The other New Zealand

I have something I have to get off my chest.

When we met 4 New Zealanders in Bolivia (well, 3 New Zealanders and one Frenchie living there who has had to field a lot of questions about the Rainbow Warrior) we were also with an English couple who had just spent 7 weeks there. Of course, it was a great opportunity for us to learn about the country, especially as Steven and Lisa had been in a camper van and developing tricks to go in a budget stylie.

We had plenty of time to talk and it soon became a running joke that our New Zealander friends were from 'the other New Zealand' because it seemed that the others had experienced totally different places and aspects of life and culture. This was mostly due to our friends being resident in Auckland, a city of 2.5 million, holding just under half of the country's human population, which is a long way, in many ways, from the South Island.

I found that there was another New Zealand. In fact I found dichotomies and dualities everywhere. The country is schizophrenic (correctly the country actually suffers from dissociative identity disorders), through my own thinly veiled diasthema# I found New Zealand to be hypocritical at best or downright deceitful at worst.

I should and will explain and anyone about to go on holiday there should take this with a pinch of salt - it is a truly amazing place after all - and everyone should get the chance to visit.

If I have discovered that Argentina is the country of the sandwich; that Mexico is the country for human indiginous diversity; that Easter Island is the place to head for er... stone heads; that Australia is the place for warning signs and really dangerous stuff (snakes, box jellyfish, sharks, drunk Australians); then I have learnt that New Zealand is the country of tourist information. In Latin America it was called Informaciones Turisticas or something and never really existed beyond a sign on a wall.

In New Zealand it means that there are signs everywhere, for everything. The 'true wilderness' is signposted throughout. Every turn in every trekking, tramping, hiking, walking, yomping and stomping trail is highlighted, usually with accompanying in depth detail about the flora and fauna which exist or no longer exist en route.

And there is a leaflet for everything. We had three compartments under our bed in the van. One was just for leaflets. The amount of tourist leaflets in the country of New Zealand is obscene. On South Island there is not much outside the few medium sized towns but the best, newest, shiniest buildings are the leaflet warehouses of the tourist information centres. There are definitely more info centres than towns on the south island and they all have the same leaflets - millions of them.

In my humble opinion New Zealand must be the most developed country for tourism in the world. Spain may have a coastline bursting with the development of tourist concrete, and countries such as Thailand and Peru may be totally dependent on tourism with many communities solely developing for tourists in different ways - but New Zealand is like the tourist barge in the Battlestar Galactica fleet. And I am talking South Island predominantly - North Island has a different character but much in common outside Auckland.

And that is why I am allowed this post. On one hand I love information. Being on a walk and having instant access to details I would never otherwise discover is very rewarding - and makes it feel like great value. The DoC (Department of Conservation in NZ) have done an incredible job to the envy of the rest of the world with their meticulous approach to their national parks. On the other hand the tourist literature in New Zealand is monstrously over-the-top, filled with ridiculous claims and is very adept at raising expectations to unreachable levels. IMHO New Zealand is full of contradictions and weaknesses. As a marketer and copywriter I think that the strategists many years ago set out to fix many 'issues' and in doing so, the claims that they make have left me disappointed, empty, a little betrayed - and determined to respond. Especially on South Island, tourism is so woven into every person and every building in every tiny hamlet, that a lot of personalities we came across (in shops, streets, cafes, parks, walks etc.) seemed to be extensions of this grand design - the locals and then also the tourists were singing from the same hymn sheet as the signs, leaflets, pamphlets and exhibits.

True wilderness - New Zealanders are rightly proud of their amazing scenery. However to constantly claim that national park X, trail Y, or area Z is true wilderness is fallacious. Granted, there are areas (where it rains 7m a year or there are 3500m plus mountains) where there are no people, no sheep and no paths but everywhere else is filled with marked trails, farming, people, reforestation projects and roads plied only by tourist camper vans. This is in stark contrast to say; deserts (Africa, Asia, America, Australia), or rainforest (particaularly Amazonian or Indonesian, where even the inhabited areas are often wilderness). The worst example of this was a ski resort that billed itself as 'the inbound backcountry'. When you have just been to Canada, and you can see from the roadside that the resort is tiny, you (well, I) want to get of the car and give someone a thrashing - or at least call advertising standards.

