Returned early yesterday morning from the 2008 Wildfoods Festival in Hokitika. Thus follows an account of the trip:
After gathering our expedition party of Messrs. Cavness, Saunders, Kunofsky, Wasserman, and myself, we left Dunedin at around 6:30 on Thursday night. Our intention was to drive as long as sanity and consciousness allowed and camp on the West Coast that night. We drove through the now-familiar route to Wanaka, and turned north to head over Haast Pass, a breathtaking river valley that separates Central Otago from the West Coast. Unfortunately, as it was now after 10 pm, it was pitch black and the sights were lost on us as we warbled along to our three cassette tapes: Billy Joel's Greatest Hits: Volume 2, Absolute Disco: Volume 1, and Mai Music Five : Summer Jams 2001. Despicable singing and rapping was practiced by all.
I drove through that night and we arrived at Lake Paringa around 1:00 AM. We set up tents by the light of our car's headlights. An aside, the car's name was recently changed from Petunia, an ill-chosen first name, to "Marrakech Magic, Car." The Magic served us beautifully this weekend with its added load of almost a thousand pounds of man, gear and whiskey. After setting up the camp, we had a celebratory Speights (Pride of the South), and went to our happy little sleeping bags.
In the morning we woke up to an infestation of little sandflies, and I walked to the edge of the now-visible lake to admire the rolling hills along the far shore as well as the quietly fishing motorboats out to the South. I roused the troops around 9:45, and we ambled around packing up our gear and stuffing it once again into the car. After leaving the campsite around 10:30 we split in the direction of Fox Glacier, 200km to the north. Charles Lee drove for the remainder of this day after my lengthy sojourn the previous night. A strange type of pride or honor is involved in late-night driving. Perhaps a silly hyper-masculinity complex, but it's very hard to hand off the wheel to someone else, I continually find myself wanting to finish my leg all alone, whether for pride, respect or simple sadism, I don't know.
Fox Glacier lies to the South of Franz Josef Glacier, which I saw years ago the first time I was in New Zealand. At the end of a short approach road, speckled with small signs announcing the glacier's previous advances, we reached a parking lot full of campervans and tour buses. The glaciers are popular stopping sites for these tours as they offer short walks with big payoffs.
Here are the boys in the lot, garfing our first PB&J sandwiches of the day.
After gathering our expedition party of Messrs. Cavness, Saunders, Kunofsky, Wasserman, and myself, we left Dunedin at around 6:30 on Thursday night. Our intention was to drive as long as sanity and consciousness allowed and camp on the West Coast that night. We drove through the now-familiar route to Wanaka, and turned north to head over Haast Pass, a breathtaking river valley that separates Central Otago from the West Coast. Unfortunately, as it was now after 10 pm, it was pitch black and the sights were lost on us as we warbled along to our three cassette tapes: Billy Joel's Greatest Hits: Volume 2, Absolute Disco: Volume 1, and Mai Music Five : Summer Jams 2001. Despicable singing and rapping was practiced by all.
I drove through that night and we arrived at Lake Paringa around 1:00 AM. We set up tents by the light of our car's headlights. An aside, the car's name was recently changed from Petunia, an ill-chosen first name, to "Marrakech Magic, Car." The Magic served us beautifully this weekend with its added load of almost a thousand pounds of man, gear and whiskey. After setting up the camp, we had a celebratory Speights (Pride of the South), and went to our happy little sleeping bags.
In the morning we woke up to an infestation of little sandflies, and I walked to the edge of the now-visible lake to admire the rolling hills along the far shore as well as the quietly fishing motorboats out to the South. I roused the troops around 9:45, and we ambled around packing up our gear and stuffing it once again into the car. After leaving the campsite around 10:30 we split in the direction of Fox Glacier, 200km to the north. Charles Lee drove for the remainder of this day after my lengthy sojourn the previous night. A strange type of pride or honor is involved in late-night driving. Perhaps a silly hyper-masculinity complex, but it's very hard to hand off the wheel to someone else, I continually find myself wanting to finish my leg all alone, whether for pride, respect or simple sadism, I don't know.
Fox Glacier lies to the South of Franz Josef Glacier, which I saw years ago the first time I was in New Zealand. At the end of a short approach road, speckled with small signs announcing the glacier's previous advances, we reached a parking lot full of campervans and tour buses. The glaciers are popular stopping sites for these tours as they offer short walks with big payoffs.
