The Sky Over Paella

And, with this post, we come to the last of my New Zealand-releated photos. I know, you’re devastated. You can’t stand that I’m now returning to writing about pop culture detritus and nothing indicative of me as a person. It will be tough, but you can pull through, I know it.

During the home stretch of the trip, we stayed in the North Island beach town of Paihia, the pronunciation of which always made me think of paella. And not without good reason, either, as Paihia had plentiful, high-quality seafood. However, what I’ll remember most about this town wasn’t in the water but above it — and seen from the deck of the house we were staying in. During one rainy day, we got a great view of the only full-arc rainbow I can ever remember seeing, and with the faintest hint of a second arc above it, no less. I took a few pictures, knowing that the beauty of natural phenomena like rainbows doesn’t necessarily lend itself well to photography. In an effort to convey this awesome sight to everyone who wasn’t around to see it live, I’ve crudely stitched together the pictures on Photoshop. If you blur your eyes a little, you won’t notice the rough corners and could feasibly imagine yourself there.

(For the full effect, I encourage you to go ahead and click on the big version.)

Later that night, I played with my camera a bit and got some cool shots of the harbor at night.

Say goodbye to New Zealand!

Attack of the Sheepotaur

Little did I know when I put up a post here a few months ago titled “The Sheep Man Cometh” that I’d eventually find something even more deserving of that title. (This is what I get for continuing to blog about video games.) May I present an even creepier humanoid sheep, courtesy of the good people at New Zealand thermal clothing company Icebreaker:

Feel weird about it, people. Even that tagline seems suggestive of a love that dare not baa its name.

Also, “enjoy” a close-up of the couple that is roughly one-fourth sheep:

That muscular ram-man is up to no good with that naked nymph on his back. Icebreaker specializes in keeping you warm, but she’s not wearing any clothes, so we’re left to assume how ram-man plans to raise the temperature.

This isn’t my first run-in with Icebreaker’s sexually grotesque ads. The company seems to specialize in visuals that suggest some freaky mating between humans and the wooly ones. During my last trip to New Zealand, I managed to spot these images:





I just don’t understand the idea behind this — by which I mean that I do but I find it both off-putting and suggestive of the New Zealand stereotype of what shepherds do with their flocks in the lonely hours of the night. It would kind of like an emblematically French company using anthropomorphosized frogs or a recognizably American company using fat eagles eating hamburgers and spilling mayonnaise all over their bibs.

Icebreaker — it keeps you warm while it sins against nature.

I Hate Songs With Questions in Them

A quickie from the trip. I made friends with a stickbug who actually wasn’t my friend and didn’t like me. But I took pictures.

Fun fact: He was longer than the distance between my wrist and the tip of my middle finger. And angrier.

If You Ain’t a Pilot

In regards to the previous post about Milford Sound, I feel I should take a moment to own up to an act of stupidity I committed on my way there.

Initially, when the company that flew me out to Milford Sound called me in my hotel room, I was told I wouldn’t be able to go — bad weather. But five minutes later, the man called again to say that I’d be able to go after all. This gave me pause: The weather was previously so bad that attempting to fly through it would have created to great a risk of a horrific crash, with the lightning and the winds and the splintering metal and blistering fire, but in five minutes the threat level had decreased to “Hell, let’s give it a shot”? How much safer was it? Was it entirely safe or just safe enough? Additional nervousness resulted when the man also explained that I’d be the only passenger in the plane. I’d never been in such a situation before. Logically, it just being me and the pilot wouldn’t make the flight any less safe. There could be a dozen other people in a plane whose pilot suddenly drops dead, but if none of you know how to fly the thing, you’re all goners. The extra people just make for extra fatalities, really. Still, I had the urge to cancel the outing on grounds of religious convictions or propeller allergies.

Regardless of the guarantee of death (basically), I agreed to go. A cab dropped me off at the Queenstown airport and I walked into the flight company’s lobby. There, a cute girl about my age stood behind the desk. She took my name and my payment and then instructed me to follow her. “Let’s get you out to the plane,” she said as we walked out onto the tarmac. “How nice!” I thought. “This young lady is taking me to meet my pilot!” When we got to the Cessna, she opened the door and begin going through various compartments and flicking on and off switches and buttons. “How nice!” I thought. “This young lady is getting the plane ready for the pilot!” Eventually, she finished making sure that all the levers did, in fact, still have on and off positions. “Well, get in,” she said. “And be sure to watch your head.” So I climbed in, hitting my head sharply on the doorframe, and slid into the copilot seat, now in full view of the doodas that keep you from dying. Right behind me, the girl climbed into the main seat. “She had better finish up soon,” I thought, “or the pilot’s going to get mad at her for sitting in his seat.” Then she handed me the headset and closed the door. “It’s good the weather cleared up so quickly she said,” as she started the plane up and effectively drowned out any words that might have been spoken. Which was a good thing, because the next words out of my mouth would have been “Oh shit! You’re the pilot!” followed by “I’m sorry, but aren’t you too young and pretty to not crash this thing?”

Of course, I went and returned safely. The pilot warned me that there might be some turbulence, but the flight went was smoothly enough that I didn’t even spill my coffee. (Which would have been bad, given my proximity to the doodads that keep you from dying.) She flew the plane expertly and even told me through my headset about what we were flying over, how long she’d been a pilot, and other bits of interest. (She had recently flown the cast and crew from America’s Next Top Model into nearby Glenorchy, so the next cycle presumably sends the girls to the Land of Kiwis, where they’ll try to look composed while riding sheep and getting pushed off bridges.) In the end, I felt stupid — sheepish, even — for having made such a sexist assumption in thinking the woman preparing the plane for flight couldn’t actually be the pilot. And I usually try to not be that guy.

