As you may have read previously, my hubby and I have just completed a whirlwind 3-week trip to Eastern Australia and the South island of New Zealand. After lots of discussion, analysis and jokes about the quality of our various tours we took I volunteered to sum up our impressions of the fearless, and sometimes surreal, personas that have braved the waters of the tour guide world. It can be a harsh world out there and everyone is a critic so hold on to your hats cause we aren’t short on opinions around here!

On our first excursion from Sydney to the Blue Mountains three weeks ago we had a great tour guide. (For the purposes of this exposé keep in mind that tour guide is usually synonymous with bus driver). He was an Aussie that lived in the area, had a family, knew the Country and all those interesting things that only the locals would know about (housing prices, local politics, standard of living, etc.). He was also genuinely excited for us tourists that we were going to see all these amazing sites and even proclaimed that he had “the best job in the world”. On top of all that he was extremely friendly and we had no doubt that we were going to be well looked after for the day.

Little did we know at that time that such guides were few and far between and as the trip progressed we began to eagerly anticipate what the next guide had in store for us.

Over the course of the many, many day trips we took for the rest of our vacation we quickly found out that immigrants from all over the world had found their special niche in the tourism industry. Whether it was a bus, boat, train or van it was clear that there was simply little space for, or desire of, the local people to share their corner of the world with visitors. In total our trips were led by: two Brits, a German, a Frenchman, two Aussies, five Kiwis (one of them in Australia) and a Dutchman. The Kiwis definitely did better than the Aussies as far as employing local people but just barely.

This made for an interesting experience but was definitely disappointing at times. I can’t honestly say that the local tour guides were better at their job than the foreigners. It was obvious that some had lived there for quite some time and/or had made the effort to get to know the place.

Australia was by far the friendlier place of the two countries. No matter what the nationality the tour guides they were alwayd happier and livelier. The only exception being our one Kiwi, which brings me to my second point: New Zealanders are not as hospitable as their reputation would have us believe. Now, don’t get me wrong, no one was ever rude to us per se, but they weren’t jumping up and down to make us feel welcome either. In that respect, it was like many of New Zealand’s other attributes that were so much like the UK.

But back to the tour guides. Like I was saying, Australia did a better job showing their guests around. The German girl on our Kuranda rainforest trip in Cairns was super sweet even though she didn’t speak great English, and the British lady who showed us around the Sydney opera house was also very nice. The Australian bus driver who drove us from Brisbane to the Australia Zoo was funny. He cracked some great jokes in the stereotypically dry humor kinda way that the Aussies are famous for. He managed to do this throughout the two hour drive where he started off by telling us he was gonna tell us “a little bit” about Queensland history during our trip and then proceeded to give us a chronological blow by blow of the European settlement. Let me give you an example of how some of this undetailed dialogue might have gone:

“People in England decided in 1811 that they should establish a penal colony in Queensland. In 1812, King Greg the 4th or Parliament or something sent a letter to Governor Henry in New South Wales saying to do this act. When the letter got there in 1813, the Governor told his wife Margaret to send her Cousin George and his best mate Jerome to get some horses and scout out the land. In 1814, they found the area around Brisbane, named it Moreton Bay and decided it was a good place to start a prison. But somehow the name Moreton was changed along the way to include an “e” which it didn’t originally have. That happened sometime before 1820. George and Jerome split up in 1818. One made it back ok and one stayed and to fight off the aborigines…” blah blah blah. You get the point right? It was somewhat interesting but funny how he would stop every so often to insert a joke, interrupt himself to point out a historic landmark, or avoid running a motorcyclist off the road. Really.

