I have a serious case of post-vacation depression – why do I have to go to work again? Oh yeah, the dog needs her expensive Rx food…
We recently returned from a two week trip to New Zealand to celebrate our anniversary. Somehow my husband finagled it into a hunting trip, and it was the best trip abroad I've ever had.
My passport isn’t entirely devoid of stamps – I’ve traveled to Europe and the Caribbean, though that doesn’t hold a candle to my husband. The nature of his work means he’s gotten to travel quite a bit and usually finds a way to work hunting into the itinerary (in the case that it’s not the sole purpose of the trip).
Historically I've avoided weaseling my way onto my spouse's hunting excursions abroad. I have a few reasons: First, it's usually a work trip for my husband. Second, he's usually traveling with buddies (and not all of them do I want to be stuck with for two weeks). Third, my day job.
Sadly I don't accrue vacation fast enough to enable me to tag along on every trip. And while I can work remotely, who wants to work while you are in a foreign country trying to absorb all the sights, smells and flavors?
Somehow the stars aligned this last February. Zach had run into an old friend while attending SCI in Nashville and got an invitation to visit Glen Dene on the South Island of New Zealand. He called from the show floor and asked if I might want to go to New Zealand, throwing in that it could be our anniversary trip since it would almost coincide…
A bit of mental processing and I asked the important question, “Who else is going?”
“It’d just be us, though there will be other couples in camp,” he replied.
Wracking my brain as to the number of vacation days I had stashed, the obvious answer was yes and we settled on dates in late May.
As the planning commenced, we would learn it's easy to get a travel Visa to New Zealand, they have very strict biosecurity requirements, booking flights there yourself can be a bit challenging (to the point that we fell back on our small town travel agent which was 100% worth it), and it takes time and a surprising amount of effort to get the permits needed to import guns.
Surprise, surprise – the husband had made it into a work hunting trip. The difference is that Glen Dene is perched on a lake in the heart of the South Island surrounded by wineries, shopping and sightseeing and they have dedicated folks who coordinate and host their non-hunter program. Did I mention they also have the coolest lake-side geodesic domes for folks to stay in? We also added some padding to the end of our trip to do a little non-hunting-related sightseeing of our own. I was sufficiently mollified that this would be a sufficient 15th Anniversary trip and wouldn’t result in me twiddling my thumbs all by my lonesome in the backcountry.
About a month out from our departure date, Zach received the final itinerary from Richard (from Glen Dene, aka his old friend). He had added in plans for the both of us to join him on the North Island for a day of driven pheasant! This is kind of a surprise add-on because Richard wants Zach to see as many of New Zealand’s hunting opportunities as possible. I'm excited because as a long time Anglophile, the one hunting trip I'd been wheedling for has been to visit England for a classic driven pheasant shoot – I even have the tweed hunting outfit! I’ll finally get to shoot on one of these trips.
While I am admittedly a fair weather hunter (literally) and not the greatest shotgunner, I do enjoy shooting, watching our bird dogs do their jobs and putting around the backroads of the midwest when we hunt upland each fall.
Fast forward and it's May 19 and we've landed in Queenstown. We made it through customs in Auckland in what seems like record time because when you are temporarily importing firearms you get your own police escort through the lengthy line and nothing else you have to declare is as important as those. As a Millienial I never flew before 9/11 and I wonder what it was like to go on a safari before all of this. Also the facial recognition for border control is kind of creepy, but since I just renewed my passport and I had applied for Global Entry I was resigned to the fact that I am a KNOWN TRAVELER.
Traveling to NZ in May means it's equivalent to October in the US. It kind of feels like time traveling. Even more so because I see pine trees and oaks and poplars and the fall color is very reminiscent of home. I later learned that NZ has a big forestry industry and actively manages pine forests for timber and carbon credits. The country also has an interesting relationship with invasive/introduced species (flora and fauna). Similar to the US they had a big gold rush in the mid-1800s and had an influx of immigrants through the turn of the 20th century. And everyone brought something with them.
Good introduced species include pine trees, sheep and game animals like ducks, stag, tahr and elk. Bad include rabbits, feral cats, rats, Australian possum and lupine. Most of the bad is due to their impact on the native birds. Prior to colonization New Zealand had no land mammals, nothing that could really harm a human on land. Going tent camping in some parts of Wyoming after going to NZ does seem a little crazy – I stayed in the tent till the sun came up!
Anyways back to the trip. We landed on a Sunday and Zach immediately went to sight in his rifle and see if there were any stag to see. His itinerary was packed and a tight window in which to shoot his stag. I tagged along on the Sunday sight-seeing because I wanted to see a stag and check out the terrain. I confirmed that the non-hunter program was my speed.
