New Zealand: the good stuff

Each time I come home from living overseas, I am reminded of the things I value about New Zealand that I had previously taken for granted.

Fern-covered seating fabric

For example, though I’m sure many people would moan about the public transportation system in Auckland – and I’m sure there are valid things to moan about – compared to the local buses in Cusco, Peru, the Auckland buses are a dream come true! (see my previous blog A dangerous commute for a glimpse of Peruvian bus travel)

For a start, they have timetables, and they almost always run on time. The drivers are mostly friendly, greeting their passengers with a friendly ‘Good morning’ or ‘Good afternoon’. If they’re not in a rush, they will actually chat to you – one read the name ‘Bolivia’ on my t-shirt and wanted to know if I’d been there and what it was like. They give you advice: ‘You’d be better to get a transfer ticket, dear. It’s cheaper’. They wait for the elderly and those with babies and young children to get seated before zooming off.

And the buses themselves are clean, with comfortable seats in bright colours and patriotic designs. They have buttons you can press or cords you can pull to indicate you want to get off at the next stop, though on one occasion I almost shouted out ‘Bajar’ as I would have on a Peruvian bus. Their roofs are high enough that even the tallest person doesn’t have to bend over. They don’t try and fit 100 people on a vehicle designed for 40, or have a conductor hanging out the door when the bus is overcrowded. They don’t contain chickens or guinea pigs or lambs or cats, though a seeing-eye dog would be allowed. They are much more expensive, of course, but believe me, the price is worth paying!

Another thing I really value about New Zealand is the greenness. There are trees everywhere, not just where I was staying in the bush-clad hills of Titirangi, but trees line the streets in almost every city suburb and in every small town, as well as the centres of the big cities. And in New Zealand we have our very own Christmas tree, the pohutukawa, which produces its magnificent bright red blossoms over the Christmas period. This year the trees were producing an amazing display.

Waterlilies in Auckland Domain

Most New Zealand towns and cities have public parks and green spaces for everyone to enjoy. In the middle of Auckland city, there’s a beautiful big park called The Domain, and one of its attractions is its large glasshouses. The display of flowers inside these glasshouses at the moment is truly stunning.

New Zealanders as a whole are great gardeners. We love our flowers and shrubs, and many people still cultivate their own vegetable gardens and grow fruit trees. For Christmas dinner, we ate new potatoes, freshly dug that morning from my uncle’s small allotment at the retirement village where they live, and I'm sure a lot of my fellow New Zealanders did the same.

Walking alongside the Waikato river in Hamilton

Honey, I’m home!

Home is where the heart is, they say. Well, New Zealand certainly holds three things very close to my heart: most of my family, my best friends and delicious food.

One of the best things about returning to New Zealand is being able to see the people I feel closest to, my extended family and my women friends. This year I timed my visit particularly well and was able to enjoy my first family Christmas since my mum died in April 2008. I like to think of the aunt and uncle I stayed with in Hamilton as my surrogate parents. Because they’ve known me all my life and they know my history, I can relax with them, be myself. They are helpful and supportive, and they always make me feel so very welcome.

Christmas dinner with the whanau

I also got to catch up with those of their kids and grandkids – my cousins and second cousins – who still live in Hamilton, and said hello to another, who now lives in Australia, via Skype. My aunt and uncle held a dinner party for some people they know who were also close to my family – my dad’s cousin and his wife, and a good golfing buddy of my mum’s and her husband. And my uncle drove us all the way to Whangamata, a beachside town on the Coromandel peninsula about an-hour-and-a-half’s drive from Hamilton, so I could catch up with another elderly auntie.

I also enjoyed a lovely dinner and catch up with relations from my dad’s side of the family: an elderly aunt who is the sole survivor from my dad’s siblings and in-laws, and her children – my cousins – and some of their children. That was fun too.

Though a couple live in faraway lands, the majority of my close women friends live in Auckland. I was blessed to stay once again with dearest Rosie and her son Stephen and cat Fluffy in their house in Titirangi, a suburb of bush, birds and beaches. Another good buddy, Sue, lives nearby, so the three of us shared dinners and lunches out, went shopping together and saw a few movies – The Hobbit, Skyfall and Quartet. I had a lovely long lunch, with those magnificent publishing women I used to work with at Auckland University Press, and heard about their latest doings and the hot gossip, and we shared a lot of laughs. I also long-lunched with Jo, my oldest friend – we worked together at Air New Zealand many eons ago – and caught up with her news of family, job, etc. I spent the night at the house of friends Carol and John – Carol and I taught English in the same language school – and we ate a yummy meal, drank lots of wine, and chatted till the wee hours. And I lunched with Cathy, another former teacher at that same school. She had visited me in Peru so it was great to catch up with her again.

I value having all these wonderful people in my life and it’s so good to be able to come back to New Zealand and pick up again as if our last conversation was just the day before.

Fresh flounder straight off the barbeque

And, last but by no means least, food! One of the great things about New Zealand is being able to eat a huge variety of fresh, delicious food … with confidence. And, by that I mean, without worrying about what nasty bugs and beasties you’re going to catch from the unwashed or washed-in-bad-water vegetables and fruit in your meals. Of course, you can contract stomach-churning diarrhoea-inducing bugs from any restaurant in any country but the chances of that happening are just so much higher in under-developed countries.

