Tramp Royale (48 page)

The next day was a very busy one. I had wanted very much to see a kiwi bird but chores incident to our departure the following day left no time for a visit to the zoo. First we had to pick up a suit left to be drycleaned and intended by Ticky for my use on the trip home-we found that they had broken three buttons on it and ripped one off. We neither argued nor complained, having learned that to do so was to invite a tongue-lashing. Since we were flying we wanted to ship back the excess over our air baggage allowance, but when we tried to do so, we found the red tape so appallingly complicated and the service so poor, that we gave up and I limited myself to mailing back as parcel post a suitcase full of books and papers. This required a trip to the customs house for export license before I could mail it. Once I had permission to send it out of the country I returned to the hotel, got the suitcase and went to Auckland's General Post Office, only to find that I could not mail it there. One could do many other things there-deposit money, place a long-distance phone call, send a cablegram overseas, pay insurance premiums, straighten out social security accounts, or even buy stamps-but the mailing of packages was not one of the functions of the General Post Office; that was done at an office several blocks away.

The trip was not entirely wasted, as I wanted to check on an expected cablegram from America and had found myself unable to do so by telephone. I found out why-the cable office in Auckland maintains no file of undelivered messages; they have no way to answer the question: "My name is J. H. Glutz-is there a message for me?" But a good-natured clerk took the trouble to check through every cablegram that had arrived in the country during the past two weeks (that being the only possible way to do it) in order to locate the one intended for me.

The suitcase being heavy I had taken a cab to the G.P.O., but had dismissed it on arrival. Now I had to lug the suitcase to the other office in order to mail it as I could get neither taxi nor tram. One of the first things Ticky and I had learned about Auckland was that the traffic cops simply were not interested in pedestrians, nor were the drivers; no quarter was given or expected, you were quick on your feet or you got hit. But in this case the heavy burden slowed me down. By the time I got that suitcase to the parcel-post office I was shaking with rage and adrenaline shock . . . most particularly because a bobby had looked right at me, then signaled a solid mass of cars to come on anyhow, stranding me in the middle of traffic, unable to run or jump. Latin Americans drive with courage, but the hazard thereby to pedestrians is as nothing to the cold ruthlessness of Auckland drivers. They give the impression that they seriously intend to hit you if possible, while their police seem to encourage the sport.

The suitcase mailed, it was necessary to obtain a different export license at still another office to take out of the country our remaining traveler's cheques. This required the usual questionnaires and declarations but did not take as long as it had taken in Australia; however, New Zealand charges a revenue fee for this gracious privilege.

We still had to arrange customs clearance for about half our suitcases and check them into the airline. Mr. Lees, of New Zealand National Airways Corporation, had pointed out that we could save quite a bit by classing our excess baggage as air cargo rather than as baggage-Mr. Lees was extremely helpful throughout-but this did entail one more chore the day before. But at the end of a long, hard day we were completely ready to go, stripped down to toothbrushes and a change of underwear. We celebrated by going to Hi Diddle Griddle for dinner.

But I still wanted to see a kiwi bird. The kiwi is not only the national symbol of New Zealand, the nickname of its soldiers, and the brand name of the world's best shoe polish, it is highly interesting in its own right. Most of the other flightless land birds are giants like the ostrich and the emu, able to compete through size, muscle, and speed; the kiwi is no bigger than a chicken. New Zealand had practically no animals before man introduced them; a flightless bird, even though small, was able to get along. Indeed, he made out better than his colossal cousin the fabulous moa, a bird that towered twelve feet in the air and which was relished by the Maori even more than they relished their neighbors-by the time the white man came it was extinct.

The kiwi hung on and still hangs on, wild in the bush. But the Auckland Zoo has a few. There was time enough the last morning, before we had to be ready to take the airport bus, to make a fast trip to the zoo provided we took a taxi and hung onto it, which we did-having the driver park and paying his way into the zoo with us.

While the Auckland Zoo cannot compare with the Sydney Zoo it is a remarkably good one for the size of the city. But I had just one thing on my mind-kiwis. So I stopped the first attendant I could find and asked where they were. He scratched his head, admitted that there were some, but he did not think we could see them. Why not? Well, they were night birds and they hid out in the brush in the daytime and were very hard to find. Ah no, he did not think we would see any, but we might try the director's office.

