Archive for January, 1999
GREAT BARRIER ISLAND, New Zealand – Slop the cop!
That seems the most amusing amusement for the hardy band of islanders at their New Year’s fair: a good-natured dousing of the three policemen who don’t have a whole lot to do in the nature of catching crooks.
So on this day annually, they take turns at catching, head-on, a bucket of water that has been rigged precariously above, on a wooden frame over the wet seat. Through a system of ropes, pulleys, and hinges – a Rube Goldbergian contraption – the bucket is tipped and emptied whenever a splash-minded contestant triggers it by hurling a baseball-hard cricket ball against a target 20 feet distant. Throw a bull’s-eye, and keep a bull un-dry. Three balls for $2. Proceeds to a local charity. continue reading »
January 31 1999 | New Zealand | No Comments »
CAPE REINGA, New Zealand – The battlefield is wet and windy, fumingly ferocious, and relentlessly fascinating. As oceans collide like two white buffalo butting horns, your unobstructed ringside seat is on the grassy rise beside the Cape Reinga lighthouse. An ivory cinder block tower, it sits, beamingly, at the uppermost tip of New Zealand’s North Island, the storm-bitten nail of a slender, sandy digit pointed into endless expanses of sea.
A lonely, gale-pounded end-of-the-line, this is known to the Maoris as “Te hika o te ika” – tail of the fish. They say it’s the terminus of their earthly line, too, sacred ground, the jumping-off point for spirits headed to the next world. continue reading »
January 21 1999 | New Zealand | 1 Comment »
WHANGAROA, New Zealand – You’ve heard of faces that could stop a clock? Not Hog’s. His is as complex and intricate as the insides of a Swiss watch – a face that would stop traffic anywhere but New Zealand.
You’ve heard of face lifts. Hog’s has been raised to an artistic level that may seem bizarre to an alien but is really a throwback to a prouder time when their country belonged to the natives, the Maoris, and the English conquerors hadn’t yet landed. It is a warrior’s fearsome countenance deeply imprinted and illustrated, marked by tattoos in a time-honored style that dates back centuries. continue reading »
January 21 1999 | New Zealand | No Comments »
WHAKAPAPA, New Zealand – Because it’s there, I know I shouldn’t be.
“It” is the volcanic Mount Ruapehu, looming and with the appearance of a gigantic molar with cavities.
“Looks like a sweet climb,” enthuses my friend, Aurelio, who would never deny that a mountain goat teeters somewhere on some altitudinous limb of her family tree.
Looks like a sweat climb to me. So, why?
“Because . . ..” continue reading »
January 21 1999 | New Zealand | No Comments »
RUSSELL, New Zealand – An elderly survivor, a 33-foot whaleboat, is cradled in the yard of the local museum, and Russell does have the look and air of a small, unrushed New England whaling town. Old, well-risen-and-wide-reaching trees guard the handsome white frame houses that stand behind whitewashed picket fences lining the quiet waterfront.
But Russell, originally known by the Maori name Kororarake, has been in plenty of action. Countless willful seafaring men have seen to that as they made names along the Karikari Peninsula, an upraised finger from the fist that is New Zealand’s North Island. Whalers, adventurers, naval commanders, missionaries, traders. continue reading »
January 21 1999 | New Zealand | No Comments »
