New Zealand as Jake saw it: Awards

Hey Everyone,

As I mentioned, I have one last post here, this time with a bunch of random awards that I have decided to give out after I have gone and seen as much as possible over the past 5 months. These cover a wide variety of topics, and are my personal opinion, but might give you some direction if you are ever thinking of coming to New Zealand.

• Most Worthwhile Tourist Trap: With little hesitation, I give this award to Milford Sound, a place swarming with tourists, but with some of the most beautiful scenery imaginable. You really have to be there to see it and understand. An honorable mention here is Mt. Cook. 

• Tourist Trap to Avoid: Also with little hesitation, this one goes out to the Moeraki Boulders. It is incredibly surprising these get bombarded by tourists, given that they are just some boulders. Yeah, the ocean has made them pretty close to spherical, cool.... You only need about three seconds with these to know what they are all about and want to move on. This one is extremely popular with the Asian tour buses. 

• Best City: Out of all the cities I visited in New Zealand, Nelson was the most appealing. It is hard to describe exactly why, but it felt the most livable. 

• Best Town: Oban. This place is awesome. Tucked into a protected bay on the wilderness sanctuary of Stewart Island, it is the only place people live on the whole island, and only 400 people live there year round. Really cool atmosphere. 

• Most Overrated Place: This one has to go to Queenstown. Yeah, it was pretty cool, but is way too touristy, and is the kind of place where people go to act like they enjoy the outdoors, when in fact, they need five star accommodation to keep from having a nervous breakdown. I hate that.

• Best Place That Nobody Has Heard of: This one was easy for me, going to the Golden Bay area of Takaka, extending past Onekaka to the Farewell Spit. It has a frontier feel, lacks tourists, and is close to amazing scenery at the tip of the South Island. 

• Pleasant Surprise: After seeing Queenstown for what it is, I wasn't sure how I'd feel about Wanaka, another mountain town nearby. This town is great though, feeling far less upper crust and having some great scenery. Queenstown, you've got nothing on Wanaka. 

• Best Place to Get Some Food: This is another easy one for me, going to the Mussel Inn in Golden Bay. The place is a tucked away log cabin that is surrounded by thick forest, and has an excellent outdoor area that is covered by trees, complete with fire pits and an outdoor stage for live music. Fittingly, the mussels here are amazing, and the place is also known for its quirky microbrews. 

• Felt Most Like Home: The place that felt the most like home to me was the Marlborough Region; wine country. The vineyards make it very different than Boise, but the landscape and raw hills that shoot up from the valley throw shadows like the meandering golden foothills of Boise. A slice of home for sure. 

• Felt Most Like Middle Earth: I had to do this one, especially given the fact that I made the above category. This was a tough call, with a lot of places feeling truly like they were taken from the story, some even more so like the imagery from the books than the movies, which is saying something. New Zealand truly is Middle Earth. This award goes out to Paradise, Glenorchy, for its moss carpeted floors, misty beech forests, crystal clear streams and ethereal stillness. Still surprised I didn't see an elf or two. 

• Biggest Letdown: Definitely Highlanders Rugby, for the reasons mentioned in my post about said club. The sting has been alleviated by the epic All Blacks match though. 

• Biggest Regret: This one hurts a little, but I never got to Doubtful Sound. Flooding and more got in the way of the planned trip, and I never had another chance. This is one very good reason to come back to New Zealand because it is supposed to be even better than Milford. An honorable mention here is not getting to spend more than a week on the North Island. It still has a lot to offer. 
• Most Glad I Did: The Ten Day Trip Around the South Island. This was a long trip over my fall break, and gave me the opportunity to see more things than any other trip. It was surely the only way I ever would have reached the northern end of the island as well.
• Best Place: As far as places go, the alpine crossing on the Routeburn Track is the best, but I'm awarding this to the entire track because it's just so awesome. 

• Thing New Zealand Needs Most: New Zealand is a bird lovers paradise, but its lack of animal life is a bit disturbing for me personally. Birds are cool, don't get me wrong, but I want something awesome. Basically, the introduction of a mammal that won't wreck the sheep population or ruin bird life like the possum is currently doing. Vote goes to Bears, they are awesome. 
• Stupidest "Kiwi-ism": Really tough category, there are just so many choices. The Kiwi accent itself doesn't even pronounce almost half of all letters in words, which is enough to make one cringe, but as far as bonafide "kiwi-isms" are concerned, it is a tie between the use of "as" (example: "that game last night was wicked as") and the phrase "feed" (example: "I just had a mean feed"). The worst is when these are combined, which they commonly are (example: "Ah broo, that game last night was wicked as, heyy? Had a mean feed with my mates and watched. A sausage sizzle with heaps of food and some beers in the chilly bin. It was sweet as broo."). No, that isn't a stretch. As funny as it is, Kiwis talk like that. 
• Biggest Mystery: This one is close to a tie, but the award has to go out to wondering what February 10th, 2010 would have been like. I'll never know, because the international dateline stole it from me. I could have had something awesome happen that day, but it is not to be. In exchange, I will get two June 21st's, but I want February 10th, too. A close second is the mystery behind the thought process that goes into Kiwi guys' choice of hair styles. Rat tails and mullets, bleached in the back. Cool guys, you look like idiots. 
• Biggest Lesson Learned: My biggest lesson learned is that New Zealand is not my paradise. As great as it is, the best places in New Zealand don't fulfill the dreams I had of finding my perfect place in the world. The beauty absolutely lives up to expectations, but the small size and popularity means that you cannot experience these without other people, which is a massive, massive bummer. In reality, there is no perfect place, but still, I can't really imagine living here full time, which is a bit of a surprise. 

That does it for my random and sometimes pointless list of post-travel awards. This also marks the end of my posting for good this time, thanks for reading and I hope everyone has enjoyed.

Jake Martin