Rocks

Okay, I admit it. My wife is weird.

When we were planning our spring vacation (that's now, for you boring Northern Hemisphere types) she told me that we would be going to see rocks. Yup, that's right. New Zealand is filled with stunning mountain vistas, exotic birds, gorgeous pastoral countryside, charming villages, intriguing Maori culture, and of course lots and lots (and LOTS!) of sheep. But would we visit any of those? Hah! Not when there are rocks to be seen.

“I get it!” you're thinking, “His wife's a geologist.” Nope, sorry, not even close. She's just strange. She read about these rocks in a guidebook, and she's determined to see them.

“They're round!” she says. I yawn. “But they're ROUND ROCKS! They're boulders!”

You can imagine my excitement.

Whenever we go on vacation, I wind up driving. This is because my wife is so afraid of the highway that she drives with her eyes closed; I can only let her go for four or five miles before I get nervous and take over. So when we got to the place where the rocks were, I was in control of the car. All I had to do was to keep going straight and we'd handily miss another boring tourist attraction. And there was beer in the next town.

Naturally, we went to see the rocks.

I'm a big boy, so I can confess that I was wrong. I had expected to see a few boring round boulders. Instead, I saw a lot of boring round boulders, surrounded by tourists eagerly snapping pictures. For this I'm paying $150/night to stay in a hotel?

A couple of days later, we explored the Vanished World Trail, which is mostly a scenic drive through towns so small that the only business is the local pub (that's MY kind of town!). Occasionally you'll spot a sign that's keyed to a guide brochure that you buy for an outrageous price (I think it was $20 NZ, which is about the same as the cost of a pack of gum over here), stop, get out, and hike to see something that's usually not worth the walk. Then you get back in the car, try to wipe the sheep dung off your shoes, and do it all over again.

One of the stops was called the Elephant Rocks. Hoo, boy, here we go again. This is gonna be like one of those tortillas with Jesus on them: some random rock formation that drives enthusiasts wild while the rest of us roll our eyes.

Since I was in control of the car again, I had no choice except to stop. There was nothing around except sheep pasture, not interesting enough to be worth even the blink of an eye. So off we hiked.

Well, when we got there the view was pretty impressive (note the person at center right):

One of the rocks looks just like me:

And okay, one kind of looks like an elephant:

Yup, I'll admit that it was pretty cool. But I'm still not letting my daughter bring any of those danged rocks home in her luggage.

Penguins

One of the most popular tourist sights in New Zealand is penguins. “What?” you might say, “Penguins like ice-covered places, not sheep ranches!” But it turns out that penguins also like their summer vacations, and so the beaches here are covered with cute birds who spend their days fishing, squawking, and sipping drinks with little umbrellas in them.

To see the penguins, you can pay a tour guide $40 NZ a head (about $1.28 US before the recession, or $1,024 now) to take you over to the beach by bus or boat. Or, if you have incredible navigational skills, you can head to the beach all by yourself (hint: it's by the water).

So off we went. One handy thing about New Zealand is that it's surrounded by water, so it doesn't actually matter which direction you drive. We chose to go south, on the theory that it was towards Antarctica. We had trouble finding what we were looking for, but we still had a wonderful time passing through picturesque villages with names like Geraldine (motto: “We're not a Flip Wilson joke”), Waikouaiti (motto: “If you can pronounce it, you're welcome to live here”) and Long Beach (motto: “How'd we get here? We thought we were in California!”). Eventually, when we reached Dunedin, we figured out that we should turn left, at which point we promptly careened to the end of the pier and nearly fell into the ocean. It was there all the time! Who would have thought?

It turns out that in Dunedin, “little blue” penguins hang out at the Albatross Centre (New Zealanders can't spell for squat). Yes, that's right: you can't reliably find albatrosses there, but the penguins show up like clockwork—if your clock runs really, really slow. They come ashore at dusk and sleep on the rocks. (Penguins are not the smartest birds in the world. Why don't they use the nice soft sand? Or check into a hotel? New Zealand has some really nice hotels.)

But when we got there, there wasn't a penguin to be found. Instead, everybody spent several hours watching seagulls, who apparently think it's the most fun thing in the world to float around in the water doing nothing. Call them the backyard pool owners of the animal world. Every once in a while they would all take off for no apparent reason, circle, and come right back. It was kind of like watching NASCAR, except without beer. And NASCAR is quieter.

When it got dark, all the other people gave up and went home. Even the seagulls decided this was a stupid idea. But our family was gonna spot those little waddlers, dammit, even if it killed us. (Given the temperature, that was going to happen pretty soon.) Not that we were likely to see them at this point, since it was now as dark as the inside of…no, I'm not going there.

But suddenly, an hour after sunset, a lone penguin popped up on the shore. At least I think it was a penguin. It was so dark that it might have been James Bond in a wet suit; all I'm certain of is that he was wearing a tuxedo and carrying a Walther PPK, a beautiful lady penguin, and a martini with a little umbrella in it. I got a photo:

He was followed (I think) by a bunch of assassin penguins, but I swear he just vanished into thin air:

But our patience had paid off; we had seen real penguins—if “seen” is defined very, very loosely.

When we got home, we went to the Antarctic Centre (I told you Kiwis can't spell) and paid $40 each to watch the staff feed little blue penguins. But I don't think they were real penguins, because not a single one was wearing a bow tie.