This tragedy has been on our national news for four straight days. The search and rescue guys (some of them volunteers) have been 50km up and down the Haast River with helicopters and search dogs. The weather has been wet and it is dangerous country.
It appears that this couple did nothing wrong and tragically happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. A piece of mountainside slipped = megatons of rock, and covered the road sweeping them 180m into a gorge.
It happens, but mostly people see such dramatic events rather than being killed by them. We are used to land slides but nothing can take away the sadness and guilt when our guests suffer. The best I can offer is that this tragedy does not pass unnoticed - the whole of New Zealand knows about it.
The two most beautiful places I’ve ever visited have been the North and South islands of NZ. You guys can arm wrestle to decide which is number one and which is number two.
Whatever happened to The Loaded Dog? He was a pretty prolific poster who one day just up and vanished. He had his own Antipodean version of the SDMB that he ran after leaving here, but that went away as well.
I’ve only visited the South Island but, out of the 35 countries I’ve visited, it IS the most beautiful. Hands down. With no hesitation. The place is simply amazing. It also is sparsely populated - 4.5 million people and is (about) the same size as the UK and S. Korea (both about 60 million). It also has great food - fish and chips for $5 and you can buy a good lamb steak from any convenience store (dairy in the local parlance) which tastes like heaven. Also the cheeses are as good as anything you’ll find in Europe. It’s an Island away from any continent so the fishing there is unparalled. The ‘chippies’ have 6 or more different varieties, even in the small hamlets you drive through to get where you’re going. And they take pride in their food.
I traveled round a bit and concur with Richard Pearse’s post on the first page about how diverse the landscapes are. Driving around the South Island boggles the mind with its variety; Swiss Alps, British countryside, ski resorts, mountain climbing/biking/driving, acres upon acres of vineyards and fruit farms, remote beautiful beaches, small towns and hamlets, fantastic fast food places (McD’s wouldn’t stand a chance there), beautiful courtyards, gorgeous churches, enormous lakes, plenty of adrenalin activities, history, an affection for the Maori culture, and the friendliest people you’d hope to meet. Also no psychotic poisonous creatures, as far as I saw. It’s a common trait that graduates will go overseas to get experience - only 4.5 million people in a country the size of the UK means opportunities are somewhat limited so they welcome visitors because they’re not living in a bubble.
When I was there earlier this year I met lots of Europeans, Americans and Israelies. Everyone was having a great time and were very happy mixing with each other. I’d urge anyone with the whys, wherefores and means to visit to do so. In their summer (the northern hemisphere’s winter) it’s great but, I was told by the locals, the winter isn’t so much. I was there January/February, a long time dream, this year and have nothing but very fond memories of the place. It is one of the few places I want to go back to. I don’t wax so lyrical online about anywhere usually but NZ is a special case. I have friends, from school and University, living there so if you want any tips PM me and I will be happy to oblige.
Got as far south as my Kiwi girlfriend’s Uni town in Dunedin, then we headed inland. We only had three weeks to spend there so we could visit everywhere we wanted to.
I think my only complaint with New Zealand is a severe shortage of places to pull off the road–to take photos or just enjoy the view. I was driving down the coast on my way to check out the Moeraki Boulders; I drove around a bend to a magnificent vista, and there was no place to pull over! I found a gated ranch road that was just enough room to get out of traffic, but I cracked the rental car’s plastic air dam pulling back on the road. (talk about 1st World problems, eh?)
I had a wonderful travel agent who helped me a lot with my trip planning to the South Island. As a “thank you” gift, I gave her a set of custom “Roadside New Zealand” postcards from my visit. Here are some samples.
You just have to love a place where, if you go into a typical little burger stand and order a basic burger, it comes with an egg and a beet, and other little mysteries.
Also, at least back in 85 when I was there, the best dairy products in the world but they seemed to have lost the recipe for a milkshake. Ask for that and you get glass of (fantastic) milk with some (awful) powder tossed in and mixed. However, one place I stopped lauded their “smoothies” so I ordered one: a perfect homemade milkshake! I never did figure out whether that was just a specialty “invented” by that place or a standard thing.
You also have to love a place with (at least, at that time) 3 million people and 60 million sheep. And every one of those sheep is facing away from you. Really. It does make one wonder.
I spent 7 weeks there and loved every minute. The hiking tracks were full of northern Europeans, and the pubs were full of Canadians. I kept my distance from the sheep, though.
Milkshake = milk plus flavoring, either syrup or powdered.
Thickshake = milkshake plus appropriately flavored icecream.
Smoothie = milk plus fruit and any combination of icecream, yoghurt, honey, cinnamon, ice (but that’s cheating), and anything else you can think of that will taste good and add to the thickness of the liquid.
Yeah, I remember this well. Beet root on everything. I remember having lunch with my caving guides, and poking dubiously at the beets on my sandwich. They asked me what was wrong and I told them that your average American would rather his own thumb than eat beets on a hamburger. They thought that was pretty good.
My wife and I got married in Queenstown in '97, being the farthest place from both our families. I most fondly remember the amazing lack of any kind of liability laws. The kinds of activities here in the US that require weeks of training and a certificate, you could just do that on five minutes notice there.
Yeah. The murders there were a topic that frequently came up in conversation. I put that down to the Islanders’ concern for self-preservation, and not that they were a regular occurrence. My girlfriend did two degrees and a post-grad dip in Dunedin, and during that time her friend was murdered. In such a small, close-knit community that has to have reverberations for a long time.
Thank you for this. It is always reassuring to hear because on the inside, Kiwis scream to get out never realising what they have just outside the front door.
The vast empty reaches of the lower South Island touch my heart but interestingly, Asian tourists find these places to be uneasy. No people.
His only post since January of 09, but it looks like he’s still around. He posted four times in three threads on January 9, 2009, all on uncontroversial topics, and then he stopped without a word of explanation.
