Seismic Events
New Zealand and the beginning of a very big month
Early last November Marina and I landed in New Zealand to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary.
Six days later, Donald Trump was elected President of the United States.
Five days after that, a devastating earthquake rattled New Zealand’s east coast.
A fiend texted me: “How many seismic events can you take?” Four weeks worth, apparently. Between New Zealand and Australia, that’s how long we were away.
It was vaguely unsettling at the outset. Airport fiascos. Lost bags. Driving on the left side. Pubs in Auckland advertising all-day happy hour “The Donald & Hillary Show.” We found comfort walking the harbor at dusk, ducking into a coffee shop for a flat white and gelato when it started to rain.
Auckland is growing. Construction cranes cram the skyline and the names of big global finance giants adorn the new buildings. Young professionals scour the streets for morning espresso, after-hours craft beer and upscale pub grub. We found a retro diner with a barstool-and-mirror take on a New York deli. They smoked their own meats and fish, served up classic shakes and offered funky plates like a Montreal-style poutine with a lean, salty and smoky pastrami cutting through the gravy, cheese and fries.
We got in our first birding at the Pukorokoro Miranda Shorebird Center, an hour south and east of Auckland, where the Firth of Thames laps up against local farms and marshland and birds along the Australasian flyway stop to nest or rest and gather food. A mecca for birds and birders, Miranda was overwhelmed during our visit by thousands of Bar-Tailed Godwits and Red Knots. A White-faced Heron walked up a small stream and gave me a good close inspection. Birds. We look at them. They look us over too.
Back in the car, over to the left, crossing roundabouts on our way down to the Bay of Plenty and the tourist destination of Rotorua. Here we connected across water and time with cousins from Marina’s side of the family, comparing versions of family stories going back over the generations. Honest, proud and loving people. Savvy and strong. I felt roots starting to grow, something starting to pull at me, telling me I would be back here again some day. The feeling would grow and it grows still.
Rotorua was awash in Maori culture and the acrid smell of sulphur from gurgling mud pools and steamy thermal springs that supposedly made George Bernard Shaw admit to the possibility of God. After a day on the lake, a hike up the mountains or a dip in warm mud, people gathered at Eat Street, an outdoor mall of pub food, Indian, Mexican and Asian — really anything you wanted. For me it was curried goat while Marina had an Indian-spiced lamb. It was all good, and it all tasted better with beer. Like everywhere we went, someone mentioned something about the election. In every conversation someone would ask if we’d consider moving here. I said there are some things you would have to make do without, like good Wi-Fi, but you could come to love a country like this and pretty much forget about the rest of the world.
Outside the cities the grass was green like Ireland. Magpies and Australasian Swamp Hens scoured the fields while Swamp Harriers kept watch from overhead. These were strange names for a place we didn’t find that swampy, but that’s the way it is with bird names. Restaurants were scarce outside the cities, but that didn’t matter when you could buy gas and have a coffee with a nice feta and caramelized onion tart at any number of roadside stops. Or a blue cheese muffin. Or a meat pie. You could always get a meat pie, as long as you were ok not knowing what was in it.
We saved money eating at village coffee shops, which was a good thing for more than one reason. All the money had birds on it. Any country with birds on its money is bound to be my kind of country.
By the time we reached Napier, the art-deco resort town on Hawke’s Bay, we really started to feel like we were away. Feet in the water. Squid and sauvignon blanc at a beachfront cafe. Outside of Napier we saw our first Tui while drinking an orange scented viognier with the owner of an organic vineyard. Tuis are noisy birds that look like old-time fops and sound like C3PO. They’re fun to watch over a glass of wine; not much fun if you are trying to take a nap.
Marina’s cousins told her about a place in Napier where you could get inject fresh donuts with your choice of (alcoholic) filling. So there we were, on a rainy afternoon, drinking coffee and shooting bourbon cream into sugary fried pastry dough. That alone was worth a 9,000-mile plane ride.
Our trip down the North Island would end in Wellington, but on the way we stopped at Cape Kidnappers, a breeding site for thousands of Australasian Gannets. Crammed together on a Cliffside, these breathtaking seabirds didn’t seem to mind the clutter as males flew in with offerings of seaweed (yes, seaweed) and mated pairs touched beaks in courtship display. Young birds without mates seemed to pout in aimless dejection. Females tended to their kelpy nests in what looked like complete contentment. I lost myself in their world.
A day later we were eating seafood on the Wellington waterfront as the election results came creeping in. The Midwest was teetering; Florida was toppling. I ordered a Scotch while I thought about American ex-pats in the time between the wars and their fondness for saying that living well was the best revenge. Did they have it right?
The next morning we were in the Wellington train station getting coffee before heading out to the Sonoma-like wine hamlet of Martinborough. Along with a few American backpackers and dozens of people arriving for work, we were lingering, stunned, looking at a newspaper headline that simply said: WTF (Why Trump Flourished). People here didn’t seem to like either candidate, but they still had a hard time believing this really happened.