I also love the variety of food available in restaurants and supermarkets. I ate Italian, Turkish, Greek, Thai and good old Kiwi fare, and enjoyed every single mouthful. Christmas dinner was that traditional Kiwi staple of roast lamb with mint sauce, plus the English traditional roast turkey, as well as delicious ham on the bone, and all the trimmings. Divine! And then there’s the seafood – my favourite, and the one thing I missed in land-locked Cusco. Ah, the seafood … I’ll say no more as my mouth is watering at the very thought of it!

Thanks, New Zealand and my fellow Kiwis. It was another truly wonderful visit home.

Santiago’s elegant edificios

I’ve always been a fan of elegantly designed buildings and, here in Santiago, I’ve found no shortage to point my lens at. Here are a few that have appealed:

The Museo de Bellas Artes (the Fine Arts Museum) is Chile’s principal art gallery. Designed by Chilean architect Emilio Jéquier as an approximate copy of the Petit Palais in Paris, the gallery displays contemporary and past Chilean art as well as playing host to visiting exhibitions. Not only is it a stunning example of classical architecture on the outside, it also has an amazing steel and glass roof. Begun in 1905, the building was finally inaugurated on 21 September 1910.

El Correo Central (the central post office) is located on one corner of the Plaza de Armas. I found conflicting information about the building in guidebooks and on line, so I will paraphrase what Professor Wiki has to say on the subject. According to Wikipedia, ‘The building was built in 1882 by architect Ricardo Brown on the foundations of the old Palace of the Governors, one that had been damaged by fire in 1881 and had been the residence of the presidents of the Republic until 1846, when the seat of government moved to the Palace of La Moneda. In 1908, the architect Ramón Fehrman transformed the facade, adopting a neoclassical style influenced by the French. In 1976, the building was declared a historic monument and, since 2004, the ground floor has housed the Post and Telegraph Museum.'

On the corner of the Plaza de Armas adjacent to the post office is Santiago’s Cathedral, the fifth such building on this site. The first edition was destroyed by fire following an attack by the local indigenous population and the following three incarnations were each destroyed by earthquakes, in 1552, 1647 and 1730 respectively. Although work on the current building began in 1747, the final design, by Italian Joaquίn Toesca, was not devised until the 1780s and building had not been completed prior to the architect’s death in 1799. A century later, the twin towers were added by another Italian Ignacio Cremonesi. Inside, the cathedral is lavishly decorated, its ceiling in particular a sumptuous work of art.

The newly restored building below was re-inaugurated in 1981 as the seat of government, though it has an interesting and somewhat tragic past. The Palacio de la Moneda is so called because it was originally designed by the Italian architect Joaquίm Toesca – who also designed the Cathedral – as the country’s mint. It was built between 1788 and 1805, functioned as the Mint until 1929, part of that time also housing Chile’s presidents, who lived here between 1846 and 1958. When General Augusto Pinochet led the military coup here in Santiago, on 11 September 1973, then president Dr Salvador Allende committed suicide here, and the building itself suffered severe damage as a result of being bombed by Chilean Air Force Hawker Hunters and the fires which followed.

The Museo Nacional de Historia Natural, or National Museum of Natural History, lies within Quinta Normal, a large and beautiful park on the outskirts of downtown Santiago. The exterior of the building, originally designed by French architect Paul Lathoud for the First International Exhibition in 1875 but subsequently rebuilt following a devastating earthquake in 1927, is quite plain and, on the day I visited, the museum was playing host to large numbers of noisy school children, all vying for their turn at the interactive displays it houses. Its one redeeming exhibit – the enormous skeleton of a blue whale – was in the process of being dismantled behind large screens. But I found the building’s interior design quite charming, if mostly inaccessible, completely under-appreciated and largely ignored.

The Museo Artequin sits on one of the busy boulevards that surround the Quinta Normal park and is a delightful example of quirky architecture. The building, constructed of iron and glass, was designed by Frenchman Henri Picq for the International Exposition in Paris in 1889, and brought back in pieces to be reconstructed here in Santiago following the exhibition. I had read negative reviews of the museum itself, which uses replicas of famous artworks to educate Chilean children about the world’s art, so didn’t bother going in but enjoyed photographing the building’s colourful exterior.

Terraza Neptuno or Neptune’s Terrace is located on Cerro Santa Lucίa, a rocky outcrop in the central city where Santiago’s founder Pedro de Valdivia and his 150 men first encamped. These days it is a haven of green amidst towering steel-and-glass skyscrapers and concrete apartment blocks but it also includes remnants of its fascinating past: bits of its original fortifications, a plaque to commemorate a visit by Charles Darwin, a small chapel which can no longer be visited due to the earthquake damage that plagues this city, and Castillo Hidalgo, now an events centre. It also has a wonderful folly, dating from the late 1870s, when city mayor, Benjamίn Vicuña Mackenna, decided to place his own stamp on the small mountain by creating sweeping terraces and grand curving stairways, a triumphal arch topped off by a grand dome and a classically inspired statue of Neptune, riding the waves of his very own fountain.