Here are the boys in the lot, garfing our first PB&J sandwiches of the day.
We walked up the twenty-minute trek to the glacier, where yellow ropes and suggestive stick figures implored us to stay behind the boundary. Our group, resembling a handful of Skittles with our multicolored raingear, decided that "suggested distances" were for locals, and as residents of the world's only superpower, we deserved a closer look at the glacier. We ducked under the rope and walked across the "end moraine" of the glacial till area, up to the crackling face of dirty, sky-blue ice. The boys had a chance to test out the meltwater, and all agreed that it was "cold as!"
After, we walked up to the safest-looking area where we all kissed the glacier, and Ben and Cully acted out their reaction to a potential calving (when old ice falls away from the face).
Señor Cavness, a devout Geology Major, was ecstatic as the rest of us danced around the glacier in a pagan snow-dance, perhaps with the direct result of freezing rain, sleet and snow back home in Vermont. Sorry all.
After Fox Glacier, we skipped up north to Hokitika, where the food festival was destined to take place. We set up camp about 10km south of town at Lake Mahinapua, at a large DOC site that quickly filled with many campers. After the tents were ready, we left to go check out the town for the rest of the Afternoon. Hokitika is small, about 4,000 people, but definitely a tourist spot and a local economic center, as it has many more services than a comparable suburban town of 4,000 (Such as Richmond). It was also quite evident that the whole town was gearing up for the Wildfoods Festival, clearly the most prominent event on Hokitika's cultural calendar. We wandered to the beach, checked out the market along the main street, and bought some food for our dinner before returning to the campsite. After some noodles and curry soup, we retired to our main evening activity: frisbee and cocktails. I won't go into details, but we heartily enjoyed ourselves and settled down for a well-deserved rest around 11 PM.
In the morning we woke to find threatening skies fulfilling the Meteorological Service's predictions of mixed showers for the day. Another quick packing of the car and we were headed off to Hoki, where we parked near the festival and hastened to enter and start our "Wild" experience.
The smell of charcoal barbeque permeated the air while we watched thousands of costumed people mill around in apparent chaos. Our stomachs grumbling, we headed in a generally Northern direction and began snacking. Batting leadoff came a wild venison sandwich followed by a wild pork sandwich on ciabatta with garlic aioli. The ciabatta was wonderful, but the venison gave me pause to reflect on one of my biggest quibbles with Kiwi cuisine: the lack of buns.
There is a serious tendency to simply use the cheapest bread possible when creating sandwiches, which cuts out, in my opinion, the finest base of a good panino or sandwich, the bread. Though the meat was wonderful and quite gamey, my enjoyment was mitigated by the incursion of Wonderbread into my palate. Pity.
From these tamer varieties we moved on to Crocodile and Kangaroo meat, both of which were similar to chicken and beef, respectively, but simultaneously had their own taste to share. We headed to the 18+ tent to get our wristbands that would allow the purchase of alcohol. Here is a photo of the boys waiting in line.
We continued to the first "big tent," a rental tent that held fifteen separate stalls as well as a dancefloor. Here we encountered my favorite item from the day, Langos (Lan-gohsh), Hungarian fried bread, basically a tart, salty, garlicky flatbread about an inch thick that was spread with either Walnut and Watercress Pesto or a Jalapeño and Herb Harissa. Danny and I invested in one each and traded luxurious bites, as I discovered my new favorite serving receptacle for pesto. This tent also housed an herbal wine stand (rosehip wine - terrible), and two bug stands, which our group took advantage of.
First, there was fried cricket served on peanut satay-spread pieces of baguette. Joe and Evan, two other American compadres, display their wares below. Look closely to see the brownish topping on their bruschetti.
Then we moved to the "worm stand," where Ben, Cully and Rich decided to try "Worms With Wings," an allusion to the famous Red Bull marketing campaign. As they each took their Red Bull shot with worm floater, we decided the classiest way would be to try a complicated triple-twist-entanglement maneuver, which worked beautifully.
After the worm shot, we went into town to re-examine the market and buy some beers from the supermarket for an early-afternoon-beach-chill-session. On returning to the festival, fortified with courage, the boys split away and went on a binge, eating Huhu grubs, goat testicles, and searching in futility for the mythical "Viagra Slushie" so advertised by the Wildfoods website. We continued on to eat a stag heart sandwich, wild boar steaks, a slice of horseflesh, an ostrich meat pie, many fruit and honey-filled pancakes and crepes, barbequed ribs, natural sorbet, local escargot, "firewater shots" (cayenne, chilli powder and vinegar), as well as numerous other treasures that my brain has no doubt blocked from memory to prevent later regret.
