Photos from New Zealand Christmas and New Year

Napier

I spent a week in Napier over Christmas.

It was beautiful and warm and I had some company, but it wasn’t Christmas. So I’ve decided to judge it by viewing it as any other week in New Zealand. By those standards, it was a lovely week with some kind people.

My expectations of a Kiwi Christmas were, in no particular order: BBQ, beach, summer fun, games, big gatherings, and tables shuddering with the amount of delicious food. These expectations, I believe, could have been met by many families (as I’ve heard stories of recounted holidays from many Kiwi’s on my journeys), but the couple I stayed with did things quite differently. Gingerbread cookies were made and a few Christmas carols were sung, but then the Christmas spirit, I’m afraid, petered out rather abruptly. Neither the husband nor the wife had particularly fond memories of Christmas growing up, so the collective decision was mainly to treat it as any other day.

Thus, I am doing the same. For a summer week in Napier, divorced of any holiday expectations, it was beautiful and peaceful and relaxing and slow, bursting with color and bright as golden sun on my skin and full of the taste of tree-ripened apricots, sweetened by the task of clambering up the ladder to pick them myself.

I did several short hikes, of which my favorite was Te Mata Peak. Despite the holiday buzz filling most corners of the city and the road that went right to the summit, there were a few minutes where I was alone atop the peak. It was truly, wondrously, smotheringly hot for the first time since I’d arrived in New Zealand, and even though it didn’t feel Christmassy, it felt a little bit magical.

Some Christmas Gingerbread cookies were made, and it was fun to get a chance to decorate them with my WWOOF hosts grandkids. I always forget how much I love being artistic until I do it. However, juggling baking trays in and out of the oven for an hour on a snowy winter’s afternoon is definitely a different experience from doing it on a scalding summer day!

On Christmas Day, the WWOOF hosts I was staying with had a friend over for a chat and a cold dinner. I’d called my family, read my book, relaxed in the shade, and eaten potato salad and cold ham. A day like any other. But as the friend was leaving, she told me she was going to go for a swim and invited me along.

We floated in the cool water of the Napier estuary for about fifteen minutes, then she exited and went home. But I lingered at the edge of the water. In the park across the way a large gathering played their joyful music and swayed their sarong-clad hips and laughed as the light waned. And a beautiful sunset burst forth, reminding me that, regardless of whether it is Christmas or an ordinary day, there is always magic. All you have to do is make space for it.

Gisborne

I left Napier on the 27th and drove up to Gisborne. While the endless beaches seem to be a popular destination for Kiwis, everyone I mentioned my Gisborne visit too expressed surprise. It’s not, I suppose, a hugely popular international visitor destination. Also, Napier and Gisborne experienced a bad cyclone (hurricane), last year and so many hiking trails are still closed due to massive slips. The roads have been mostly repaired, though I had several long waits at road construction spots along my drive. Even though it’s not the usual tourist area, at first glance I already regretted only staying a few short days.

But, as my time was limited, and it took ages to get anywhere driving, I dove right into my exploring. I motored past Gisborne up to Cook’s Cove Walkway, a walking track down to the inlet where the explorer Captain James Cook anchored the Endeavor and came ashore. The most fascinating part of the hike was the archway just a few minutes before the inlet.

Captain Cook’s crew stumbled upon the archway during their exploring. I’ve visited several places where Abel Tasman first laid eyes on New Zealand or other areas where Cook anchored his ship, but this is the first location that struck me in a real way. I can imagine an 18th century style ship floating in a bay, but it feels like a movie. Standing before this arch and imagining a bunch of men with boots and stockings and rifles standing here several hundred years ago, both of us equally in awe of the natural world…of a natural world that endures far longer than any single one of us does… That leaves a different kind of impression.

Most of the Gisborne area seems to be green farmland. At least, that’s the impression I got on the hour drive to my accommodations for the next two nights. As Gisborne is off the tourist track, I couldn’t find any hostels. And, because it was Christmas week, hotels, motels, and holiday parks were quite fully booked. But I stumbled across a website called Off the Beaten Track and managed to find a farm-stay cottage for the same price as a bed in a hostel.

It truly was off the beaten track. My GPS said I could drive to Rere Falls–a well-known waterfall in the Gisborne area–and then keep going another twenty minutes to reach the high country station. Well, it was definitely a road better suited to a four-wheel drive vehicle, but I managed it. And then, halfway through, it became quite clear that it, in fact, was not a public road at all, but that I was driving on a private farm road (and not the same farm as the one I was staying at). I just waved guiltily at the people watching me and continued on, as it would be two hours to turn around and go the other way!

When I finally reached them, the accommodations were cute and cozy and I enjoyed a quiet night. The next morning, Kiwi hospitality reached new highs.

Haurata High Country Station has a series of walks around the vast property. So I checked in with my hosts, ready to do one of the all-day hikes. But I didn’t have an phone service on the property and the host was worried about me, out and about all day, so she gave me her husband’s iPhone so I could check in with them occasionally or call if I had any trouble navigating the sparsely marked trail. Then, she insisted I take her walking stick in case I had to wave it at any overly friendly or aggressive cows!

So I started my walk feeling pretty positive and upbeat. And it was easily one of the hardest hikes I’ve done in my life.

The hills in New Zealand are no joke!

The trail I chose (surprise, surprise) was the waterfall walk. This meant that I was scrambling down grass covered slopes that were nearly sheer. I gripped the tall grasses in one hand and used the walking stick to stab through the tangled flora mat to see if there was actually ground there or if I’d slip down a few feet until the grasses stopped me. Then, I had to climb back up the same slope, wiping my sweaty forehead as the muggy air clung like sticky fruit juice. Only to do it all over again in twenty minutes, descending to the next waterfall.

But I was the only soul out there in the misty hills, slipping and sliding down to private waterfalls. The path was only sparsely marked and often there wasn’t any visible sign of a trail–no dirt, no gravel, not even bent or matted grass. I wandered along, picking my own path, and occasionally checking the app the family had created to make sure I didn’t go entirely off track! At one point, I climbed up a thirty foot post/ladder and I couldn’t help but smile. With muscles aching and breath burning like smoke in my lungs and nothing but open land, sheep, and cows around me, I felt like I was a true adventurer.

When I returned in the late evening and returned the host’s husband’s phone, she shocked me further by inviting me for dinner–and fresh-picked raspberries for dessert. Exhausted, sated, and rejuvenated all at the same time, it’s a day that glows like Christmas lights among my New Zealand memories.

Whiritoa

To cap off the holidays, I returned to Whiritoa and my friends Jacky and Bruce (who I stayed with back in August for a month!). They are the true definition of Kiwi hospitality–sharing their life and home with me for four weeks, then inviting me to a family member’s house, and again welcoming me back for five days around the New Year. This, finally, was how I had imagined a Kiwi holiday: meeting fun people, everyone pitching in to provide way too much incredible food, so many laughs, swimming at the beach, endless card games… I couldn’t be with my family, but I was with the next best thing.