Kiwi Coach Potato Syndrome by John Borthwick

Clutching his old plastic travel bag Norman Gunston, that one-man Aussie razor gang, used to swear he suffered not from jet lag but bus lag. I know the feeling. It strikes on day two of our six-day coach tour of the North Island of New Zealand. Each time I take my seat and the bus starts rolling, I collapse onto my wife's shoulder.

At first I suspect that our driver, a jovial Kiwi named Jack, is pumping knockout gas through the air-conditioning - or at least the vent above my head. Then I blame the rocking motion of the coach. I can't say it's the scenery: great fern-cloaked kauri forests, thermal springs and sparkling bays that should jolt me to attention. Eventually I blame Jack's discourse. Curiously it is both the trigger to my drowsiness and its antidote.

In a rural town whose houses are brightly daubed in what Australians used to sniffily call 'Neapolitan' colours, Jack informs us that 'The Maori has terrible taste in colours, actually.' A sharp intake of breath from the American couple in front of me. 'He'd have to be very careful what he said if he ever came to the States,' whispers the wife. Her husband confides that, 'The Australian gentleman in row three described him to me as 'a Pakea Ocker' - whatever that means.' 'Don't you dare ask him if he is one,' cautions the wife.

I flop back into coach coma. On a stretch of the northern coast near Mangonui, I stir again as Jack intones '…the males are very big. Two metres high, many of them. They're a Dalmatian-Maori cross. Very fit, actually.' I look for one of these awesome creatures - are they bipeds, quadrupeds, spotted or brindle? - then realise he is talking about people, the descendants of early migrant labourers from Yugoslavia's Dalmatian coast who married Maori women. The Americans don't know whether to laugh or wince at Jack's 'incorrect' candor, and so do both.

From time to time we 40 or so passengers file off the coach to consume mutant New Zealand fare like bacon and egg croissants and pink lamingtons; the centre aisle of the coach seems to grow daily narrower. The North Americans, as well as five Germans, have admirable endurance for such touring and feeding. After three weeks around Australia on coaches they are now into a further 14-day New Zealand odyssey. The recurrent passivity of 'coachdom' - in which one is fed, trollied from attraction to attraction (always exiting via the gift shop), then fed again - seems never to diminish their enthusiasm for more.

'I'm hither and I'll shew you the kevins. The insicts lay their igs, then they're did.' announces the young ranger who is our guide through the transcendentally beautiful Waitomo Glow-worm Caves. 'What did she say?' asks a Canadian woman. I attempt to translate: 'I think she said, 'I'm Heather and I'll show you the caverns. The insects lay their eggs, then they're dead'.' The cavern ceiling glows like the dome of a diamond mosque. A Milky Way of tiny phosphorescences on an velvet-black background makes me feel adrift in the cosmos with my camera lens a poor man's telescope. Definitely a place for visions, not vowels.

Later, I understand a little better the nuances of the local language when Jack (or 'Jack Actually' as I now call him) explains to us that 'The early missionaries actually gave the Maoris only a 17 letter alphabet.' It seems that everybody lost out, particularly on the letter 'e'. New Zealand might soon be an e-free zone. I spot a giant black 1959 Cadillac El Dorado, as sinister as a mako shark, from which creature the Caddy's great dorsal fins are seemingly grafted; five equally large Maori men fill the car. Nearby is a significant example of local phonetic signage - 'Plumbing Sirvice'. I decide it's not the kind of joke that a foreigner might sensibly share with blokes who look like extras from Once Were Warriors.

In a small country town I taste the lash of linguistic revenge when a shopkeeper says, 'You must be Australian. You pronounce 'six' like 'seex'.' Trying to not sound quite so Mexican I chat on, but once she learns that I'm from Sydney and worse, Kings Cross, it's as though I have two heads and the plague. She looks relieved when I leave without touching anything in her shop.

I stumble off the bus to suffer awful hay fever from Rotorua's flatulent, sulfuric airs. At our hotel, there's an evening hungi feast, complete with a thundering haka ceremony. The Maoris on stage boast a range of physiques from sumo paunches to gym-fed beefcake. Right at the climax of their in-your-face haka, a table of Taiwanese tourists abruptly rises and leaves - offended perhaps by the 'savagery'? No, just obeying the greater savagery of their own itinerary, which will have them back in their coach by seven next morning and through both islands of New Zealand in five days. Like them, the next day sees us rolling on again into the Land of the Long White Anaesthetic. Mare's tail clouds trace a silken calligraphy above the hills. Pohutukawa trees bow beneath the weight of their crimson blossoms. Turquoise-green bays scoop into coasts rimmed by endless yellow dunes. Rapturing as I do, I still succumb to the sleeping gas. I have become a coach potato.

On day six Merlinda and I depart the tour, heading back to Auckland. ('So, who were these 'Aucks'?' a Belgian passenger asks me.) The last sound I hear of life in the coach lane is Jack on his PA, expounding on the Kiwi. 'This little creature is known as the 'Ooh-Ahh Bird'.. That's because by the time the mother lays the egg it has actually grown to 25 percent of her own body size...'