As the festival closed, we drank a copious amount of Kava, a Fijian drink made of the crushings of a plant similar to marijuana (legal!), which has a mildly sedative effect somewhere between marijuana and alcohol, and retired to the beach to investigate burgeoning bonfire opportunities.
Then it began to rain. Hard. For about an hour we huddled in our rain jackets, wandering aimlessly down the beach searching for some other Middlebury kids, and contemplating an early departure to return to Dunedin. Luckily, the skies began to clear, cans of beer appeared, and we settled down to an extended beach session, with plenty of friends from Dunedin around and many local pyromaniacs to meet as well. As the bonfires burned, we swapped stories about everyone's favorite (or most disgusting) part of the day, and griped about weather, the quality of Tasman Bitter beer, and the lack of dry firewood.
Rich, Ben, Danny and I left Cully snoozing near the fire and skipped into town to inquire at an Indian restaurant we had previously sighted about the possibility of some dinner. Danny and Ben, the J-Squad, convinced the owner to let us into the restaurant to stand at a table until chairs became available, instead of waiting outside watching the empty, seat-less table inside. After some delicious curries, copious naan, and some somosas for good luck, we paid the bill and headed back the 500 yards to the beach to reconnoiter the status of our fifth compatriot. We hung by the fire for a while longer as various members of our group contemplated romantic options, before deciding that midnight was an excellent hour for leavetaking, and retreating to our vehicle to consider our options.
For days, we had been planning on leaving the festival that night, regardless of events, as Rich and Danny had a mandatory soccer practice on Sunday at 2 pm. That morning, I had won the ro-sham-beau to decide who stayed sober enough to drive, and my last drink having been some despicable beer at the festival eight hours earlier, I threw my support beside an early departure and was quickly joined by my other teammates. We packed into the car to find that we had lost our recently-purchased iPod adapter, and as sadness threatened to crush the group, I hastily pulled out Absolute Disco for a hearty singalong of "Disco Inferno," which never fails to lift group morale. We drove north and then east, heading back a different, faster way over Arthur's Pass. Once again, we had made the choice to drive this beautiful pass in pitch blackness, which I will regret until we likely head back there in a few weeks to do some tramping.
The drive was physically and mentally taxing. I felt a strange compulsion to see it out to its end, so with a full tank of gas, a Red Bull and some BBQ potato chips as fuel, I set in for the long run. Danny, Rich and I stayed away for awhile after Ben and Cully passed out before we even reached the DUI checkpoint outside of town. We discussed what seems to be on every university junior's mind, what our plans were post-college. It seems everyone I know is worried about job hunting or internship scavenging, and the three of us discussed plans, hopes, dreams, and fears on the long ride up the pass.
After a stirring rendition of "Piano Man" (for the record, Danny's favorite lyric: Yes, theyre sharing a drink they call loneliness/But its better than drinkin alone)as we crested the saddle, we drove off into Canterbury, with nothing in front of us except reflective patches on the road and the promise of a soft bed upon our return to Dunedin. I began to tire, but was able to scavenge some caffeine from a lonely gas station before we hit Timaru, and Dunedin seemed closer than ever. The last hour, as Danny succumbed to sleep and Rich struggled to keep awake as my passenger-side partner, conversation devolved into the name game, discussion of the trip so far, and at its lowest point, a question from Rich of "Sam, what is your greatest fear?" I struggled to stay sane, let alone conscious.
As hour seven dawned with the sun I alternated between putting my head out the window, pinching myself, or simply driving faster and faster as I tried to stay awake. Whenever I felt a true burst of tiredness, I would pull off to the side and stare into space for a while while I gathered my sparse thoughts. Finally, as we rounded Mt. Cargill, I rejoiced in jubilant victory as we entered the city proper. I dropped of the boys at their respective flats in a slap-happy air of hilarity, and retured to my bed for an incredible sleep until 2:30 PM. We played some tennis before dinner and had a large team dinner with all the crewmembers and Ben's Kiwi host, Brad. Last night I slept beautifully, as I will likely again tonight.
