what’s on in nz this summer?

New Zealand – Summer 2009 / 2010 highlights

New Zealand’s native Christmas tree, the pohutukawa, is breaking into flower marking the start of the country’s favourite season where festivities and fun are the hallmark of summer.

While universities and schools are winding down to the end of the academic year, businesses are gearing up for the Christmas party season and families have begun priming their baches and camp sites for the long holiday season ahead.

December is Santa season, and almost every city and town in New Zealand prepares a parade to celebrate Christmas. Protected from the hot sun, hat-clad, cheering children line the streets to watch festive floats, street performers, marching troupes, pipe bands and musicians bring a light-hearted touch to what has been a challenging year.

Much anticipated and always the focus of the Kiwi calendar, summer in New Zealand tends to be a relaxed affair where the emphasis is making the most of the weather and the environment.

Events also focus on the outdoors and the 2009 / 2010 season promises national and regional happenings that cover a broad spectrum from sports, music, arts and culture to food, wine, nature and the outdoors.

New Zealand 2009 / 2010 summer events

Christmas lights - Auckland Sky Tower
1 – 31 December 2009
On 1 December a celebratory lighting ceremony takes place on Auckland Sky Tower’s Sky Deck when the winner of a competition to choose the colour combination for the season, will ‘hit the switch’ and turn the city’s iconic landmark into a festive spectacle. The tower will have a green base with silver, red and green flashes for all of December.
Sky Tower – Auckland

TSB Bank Festival of Lights - Taranaki
19 December 2009 – 7 February 2010
Pukekura Park, a 52ha domain with majestic trees, unusual planting, waterfalls and lakes provides a dramatic backdrop for this lighting festival in the heart of New Plymouth. Since 1993, the annual light festival has been attracting visitors to Taranaki but the origins of the festival date back to 1953 when a lighted fountain was installed to commemorate the coronation of Queen Elizabeth ll. This season’s entertainment highlight is the only New Zealand performance by Fleetwood Mac.
Festival of Lights

Rhythm & Vines - Gisborne, Eastland
29 December 2009 – 1 January 2010
This popular New Zealand festival is internationally famous as ‘the place to be’ for the dawning of a new year, Rhythm & Vines is held in a vineyard near Gisborne, on New Zealand’s east coast – the first place in the world to see the sun each day. A crowd of 20,000 gathers for the three-day outdoor festival to hear bands from all over the world and see the new year in. Top emerging and established rock, roots, jazz and dance artists perform on the Waiohika Estate’s four natural amphitheatres.
Rhythm & Vines

Black Barn Open Air cinema - Hawke’s Bay
27 – 30 December 2009 / 2 – 6 January 2010
One of New Zealand’s best known vineyards – Black Barn – in the foothills of Te Mata Peak, Hawke’s Bay, has become a popular outdoor venue where, for nine summer nights, a big screen shows popular movies. Movie-goers can relax on grassed terraces with a glass of wine, sample local fare provided by the in-house caterers or picnic with friends while they watch.
Black Barn

Parihaka International Peace Festival - Taranaki
8 – 10 January 2010
This festival celebrates the vision and example of Te Whiti o Rongomai and Tohu Kakahi, the founders of Parihaka – a small Maori settlement on the Taranaki coast, 55km south west of New Plymouth. Situated in a volcanic landscape, the unassuming village is a site of major historical, cultural and political importance in New Zealand. The 2010 festival celebrates its fifth anniversary.

Waka Ama Sprint Nationals 2010 - Waikato
12 – 16 January 2010
Up to 3000 paddlers, from 7 to 70 years, will descend on Lake Karapiro, on the Waikato river, for the Waka Ama – or outrigger canoe event – that’s the biggest Waka Ama event in the world. There will be 320 races in distances ranging from 250m to 1500m. This is the venue for the world rowing championships from 31 October to 7 November 2010.
Waka Ama New Zealand

see lots more events all over NZ this summer 09/10

travel writers and banned countries

Should travel writers go to, and write about, countries which whom their own country has travel warnings or sanctions against?

For instance, think about – CUBA: FIJI: ZIMBABWE: MYANMAR/BURMA and other such places.

What do you think? Do you go to such places? Why? Why not?

Comments and discussion please

The Kiwitravelwriter to tutor on a Pacific Island – FIJI

Learn travel writing on a Pacific island

They pay you to do what? Like travelling? Like writing?