The Frenchman that took us on our Wooroonooran Safari was by far the best guide. His accent was so heavy you would have thought he was right off the boat but he had actually lived in Australia for more than 10 years. He had quite a job on his hand doing a bilingual full-day tour in English and French. He didn’t complain about it once even though he rarely had to do something like that and it made his job twice as difficult. Just think, he had to tell each and every fact twice, translate questions and answers from both languages all while driving a van to a swamp, crocodile farm, and the Wooroonooran rainforest national park. When we were at the Johnstone Crocodile farm he even jumped in and showed us around the animal enclosures as the keepers were busy with a large group that had just come in on a bus. He could’ve just sat back and taken a break while we were in there. Not only did he do all this but he managed to make us all feel like we had the most personal tour guide on the planet as well. He did an excellent job making both language groups feel like he was their friend and available for any question or conversation you may want to strike up. We asked him questions about the places we were visiting, politics, his family, his job, the environment, aborigines, history and so on. And all with a smile on his face. Honestly, the man deserves a medal.

New Zealand brought its own flavor to tourism. We had some average friendly Kiwi guides on our excursions to the glowworm caves in Te Anau, Milford Sound and Kaikoura whale watching. And we also had one very, very sweet local lady from Twizel who showed us around “Pelennor Fields” (you Lord of the Rings freaks – I mean fans – will know what I mean) on our impromptu Lord of the Rings tour. I would definitely recommend all of these, especially the last one as it seems pretty good value for money based on some of the other LOTR tours we saw advertised.

On our second “Brit experience” the guide’s name could have been I’m-only-here-because-I-can’t-find-another-job man. Seriously, he was alright when you approached him with a question but I’ve never met a less talkative person whose sole job in life was to show people around a place they were seeing for the first time. He picked us up from our hotel for our swimming with dolphins trip to Akaroa, and didn’t say anything until the van was full. He then got on his microphone and told us it would be about an hour to our destination and then didn’t say a word until we got there. Well, I lied. He DID make a couple stops on the way there where we got a few words out of him. The first stop was at a vista point. He told us the name of it as we were driving up to it and then let us out to take a look. I guess he figured the sign posted there would tell us everything we needed to know. I decided to approach him with a question to see if I could coax a personality out of hiding and to my surprise he engaged in a response! My hubby jumped into the conversation, as I’m sure he, like myself, recognized that this might be our only opportunity to get some valuable information out of this guy. He played the obvious “I’m British too” card to try to make a personal connection, which worked a little bit. His reaction to our attempt at breaking down this wall of ice was to maneuver the dialogue onto how bad British people are. At that point I think I named him glass-half-empty man. I’m not kidding but the man had a cynical response or comment about everything! Some classics were: “the Brits complain about everything” (yes, the irony here is overwhelming, I know), “not everything the Brits brought over here was good”, “in 1915, they renamed that bay from German bay and I bet you can guess why THAT is”. But the cake goes to the story he told us about when he recently visited the British museum of history in London and took it upon himself to tell one of the workers there that none of the stuff was theirs and that they had just “nicked” everything from around the world during Imperialism.

But, the grand prize of tour guide weirdos has to go to the “flying Dutchman”. Now, I’ve never met a real Dutch person before (unless you count some older relatives that moved to the U.S. over 70 years ago) but I doubt they are all like this guy. This mid-thirties “dude” was definitely one who likes his cars fast and his women pretty. He was a smoking, promiscuous flirt with spiky, blondish, thinning hair and a wicked sense of humor. He had no trouble dropping the “f” bomb in conversation along with other choice swear words as if it was just a normal thing you did when you engage in casual conversation with perfect strangers. He promptly told the entire bus, as we were beginning our day together, that he came to NZ to follow an ex-girlfriend but then dumped her because she turned 30 and that was far to old for him. But not to worry, he assured us, he obtained a younger model shortly thereafter. Other highlights of the day included him joking about pushing me off the cliff, running after a pretty girl on the street while smoking a cigarette, and when I asked him if he was ready for us to get back on the bus the famous response, “I’m always ready, just ask my girlfriend”!! To top it off, when we got back on the bus for the final time he asked the two of us why we were on an “old people’s trip”. I’m not sure what I said but it was one of those moments that you wish you could’ve said something clever. I mean, come on buddy, you can’t pay money for a surreal experience like that!