We tried the director's office but there seemed to be nobody at home. We walked away from there rather disconsolately, wondering whether we should sample a few caged tigers and such, or go at once back to town.

We heard someone running behind us, turned and found a slender, very pretty girl waving to us. "Hello! You wanted something at the office?"

We introduced ourselves and said what we wanted. She was Miss Margaret Wilson-"Pat" to her friends, who must be numerous-secretary to the director. She said, "You are visitors, aren't you? Not New Zealanders?"

"That's right. We're from the States."

"Then I think you ought to see a kiwi if that is what you want to see. Come along, I'll try to arrange it."

But we did several things else first. Miss Wilson was not a zoologist nor veterinarian herself, but she loved her zoo and was proud of it; we had to meet her friends, including a lioness who let Pat put her hand in her mouth, a Canadian timber wolf who fawned all over her and whined when she left, and a baby lion which Pat went into a cage to fetch, then brought out and let Ticky hold.

She showed us Komodo dragons, left over from an era even rougher than this one. I remembered our ship passing their home island after we left Java and regretting that I had never seen one. She showed us blue penguins, native to the islands between New Zealand and the south pole and a variety rarely seen in captivity. These had just arrived and the birds were not used to pens; they had hidden. Pat got inside with them and started groping back in under rocks, almost standing on her head. "Come on out, please! Come, darlings"-she called them all "darling" and "dear" from lions to budgies. "Come on out, dear, please! I won't hurt you. Darn! You
bit
me. You shouldn't have done that. Now come on out and be nice."

She talked him into it and reappeared with a penguin that was unquestionably blue. He looked at us and did not seem impressed. Then he bit her again.

The kiwis are kept in a large, wild although enclosed, stretch of native bush. This suits the kiwi but it makes him a wash-out as a zoo exhibit as he simply hides and sleeps through the day. Miss Wilson had one of the keepers poke around until he found one, which he then fetched to her. She held him, petted him to soothe his nerves, and talked about him. "He eats worms and lizards and things like that. He can eat one hundred and sixty-eight worms before he gets sick," she told us solemnly-I quote verbatim.

The kiwi's feathers look and feel like coarse hair. Its bill is the size and shape of a lead pencil but curved. Its wings are useless, featherless little stubs, hidden under the body feathers and looking like a chicken wing just before frying. The kiwi takes a dim view of humans and presently we let him go, whereupon he hurried into nearby thicket and was soon lost to view.

I think Miss Wilson would pet a brontosaurus if she could find a rock to stand on. She would probably call him darling, too. All in all, she was just about the nicest thing that happened to us in New Zealand.

Our taxi driver had seemed to enjoy visiting the zoo on a paid basis and we had grown rather chummy. But when he got us back to the hotel he looked me in the eye and charged us just double what I knew the legal tariff to be for the mileage and the waiting time. I paid it without a quiver, not minding since we would be on our way in an hour or so. Our ship was a DC-6 sleeper of the British Commonwealth Pacific Airlines (since then merged with Qantas). The day was clear, the take-off uneventful; we settled down for a long flight to the Fiji Islands. As we headed north we could see North Island stretched out under us and behind, its odd shape recognizable, just as on a map.

And I was determined to leave it on maps from then on. Australia had had its drawbacks but Australia was a place we wanted to return to and see what we had missed. But New Zealand- To get us back to New Zealand they would have to drag us, kicking and screaming all the way.

I had time to try to get my thoughts straight about New Zealand. Certainly poor hotels were not reason enough to detest a country. I myself had been born in a house without plumbing and had lived much of my life without much of the physical comforts. I was sure in my heart that I could have loved New Zealand, beautiful place that it is, had there been not a single flush toilet in the whole land.

I admitted that part of my reaction was disappointment. I had been sold on their propaganda about what a paradise the place was-no doubt it had seemed more dreadful in contrast to my expectations. But that alone was not it, either; every new place turns out to be quite different from anticipations. The reality quickly erases the preconception and causes one to forget it; it took a careful effort of memory to recall what my former concepts had been.

