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I Like It Here!

Writer's picture: Pru WarrenPru Warren

Oct. 24 (Thursday)

 


The plan to separate 52 travelers from the NG Orion was only entertainingly complex if you’d had enough sleep the night before…and since we all had to have our luggage outside our cabin doors by 6am, pretty much no one had slept well. (Myself, I’d been awake long enough to associate the coastal lighthouses with a Gandalfian plan to force Rohan into backing up Gondor, so—not enough sleep.)

 

As Twig and I came upstairs from breakfast, we saw a new table outside the lounge, featuring things made of wood. Like, the masks, etc. people had bought on Ambryn, the Island of Black Magic…

 

“What are those?” We wondered. “Are those available for purchase? There are no price tags. Look—there’s the huge carved iguana from the observation room. What is that?”

 

There was no answer; no signage. Now, in retrospect, I think they must have been wooden items identified by the New Zealand Biosecurity Team, which was prowling the ship looking for trouble. They must have said “Set that aside for us—and that. And that.”

 

At 7:15, we were supposed to get our passports back and pass through customs. I happened to be sitting in the lounge when they announced that the customs agents were ready for us in the lounge, so I leapt to my feet, passport and declaration card in hand, happy to be third in the line that soon snaked endlessly behind me…

 

…because the customs agents were ALSO the biosecurity agents. I watched as the first passenger pulled out the mask he’d bought on Ambryn. The very serious biosecurity guard took it, turned it over in his hands thoughtfully, examined it, tapped it on the little round lounge table in front of him, and consulted with his colleague. The line of passengers behind me was now stretching out the door.

 

Finally a customs agent beckoned me forward. The passport scan was almost instantaneous. Then she looked at my declaration form.

 

“You have things to declare?”

 

“Yes,” I said. “A wooden fruit bat and a bamboo flute—but they’re in my checked luggage, and that’s gone.”

 

“Oh, no. You’ll have to go get them. And get them cleared by my associates, here.”

 

Well, shit. So I went in search of a Lindbladian to ask about this. No naturalists in sight—but a waiter paused long enough in her journey, burdened with six cups of coffee for the customs teams, to note that all the luggage was on the back deck, waiting for customs to clear it all.

 

Oh, phew! I scrounged around in the huge rats nest of luggage and found mine. I hauled it up on a table and opened it, sharing with the interested participants in the Aukland harbor not only my incidentals but also my packing technique, and fished out my wooden objects. I don’t know why I thought I’d be showing a biosecurity agent these items in a more controlled setting, but I had—so at their request, I’d made a note to show them my sneakers, and done a “pack this last” of my swim leggings, shirt, and bathing suit since they’d asked about any equipment used in the wild. But I was NOT going to carry those items back through the now-hopelessly-crowded lounge.

 

Plus now I was number 47 in a line of people that now stretched down the corridor as the serious man at the little round table tapped each item carefully. Fuck.

 

Actually, I moved forward faster because word began to spread. “Wait—I have to have my wooden objects NOW? But I packed that! I don’t want that mask in my carry-on bag!” Fully three-quarters of the passengers detoured out of line to the back deck, where everyone threw open their luggage to pull out the masks, flutes, fruit bats. Heather the naturalist pulled out an immense package. “What is that?” “Bow and arrow,” she answered happily. From somewhere before we got on board.

 

When I finally got back to the serious man, he liked my fruit bat but told me my bamboo flute was not treated. I evinced surprise and he smiled at me patiently. “What do you think?” he asked the woman beside him. “Hmm,” she said thoughtfully. (Behind me I heard “Hold on—I need the mask NOW? But, I packed that! I don’t want to carry that on the plane with me! Why weren’t we  told this?”)

 

“Well,” said the serious man’s colleague, “I don’t know.” They both stared at the flute thoughtfully, stroking their chins and giving it a good, long think. “Have you got your torch?” she asked him. “Yes—here it is.” He fished around in his bag for a while and pulled out a penlight. “Give it a look,” she said. “See how it looks inside.” “Yes,” he replied. “I think that’s a good idea.” The pressure building up behind us would have popped a champagne cork.

 

“I’ll let you have it,” he said finally. “But perhaps you’d be so good as to keep this in your luggage while you’re in New Zealand.”

 

“I certainly will—thank you!”

 

“And this sporting equipment you’ve listed here?”

 

“Ah—my sneakers. I scrubbed them, though.” Please don’t make me go get my bathing suit…

 

“Yes? Well, let me see. Very good. And the other foot, please? Ah. Well done. All right then. Enjoy your stay.”

 

I believe in taking the threat of biohazards seriously—I really do. New Zealand is an island nation and they have every right to protect themselves. But Lindblad has been to Aukland Harbor before. Surely they should have warned us not to pack away anything we’d bought?


