Two new BUG guidebooks on the way
June 27th, 2008 by Tim Uden
You may have noticed that I have been a bit quiet in this blog and on the forums for the past six weeks or so. That’s because we have been busy finalising our latest two guidebooks, which finally were sent off to the printer on Wednesday.
We have been working on these two books since November last year and when it came down to less than two months to the deadline, the books suddenly took priority over everything else. This meant that posts to this blog and my presence on the forums was reduced to a trickle. During the last six weeks we’ve been working till 2am every day and in the last week our work day was extended till 4am. Yesterday I caught up on some much needed sleep - 20-hour workdays tend to be a bit exausting.
Every new edition of our guidebooks has been better than the previous edition, and this is no exception. This time we had the backing of a major publisher, which meant that I was able to send a few talented writers on the road to visit and review over 1000 hostels in Australia and New Zealand. The new reviews are more detailed than previous books, we also have coverage of new destinations, expanded coverage of places to eat and drink and we have redrawn all the maps so that they are clearer and easier to read.
The next couple of months will see us update the website with updated information that we gathered while researching the new books.
The 4th edition of BUG Australia and the 3rd edition of BUG New Zealand will be in bookshops in October.
Going Green
April 5th, 2008 by Thomas Maresca
Having driven more than 4500 kilometers around New Zealand in the last month, and having flown several thousand more to get here in the first place, it’s hard not to think about the environmental impact that traveling has. New Zealand already gets 2.4 million tourists a year; now imagine the growth of economies like China’s (New Zealands’s fastest-growing tourism market–new direct flights from Beijing have just begun on Air Zealand). Something has to give.
Obviously, the greening of travel has already begun in a number of ways. Carbon offsets are increasingly common options for travelers, and sustainable ecotourism has been around for quite some time (although generally this is geared towards more upmarket travelers.) Still, these feel like nothing more than baby steps. Is sustainable long-distance travel even possible?
On my wanderings around the North Island, I came across a number of hostels that are addressing this issue on an individual-scale basis. A few of the more interesting places you might want to check out:
Tree House Backpackers Lodge, Kohukohu: They don’t make a big show of it, but the owners of this place have been restoring the forestland around their property for nearly 30 years, long before it was fashionable. You’d think you were staying among natural gardens surrounded by wild native bush, but almost all of it was planted and nurtured by these enterprising and friendly people.
Solscape, Raglan: This hostel/lodge is more upfront about its eco-message. Set high on a hill with lodging ranging from old train carriages to tipis, the owners are striving to make the whole operation as self-sustaining as possible. The tipi area is completely off the grid, generating its own power and water, composting waste, etc.
Mel’s Place, Hicks Bay: This small place along the East Cape is also trying to be as environmentally friendly as possible. The owners, a Maori couple who run fishing charters, practice sustainable fishing and are very articulate about describing the Maori relationship to the land and its resources.
Just a few examples of local-level eco-conscious travel—you have to assume we’re going to be seeing a good deal more of this in the coming years.
On Being a Kiwi
April 5th, 2008 by Thomas Maresca
Seen on a Wellington bathroom wall:
I don’t know about you, but I am not a flightless, defenseless, half-blind bird with a really big nose.
I did manage to see a kiwi, in Otorohanga (“The Kiwiana Capital of New Zealand”) and they really are kind of ridiculous. Bigger than I’d expected, and round and silly-looking, a furry ball with a long beak. Not what you would call an impressive creature (although cute.)
It makes you wonder why a bird like this even exists.
The Maori have a good origin story. Tane Mahuta, the lord of the forest (and the name of the biggest kauri tree in NZ, in the Waipoua Forest), noticed that the bugs on the ground were eating roots and making the trees sick. So he asked for a bird to come down and live on the forest floor to eat the bugs. He asked the tui, the pukeko, and other native birds but all refused—too dark, too damp, too busy building their nests.
Finally, Tane Mahuta asked the kiwi, and the kiwi agreed. The lord of the forest warned that this would mean that the bird would lose his wings and beautiful feathers, but the kiwi still consented. For his noble sacrifice, Tane Mahuta promised that the kiwi would become the best-known and most-beloved bird in the land—which it certainly is, no matter what it says on the walls of Wellington.
Milford Sound
March 22nd, 2008 by Tiffany Miller
I read somewhere that going to New Zealand without seeing Milford Sound is like going to Egypt without seeing the pyramids. I have seen both, and I suppose this would be apt if there were glaciers, bungy jumping and whales in Egypt. But the South Island of New Zealand has so much to offer, I think I could have walked away just as awe-struck if I hadn’t seen The Sound.