Heritage - like pretty much every nation on earth (except probably people at war who don't have time to think about it but are probably fighting for it) New Zealanders are proud of the past. Without veering into the indiginous debate (seperate point) there is lots of fascinating stuff about the pioneers and the incredible fortitude and ingenuity of the settlers. However, and this really pi**ed me off, every tiny 3 shack hamlet has a heritage trail, and most have a welcome sign proclaiming that you are now entering 'the historical town of x'. I had a big problem with this as I found New Zealand's towns and villages incredibly disappointing. To be cruel they were generally charmless and boring. Napier had its art deco, there were a few nice buildings, cafes and shops dotted around but by comparison I would say that all the towns on South Island put together had less charm than any random Cornish, Dorset or Sussex village - and most certainly vastly less heritage and history. One sign even referred to entering the 'historical heritage town of...'. Shakespeare said 'the lady doth protest too much.' We went to one museum proudly displaying a whopping 42 years of village history. OK it is all they've got, like the national radio show where a lady talked about her historical book on three generations of village life for two hours, but it is way beyond rational to hype these kind of claims.

Natural diversity - New Zealand has lots of amazing looking stuff, there is no doubt about that. The locals and the leaflets constantly give you the impression that the country has the most amazing diversity on the planet. Except it doesn't. Not in my opinion. Australia, and even California, even Bolivia are more diverse. In NZ they claim it so i am allowed a rebuttle. I am starting to think it is because people only go to NZ once so the hype-machine can get away with it. Yes, NZ has amazing Fiords, rainforest, coastline, mountains, geothermal areas and wildlife. Bolivia is definately more diverse (and you could make a similar claim for Argentina and many others). It has Amazonian rainforest and pampas at 100m, desert, 4km high salt plains, mountains, geothermal areas, lakes and looks and feels like being on the moon most of the time. California has pretty much everything except rainforest but instead has the world's tallest trees plus some of the world's most extreme human settlements (those cities are pretty diverse). What they don't point out at length in New Zealand is that, in the short period since European colonisation, they (or we if you prefer) have done a very good job at messing up the place.

Most of the species of whales are gone from the coasts, and there are very few penguins left. Probably my 'kul wadah' moment of realisation came when were in a penguin hide waiting to spot one of the six yellow eyed penguins that lived in the area. It turned out that we were in a conservation area that was a beach that had to be rescued from farming and had to be reforested in order to provide habit to save the birds from extinction. There are not many penguins left in New Zealand. We went to the see the famous New Zealand glaciers, cunningly billed as the 'largest most accessible glaciers close to a major road in the southern hemisphere' or something similar. We were gutted. Of course, we live in snow and ice of some of the year - a travelling companion of mine described them as looking a bit like a Finnish ski slope in spring. Unfortunately they were not the ice-cracking-into-the-sea wilderness experience of Patagonia (that we missed - this time). The were crawling with access roads, tour parties, walkers, climbers, fools taking photos under the crumbling face, and they were not very impressive. Despite the highly extravagant claims of the brochures.

The New Zealand farmland is undeniably beautiful - in fact I the rolling sheep-infested countryside aroud Christchurch was probably my favourite vista - but it hides that fact the country has been subject to ruthless deforestation, precipitating all the usual side effects - loss of habitats and extinctions, and soil erosion. There are Kiwis or course, and every glow worm hole is a tourist destination in itself but I keep coming back to compare Easter Island with NZ, especially as they were settled around the same time. Easter Island is known only for the heads and for the fact that it was completely raped by humans and farming practices pretty much much destroyed all the ecosystems on the land island and in the surrounding water. It took the Easter Islanders a thousand years to render their island barren. As far as I can see it has taken colonial practices only a few hundred years to destroy much of New Zealand's nature, even if the big stuff (mountains and er... mountains... has been left intact).

