The 90 Mile Bitch

In our last day in New Zealand we hired a private tour guide (Phil) to show us around 90 Mile Beach and Cape Reigna (the Northernmost point of NZ). Phil was a wealth of information having worked as a tour guide for 8 years and a rancher before that. So we got all our NZ questions answered and all our stereotypes corrected on this tour. [In reference to why things are named in miles, it was because Great Britain was still under the imperial system when these locations were baptized.]

90 Mile Beach had a pretty interesting backstory which I won't bore you with. The best part of the tour was the way Kiwi's pronouce E's and I's. They pronouce hard E's (like peach) with a soft I (like pitch). So the entire time Phil was telling us about 90 Mile Beach, it sounded like 90 Mile Bitch.

It's funny when the Kiwi's talk about their "history" because their nation is so young. When we sailed past the original capital of NZ, the tour guide told us this long and dramatic story of the first European born in NZ. Seriously, the creation story rivaled the Book of Genesis, until you find out the damn gringo was born in 1857.

Another instance of their delusions of antiquity was when Phil took us out to the Kerikeri forests to find "wild horses". Now I wasn't expecting the horses from those cave doodles in France but we found out that these "wild" horses got loose in the 1970s! That's just a sabbatical in my books. The wild equines of the Cheasapeake Bay at least swam ashore back in the 1700's. It's rare that US history can pre-date anyone else's so one point for the star spangled.

Phil also told us that the local ranchers try to round up the wild horses each year and bring them back to the ranches that they camp from. So really, these are horses that some idiot lost when he got too sauced one night and forgot to close the gate. Then the locals have this ingenious idea to call them "wild horses" of the Kerikeri Forest so dumb tourist such as myself will pay to trudge through the dirt to "spot" them. I think they might as well go a step further and krazy glue a horn on those babies and call them unicorns. Then sit back, relax and watch the Robert Jordan freaks arrive in hordes.

It is also worth noting that it poured the entire day which Phil says almost never happened in his 8 years of guiding. Ali and Matt slept for about 60 miles of the drive down the 90 Mile Bitch proving once again that yes Virginia, money does grow on trees.