That said, it is spectacular. It is captivating and inspiring and has all the awesome beauty of nature at her grandest. You should see it. And if you do, I have a little recommendation: get off the beaten boatwake. There are packed tour boats heading into the fiord hourly (by the way- it is, geologically speaking, a fiord- it should be called Milford Fiord). The boats are huge and loud and impersonal. But there is a better way, and a more ecologically respectful way, to see it. Kayaking. Not only is kayaking usually a cheaper option, it allows you to experience the true profundity of Mitre Peak and its surrounds- at your own pace, with only the sound of the water and the birds in the trees, and leaving only the exhaust from your lungs. A truly great way to feel connected to nature.
But kayaks don’t have complimentary coffee. You decide.
The Idea of North
March 18th, 2008 by Thomas Maresca
An Auckland native whom I met in the ski town of Ohakune described New Zealanders to me this way: “The farther south you go from Auckland, the friendlier people get. The farther north you go, the weirder they get.”
It was an ungenerous way of putting it, but substitute offbeat or quirky, or maybe just different, for “weird,” and I’d have to say he was on to something.
There’s definitely something about the Far North. Even though New Zealand is tiny, the north feels remote, isolated from the rest of a country that itself already feels isolated. Driving through, I always had the sense that almost anything might be around the next bend in the road, that I was bound to meet somebody . . . offbeat . . . at the next place I stopped. And often, I was right. Transplants from Japan and Germany who were dropping out of their overcrowded countries; hostel owners eager to share salacious gossip from towns that seemed way too small to have so much salaciousness. I really liked it.
In a strange way, the attitudes somehow reminded me of the frigid, northern parts of the U.S. and Canada, even though you’d think it should be the opposite—here in New Zealand, the north is lush, abundant, the most temperate part of the country. Maybe a certain type of person is just attracted to heading as far north as possible, as if following some internal compass.
Anyway, there’s a real feeling of edge-of-the-world remoteness at Cape Reinga, the northern tip of the North Island. From here, you can look out over an unbroken expanse of sea and sky, and see the waters of the Tasman Sea and the Pacific Ocean meet and churn together. This is where the Maori believe spirits of the dead leave this world for the underworld (Reinga means “underworld”, and the Maori called the cape Te Rerenga Wairua, the “leaping-place of the spirits.”) It’s an undeniably powerful experience.
A couple of practical points if you’re making the drive up to Cape Reinga yourself: One, you should fill up the car in Pukenui; there is a petrol station closer to the Cape in Waitaki Landing, but it doesn’t have a reliable supply of petrol.
Also: drive carefully! The last 21km of road to Cape Reinga is unsealed and very winding. My car was sliding all over the place, and I heard lots of stories of accidents. Driving extra-carefully is sound advice on the North Island in general; roads all over are narrow and winding and there are just so many distracting views.
Franz or Fox?
March 13th, 2008 by Tiffany Miller
That is the question.
Backpackers are constantly debating over which is better. When you are travelling on a budget, this kind of decision can be hard to make. If you can’t see both, which one should you choose?
I am of the opinion that once you have seen one glacier in the Southern Alps, you have seen them all. I mean, essentially, they are the same thing: massive blocks of ice surrounded by pretty mountains. Fox Glacier may be a bit larger than Franz Josef, but you can’t really tell since the size of the glacier causes an optical illusion and regardless of square metre-age, you will stand on both of them in awe of their immensity. Fox also claims to have less of an incline to climb up. But let me tell you, after your 800th step in those boots, you might as well take a few more because you will be spending the next few days on your a*se.
Both have excellent guides, both have postcard views, and both offer the chance to walk through ice tunnels and peer inside cravasses. The two things you need to decide on are price and location.
Fox Glacier is a bit cheaper. It just is. It doesn’t mean it is any less quality. Perhaps Franz Josef just has a more recognizable name. Its like wearing a designer shirt when the cheaper generic brand would be just as comfortable.
Fox is also a quieter town. There is only one backpackers, and it is good, but a bit more laid back than some of the hostels in Franz Josef. There is a bit more nightlife in Franz Josef, and a better supermarket… just more facilities in general. But Fox has the incredibly beautiful and easily accessible Lake Matheson, which is best early in the morning or at sunset. I think it is worth staying in Fox just to see this lake. It takes about an hour to walk around it, but you may want to add a half-hour or so for photo-snapping….