The experience of your lifetime - We have seen a flyer for a sheepshearing show billing it is the experience of your lifetime. I thought at first it must be ironic but the leaflet tried to justify it. You see pretty much everything about New Zealand is once-in-a-lifetime, unforgettable, one-of-a-kind... except that it isn't is it - it never is. On one hand the leaflets and even offical goverment signs go to amazing lengths to prove uniqueness. And, yes, you have noticed that this is the copywriting partof my brain talking. A waterfall is the 'tallest single tract fall in the southern hemisphere outside of the Americas and Asia' or it is 'the biggest rock on this coast south of Dunedin' or the 'biggest national park on the north of south island' or something. Unlike America. Where when they say it is the biggest roadside donut in the world you can be sure it is. Or the Nile, the Amazon, Mount Everest, or the biggest rat in the world from Bolivia. Or Malaysia, where they have their own book of records because they are nation obsessed with balancing coins on noses and cans on mopeds and fireworks on skyscrapers. You know it is true. But in New Zealand what is written on a sign or leaflet probably isn't true. New Zealanders surprisingly don't have much of chip on the shoulder about the Aussies but they are gutted they don't have the world's most dangerous snakes.

And I leant something. In NZ everything is an experience. Some readers will be catching some familiar tones here. I have learnt that refering to something as an experience is ultimately vacuous. A thing that is in need of description does not benefit from being termed an experience. It is a tautology in the making and only serves to convey a confused lack of substance, relevance and conviction.

The activities centre of the world - yes, NZ is a brilliant place to go if you want to jump out of plane, go canyon power boating, bungee jumping, rafting and canyoneering all on the same day. And in a way you kind of have to. Of course, part of me wishes that we had had unlimited funds and could have taken a sktdive or power boat ride. But that is because you knida have to. You see, I unfortunately think that New Zealand is such a very boring place that you need to have your adrenalin charged by something - hence the wonderful symbiosis that exists between the country, the tourists and the extreme activities. In truth all the activities can probably be done in your home country and most can probably done in most other major tourist destinations (in Dubai you can probably do them all indoors!). However NZ is a great location, particularly around Queensland, which has wonderful scenery and, of course, every bungee-tight-rope, hot air-bridge-swing, boat-bubble-ball combo you could imagine. I should mention that while everyone else was taking their gran bungee jumping in Queensland we went for a crafty cheeseboard. You should also be aware that you jump will not actually be the 'first', 'highest', 'longest', or 'narrowest' - those accolades would belong to some SoCal hippie or a Polynesian islander - and that it will not be the 'experience of a lifetime' - that will be the birth of your first child, probably, unless you have twins.

Nearly done but this wouldn't be complete without a quick slagging off for Auckland. We expected a cosier Sydney. We were gutted. Ponsonby was nearly charming but it really was disappointing. Before our trip we always thought of NZ as a distant possible future home. Not anymore. And what Auckland brought home was the huge solcial issue facing New Zealand - that of race and the integration of the indiginous population with the settlers. We have only briefly witnessed the struggles of indiginous people; in the USA, where it has been swept away on a barge crowned with a head-dress shaped casino; in Mexico, where myriad local tribes have kept ancient ways of living but autonomy is a still an armed struggle for some; In Australia, where the loss of nomidic lifestyles and social exclusion of Aboriginals manifests in alcohol problems evident on the strets of most towns; in Finland, where the Sami are OK but have lost their lifestyles and are losing their language as fast as they have lost their land. And New Zealand, which doesn't have much news, so the same news stays on for a week, but most news stories are of alcohol-related domestic abuse in the indiginous community. And where the lifestyles of the indiginous peoples have left them disinfranchised from the benefits of development and, in particular the education system.

New Zealand is relatively small however and its people do have a wonderful characteristic - similar to the Finns - issues seem to be debated openly and with a calm enthusiasm. My hope is that, particularly be investing in education, New Zealanders are able to develop ways to offer indiginous descendants options in a new future.

To sum up; I won't go again, and I would definately recommend Australia first; but everyone should go; but go with the will to get extreme and dirty; and don't believe anything you read - particularly not my opinions in this blog. I hope you find the other New Zealand!

PS Sorry to the lovely New Zealanders we have met. Nothing personal. I just had to get it off my chest.

#Diasthema = my gappy front teeth