Pedants' Corner

(Or pedant's corner, if I am alone in this.)

I think most New Zealanders must have spent English classes at school staring out the window at the beautiful countryside. This place is a grammar purist's hell!

I thought Britain was getting bad at apostrophes, but we're swots in comparison. A fair number of Brits seem to get apostrophe diarrhoea, chucking extra ones in just in case. But there definitely aren't as many missing apostrophes as there are here. Vouchers on the back of supermarket receipts: "The worlds best deals!". On a glossy public information leaflet for Marlborough Sounds: "Picton. Sound like a paradise? Thats because it is!". Aaargh.

Maybe it's because of all the geographical features named after early European pioneers, which all seem to have lost their apostrophes of possession, e.g. Smithys Creek, Bullers River, Gillespies Beach - government signs setting the nation a bad example. Tsk.

Of course there are still those who have eaten a dodgy apostrophe kebab. "Bernard's Bucket's"? He got one of them right, why not the other? Unless I was missing the part of the sign which said "great, but it's not for sale".

Pointlessly capitalised words seem to be in vogue as well. WHY??? Even the authorities are at it. Among a number of odd roadside messages (e.g. "There's no place for JAFAs round here" - bit harsh on the infertile?) are some puzzling capitals:

45% of accidents happen on Corners
19% of accidents involve Trucks

BUT WHY? Do they think that if they didn't capitalise those final words, drivers wouldn't bother with the last word, and would be left forever wondering where 45% of accidents happen? At least until, completely distracted by the obscurity of some of the messages, they pile headlong into a nearby Tree.

It's good to see though that I'm not alone in this quest... Me and the vandals, united against grammar crime.

Pretty wet and occasionally wild

Having overdone the walking, we thought we'd give our legs a rest and paddle down a river for three days. 87km down the Whanganui river, to be precise. Some grade 1 rapids and a couple of grade 1.5 (the scale goes up to 6 - so we weren't too worried..).
Predictably, the scenery was stunning. We spent most of the time too deep in a river canyon to worry about sunburn, although we could see the blue sky above.

As for the rapids... Pah. Of the three canoes in our group, ours was the only one not to capsize.
Come on! They gave us quite a soaking though, to be fair.

After a long day's caneoing, there's nothing like a cold beer. And if you don't like beer then you can't beat a plastic mug of wine.


And as for venison sausages for breakfast... Get in.

Two weeks down

Some more to go... Finally, a blog entry! Blinking writer's block. Or is it the seemingly extortionate price of internet cafes here..? Bah humbug.
Anyway, my excuse is that we've made a slow start. I must be a complete jetlag lightweight. How do people do a two-week holiday here? It took us three days to get more than 100 yards down the road in Auckland.

When we did finally leave Auckland, we were so excited we decided to draw a map of the country in the sand...




Last weekend we took our hostess's car up to the Bay of Islands, where we kayaked, cycled and oh yes, swam with dolphins. Except that I don't suppose they would have described it in the same way. We swam towards them as fast as we could - they sauntered away, whistling casually. Eventually they came back towards us, had a quick look, and scarpered again. Still, we tried.

We also stopped at some amazing, isolated beaches. This one's called Baylis beach and it's on the wild West Coast of the North Island - where most of the country's good surf is.




Now we're doing a 2-week loop of the centre of the North Island, still in the borrowed car - thanks Hayley! I was going to skydive over Lake Taupo, but the weather wasn't up for it. Honest. Might save that one for Australia. So instead we swam in some hot springs on a nearby river - perfect for backpackers, as it's the nearest we'll come for some time to a hot bath.

Nothing so far had really hit my spot though - until yesterday, when we walked over an active volcano for 11 miles or so.
Maybe I just needed some hardship in my life. My hired hiking shoes certainly provided that, within an hour of the start.



Extra adversity was added by cloud


And wind


But the views, when the sun poked through the swirling clouds, made up for it all.

South Crater


Red Crater (and cold Englishman)


Emerald Lakes (and now sheltered Englishman)