So, in reflection on this weekend of gastrointestinal gymnastics, we all returned psyched on the trip, intrigued by foods we had never seen or imagined, and amazed by the considerable ability of teenage and twenty-something Kiwis to be stumbling drunk at very early hours of the day.
New Zealand, cheers to you!
Sam
After, we walked up to the safest-looking area where we all kissed the glacier, and Ben and Cully acted out their reaction to a potential calving (when old ice falls away from the face).
Señor Cavness, a devout Geology Major, was ecstatic as the rest of us danced around the glacier in a pagan snow-dance, perhaps with the direct result of freezing rain, sleet and snow back home in Vermont. Sorry all.
After Fox Glacier, we skipped up north to Hokitika, where the food festival was destined to take place. We set up camp about 10km south of town at Lake Mahinapua, at a large DOC site that quickly filled with many campers. After the tents were ready, we left to go check out the town for the rest of the Afternoon. Hokitika is small, about 4,000 people, but definitely a tourist spot and a local economic center, as it has many more services than a comparable suburban town of 4,000 (Such as Richmond). It was also quite evident that the whole town was gearing up for the Wildfoods Festival, clearly the most prominent event on Hokitika's cultural calendar. We wandered to the beach, checked out the market along the main street, and bought some food for our dinner before returning to the campsite. After some noodles and curry soup, we retired to our main evening activity: frisbee and cocktails. I won't go into details, but we heartily enjoyed ourselves and settled down for a well-deserved rest around 11 PM.
In the morning we woke to find threatening skies fulfilling the Meteorological Service's predictions of mixed showers for the day. Another quick packing of the car and we were headed off to Hoki, where we parked near the festival and hastened to enter and start our "Wild" experience.
The smell of charcoal barbeque permeated the air while we watched thousands of costumed people mill around in apparent chaos. Our stomachs grumbling, we headed in a generally Northern direction and began snacking. Batting leadoff came a wild venison sandwich followed by a wild pork sandwich on ciabatta with garlic aioli. The ciabatta was wonderful, but the venison gave me pause to reflect on one of my biggest quibbles with Kiwi cuisine: the lack of buns.
There is a serious tendency to simply use the cheapest bread possible when creating sandwiches, which cuts out, in my opinion, the finest base of a good panino or sandwich, the bread. Though the meat was wonderful and quite gamey, my enjoyment was mitigated by the incursion of Wonderbread into my palate. Pity.
From these tamer varieties we moved on to Crocodile and Kangaroo meat, both of which were similar to chicken and beef, respectively, but simultaneously had their own taste to share. We headed to the 18+ tent to get our wristbands that would allow the purchase of alcohol. Here is a photo of the boys waiting in line.
We continued to the first "big tent," a rental tent that held fifteen separate stalls as well as a dancefloor. Here we encountered my favorite item from the day, Langos (Lan-gohsh), Hungarian fried bread, basically a tart, salty, garlicky flatbread about an inch thick that was spread with either Walnut and Watercress Pesto or a Jalapeño and Herb Harissa. Danny and I invested in one each and traded luxurious bites, as I discovered my new favorite serving receptacle for pesto. This tent also housed an herbal wine stand (rosehip wine - terrible), and two bug stands, which our group took advantage of.
First, there was fried cricket served on peanut satay-spread pieces of baguette. Joe and Evan, two other American compadres, display their wares below. Look closely to see the brownish topping on their bruschetti.
Then we moved to the "worm stand," where Ben, Cully and Rich decided to try "Worms With Wings," an allusion to the famous Red Bull marketing campaign. As they each took their Red Bull shot with worm floater, we decided the classiest way would be to try a complicated triple-twist-entanglement maneuver, which worked beautifully.
After the worm shot, we went into town to re-examine the market and buy some beers from the supermarket for an early-afternoon-beach-chill-session. On returning to the festival, fortified with courage, the boys split away and went on a binge, eating Huhu grubs, goat testicles, and searching in futility for the mythical "Viagra Slushie" so advertised by the Wildfoods website. We continued on to eat a stag heart sandwich, wild boar steaks, a slice of horseflesh, an ostrich meat pie, many fruit and honey-filled pancakes and crepes, barbequed ribs, natural sorbet, local escargot, "firewater shots" (cayenne, chilli powder and vinegar), as well as numerous other treasures that my brain has no doubt blocked from memory to prevent later regret.
As the festival closed, we drank a copious amount of Kava, a Fijian drink made of the crushings of a plant similar to marijuana (legal!), which has a mildly sedative effect somewhere between marijuana and alcohol, and retired to the beach to investigate burgeoning bonfire opportunities.