In taking so many pictures during the flight, I managed to get part of my pilot in one shot. So I’ll post it here.

And I’ll let it remind me that not only are women as capable as men, but most women are more capable than me, who, if this little adventure ended differently, would have had to take control of the plane during an emergency and plunged it into a mountain in what would have been record time, if such things were a contest and records were kept. May they never be.

The Land of Milfs

The one solo trip I made during the New Zealand adventure was to Milford Sound — a picturesque inlet on the South Island’s west coast that I failed to travel to during the last trip. It’s actually not a sound but a fjord, as it’s an ocean inlet created by glacial movement. But let’s not kid ourselves: That first syllable is the one that should be capturing our attention.

I’m glad I went. It was indeed beautiful, though I have to admit that the flight to Milford was generative of better pictures than the boat trip down to the Tasman Sea. Maybe I caught it during an off-day. Time your trip right and you see a hundred waterfalls and penguins. I, however, saw about five waterfalls in addition to seals and seagulls, all of which I can see for free in California, within walking distance of my house.

That being said, please do enjoy my pictures.

Ha ha. “Milf.”

Tomato Peak

Near where my dad grew up, there’s an overlook called Te Mata Peak. It’s not too high up, but the views are amazing, especially on a day where a few passing clouds can cast shadows on the land below.

I should probably own up to the fact that my appreciation of this place belies some home state pride. When we were there, it was the New Zealand’s equivalent of July. Thus, typically verdant hills were gold, and the landscaped looked more than a bit like California, just better — maybe because I’d never seen it before and maybe because New Zealand is inherently beautiful. Fellow Californians: You see the resemblance, right?

I normally don’t fear heights, but that first picture shows the view from a ramp from which people go hang gliding. I have to admit that I can’t think about jumping off over that valley — flying attachment or no flying attachment — without my stomach going into knots.

A Brief Encounter With an Overly Curious Swan

(A story told in five photos.)

The thrilling conclusion: Oh shit! Now there are two of them!

Surrender Your Jandals

Last time I was in New Zealand, my friends and I stopped in Cardrona, at the Bra Fence, an unexplained roadside tribute to the ladies’ undergarment. It no longer exists today, so amuse yourself with these photos I took back in 2006.

This most recent trip, we drove through the small North Island town of Kaeo and found a sort-of successor: the Jandal Fence. (New Zealanders inexplicably use the term jandal for what we in California would call sandal or more specifically flip-flop. Wiktionary posits that jandal could be a blend of sandal and Japanese.)

Overall, not as risqué and overall not as good, but hey — it’s stuff you wear posted on a fence, so you have to like it. Otherwise they kick you out of New Zealand.

There’s a joke somewhere in here about flip-flips and bras being designed to limit that kind of motion, but I can’t quite pull it together.

Level NZ-3

Another from the strawberry processing plant.

Am I alone in thinking that these brightly colored palettes and crates, stacked to varying heights, looks just a little bit like Super Mario Bros.? Specifically the “up high” stages that require you to jump from one landing spot to another and over gaping holes?

Sheep of Note (2010 Edition)

The most outstanding sheep seen during my visit to the the Agrodome, which, despite what the name might make you think, is New Zealand’s spot that honors agriculture and no road rage.

Third place: A sheep with dreadlocks



Second place: A sheep so wooly that it looks obese



First place: A sheep with crazy horns



Honorable mention: A sheep with a dog riding on its back.

(Yes, the last easily makes for the best photo, but, really, it’s the dog who’s doing all the work here. The sheep probably doesn’t even know there’s a dog on its back. AND YOU SHOULD ALWAYS KNOW WHEN THERE’S A DOG ON YOUR BACK.)

Everyone on This Island Wants My Fake-Looking Monopoly Money

New Zealand often wants you to act or think a certain way. More often or not, that way amounts to “I want to buy that thing.”

Sometimes New Zealand attempts to accomplish this in surreal and disturbing ways.

Other times, this nation tries a different tactic, the one above being “Would you buy this thing if we make it really fat? Like, unhealthily so?”

And still other times, the marketing gimmick will be boiled down to its essential elements. What you see above is the incentive to buy anything in a New Zealand souvenir shop ever, just stripped of any business savvy or verbal artistry.

And, finally, sometimes the ploy works very well. The New Zealand government is trying to eradicate possums, a non-native pest and a threat to the kiwi, the national bird and an endangered species. (And, besides, a cutie pie species, so double threat status for the kiwi.) Fortunately for the New Zealand possums, they’re also fairly cute — certainly more so than their North American counterparts. In order to underscore the need to wipe these cuddly marsupials off the map, those in charge of the campaign plaster parks with pictures like the one above, which shows a possum eating a kiwi chick, which is one of the most brutal things ever.

So, in summary and in conclusion, New Zealand made me feel ways about things.

Attack of the Wild Strawberries

While in New Zealand, I got totake some photos in a strawberry processing plant, basically mid-process, while the workers were on their breaks. Consequently, I got to see strawberry bits in all levels of intactness. Getting to photograph these berries on and around the machinery that takes them where they need to go, I got to capture an interesting intersection of organic and inorganic — the point at which the land was done growing these things and when humans started using them for their own devices.

The results are alternately appetizing and unappetizing, but also representative for how the New Zealand agriculture industry gets produce to the people that want it.

EDIT: I realize now that I neglected to post manyt of my pictures from my 2006 trip to New Zealand, so now seemed as good a time as any to post them. Here is what the same strawberry processing plant looked like then, post harvest and therefore minus a lot of the goop.

See the posts tagged NZ/OZ for other old photos.