larger stations went into helicopters in a big way. They did away with a lot of dogs, shepherds as well.” Houston, 55, has been a farmer all his life. He once sheared 385 lambs in one day. He grins a vindicated grin. “It didn't work out.”
Mixing the old ways and the latest thing is a guiding principle at Houston's Lakeview Homestay, a working farm tucked in the lee of Mount Cook, New Zealand's highest peak. The farm part is traditional, and Houston, a personable, roguish old hand, is happy to let you tag along on his rounds. (“That wee wire's got about 3,000 volts running through it, so it's not to be touched,” he tells me, just as I'm throwing one leg over the crotch-high strand.) The food, too, is sheep-station classic, with mutton that's allowed to hang for a few days before being roasted to meringue tenderness by his wife, Wendy.
But the house itself is a modern, stylish showplace that would look at home in Queenstown — or Vail. It's built low along a hilltop, with floor-to-ceiling windows that frame the landscape like Imax screens. Playing on one side is an enormous lake, Pukaki, where cloud shadows drift around the creamy blue surface like continents on a map. On the other side, when the clouds permit, is Mount Cook, rising above the toothy horizon of the Southern Alps.
It's impossible not to settle in here. After several colossal meals, a family trip to the pub and some serious pasture time, I tell the Houstons that I feel as if I've returned to the real New Zealand, the part still untouched by the ubiquitous cinema hype.
“Oh, you mean 'The Lord of the Rings,' ” Wendy says, standing. She points out the window to the rolling plains to the south. “Right down there is where they filmed one of the biggest battle scenes. It was massive, horses and tents everywhere. You can even take a tour if you like.”
Details: New Zealand
Getting There: The only good thing about the flight to New Zealand is that New Zealand is at the other end of it. It's about 18 hours air time from Washington, and excellent bargains are rare. Air New Zealandis the big player, with round-trip fares now through November beginning at $848 from Los Angeles ($912 with taxes). Qantas also flies between L.A. and Auckland and currently has a Web deal from L.A. for $691 ($761 with taxes).
I made out well with a $1,755 package that included airfare from Los Angeles, eight days' rental car and seven nights of vouchers for hotels around the country. The hotels were all pleasant but unremarkable, but the tour company did a good job of keeping up with last-minute schedule changes. The deal is also available April through August for $1,449 per person, double occupancy, through Newmans South Pacific Vacations (800-416-0667, www.newmansvacations.com). In August, as New Zealand's winter gives way to spring, prices will begin to climb again. January and February are the priciest.
GETTING AROUND: New Zealand is just a little smaller than and similar in shape to California, but split into two separate islands. More time is better, obviously, but even a nine-day gallop around the country can be deeply fun — and worth the long trip. If you're comfortable driving on the left side of the road, renting a car provides maximum flexibility; the traveling is easy and the distances usually kind. I flew between North Island and South Island, picking up a new car each time, but there is also ferry service between the two. I hit most of the major tourist stops on my blitz: Auckland (the biggest city), Rotorua (geysers, mineral spas, the excellent Maori Arts and Crafts Institute and thermal reserve), Wellington (the capital, of both politics and sophistication), Queenstown (for winter skiing and summer tramping), Mount Cook National Park (Australasia's highest peak) and Christchurch (an Anglican city of gardens and fine restaurants).
"LORD OF THE RINGS" TOURS: It's easy to fall in with the LOTR pilgrims who are driving up New Zealand's tourist numbers; in fact, it can be hard to avoid it (a huge Gollum sculpture, for example, is perched over the departure gate at the Wellington airport). Peter Jackson filmed in hundreds of places around the country, but the only actual movie set that remains standing is the Hobbiton set in Matamata, a couple of hours south of Auckland. The two-hour tour departs from the town visitors center and costs about $33. Info: 011-64-7- 888-6838, www.hobbitontours.com.
On South Island, a number of companies drive and fly you to film sites, each of which is a terrific landscape in its own right. Nomad Safaris (011-64-3- 442-6699, www.nomadsafaris.co.nz) in Queenstown offers worthy jeep tours, some of them led by guides who were extras in the films. Glenorchy Air (011-64-3-442-2207, www.trilogytrail.com), which flew some of the cast and crew, offers small-plane tours, including landings at some remote sites, starting at about $83 per person.
WHERE TO STAY: New Zealand has good hotels, and even cheap roadside places tend to be comfortable and clean. Ultrabudget travelers are beloved, with multiple hostels (called "backpackers") in every town of any size offering dorm beds and single rooms in the $12-to-$30 range. The country is also full of lodges, some of them tipping into four figures a night. See Tourism New Zealand, below, for a list of accommodations. My favorite place was Lakeview Homestay, a recently built private farmhouse 30 minutes from Mount Cook National Park. For about $120 a night, you get overwhelming views, abundant farm cooking, sheep dog demos and hosts who know how to keep you lingering around the table to hear more dubious yarns. Info: 011-64-3-435- 0567, www.lakeviewhomestay.co.nz.
WHERE TO EAT: New Zealand cuisine ranges from fish and chips to Maori pit-steamed vegetables to mutton, mutton, mutton. Seafood from the surrounding Pacific is ubiquitous and delicious. And with wineries popping up everywhere, foodies can now make a decent wine-and-food tour of either island. Among many good meals, the pan-Asian cuisine at Christchurch's Indochine (209 Cambridge Terrace) stood out. You can assemble a tapas-style meal from numerous starters in the $7 range. In Rotorua, the Fat Dog (1161 Arawa St.) is a lively downtown cafe with a boisterous dinner scene (entrees in the $20 to $30 range) and a fine weekend brunch.
INFO: Tourism New Zealand, 866-639- 9325, www.newzealand.com.