Here's the fab gate that defined our quay at the wharf. Nice faces--nice lions!

 


The last event was a bus tour through the charming community of Devonport, which included journeys to the peaks of two old volcanos, which were green and beautiful and offered gasp-inducing views of the waterways and islands around us; in comparison the cityscape of Aukland across the bridge was glaring and ugly.

 

“Volcanoes?” asked one Lindblad patron nervously.

 

“Oh, yes,” said our local guide. “But the whole area has been declared geologically dormant. Why, our last volcanic eruption was 600 years ago!”

 

Given that the 600-year-old eruption raised the biggest island in the harbor, and that in terms of geology, 600 years is the blink of an eye, I thought his assurances were rather lacking in substance, but the views were astonishing.



Look. Can you see the Orion docked in big-city Aukland? White upper decks, blue hull. Look past the huge Grimaldi Lines tanker. As this picture was taken, the entire staff was in a mad cleaning frenzy getting ready for the new freight of passengers; they get like four hours and then everything has to be ready. Blech. Bad day for them!


Also in the above photo: One of five ships in the New Zealand Navy. They used to have six, but someone read a chart wrong and the sixth one sank... kinda embarrassing. On the other hand, New Zealand just won the America's Cup again, so the news is not all bad for them!


Twig, Harry, and I finally uncoupled from the group before lunch and headed to the airport to await our 3:15 flight to Blenheim on the south island. Our tenure at the airport was tedious, but we all enjoyed no longer being part of a multi-headed beast. Twig bought a sweater that made her completely happy; she’d been cold since we left the tropics. Once she got the sweater though, she began emitting the I Am Fully Happy Twig Sigh, so that was especially cheering.

 

The flight to the south islands was on a little prop plane, but it was willing and we arrived without incident—save for me gasping at the view out the window. We’ve arrived in a part of New Zealand that must have been VERY up-and-downy before ocean levels rose at the end of the last ice age; the waterways now flow far inland, surrounding what I thought were mountains until I saw the REAL mountains in the distance. I sez to myself I sez, “Jeezum Crow, Prudence—you need to move to New Zealand right quick.”



And that was before we left the plane and felt the soft freshness of the light breeze. It’s the kind of air that makes you stop and say “Ahh.” And then inhale much more deeply than usual, pulling apart all that lazy, soft tissue at the bottom of the lungs that usually just phones it in. It is NICE here.

 

We had a little confusion over the GPS system in the car that Twig and Harry kindly rented. “Does the car have GPS?” Harry asked the lovely woman at the rental counter. “Oh, yes,” she replied. Good. We’re going to do some traveling, and having our route on a screen will ease a lot of anxieties.

 

But once in the car, the GPS system announced that the subscription had expired; please touch the button to continue guidance.

 

What button?

 

Finally I dragged the nice lady from the rental booth. She frowned at the screen for a while too and finally called someone. She thanked the person she’d called and hung up. “This car doesn’t have GPS,’ she announced definitively.

 

I’d already been driving on the wrong side of the road to get back to her, and we were weary from our day of travel and of biosecurity gauntlets. We all blinked at her. “Well, do you have a car WITH GPS available?”

 

“I can check,” she said doubtfully. “But why don’t you hook your phone up to the car with Bluetooth?”

 

Because, I thought but did not say out loud, then I’m paying for internet in New Zealand. And then I thought FUCK IT and tried to hook up. In the back seat Harry was doing the same thing and the car’s system couldn’t handle the dual assault. But finally we got Harry’s phone linked to the car and we were off! Whee!

 

Drive on the wrong side, drive on the wrong side, drive on the wrong side. My mantra.

 

My two issues were that my instinct is to park my butt on the line that delineates the shoulder, as I would in the US, which meant that several times Twig had to yip in fear as I nearly sideswiped a car or ran us into a ditch, but I feel this tendency is correctable. The other challenge is that the turn signal is where the windshield wiper controls should be, and vice versa—so several times I definitively announced my intentions to the world by aggressively wiping the windshield…but there you go. This too is correctible.

 

The roads in this magnificent valley are straight and wide and uncrowded. The driving was NOT BAD AT ALL (although the passengers might have disagreed if asked!), and soon we got to The Marlborough, which is a boutique hotel in a part of this valley confusingly called The Marlborough, so every taxi or van we saw looked like it had been sent by the hotel to find us and lead us in…

 

When we got here (after an action-packed U-turn because the GPS is now giving directions in meters and kilometers and I overshot the driveway), we entered the kind of paradise that only huge gouts of money can afford. This place is utterly stunning. Gardens and huge lawns (with lawn-mowing roombas trundling silently around keeping the place looking tidy) and creekside walks of the most perfectly-groomed wilderness ever seen. Through the trees, miles of grape vines in their tidy rows.



