Andy Came To Visit

Deer Park Heights

Taking advantage of Andy's car, we drove out to Deer Park Heights. Although visible across the Frankton Arm of Lake Wakatipu, it actually takes about 40 minutes to drive there. It's kind of like a zoo... but different. You can drive or walk in (driving is way preferable since it's a huge hill), and there are a bunch of different kinds of animals hanging out there. Some are enclosed by thin wire fences; most just roam around freely. And unlike any zoo that I've ever been to, they let you feed the animals. There are even feed stations where one can buy food specifically for feeding the animals.

Among other things, we saw bison, fallow deer, yaks, bison, goats, thar, llamas, ducks, and of course, sheep. Quite an eclectic collection of animals; I certainly wasn't expecting to see any llamas or yaks during my travels in New Zealand. There was a group of 3 llamas just sitting around, not enclosed by a fence, so I decided they probably weren't too dangerous. I decided to go see if I could sit with them and meandered on over, trying to look as innocent as possible. If you check out the flickr photos, you'll see that one of the llamas wasn't fooled and ran away. The other two seemed not to mind so much and let me hang out with them for a bit. I'd never seen a llama in person before and was surprised at how massive they are. They HUGE!

The park was also interesting because it had a bunch of spots where sections of the Lord of the Rings trilogy were filmed - primarily from "The Two Towers," and there was a little flyer at the entrance to the park describing all the spots and what happened in the movies at each location. I've seen all the movies, but since that amounts to over 9 hours of footage, I didn't remember a lot of the little scenes described in the flyer. Probably the most memorable scene from the movie that was filmed on the hill was where Aragorn is attacked by a warg and dragged over a rock into the rushing river below. Well that rock is here, and even though this picture doesn't show it, there's certainly no river below...just more of the hill. The river used in the film is the Kawarau river, the river that is the outflow from Lake Wakatipu; it doesn't begin until about half a mile away from where that scene was filmed. And such is the miracle of modern film making.

There's also some amazing view from the top of the hill. In one direction, Frankton and the Remarkables. In the other, a wide panorama of Lake Wakatipu. It's a pity the day wasn't a little clearer, but I suppose even the mist looks kinda cool.

Wine Tasting and Wanaka

The area Queenstown lies in, Central Otago, is famous for it's wine. Specifically it's Pinot Noir. There are probably 30-40 wineries in the area, most of which offer tastings of their latest offerings. So Andy and I spent two days exploring some of the local wineries. I pretty much know nothing about wine so I felt a bit lost among the people exclaming things like "beautifully balanced!" or "green apple on the nose, followed by some melon, pineapple, and what's that? a bit of peach. nice finish..." but it was cool to taste a lot of different types of wines. My wine consumption typically involves lots of food, loud music, boxes, and perhaps reinflating the bag to use as a pillow. So this was a nice change.

The wineries were absolutely gorgeous, as wineries generally are. Many of them also had pretty cafes where it would have been nice to kick back and enjoy a sunny afternoon. It was overcast during the days that we went, but I'm sure that they will merit another visit when summer rolls around.

We went into one winery, Gibbston Farms, and found that they were charging for tasting. Tasting fees at wineries are generally nominal and refundable upon purchase but considering that most places will let you taste for free, I have a hard time rationalizing paying to taste. So we wandered over to the Cheesery, also operated by Gibbston Farms. They let us taste their cheese for free, and it was excellent. They had a wide variety of cheeses, mostly made from sheep's milk (surprise), and Andy and I each ended up buying a block.

We continued past the wineries to Wanaka, a pretty little city near Queenstown. We ate a late lunch there and looked around the town for a bit. But with a population of 3500, there's not a whole lot to see. So our time there was pretty limited, but we did get some pretty pictures there and during the drive back.

Giving thanks, NZ style

Thanksgiving isn't much of a holiday here. Which makes sense, given its origins. So when I began planning a Thanksgiving dinner, people just laughed at me..."silly american." But it was my first Thanksgiving away from home and I was determined to get ahold of a turkey for the 4th Thursday in November.

This proved to be a harder task than I had imagined. To begin with, the only grocery store in town is a small market, about the size of a big 7-11. There are two larger grocery stores in some of the nearby towns, but the last thing I wanted to do was lug a frozen turkey home on a 40 minute walk. Luckily, Andy Greene, a buddy of mine from Caltech who is living in Christchurch, came to visit for a few days. And he has a car.