Perhaps I had placed too much emphasis on poor hotel food. But food is basic to life. It need not be fancy but it should be clean and reasonably well prepared. The plain fare of an American freighter had suited us well enough-but in New Zealand Ticky had lost eleven pounds in eleven days.

But it was not even bad cooking that had appalled us and taken our appetites. One can live a lifetime on tasteless food. It was hair in the coffee, flies in the sugar, dirt on the dishes, and an atmosphere of incivility that tightened up the stomach and made it impossible to eat. The last especially-Australian manners are rough but warm; New Zealand manners are often colder than the proverbially chilly English, with an icy and intentional rudeness not characteristic of the English.

"A guest should never complain." Ah, but we were not treated as guests; we were merely sources of revenue to be exploited, "suckers." It is their country and they are entitled to run it as they see fit, but they are not entitled to advertise for tourists, as they do, and then treat them as they do. They are obtaining money under false pretenses.

But, I reminded myself, not all New Zealanders are rude, or drunken, or dirty, or dishonest. Not at all! I remember at least three taxi drivers who were fine gentlemen, one who apologized on behalf of his country for the manner and speech of a drunk, another who returned half of a tip which he considered too large, another who did us a gracious service and refused pay. There was the manager of the Waitomo Hotel, a conscientious host, Mr. Gunning of Thomas Cook & Son, Mr. Lees of the government airlines, and the lovely and sweet little woman we had met at Rotorua who was so upset at the nastily anti-American talk we had been subjected to one night at dinner at the Hotel Geyser. There was Miss Pat Wilson, bless her warm heart, that very day.

I loved them all, every one of them, and was grateful for what each had done to make us feel happy in their land. But it does not take a very high percentage of boors to make a country dreadful for strangers. No doubt, even in New Zealand, the boors are in the minority . . . but nevertheless New Zealand has several times the minimum tolerable percentage; a visitor gets slapped around so frequently that he is in a constant state of shock.

But New Zealand unquestionably does have some of the finest hunting and fishing in the world. At Lake Taupo near Rotorua the trout, they say, average over five pounds. As for game, you may even shoot doe and be paid a bounty for shooting them. The game do not have to be stalked; just bang away until your shoulder is sore. If that is what you are after and you can stand the hotels and the numerous and-so-forth, then New Zealand is for you.

But is that "sport"? Shooting cows in a pasture is actually more sporting; you have the farmer to worry about. As for fishing, it is a long way to go to catch a fish.

Plan your trip to avoid the place. This is not hard to do; only Tristan da Cunha is harder to reach, harder to leave. New Zealand claims to have the finest variety of natural wonders in the smallest area of any place in the world, but let me tell you how to plan a trip which will cover no more territory than all of New Zealand, involve no more mileage in the area described, and involve thousands of miles less to reach your starting point-and will provide everything New Zealand has to offer, including hunting and fishing, and excepting only the glorious Glow-Worm Grotto:

Lay a map of New Zealand down on a map of the United States of the same scale so that the south end of South Island is at North Rim, Arizona, with the north end at Yellowstone. Place the toe of the shoe of North Island at Puget Sound and the heel at Glacier National Park; this will leave a space between the two islands roughly equivalent to Cook Strait at a point just above Arco, Idaho.

In the area of the United States covered by the outlines of the two New Zealand islands superposed on your map as described above you will find:

Several Indian reservations, in place of Maori villages.
The thermal areas of Yellowstone Park
Many caverns including Lehman Caves National Monument
Mountains, glaciers, fjords (Puget Sound is not called"fjords" but the name is not important)
Yellowstone Lake instead of Taupo Lake
Freshwater and saltwater fishing of many sorts
Hunting-elk, deer, antelope, bear, game birds, even mountain lion-but you will have to hunt in most areas; it will not be shooting cows in a pasture.
In place of Auckland, you have a choice of several cities but let us name Salt Lake City which is the same size as Auckland, but much prettier and immeasurably cleaner, and possesses some of the finest hotels in the world, run by Mormons, a people who make almost a fetish of being polite and hospitable to "gentiles." They are wonderful cooks, too.
And (I almost forgot!) several hundred miles of beaches, ocean, freshwater, and salt lake