This course is run by the redoubtable kiwitravelwriter, well-known in New Zealand and expanding her readership rapidly. Her suggestion is compelling:

“Take a vacation-with-a-purpose, learn travel-writing, and then get paid to travel! Combine your writing and travel passions so you can earn money for even more travels by learning to write terrific stories at this travel writing workshop – and wonderfully, where all the topics we need will be right on our doorstep for us to experience – I believe authentic, ethical travel writers never write about things they haven’t done or seen.”

And of course you can also use the same skills for creating a setting in a novel, or short story, and to greatly improve your blogs, letters, and emails.

Topics will include (but not only):

• How to write specifically for various publications
• Know your market
• What works – what doesn’t?
• Where to sell your stories – locally and internationally
• Finding your own style and the secrets of style
• Use your senses; quotes; fact files
• Query letters and the taxman
• Considering other markets
• Photography and travel writing: along with exercises, daily expeditions, and lots of talking in-between.

By your last day you should have a perfectly formed (critiqued) article ready to pitch to an editor and start earning.

Course requirements: enthusiasm and curiosity are essential.

Add notebooks and pencils; a camera; perhaps your laptop or an audio cassette – and, as we are on a Pacific island – sunscreen and swimming costumes are highly recommended!

Check out this link for more info re course and of  course the fabulous resort – I hope to see you there!

tips for traveling alone from kiwitravelwriter

Considering travelling alone? Some tips from a biased-in favour-of-solo-travel by a passionate nomad.

I love to travel alone for many reasons: high on the list of advantages to solo is the freedom to decide when, where, and how I will travel. Solo travel means 100% pain and 100% pleasure

Navratri festival .. longest dance festival in the world

Of course there are downsides to being alone; it often costs more for accommodation and you always have to make all own travel decisions, read the map alone, and always be totally responsible for your own actions and this can be tiring!

However, you also can always stop to eat where and when and what you want. The augments – or heated discussions – I have heard over this simple topic are amazing in their ferocity and frequency.

Being alone also means there are no safety nets as you walk the tightrope of lone-travel. However being alone does not mean being lonely.

I am approached by locals more than when I’m spending a day with another traveller. It seems that I am less threatening alone so locals  – who often are keen to practice their English or just talk to someone with a different background – will approach me. So I believe you will meet more people on your own, have direct contact with those who live in the country. You needn’t be lonely.

even monks are tourists

I travel without reservations or plans so I also need to approach locals for information in a way that is not required by tourists. It is also a great way to get to engage with other women who are often in the background, virtually invisible, in many places.

When I ask a couple for information it is the woman that I address my query.  Frequently it is the man who replies (often women, in non-English speaking countries, have limited English) but, by being a woman talking to a woman, I have made myself more acceptable and non threatening, less inappropriate, in their eyes anyway.

Interactions with these locals give me a different perspective on the country than when I sit and talk with a fellow traveller over a Turkish coffee, a Malaysian long-tea or a Thai curry. (favourites of mine)

Conversations with other travellers are useful, fun and interesting too, but are better kept for evenings at the hostel, tent or hotel.

If, when travelling alone, you feel lonely one can always join someone for an hour or a few days. Once I even joined a group of ten in a truck to travel in Botswana and Namibia, not because I was lonely but for convenience. Although I got to fabulous places and saw great sights, I did not get to have interactions with the very people I came to meet. A big group is too intimidating for most people to approach; this truck tour convinced me lone wandering is my preferred style.

Finally the other really great travel companion for me is my journal and a good book. They add some consistency to life when all else is changing – constantly!

So what other advantages are there, for me, in living a nomadic lifestyle on foreign roads?

There is no compromise in the experiences I have, I can stay as long or as short as I wish, so the ability to be flexible is a wonderful asset.   I have developed skills and strengths that I did not know I wanted, needed or were lacking, and my experiences – both the pain and the pleasure- are intense, undiluted by the thumb sucking security-blanket of others.

So that’s why I’m a sole traveller? Maybe because I feel more of a soul-traveller that way: or maybe it’s because I am totally selfish and self-centred and want to grasp the intensity all to myself. And it’s that very intensity that makes me a passionate-lone-nomad.

Only in New Zealand would you see this sign

Kiwitravelwriter included on 101 Most Awesome Adventure & Travel Twitterers

Just had to pass this information on

(after all there are another 100 travel writers you need to know about, not just me):

Hi Heather,
Congrats! You’ve made our “101 Most Awesome Adventure & Travel Twitterers You Should Be Following” list!
You can see the list here:  http://abroadening.com/161

We worked hard to compile a list of awesome people like you who embody passion, adventure, and share their best traveling tips via Twitter.