So after buying the biggest turkey in the store (a whopping 11 pounds), we made up a traditional thanksgiving menu and went to the store armed with shopping lists and recipes. We ran into a few snags...like when we went to buy yams and were told that yams are out of season. So we bought kumara instead, which is a fairly common vegetable in New Zealand. I had never heard of it before coming to NZ, and I had never tasted it before the other day, but apparently it's some relative of sweet potatoes. So we just went with it and made the yam recipe...but with kumara instead. And it actually turned out decently...didn't really taste like yams, but I guess if you put enough brown sugar in anything, it can't be SO bad.

In the end, we put together a respectable number of plates - here's the final menu:

Fresh salmon with toasted croustini
Fresh vegetable salad (courtesy of Katie and Andrea)
Ambrosia (Andy's dish I'd never heard of)
Stuffing
Kumara...made to a yam recipe
Turkey and gravy
Mashed potatoes
Ice cream sundaes (by Megan)
Coconut cream pie

So like good Americans on Thanksgiving, we stuffed ourselves until we couldn't move. And then ate some more.

Leftovers have carried me a few days now, and Andy's making a soup from the turkey bones. So hopefully I won't be back to pasta and peanut butter sandwiches for at least a few more days.

Vampiric Musings

It certainly isn't your typical 9-5. 9 PM to 5 AM, perhaps. But things are just different working at night.

Things I don't like:

• The only things open when I want to get food during the middle of my shift are Subway, a burger place, and the 24 hour store (at least they serve wedges)
• The rest of the world operates during the daytime so I have to do all my errands before work starts.
• My room has two decently large windows that make sleeping during the day a bit of a challenge

Things I like:

• Seeing really motivated people on their morning run as I'm walking home
• The light at the beginning of the day before the sun actually emerges from behind the mountains
• The moment when all the streetlights all go out at the same time

Drinking on the Job

Last night was the going away party for one of the managers at Bardeaux. Now Bardeaux is run by an organization that runs about 7 or so bars in the area, so I'm constantly meeting people who are all my bosses in one form or another. And last night they were out in full force. I generally get some kind of warning...they'll introduce themselves to me (not many people who aren't VERY confident around the bar will do that) or I'll hear one of them murmur to another "who's the new guy behind the bar" or something along those lines. And so I wasn't quite prepared when a "customer" followed his drink order with "Where's your black shirt?"

Since Bardeaux is a pretty small bar, there's no "standard uniform." There's only a few staff, so the management doesn't need everybody always looking the same. But all the same, I wasn't quite sure who this guy was, or how much control he had over my paycheck. So I politely explained that my black shirt was dirty from the prior day's work and was in the wash. He looked at me incredulously and after a moment's pause followed with "You only have ONE black shirt?" He looked stunned, as if I had just told him that we had run out of water.

Now a little bit more unsure of myself and who this guy was and just how important he was, I told a little story about how I'm new from the states and only brought one black collared shirt and hadn't gotten the chance to get another and etc etc etc...

So that seemed to appease him for a little bit and he went on his way. A little bit later he came back and bought some shots, including some for myself and Adrian (the other barman working). I figured that he had forgotten about his little outburst earlier, or that he had forgiven the color of my shirt, since he was now buying us drinks. But the moment that Adrian and I tipped back our drinks, this guy looks over at the manager and yells "Angelo! FIRE these two for drinking on the job!"

Uh Oh

So it actually turns out that this guy is in charge of the organization that I mentioned earlier, and owns 50% of Bardeaux. So his word is law. But apparently he also likes to come in and mess with the new bartenders and keep them on their toes. So I get to keep my job. For now. But you can be sure that I'm going to buy myself a few more black shirts.

Whirlpools and eddies and rapids! Oh my.

I have seen the face of absurdity. And it looks like a me on a boogie board, going down the Roaring Meg rapids, a class III+ section of the Kawarau river (currently as warm as about 48-50 degrees).For those who might be unfamiliar with whitewater rapid classification (I'd assume pretty much everybody, myself included), this is from the international scale of river difficulty:

Grade III

A Grade III (Three) section will have numerous rapids, irregular waves and moderate drops, harder eddies that may recirculate and stoppers may form below drops and in waves. The river may have a broken flow that might not always present a clear course. Often these sections have a series of drops creating a steep overall gradient. On the whole, from-the-water inspection should be sufficient, although some harder parts may need inspection from the river bank.

Grade IV

A Grade IV (Four) section will feature long, difficult rapids with highly irregular waves, a steep gradient, a stepped profile with drops up to 3m in height, difficult eddys and whirlpools. The course of the river may be hard to recognize and powerful but predictable flows require precise handling, with a high risk to swimmers. Off-river inspection is highly advised, as is bank support for some features.

Eek.