Day 25: Saturday, March 15, Nelson

This morning started early with the Nelson Saturday Market. Vendors set up tents in a parking lot to hawk their wares. I would say it was one of the better markets I have been to and had more upscale items than most. Popular items included homemade soaps, jade jewelry, fruits, vegetables, and jams. Some of the more interesting items included airplanes and helicopters made of cut up and bent beer cans, hippie-style clothes (sold by someone who obviously wore her own clothes), and a guy selling Americana. He said that he went to the U.S. once or twice a year, bought an old truck for resale in NZ, loaded it with shirts and other clothing from Wal-Mart and other cheap outlets, and shipped it back to the NZ. No one here knows they are from Wal-Mart because they aren’t familiar with WM’s house brand names. He also had a picture frame and other items made from Texas license plates; he gets those from junkyards and resells them here.

While in the market I had quite a shock. I was walking down a row when I thought I spotted a family we knew. I was so surprised that I just kept walking, then turned around to have a better look. Sure enough, a family that we had eaten with on the North Island in Palmerston North was there at the Nelson market (which is on the South Island). It was quite bizarre. It turns out that they were on a “house swap” vacation with some friends – each used the other’s house for a week so they each got a cheap vacation. Had I known that, I almost would have expected to see them at the market, but as it was I thought it was really strange. (It got stranger as the day went on.)

When I was finished in the market I wandered down an adjacent street. I saw a restaurant called the Lone Star and took a look at the menu. Fajitas for 2 were $58, a burrito was $25, and hamburgers came with a side of “buffalo chips.” I’m not sure if they just said that for the American ring, meant to imply that the French fries (chips) were big, or if they really meant it as a pun, but the idea of having a side of buffalo poop with my burger wasn’t a selling point.

My 40+ year old ex-electrical engineer hang glide instructor. How's that for a career change?

That afternoon I went hang gliding, which was one thing I had wanted to do. The guy who took me was an electrical engineer by training, but in 1989 someone had introduced him to hang gliding and he bought his hang glider two days after his first flight. He has been hang gliding ever since. He has an understandable dislike for wind farms. I also learned that NZ’s nuclear-free policy extends to nuclear-powered ships, not just those with nuclear weapons, and that the extensive pine tree forests that grow on hills here are planted by hand. (We thought that might be the case because these hills are so steep and that it would be hard to run any machines on them.) We went gliding from a hill overlooking Nelson, and I wish we could have picnicked at the top before coming down. It was a great view. The crest is bare because a logging company cleared it and they lease the land to local hang gliders and paragliders. The flight was great and I even got a chance to pilot it for a bit. We landed in an open sports field where a softball game was going on nearby. The instructor said that he once heard several “whoosh” sounds as he was coming in and learned after landing that someone was launching model rockets nearby.

I gotta get me one of these.

While we were out on the field we looked up to see the friends from the market walking across the field toward us. It turns out that one of their sons was playing in the softball game (baseball doesn’t exist here, so softball is both a guy and girl sport) and when they saw the hang gliders they decided to investigate since we had told them our plans.

The rest of the day was spent wandering around Nelson. One stop was the cathedral that overlooks the town. It was started in the 1930’s in the neo-gothic style, but building paused after the first level was complete. When building was going to resume in the 1950’s there was debate over whether to complete it according to the original plans or finish it off in a 50’s style. The result is a cathedral with great stained glass windows and interior buttresses in along the outside (I’m forgetting my architecture history vocabulary) but topped with a flat plaster ceiling that looks like something from a nice office building. The result isn’t too great.

As we walked in town afterward we heard a honk. We looked up in time to see our family friends driving past us, making it the third time that day we had seen them. We decided to eat at a place called Go Mexican for dinner; up to this point we had only had tacos we made ourselves and great burritos at The Burrito Company in Christchurch, so this was our first sampling of full NZ Mexican. The place looked clean and new, but the guy who helped us was Indian. The food turned out to be four of five stars (my only complaint was with the salsa) and the presentation was great. We ended up in a long conversation with the owner/waiter. It turns out that this Indian guy who cooked us Mexican food in New Zealand taught international cuisine at a culinary school in Milwaukee after living in El Salvador. He became a U.S. citizen about ten months ago, but since his family couldn’t get immigration papers they all decided to rendezvous in NZ. He married an American, but his mother-in-law teaches art in Perth, Australia. He was a very interesting guy and we enjoyed both the conversation and the food.