The program itself is dictated by the interests of the participants. My week was a little odd in the fact that most of the wives tagged along with their husbands, so it was mostly up to me! During dinner on Sunday our hostess Sarah quickly figured out I'm a nerd, specifically an engineer. I've worked in the environmental engineering field for 15 years and am a sucker for anything manufacturing, infrastructure and nature-related. So on Monday as I discussed my interests with my tour guide, Sarah had organized a tour of the local hydro-electric dam for that afternoon! Having just visited Hoover Dam earlier in the year, getting to visit two dams in two months was pretty epic in my book. Hoover has scale, but this was just myself and Julie (my tour guide) and we were able to tour the entirety of the dam, including visiting the control room and a turbine in operation.
The next day was an easy one spent spot-checking the inventory of two local wineries, poking around Lake Wānaka and finding souvenirs for myself and family. For folks who are into yarn, New Zealand might very well be Mecca. With several brands that are 100% NZ made and available in various mixes of wool, possum and silk, they are all way more affordable than premium yarn is here. While it’s largely unknown here, possum is a popular addition to make the yarn softer. The added benefit is since they are a highly invasive pest it's an extra bonus for the folks who trap them to then pluck them for the yarn market.
The last day of my program, Julie was able to secure a flight and cruise to Milford Sound. The fjordlands of New Zealand are a UNESCO World Heritage Site and I was hoping for a glimpse of whales or penguins. We flew in an 8 seater Ozzie bush plane and landed in what felt like one of the most remote air strips in the world. Flying over glaciers and fjords was much preferred and turned what would have been an 11+ hour day with the drive into a 4 hour round trip. Glen Dene packed an awesome lunch for us and all I had to do was get in the right queue for the cruise (which our handsome pilot Hamish ensured). No whales or penguins, but we did see dolphins and sunshine in a place that gets 200 days of rain per year.
Thursday saw Zach and I packing for the North Island and meeting with Richard's friends for a weekend of driven pheasant and then ducks for Zach. Friday we found ourselves at Poronui, where we joined a crew of Kiwis and Ozzies for a traditional driven pheasant shoot with tweed and all. Though, according to the crotchety gamekeeper it wasn't traditional enough for his tastes.
I shot the first drive, figuring this had to be easier than hunting wild pheasant, but I was wrong. Shooting a bird that's zooming overhead is much harder than I thought it would be (it also didn't help that I didn't practice and the borrowed gun was slightly too long for my short arms). Also not being able to load the gun yourself kind of takes some getting used to. What I did get used to was elevenses, with whiskey, sloe gin, tea and coffee accompanied by pheasant and mushroom pies after the first drive.
After that I let Zach shoot our peg and it was a ton of fun watching the pickers and their packs of hounds searching for the downed pheasant and loading them up on the wagon. At the end of that day we had drinks with all of the beaters, guns, pickers and the gamekeepers and were informed of the groups shooting average. Happy to note my drive was not the worst.
From there that was the end of Zach's working part of the trip and he got to join a friends and family duck hunt while I hung out with the ladies as they golfed at a course that doubled as a nature sanctuary. I got to see takahē, fallow deer and guinea fowl at the golf course while playing caddie.
We then flew back to the South Island for some non-hunting-related sight-seeing. We visited the World's Fastest Indian, toured an exhibit dedicated to John Britten and stopped in at the southern-most Harley-Davidson dealership on the globe – we might be motorcyclists...
It was a whirlwind loop of Queenstown, Invercargill and Dunedin and back to Queenstown before starting the long trip home. In theory, the trip home is "shorter." The fun of going to NZ is that you cross the date-line so heading there we lost Saturday the 18th and going home we planned on leaving Wednesday the 29th only to arrive home on Wednesday the 29th. Alas, weather in Auckland set off a chain reaction of missed flights and resulted in not getting home until Thursday the 30th. It turned what was supposed to be 30 hours of travel into more like 60. Considering we successfully drove around NZ on our own on the wrong side of the road for two days and nothing else up to this point had gone wrong on the trip, I felt they were karma travel points well spent.
Reflecting on the trip with Zach when we had been home for a few days, I asked as I always do, "Would you go back?"
Neither of us have ever regretted a single trip or adventure, but I think the mark of a great trip is would you do it again? We chatted, trying to quantify what had made the trip so good. Was it the stupid-beautiful scenery? The spectacular hunting? The lack of anything dangerous wanting to eat you? Or was it the delicious food (assuming you like chef-prepared dinners, lots of lamb, some darn good fish and chips and the best oysters you’ve ever had…).
In the end, it was the people. Everyone was friendly and willing to discuss anything, from the cost of living to vacation days and everything in between with the crazy American couple who for some reason wanted to drive all the way to Invercargill to look at dusty old motorbikes.
Every trip abroad that Zach and I have been on (heck, even a few in the US) there have always been moments where we felt slightly unsafe, maybe felt like interlopers or that we were the dumb Americans who couldn’t speak Czech (which is a high bar – only Czechs speak Czech). On this trip we never had those feelings. Even when just bumming around the countryside, crime is exceedingly low and everyone was perfectly friendly. The worst thing that's going to happen to you is you’ll end up filling up all available space on your phone and camera with photos of the trip!
Would we go back? In a heartbeat.