Well, those are the highlights. It’s funny that no matter how much planning you put into a trip like this there is just no way to account for all the variables a tour guide can bring to your activities. The weirder the guide the funnier the memories I think so it’s better to embrace it, sit back and enjoy!

The food really was marvelous, a fantastic menu, and an obviously talented chef. However, the service received was pretty terrible. 3 times I had to go looking for someone to fill our drinks (They never once took the initiative and asked us), and once we had completed our main courses, my lovely wife and I looked at the (admittedly few) morsels remaining on our plate for 25 minutes, before I decided to go and find a member of staff to clear up. At this point, however tempting the sweet menu was, we need to to get to bed as we had an early start in the morning, and couldn’t afford any more time wasted.

It really is a shame, and I hope my experience here was just a fluke, as the place has a wonderful charm, and like I said, the food was sublime. However, because of the poor service, the Redcliffe Café is pushed out of the top spot for places to eat in New Zealand.

There is not really much to this little town, a dozen or so eateries and the same amount of souvenir shops. It is worth a visit for its natural beauty tho. And for the one local attraction, the glow worms.
Te Anau is a maori name, but its origins had been lost in the ages. “Te Anau-au”, or cave of swirling pools was the most likely original place name. This led a local explorer in 1948 to begin a search for caves in the area that contained these swirling pools. After a few years of searching he found the cave entrance by swimming down an underwater spring on the mountain side, not knowing what he would find (What was he thinking). What he found were about 6 miles of underground caves, rivers, pools, and the cave ceiling speckled with the light of glow worms.

My lovely wife had been looking forward to this trip, and it really was special. Again, we were not allowed to take photos (The worms are shy apparently), so I cannot actually prove I saw them. However, I can say this. The “Pirates of the Caribbean” ride in Disneyland has a faithful recreation of what a glow worm cave looks like, only without the singing.

The real reason we visited the wildlife park was to see the Kiwi – the avian variant. I may have previously mentioned that before the arrival of humans, there were only 2 native mammals on the island. NZ was avian heaven. Even the two mammals flew, as they were both bats!
The Kiwi developed to be a ground creature to fill the role left by the absence of mammals. It has very mammalian features and behaviors. It burrows in the ground, cannot fly, is nocturnal, and its “feathers” are more like hair. It is a really strange creatures. At the Queenstown wildlife center, we got to see these wonderful birds in their native habitiat – a glass enclosure. We had to enter a dark room, and let our eyes grow accustomed to the dark before we could see them, but they were pretty cool. They are a lot larger than I thought, but were fascinating to watch. No photos were allowed I am afraid
After a while, the ever-ticking clock forced us to leave Queenstown, and head south. The drive out of town took us past deer park heights which is where a lot of the LOTR trilogy was shot. It is quite funny to think that right next to a huge holiday town, an airport roads, and telegraph poles the scenes of LOTR that depicted the most isolation were filmed here.

The road to Te Anau was as stunning as any in NZ. I have to admit, I have become too accustomed to the views, and am forgetting how lucky I am.

We took a steam boat out into the lake, and cruised along for about 40 minutes to a farm at the other side of the lake, where we had a lovely meal.

The steam boat was great. I love this sort of thing. You could get onto a galley above the engine room and look at the pistons pumping away, as a couple of stokers furiously shoveled 1 ton of coal an hour into the boiler. I tell you, not many people volunteer for that job you have to be fit.

After about 40 minutes chugging along at a fair clip, we arrived at Walter Peak’s farm. This farm is the opposite of Queenstown. When the first two settlers arrived in the area, they flipped coins as to which side of the lake each would settle on. Since then the two sides have developed extremely differently. Walter Peak’s farm is almost the same as it was more than 100 years ago. It is lovely.

We had a smashing dinner, which included the best soup my lovely wife has ever tasted and Yorkshire Puddings! We were then given the opportunity to watch some sheep get herded, and then shawn. Beign a yorkshireman, I have seen tis done a hundred times, but my lovely California beauty insisted on attending the show, and as I am lawfully obliged to do all as I am told to, I followed.

