Adult Under Construction: Surviving the Holidays

Despite spending three of the past five years overseas (give or take a few months), I have always made it home for Christmas. Not so this year. New Zealand is simply too far and thus, too costly to return from for such a short visit. So for the first time, I faced every traveller's greatest challenge – I was on my own for the holidays. The idea had scared me a bit in previous years, and I would not have done it if not for the distance, but I can happily report that things worked out rather well.

Once I had arrived in Wanaka, I set about making plans to stay occupied on Christmas Day, when all the shops would be closed. As I was expecting to be alone, I decided to embrace it and do that most solitary of activities: fishing. Wanaka is a popular fishing area, and it was easy to rent a rod and buy a 24-hour license on Christmas Eve. Saving those for the next day, I spent that evening in the Cinema Paradiso, which is unique enough to merit an entry in the Lonely Planet guidebook to New Zealand. Every film is presented with an intermission, at which there are freshly made cookies for sale. The theatre seating is varied, with couches, standard cinema seats, and an antique car all squeezed in front of the screen. The film selection seems to be mostly second-run features, and every day's schedule is completely different. I was caught between Midnight in Paris and The Guard, but feeling that a bit of a distraction might not be a bad thing given my situation, I bought tickets to both (there was a free cookie in the bargain).

On Christmas itself, I spent about two hours walking to a recommended fishing spot. As it turned out, it was along a walking trail, and Christmas is a lively day for outdoor activities here. I don't think I ever went 30 minutes without someone passing by and asking how the fishing was. Unfortunately, it was not a lively day for the fish, and I only managed one bite, after which a large, smug trout jumped about three feet above the surface. It was nice to be reminded that there were fish in the river at all, but my day's tally was unbalanced, with no fish taken out and two rented lures left in. I bought fish and chips to account for the freshly caught trout that I wasn't eating, and went to bed satisfied that I'd filled up what could have been a long, lonely day.

With Christmas behind me, I hitchhiked back down to Alexandra and settled in for the start of my cherry-picking job. It was only at 6 AM on my first day that I learned my first day had been moved back a week. It seemed I would be stuck waiting in Alexandra over New Year's, but coincidence worked in my favour. One of my pub quiz teammates from Wellington happens to be from Dunedin, and also happens to have a family cottage not far from Alexandra. We also happened to be close to one of the biggest New Year's parties in New Zealand, about an hour away in Queenstown. So on the last day of 2011, I found myself enjoying a beautiful ride along the Kawarau Gorge, on my way to the “adventure capital of the world.”

Queenstown is Wanaka's older, more extroverted brother. It draws huge amounts of tourists for a variety of reasons: its beautiful location; its skiing in the winter; and its bungee jumping, skydiving, and parachuting in the summer. Needless to say, it was packed for New Year's Eve. The campsite is allowed to expand to the rugby field in the center of town to handle the overflow of visitors. Many of them were young Kiwis from the surrounding area, but a few were international travellers such as myself. Our tents were pitched next to those of some young men from Saskatchewan, of all places. We spent our afternoon hiking up Ben Lomond to get one of Queenstown's most famous views (and a bit of a workout). Although it was busy at the top, my aversion to crowds did not spoil the scenery. Back at the campsite, we tossed a football around with the Saskatchewan boys before joining up with some other friends from Wellington to ring in 2012. Despite the crowds, there was no trouble, and the fireworks display was fantastic. We rode back to Alexandra on New Year's Day, tired but satisfied with our brief excursion.

In the end, the holidays were fairly easy to handle on my own. It is important to point out, however, that the holidays in New Zealand feel nothing like those I'm used to. I still have not adjusted to the complete reversal of the seasons down here, and I only knew it was Christmas because stores kept posting their holiday hours. While North American Christmas happens just as winter is really setting in, Kiwi Christmas happens just as summer is heating up. That makes Christmas back home a bit of a relief from the snow and the cold, something to look forward to during the year's shortest days. Here, my mood had already been lifted by the heat and the sunshine, and the Christmas decorations in store windows just confused me. New Year's was the same – the weather made me think of Independence Day or Canada Day, not New Year's. The time difference between here and home also reinforced the oddity. For the first 18 hours of 2012, my family was still in 2011!