I love connecting with new globetrotting friends who love travel and adventure as much as I do, so connect with me at http://twitter.com/abroadening

(and if you’d like to share the 101 list on twitter, here’s a handy link: http://bit.ly/travel-list)

Travel wide and live dangerously!

Markus Mindaugas
m@abroadening.com
twitter.com/abroadening
abroadening.com

If you like my writing, my book is for sale HERE

Join me on my FACEBOOK PAGE The Kiwi Travel Writer

Heather (L) joins in the fun of Thai Buddhist new year festivities

confession time – what are your worst travel souvenirs?

OK confession time. What are some of your worst travel buys? What unimaginable horrors have you inflicted onfriends and family?

I posed those questions at a BBQ recently, along with, what have you have bought, traded or stolen to bring home? What embarrassing items have you got hidden under your bed, too ashamed to let them see the light of day – so bad or weird that even your best friend doesn’t know that your taste had dropped so low.

No-one confessed to a Jesus with a pulsing heart or pyramid pencil-sharpeners that I have seen available, but we did hear of two bottles of Mongolian vodka that was polystyrene-spray-packed to arrive home safely, the postage costing more than the product. The same confessor also admitted to buying a 1.5 x 1 metre, wooden-backed painting in Thailand causing more ‘how do I get this home’ problems to be solved.

One person, the host, admitted her taste was so low that one of her favourite souvenirs (now gone to the great souvenir heaven in the sky) was bought for her family by an uncle. It was a plastic donkey complete with panniers that, when the lids were lifted, became ashtrays. But wait, there is more. Into these panniers go the lit cigarettes, push the poor creatures’ ears up down or forward – I forget which- and the smoke was directed out its rear end. We all agreed she had no taste.

The next worst souvenir story, also in the nicotine addiction field, was about one that was not bought (he gets the best-taste prize). Imagine if you will; a merlion, Singapore’s half lion-half mermaid symbol, as a cigarette lighter and that plays the theme from Titanic when used! Ghastly.

A bow and arrow set was difficult to manoeuvre in and out of buses, plastic mirror and comb sets that are never used and the usual pencil sharpeners, plastic sphinx and Sydney’s bridge and the must-have-place-name-dropping T-shirts have all been admitted to.

My confessions are few as I rarely buy souvenirs – many are too difficult to carry in a backpack and I prefer to save the dosh for another day of travel – although I do try to buy something small to use as a Christmas decoration.  These tiny reminders of various countries allow me to display my tiny blue china clogs, a wooden San Francisco tram, a Buddha in a glass cage, and a verse from the Quran: at least once a year. A unique tree I think – a mish-mash to others!

Why do we buy them? Reminders of a place and time that is special to us or snobbery and wanting to produce envy in others.

Kingston Flyer - New Zealand

‘Oh have you been to Alaska?’ You are asked as you wear the thick sweater emblazoned with A L A S K A in the middle of a kiwi summer. ‘Oh yes I have’ we mutter, ‘how did you guess’ really pleased to be able to tell someone else about our travels. Alternatively we give the same item to a friend, mother, or child. Have you been to Alaska they too are asked. No I haven’t they mutter, but my mother, my friend, my son has. Envy once removed!

OK, I so I am not as perfect as I made out. I too do have confessions to make. I did steal a small silver-plated easel that displayed the wine list, from a suburban restaurant in Budapest,   I also have bought stones and shells back from a romantic sailing trip, and I have a number of T shirts that scream where I have been.

Take only photos leave nothing but footprints – I don’t think so. I want my book of African legends, I want the T shirt that says I was staff on the Perhentians Islands’ Moonlight beach restaurant and I want my porcupine quills from a hiking track in Botswana. You might not be impressed but I am.

OK it’s your turn …confess,  what can you add to the list?

Pulua Perhentians, Malaysia

women: stand up and take control of your bathroom needs

To pee or not to pee: that is often the question when you are out sailing, skiing or hiking and it’s too cold, too awkward, or too immodest to drop your trousers/pants.

Men have been always able to do this but for us women its always been a problem. At a sports show recently I was introduced to the Shewee – a device which enables women to pass urine standing up – fully clothed! (” a portable urinating device for women” the box says.

“Try it in the shower first” I was recommended and that was a helpful tip – not that there were problems but that it meant when I used it on a hiking trail it knew exactly what to do. It works! No cold rear end; no prickles in the derrière; and, no holding up the group while clothing was removed then pulled back up.

A SHEWEE in its' pretty pink pack

Coming in its own carry case, and with an extension pipe to improve directional flow, this is the ideal gift for the women traveller, skier, and hiker. I can see many women wanting to use it in Asian squat toilets as no squat required!So, when you just ‘have to go’ you can!