When you’re outside of America, you come to appreciate that even when people don’t agree with us, they still look to us for common sense and stability. Those are precious commodities in today’s world of anxiety, uncertainty and fear of change. But there is a refreshing resilience in the people of New Zealand, no matter what happens. “You can wring your hands for a day,” as one TV commentator said. “Then you just have to get on with it.”
We stayed in Wellington for a few days, making tourist stops and seeking out the grave sites of Marina’s grandmother and great-grandmother, both of whom were buried in the old Karori Cemetary. Her great-grandmother Annie led a colorful life highlighted by the escape from a dull marriage via a lover with a motorcycle. Her gravesite was easy to find. Marina’s grandmother May, the wife of an unpleasant laborer, was not as fortunate. We knew where she was buried, but her gravestone was nowhere to be found despite the fact that it had been bought and paid for by Marina’s mom. It was in an old and unkempt part of the cemetery in the shadow of a tidy memorial to the former Prime Minister. Blackbirds sung a constant tune in the trees overhead. If she could hear it I am sure she would have been pleased.
I remember remarking that Wellington was a lot like San Francisco, with steep windy roads overlooking the Harbor, Fitzroy Bay and the Cook Strait between the country’s two islands. I wasn’t thinking about earthquakes.
We left Wellington for the South Island and the Fox and Franz Josef glaciers. Up in the mountains for a couple of days, we were many miles and a good sleep away from the shaking down below.
Then I got the text I mentioned earlier, and another from my nephew, and an email from my work. I turned on the news. At two minutes past midnight, on November 14, a magnitude 7.8 quake struck off the coast of the seaside town of Kaikoura, rippling north and rattling foundations in the buildings we had just left behind in Wellington. Kaikoura was blocked off by landslides. Marina was about to drop me off there for a pelagic that promised close-up views of six species of albatross — each one a lifer for me. Had I been there, I would have been stranded. It was one of those moments that instantly reorders your priorities. All we had were some rippled-up roadbeds. The tourists in Kaikoura were holed up for two days before military ships and helicopters came for them.
With Kaikoura out of the question we detoured for the port city of Timaru, overnighting in a shopworn hotel where Queen Elizabeth once stayed. The fish and chips were good but the real reason for staying was to be found later that night on Caroline Bay.
It was in Timaru where we engaged in the time-honored ritual of the sacrificial birder.
We stood on a beach at sunset, overlooking the bay as a male oystercatcher refused to take no for an answer while its female counterpart ran him ragged for an hour before succumbing. As the sun went down began we were joined by others — people from Norway, China, Germany, until about 35 of us were out there in the drizzling cold.
A local woman came out, in a safety vest and drenched in perfume. She told us the penguins would be arriving any time now, swimming ashore and waddling to the rocks to find their mates and feed their young who were waiting in their burrows under the rocks below. Little Penguins. Lots of them. Aptly named because they are in fact the world’s smallest penguins. You could hear them moving about under the rocks, squealing like terrier puppies.
It got dark. It started to rain. Some people started to grumble and check their watches. After ninety minutes of staring at a beach in the dark and rain, a trio of hipsters from Germany decided they’d had enough and headed for the local bar.
They were the sacrificial birders. Because, as all birders know, nothing good happens until somebody leaves.
Ten minutes later we heard a call where someone spotted a pair far up the beach headed toward the rocks. Five others appeared, crouching at first as if to make themselves invisible to any predatory cats and dogs, then going into full waddle as they shot their way to the rocks. Squeaks of joyful family reunions and dancing on the beach as a dozen more made their way ashore in the darkening night. Pure joy for penguins and people alike.
Our time in New Zealand was coming to an end. We birded an estuary with a man who took us around in a vintage Citroen. We bought jade in Hokatika, the funky gold-rush town (yes, there was a gold rush here) bordering on the Tasman Sea. We ate more meat pies and savory muffins and mailed Merino sweaters back home for Christmas. We fed almonds to a squadron of Keas to keep the mischievous parrots off the roof of our car.
And we headed down to Christchurch, a city that could break your heart.
If you ever want to know what an earthquake can do to a city, go to Christchurch. The South Island bastion of the old British empire was shaken by a 7.1 magnitude earthquake in September 2010 and brought low by a 6.3 magnitude quake a few months later. 185 people were killed in the 2012 quake. Property damage in the center of the city was so extensive it looked as if its heart had been ripped out.
Six years later, signs of the disaster still abound. Although new office and retail complexes are springing to life, the city’s iconic Anglican cathedral still sits empty and crumbling, fatally awaiting consensus between church and government officials on whether to rebuild and restore, or start over with a modern church.
The English roses still bloom at the botanical garden. Ducks still swim in the Avon River. Office workers stroll the city’s squares and enjoy lunch from a bustling food truck scene. Young restaurateurs are bringing a new vibe to the city’s cuisine. People worship in something called the Cardboard Cathedral.
Yet something is missing. New malls and new office buildings can only do so much. A city whose heart is Cathedral Square needs a new heart. Let’s hope it gets one in 2017.
Coming up: Adventures in Australia