Soon, the steamboat blew its whistle, and it was time to board and take the trip home. On the way back we were able to partake in a sing song with the pianist on board. We were the youngest on board by far. The song choice reflected this, but I knew most of the songs anyway, and the numerous beers I had drunk encouraged me to sing along at the top of my voice. The grannies loved it

This was a romantic evening for the two of us with a lovely setting. It did make us think how our big trip will be over soon, and we will begin our long journey home.
Not immediately however, we must first head to Te Anau, and Milford Sounds.

As we entered town, we saw how appealing this is to those younger than ourselves. The place is packed with hotels, hostels, and those under 25. This is a party town. But we didn’t come to party we came to see the amzing lake, and its famous view of the Remarkables – otherwise known to LOTR fans as the Misty Mountains.

We spent the morning wandering the shopping district. We were struck by how many activities there are, and how busy it is. For a permanent population of 11000, this place is hopping. We had a light lunch at the famous FergyBurger, and then headed up the mountain side on the cable car.

At the top there is the Luge. This is basically a downhill track for a 3 wheel single bob sled. What fun. My lovely wife and I had 3 turns each.

Queenstown really is situated in a lovely part of the world, but I can’t help feeling it is a little tacky. However, It is amazing to be walking aling the street, and to look above you and see a parasail flyng around, then turn around and look at the mountains and the lake…

As we drove close, I said to my lovely wife “We’ve got to do the tour, no matter how much it is”. She smiled, and said we’ll see. Well, we did it, and it was great.

The main filming site is on private land and the only way to see it is through the tour. We boarded the 4WD vehicle in the small town centre, and headed out to the farm. Along the way the tour guide, Jane, was telling us all about how the filming impacted their community. Pretty much everyone who wanted to be involved was. They needed riders, horses, handlers, carpenters, cooks, orcs, Rohirim, Gondorian soldiers, anything. The extra’s were paid $100 per day – I would have done it for $1 a day I think.

The farm owners themselves were only paid $1000 per day for the use of the land. The film crew spent 30 days setting up the scene, including building the roads into the site, and then another 30 days were spent filming.

One of the unique things about this Lord of the Rings site is that after the film crews leaves, they usually put the site back to its original state. In this case, however, the roads were left, as the land owner deemed them to be a usefull addition.

As the tour reached the site, we were shown segments of the film which was then paused, and we could just look out of the window at the actual location in real life. We then got out and looked around as Jane shared more stories about the filming.

We stood in the exact spot were Theodin gave his rousing speech, I ran down the hill where the Rohirim charged. I stood on the spot where the Witch King was slaughtered, and ran alongside the spot where the mumak’s attacked. This was magic.

Our guide was excellent, and had lots of props including Bormir’s sword, an orc’s mask, and flags of Gondor and Rohan. We got to play with them which just made the experience even better. We had a blast.

Mr Crabapples, I thought of you often this day. I know you are jealous!

Once we arrived, we checked into a chalet with a glorious view at the bottom of the mountain. The little chalet was very cute, though the previous occupants had left us a nasty smell. But we can’t win them all.

We had a bite of lunch, and then went for a walk up the Kea Trail which took us across a couple of swing bridges over treacherous gorges. Very cool

Following the walk we had dinner at the Hermitage’s famous restaurant. The meal was delicious, easily the best we had had in New Zealand so far. It is definitely worth the visit, and it really was not that expensive. It costs us less than $100NZ for starters, mains, and a dessert (and a number of beers for Stuey).

We slept very soundly that night, and in the morning we went for another walk to the glacier lake, which is basically the melting point of the glacier. From the vantage points along the walk you can see the Tasman Glacier, the lake containing glacial icebergs, and then the moraine and expanse towards to the river, and eventually lake Pukaki.

After an all too short a time we had to leave Mt Cook to head further south to stay two nights in the adventure capital of the world, Queenstown.