Q. Is this something you would use?

Please tell us some of your desperate-to-pee, ’should have had a Shewee’  stories

The Heat Goes On International Tourism

A new study from the British Met Office states that catastrophic climate change, previously thought to be 100 years or more over the horizon, could occur within 50 years. Meanwhile, in the lead-up to the Copenhagen climate negotiations in December, the European Union is calling for 10 and 20 percent carbon dioxide emission cuts for aviation and shipping.

Why should the New Zealand tourism industry care? I argue that we all have an urgent responsibility to act on climate change, because if we don’t, we are going to spend the rest of our lives dealing with the increasingly dire consequences – consequences which will include droughts, floods, tropical diseases reaching New Zealand, and sea level rise that will make investing in coastal property – including those parts of our major cities that are just above sea level – a really, really bad idea.

But just suppose you don’t care about that. Suppose all you want to do is turn a buck from international tourism. So far, you’ve been lucky, relatively speaking: international aviation, on which inbound tourism to New Zealand depends, was exempted from the Kyoto Protocol, the current international agreement on climate change policy that expires in 2012.

This exemption is unlikely to last forever. Not only is international aviation a rapidly growing source of greenhouse gas emissions, but because most emissions from international aviation occur high in the atmosphere, the effect of aviation emissions on the atmosphere is magnified. The aerospace industry has been lobbying vigorously against the inclusion of aviation in future international climate agreements. As recognition grows of the effects climate change is having, and how rapidly those effects are increasing, it’s most unlikely that aviation will escape the net forever.

That is going to increase costs, and in a price-sensitive tourism market, long-haul travel will be especially sensitive to cost increases. But carbon charges are not the only likely source of cost increases: although the recession which began in 2008 caused international oil prices to drop, the International Energy Agency predicts that another sustained rise in oil prices is not far away. Airlines hedge fuel prices where possible, but those price rises will ultimately have to be passed on to passengers.

As costs increase, New Zealand’s battered “clean and green” reputation will come under increasing pressure, partly from the very emissions that result from flying round the globe to get here. If I were involved in the tourism industry, I would be protesting vigorously to the Government every time it or its agencies propose investigating conservation lands and national parks to see if it can mine them, or digging up farmland to mine highly-polluting lignite. Those things do nothing for New Zealand’s international image, quite apart from the damage they cause in their own right, and as the 10-20% Pure New Zealand campaign shows, people are noticing the contradiction.

The credibility, and ultimately the existence, of New Zealand’s international tourism industry depends on vigorous and public action to combat climate change and find genuine alternatives to present unsustainable transport methods. Better to get to grips with the issue now than have it get to grips with you in the near future.

Tim Jones is a Wellington writer, editor, and sustainable energy and climate change activist. For more on Tim and his writing, please see his blog Books in the Trees.

rooms with views

This week (this was written a few years ago)I am writing from a room with a view. A  room in which various national and international ‘artists in residence’ have used to relax or work.

As I sit and await the muse to visit (surely there must be some residual energy from those other writers) I gaze out the window at the view.

The Peacock Fountain, in the Christchurch Botanic Gardens, was built in cast iron in 1911, and is the background to many photographs travelling to all points of the compass. As people pose, it sprays it’s water regularly from the dolphins, and is well decorated with herons, lily leaves, and other undefined foliage.

I sit and think of other views, other places. Some from on high, others through a door or window.

A palm-roofed hut, just large enough to place a double-sized bed and still walk around it, produced a romantic view of white sands, palm trees, and blue skies. Idyllic – a genuine travel brochure scene.

The view from my downtown Manhattan hostel window – taxis abandoned in the middle of the street and only the top of the yellow-cabs roof showing through the snow.

The view from  a tower in Istanbul may have been amazing but I was too busy clinging to the building to appreciate it. It is hard to be a tourist or traveller with a  fear of heights!  Nevertheless I do recall seeing the busy Bosphorus and the skyline of minarets through adrenaline-impaired-vision.

Once I nearly got over my fear enough to inwardly consider urban rap-jumping from the Novotel in Auckland. I am pleased to report I recovered my senses enough to keep those thoughts to myself and remained firmly on top of the hotel and did not walk down the side of the building- face forward – and now own a Tee shirt that says; I wouldn’t dream of urban rap jumping. The view of downtown Auckland and the harbour was great: however I was not really appreciating it right then.