So decide which town suits you, and do it. It is a very rewarding and very good value trip to take while on the South Island. Whichever one you choose, it will be a trip you will always remember.
Mussel Mania
March 11th, 2008 by Tiffany Miller
If I could live on any food for the rest of my life, it would be fish. Coming from Hawaii, I almost do already. I absolutely love seafood of any kind. But there has always been something about shellfish which has, well, repelled me. Perhaps it has something to do with eating the entire animal, organs and all…
In preparation for the Wild Foods Festival I was heading to, I thought I should wake up my more adventurous taste buds. First stop - Havelock, the green-lipped Mussel Capital of New Zealand. There is a restaurant there called The Mussel Pot - you can’t miss it because there is a huge pot of mussels clinging precariously to the roof. It is a cute place perfect for lunch after driving through the Marlborough wine country. I ordered my small pot of the slimy little molluscs and gave it a go. They weren’t bad. I have to say I am still not a fan, but they were pretty good for someone who finds them generally repelling. In fact, I ate them all.
While driving out of Takaka, I came upon the Mussel Inn, where I gave mussels one last chance - and now I think I may actually be enjoying them. Though I suspect that is their awesome beer talking. This place was a funky mix of tourists, locals and transient hippies wandering through its rustic timber doorway and mingling at its long wooden tables. It is a real classic, and well worth a stop. Even if the only ‘mussels’ you find appealing are of the Brad Pitt variety.
Hokitika Wild Foods Festival
March 8th, 2008 by Tiffany Miller
This year, the event planners of the Hokitika Wild Foods Festival decided to sell less tickets in an attempt to curb the crowds of drunken rowdy youth whose motto (as seen on many of their t-shirts) is “F**k the food, let’s get WILD!”
I would deem this attempt unsuccessful. The festival is absolute mayhem. I almost felt out of place in jeans and a jumper, as everyone else was decked out in funky costumes, body painting, and wacky accessories - or all three together. And they didn’t even follow a food or animal theme. It is more like Halloween on psychedelic drugs. Imagine a deranged Stephen King novel with a “You Kill ‘Em We Grill ‘Em” plot. It’s great.
And there are plenty of wild, weird and utterly disgusting foods. I started off light, with a live worm in a shot of Red Bull. Okay, not bad. Tasted like a shot of Red Bull. I then moved on to deep fried grasshoppers, which tasted, well, a bit like chicken with antennae. “Hey, this is nothin’,” I thought.
Before I knew it, I found myself knee deep in wood chips and sawdust digging for huhu grubs. I didn’t even know what they were until I split open a hunk of wood to find a huge white squirming maggot-like bug, which I was overwhelmingly encouraged to eat by the crowd around me. So I tossed it in and bit down hard, and the thing exploded in my mouth. It tasted… like a grub. People laughed and took pictures of me, undoubtedly due to the panicked and nauseous look on my face.
And that was the end of my wild foods quest. As I walked past the Mountain Oysters it started to rain, and I took that as a sign that I should head home (and through the drive-through). I am well aware that there is nothing that unshowered drunken third-day festivalgoers love more than a big mudslide.
I didn’t get (or particularly miss) the chance to eat “bunny balls” or “sheep dropping ice cream”. Maybe by next year I can muster the courage. For now, Im gonna Have It My Way.
The toilets of Kawakawa
March 6th, 2008 by Thomas Maresca
Thousands of visitors a year are stopping in the small Northland town of Kawakawa to go the toilet.
These are no ordinary toilets, you see. They are art-toilets, a colorful pastiche of mosaic tiles, ceramic columns, and colored glass bottles, with a living tree growing on the structure’s roof. The project was designed by renowned and controversial Austrian artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser, and it’s turned Kawakawa from a drive-by on the way to the Bay of Islands to a stopping point for the curious and the art aficionado alike; when I dropped in, I met an Austrian couple who had made the restroom a major reason for their visit to New Zealand. (Of course, the toilets also very capably serve a more prosaic purpose.)
Hundertwasser adopted Kawakawa as his home in the 70s and for years offered to design buildings, postage stamps, and flags for New Zealand, but the toilets are the only project that he was ever able to complete here. They opened in 1999, a year before his death.
The toilets may not be alone for much longer, however. Whangarei, another Northland town that has traditionally been bypassed by tourists, has just announced plans to open a $9.5 million Hundertwasser art centre, based on the late artist’s designs.
Sometimes, a photo just begs to be taken.
March 5th, 2008 by Thomas Maresca