Then it began to rain. Hard. For about an hour we huddled in our rain jackets, wandering aimlessly down the beach searching for some other Middlebury kids, and contemplating an early departure to return to Dunedin. Luckily, the skies began to clear, cans of beer appeared, and we settled down to an extended beach session, with plenty of friends from Dunedin around and many local pyromaniacs to meet as well. As the bonfires burned, we swapped stories about everyone's favorite (or most disgusting) part of the day, and griped about weather, the quality of Tasman Bitter beer, and the lack of dry firewood.
Rich, Ben, Danny and I left Cully snoozing near the fire and skipped into town to inquire at an Indian restaurant we had previously sighted about the possibility of some dinner. Danny and Ben, the J-Squad, convinced the owner to let us into the restaurant to stand at a table until chairs became available, instead of waiting outside watching the empty, seat-less table inside. After some delicious curries, copious naan, and some somosas for good luck, we paid the bill and headed back the 500 yards to the beach to reconnoiter the status of our fifth compatriot. We hung by the fire for a while longer as various members of our group contemplated romantic options, before deciding that midnight was an excellent hour for leavetaking, and retreating to our vehicle to consider our options.
For days, we had been planning on leaving the festival that night, regardless of events, as Rich and Danny had a mandatory soccer practice on Sunday at 2 pm. That morning, I had won the ro-sham-beau to decide who stayed sober enough to drive, and my last drink having been some despicable beer at the festival eight hours earlier, I threw my support beside an early departure and was quickly joined by my other teammates. We packed into the car to find that we had lost our recently-purchased iPod adapter, and as sadness threatened to crush the group, I hastily pulled out Absolute Disco for a hearty singalong of "Disco Inferno," which never fails to lift group morale. We drove north and then east, heading back a different, faster way over Arthur's Pass. Once again, we had made the choice to drive this beautiful pass in pitch blackness, which I will regret until we likely head back there in a few weeks to do some tramping.
The drive was physically and mentally taxing. I felt a strange compulsion to see it out to its end, so with a full tank of gas, a Red Bull and some BBQ potato chips as fuel, I set in for the long run. Danny, Rich and I stayed away for awhile after Ben and Cully passed out before we even reached the DUI checkpoint outside of town. We discussed what seems to be on every university junior's mind, what our plans were post-college. It seems everyone I know is worried about job hunting or internship scavenging, and the three of us discussed plans, hopes, dreams, and fears on the long ride up the pass.
After a stirring rendition of "Piano Man" (for the record, Danny's favorite lyric: Yes, theyre sharing a drink they call loneliness/But its better than drinkin alone)as we crested the saddle, we drove off into Canterbury, with nothing in front of us except reflective patches on the road and the promise of a soft bed upon our return to Dunedin. I began to tire, but was able to scavenge some caffeine from a lonely gas station before we hit Timaru, and Dunedin seemed closer than ever. The last hour, as Danny succumbed to sleep and Rich struggled to keep awake as my passenger-side partner, conversation devolved into the name game, discussion of the trip so far, and at its lowest point, a question from Rich of "Sam, what is your greatest fear?" I struggled to stay sane, let alone conscious.
As hour seven dawned with the sun I alternated between putting my head out the window, pinching myself, or simply driving faster and faster as I tried to stay awake. Whenever I felt a true burst of tiredness, I would pull off to the side and stare into space for a while while I gathered my sparse thoughts. Finally, as we rounded Mt. Cargill, I rejoiced in jubilant victory as we entered the city proper. I dropped of the boys at their respective flats in a slap-happy air of hilarity, and retured to my bed for an incredible sleep until 2:30 PM. We played some tennis before dinner and had a large team dinner with all the crewmembers and Ben's Kiwi host, Brad. Last night I slept beautifully, as I will likely again tonight.
So, in reflection on this weekend of gastrointestinal gymnastics, we all returned psyched on the trip, intrigued by foods we had never seen or imagined, and amazed by the considerable ability of teenage and twenty-something Kiwis to be stumbling drunk at very early hours of the day.
New Zealand, cheers to you!
Sam
2 comments:
Great post, sweetheart. I'm going downstairs now to eat some saltines and broth or something to settle my stomach...
silly hyper-masculinity complex? More like masochism that you try to pass off as machismo.
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