We’re going on a wineries tour in ten minutes, so I must pause here to put on some sunblock. Not that you’ll notice the pause!

 

There. See? No time at all! Here's the New Zealand flag just over the bridge at The Marlborough:



The main building of The Marlborough used to be a Catholic nunnery. Forty or fifty years ago, when the building was being threatened with demolition, someone bought it, chain-sawed it into six pieces, put them on flatbeds, and drove it to this location, where it was stitched back together and made into a “guest house.” This experience was so successful that in later years when a chapel was similarly threatened, it too was relocated.

 

So now in the middle of some of the MANY vineyards in this valley is an oasis of gardens, featuring its own desanctified convent and its own desanctified chapel, none of which has even slight religious tones and all of which are used for many cocktails and glasses of wine.  So THAT’S entertaining.

 

When we arrived, there was a moment of confusion by the tailgate. Take our bags and try to check in? Leave our bags and make sure we’re going in the right door? Harry persuaded us to come back for our bags. Then we walked in and met Marcie and Rob, who own the place. They were thrilled to see us—the kind of thrilled that typifies brutally expensive places. Like the Inn at Little Washington, which has the best claim to pretentiousness but is instead cheerily friendly. Marcie had me give her the keys so she could get our bags up to our rooms while Rob took us to the chapel and gave us cocktails and the executive chef brought us treats. (Tempura squid, fresh-caught today. Hotel-cured olives with all kinds of flavors in them. Tender balls of the world’s best goat cheese, crusted with crushed hazelnuts roasted on the property. YES PLEASE.)



I am in love with this huge painting of a bull in the chapel.



Then Rob gave us the quick tour (down that hedge-lined path is the pool and the croquet lawn, here is the outside fireplace which we’ll keep lit until midnight if you want to sit on one of these comfortable sofas, here’s a lovely huge map of the area on the wall—these are routes I recommend if you want a beautiful day trip and by the way here’s the secret wall switch that makes the entire map slide to the side, revealing the inside entrance to the restaurant. Like a James Bond feature.

 

My room is on the second floor, with doors to a balcony. But, because the doors open by some mysterious New Zealand mechanism that I can’t figure out, I’ve gone out the window. The room itself is huge and plush and not even remotely haunted by the ghosts of Sister Mary Ignatius, or whoever used to live here—and the bathroom is nicer than anything the nuns ever saw.




We had dinner last night at the hotel’s restaurant, Harvest, which uses only locally-sourced foods. (Was it ONLY locally sourced? I can’t remember. Probably not. Even here in this spectacularly fertile valley, they probably don’t grow saffron or, I don’t know, what else is only grown in specific places?) We had the misfortune to be seated after a party of 16, part of a tour group that shows up every single Wednesday night during the tourist season, and we believe our main courses were entirely forgotten by the kitchen. We each had a (perfectly delicious) beet salad and then nothing for over an hour. Twig finally faded and went to bed, which horrified everyone. We received heartfelt apologies from the waitress, the restaurant manager, and finally from the executive chef, who came out to express his horror that we’d waited so long. He wanted us to tell Twig that the kitchen would prepare the duck she’d ordered at ANY time the next day. (Hm. Breakfast?? Afternoon tea?)

 

Harry and I lasted through the main course (I had something called lemon fish which must have referred to its color since it was certainly not its flavor; the dish was not memorable and I mostly at Harry’s delicious truffle fries) and then parted gratefully to go to our respective palatial rooms. The bed was dreamy; I know that because I dreamed a lot. Or I assume I did; I was that tired.

 

This morning’s breakfast was better! I had a pair of perfectly poached eggs on top of a pouf of magnificent smoked salmon, all on an English muffin—plus a little jar of outstanding Greek yogurt with granola in it. Oh, purrrrr. I can tell it was particularly good because I don’t believe I’ve mentioned food much in this blog…have I?

 

The hotel had secured the services of Joe to take us on a wine-tasting day. Joe turned out to be a former policeman in a suit; he was fantastic. There was nothing he didn’t know about wine, or the people who made it. He was full of actual knowledge as well as tasty wine-related gossip. Very entertaining.

 


He took us to the “cellar door” (which means a tasting room) of Hans Herzog, who doesn’t sell in the US but does ship to the US. I had water, and Harry and Twig chose four of the wines and are having a box shipped to them. We had lunch and went to Mahi, the second winery, where we got to see a little of the backroom work too.



And finally Joe drove us to a gin tasting room, where I wanted to buy something unusual for Rusty. But the word is that I’d have to buy it at the duty free shop at the airport or I couldn’t bring it into the country, so I’ll have to try to remember to do that.

 

And now we’re back at the magnificently groomed wilderness of The Marlboro and I’m thinking that this would be a nice time to indulge in a little nap!

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