Wanganui

This weekend five of us escaped to Wanganui, a quiet riverside town near where the Wanganui river meets the Tasman sea. We were originally bound for Napier, but the music festival there that weekend had filled up all of the available accommodation. Wanganui had a fantastic museum, with a full size Maori waka (war canoe) that took up the entire room and was covered in carvings. Really cool. The museum had tons of natural history diorama-type displays, including fossilized skeletons of the giant moa, an ostrich-like bird that stood 8 ft tall! Upstairs, there was a challenging display of tintype photography featuring the Wanganui Maori -- the debate still continues as to whom these photos belong. The subjects, who believe that depictions of the self are actually the self? The artist, since passed away? His descendants? The museum?

Later that day we climed up Durie Memorial tower, a stone tower built to commemorate those Wanganui soldiers killed in WWI. There were 180 stairs -- we counted :) The view from the top was glorious! Wanganui has a strong tradition in glass-blowing, so we visited an awesome workshop/gallery to watch the artists. They were tremendously skilled, moving deftly around the white-hot glass to create the most incredible shapes. It was a wet and windy day, so we decided to close it out with a homemade dinner at the hostel and live music at a nearby bar.

On our last morning, we woke up at 5:30 a.m. to walk to the beach and watch the sunrise. The black sand beach and the rough waters characteristic of the west coast made for a somewhat surreal and absolutely beautiful morning.

Pictures from Wanganui

A word on New Zealand food -- in general, it's amazing. Though factory farming is developing in the more populated regions of the country, meat is generally humanely raised, and all beef -- all of it! -- is free-range and grass-fed. The chickens are also genuinely free-range, which means pasture-raised, not the American "free-range" (i.e. given a cage 50% larger). This morning when I was making my eggs and toast I actually found a feather on one of my eggs! This serves as a reminder of how fresh and real the eggs are. The yolks are gorgeously orange as well. I think this makes up for the spaghetti on toast concoction typically served for breakfast here :) I usually opt for organic yoghurt and muesli. Mmmm.

The Amusing New Zealand Accent Series: Part II

New Zealanders use a bizarre construction when they want to emphasize something: "____ as." It's like there was originally some universal simile that became so well known that the last word was dropped altogether. The most common permutation is "sweet as!" used to express excitement or enthusiasm about something, but any adjective will do, e.g. "Driving on the left side of the road is hard as." A fine example of this construction is featured in the wildly popular and wildly weird video Beached Whale (caution: contains NSFW language)