With these confessions of fears, you will be surprised to know that I have done a bungee jump – right in the heart of Wellington. I was really fearful as they tied my ankles, the soft towel to prevent ropeburn did not reassure me. I must be crazy I think. Ropes tied and tested I am under starters orders. “Move to the edge of the platform” he tells me and I shuffle forward, “A little more” I move imperceptibly more, my heart beating at an uncontrollable speed. The view is now clearly in front of me, the water is fast, cold looking and a long long way down. I still have time to back out of this but my pride won’t allow it. The countdown starts. Three. Two. One. Bungee! Over the edge I go, plummeting downwards, waterwards, my heart undecided if to climb out my throat  or smash through my ribs, I’m screaming. I bounce, up and down, down and up again swinging side-ways and slowly come to a gentle halt. They untie my legs as I wonder did I wet my pants? I slowly walk away. That may have only been virtual bungee at Te Papa but it was real enough for me!

Another memorable view from the top was in Scotland. Inveraray, a village built by the head of the powerful Clan Campbell (my clan) in 1745, has a bell-tower built, on top of a hill, as a memorial to the Campbell’s who have died in battle. I climbed, sometimes crawling on my knees, to the top for a fantastic view of the village below, the Clan Campbell castle (Inveraray Castle) and the beautiful Loch Fyne and the tiny village. It seems amazing that such a calm, peaceful setting was the training ground for some half a million troops prior to the D-Day landings in WW2.

My journal, written on top of that hill, notes my grief at my sons death some five years earlier, and how I had then thought I would die from the pain, yet now, on the date of his birth, I was enjoying the view from a hill in Scotland. Grief produces such paradoxes, out of pain, or perhaps because of it, growth and life and laughter happens. Just as Buddhists explain the lotus flower and how its beauty grows out from mud.

Maybe the muse that has been left in this room is a reflective one. One that looks out windows and wonders what’s it all about. I certainly don’t know, all I know is the more I know, the less I know, the less I need to know.

what to pack and what to leave

What to pack or not to pack that is the question.

• Maud Parrish (1878-1976) in her book, Nine Pounds Of Luggage, said she travelled the world with approx. 4 kilo of luggage and a banjo.

• I travel for a year with less luggage than my friends take for a weekend!

• Carrying possessions on my back ensures I pare the weight down to the least possible and still have a change of clothes.

• It’s the necessary extras that weigh so much – toilet-gear, books, glasses/contact lens, footwear.

So what can a woman with a passion for travel and adventure tell you about what to take?

• Travel lightly, in spirit as well as in luggage; wear the world like a loose garment as an old saying suggests but pack lots and lots of enthusiasm.

• Take less rather than more – a lot less, there very few places that you cannot improvise or buy a needed item of clothing. Remember, most of the people you meet will never cross your path again so there is no need to impress with different clothes each day.

• So what can you jettison – everything you take ‘for just in case’. Soap is on the out list; body shampoo works well on hair too and saves carrying two items. Disposable shavers will keep your legs just as silky as the designer ones and half empty containers of toothpaste and deodorant from home last for ages. Old film canisters are great for keeping things such as hair gel rather than carry big containers.

• I love BIG bath towels! However travel has taught me to dry myself on a well-worn, soft, small one.

• Think about where you are going when you pack your clothes.
• Be respectful in your clothing, even if you don’t approve of, or understand the cultural norms that require you to cover up.
• Remember you went to that place because of it’s difference, if it was the same as home you may as well stay at home, it would be easier and cheaper!

• Jewellery, take the absolute minimum as insurance cover is expensive, and looking after them is just one more worry. I wear small earrings and a gold chain, and of course, like most travelling Kiwis, my bone carving or greenstone.

• Sometimes I buy a couple of cheap fun pieces in the county I’m in for a change.

• Bank cards are my way of travelling, with a few small travellers’ cheques and a little cash, hidden away for emergencies. Most airports have an ATM ensuring that as soon as I arrive I can get some local currency.  Only once did I have a problem with using a card – leaving Zimbabwe
• On a practical level, check with your bank about charges. It may pay to put your credit card into credit then use it as a debit card to reduce charges. I carry two different cards that I keep separate in case of loss or theft and make sure the expiry date doesn’t fall in the middle of your holiday!

• Traveller cheques (get rid of the covers) are still  used by lots of people so check the exchange rate, often those offering no commission pay a lower exchange rate. Once again, talk with your bank to get current, and correct, advice.

• Soft covered journals weigh less than others, swap your reading material along the way, send photos home once they have been developed (negatives in a separate letter for safety)

• Most of all throw out all your worries and problems about yesterday and tomorrow, they weigh far too much to be of any use to you today.

FINALLY:  if it’s in your bag for –  ”just in case” –  leave it at home!