Everyone told us to get out of Queenstown before New Year’s, since the whole place turned into a drunken, bogan-infested shitshow. For a few days this tourist haven, nestled on the shores of Lake Wakatipu, became the nation’s biggest outdoor party, a magnet for every mullethead in the South Island and beyond. This was the beginning of their summer, so Kiwis were in the mood to get hammered and cut loose. 

But Sam and I hadn’t come to New Zealand to seek out crowds, especially ones steeped in booze who may not take kindly to our broad American accents. In fact, a couple of Kiwi buddies back in Korea had advised us to keep our heads low and our voices down, as our voluminous Yankee brashness was sure to clash with local sensibilities.

Kiwis, on the whole, are a reserved lot—shy even—and nothing rubs them rawer than noisy, boisterous arrogance, which explains why, despite sharing a common culture, they get easily irritated with Australians. We Americans are even worse, and Sam and I were, in a sense, walking stereotypes—loud and opinionated even for OUR people. 

Realizing this, we were largely on our best behavior in New Zealand, or “N Zed” as the locals often refer to their splendid piece of real estate. Kiwis are largely sweet and tolerant, but a certain strain of redneckism runs deep—especially in the South Island.  After a few beers they aren’t above taking a swing at a mouthy Yank, so we tried to run beneath the radar and treat our hosts with the quiet respect they deserved, though we weren’t always successful in this endeavor. Sometimes it’s hard to tame your nature.  

But like I said, we weren’t really there for the people or the party, despite liberally sampling the local suds on a daily basis. We had come to New Zealand for the same reason almost everyone does: to dive into its natural splendor. And oh, we drank deeply from this well, spending two weeks around Queenstown and Te Anau, where we trekked through the mountains and lived our days in an orgiastic blur of fly-fishing.

The waters of New Zealand’s South Island offer up some of the best fly-fishing in the world, because the trout—introduced by European settlers—grow to gargantuan size, and the conditions are often pristine. Sam’s brother Steve and his buddy Joel joined us for much of this bliss, where one day bled into the next wandering up and down rivers with names like the Greenstone, the Clinton, the Eglington, and the Upukerora. We stalked monster rainbows and browns in a thrilling, hypnotic daze, landing lunkers on both wet and dry flies. The action was like nothing I’d ever experienced; the scenery a happy gut punch. Fly-fishing New Zealand had long been at the top of my desires, and to live this dream out in real time was almost too good to be true. 

Steve and Joel eventually had to board a plane back to San Francisco to get back to their high-profile tech jobs, but Sam and I were Korean university fake professors with nothing but time on our hands, so we decided to make our way north overland, fishing and drinking along the way. Our only obligation was a flight out of Auckland in ten days’s time, so we might as well take the opportunity to see the country at the ground level. 

Our first official stop after Queenstown was to be Christchurch, the South Island’s biggest city. It was reachable in a day’s drive, but as we wound up and down the foothills—-past the otherworldly azure of Lake Pukataki and Lake Tekapo with the volcanic cone of Aoraki (Mt. Cook) in the distance—-I wondered aloud if the last day of the year would be better spent in some tiny town, rather than the city. Sam readily agreed. After all, we were in NZ to sample the local, rural flavor, and nowhere could offer up such goodness more than a hamlet in the sticks in a country largely composed of the sticks.

As the afternoon wore on, we weighed our options. We nearly stopped off in the town of Twizel just because the name was too perfect, but it was still a bit early in the day and we wanted to press on towards Christchurch. But when, around four o’clock, we pulled into the crossroads settlement known as Fairlie, we knew we had arrived. 

There was nothing to distinguish this town as THE place, which is perhaps why we knew it was where we had to pass the night. It was a village surrounded by farms, and while the countryside was picturesque (I mean come on, we were in New Zealand) it didn’t knock your socks off. It seemed to be an average little town that wouldn’t show up as a blip on any kind of radar, which made it our perfect New Years Eve destination.

After checking into a little motel, we took a drive out of town to see if we couldn’t hook into a fish on the local river, but after an hour of no action, we returned to central Fairlie to quench our now considerable thirst. After all, we had been driving all day and needed cold beer, STAT.

The one pub in town sorted us out. We were so deep in the countryside that this particular little tavern didn’t even have beer on tap, but rather sold big bottles of Speights, the South Island’s go-to brew, with a glass on the side. The barlady cocked her head when we ordered, unaccustomed to hearing Yankee accents. While New Zealand sees heaps of tourists, I got the idea that Fairlie, by and large, did not.

Sam and I ordered dinner at the little restaurant attached to the pub, where both of our burgers came with a fried egg on top. Kiwis didn’t just look and act like hobbits: they ate like them. It seemed that most any dish on the South Island arrived with an egg as the topper. I quickly came to embrace the stodginess of the local cuisine, especially the meat pies, which were served up everywhere.

Soon we made our way back into the main room of the pub, where Meatloaf and his wife were setting up shop. Meatloaf was a local lad who worked as a karaoke DJ. As his name suggests, he bore a certain resemblance to the girthy American anthem rock singer of the same name, He wore a burgundy velvet shirt and sported longish black hair in and a beard. He was definitely what passed as a bohemian in Fairlie, and had that wonderful down-to-earth, sly charm that I’ve experienced so much in Kiwis.

Meatloaf could also sing, and he kicked off the evening’s festivities with a couple of tunes belted out in a vibrating, confident tenor. Soon he opened things up for the public, and as the joint filled up, Sam and I put our names down to sing. 

Karaoke was definitely a thing during our time in New Zealand. Many of the pubs had DJs running mics and it seemed that these small communities got a kick out of seeing their friends and neighbors get up and butcher songs. And like anywhere, there were always a couple of ringers who would knock one out of the park just to remind everyone what actual singing sounded like. But most people got up out of a sense of fun and divine failure, which is really what makes Western Karaoke (singing in front of strangers at a bar) such a kick in the pants.

Sam and I had sung a few karaokes in NZ out of this sense of silly release, but also because we found that it opened people up to us. The locals suddenly got friendlier after we’d croon one out on the mic. I think they appreciated the effort, and also enjoyed hearing a couple of Americans strut their stuff. Sam would do Merle Haggard’s “Okie from Muskogee” which was always a crowd pleaser (old school country was alive and well there), and it was in New Zealand where I figured out that I could actually pull off much of AC/DC’s catalogue, a talent worth scads in social capital in the ape-draped environs of the South Island.

So Sam and I turned on the karaoke charm that night, with Meatloaf cheering us on the whole time. Before we knew it bottles of Speights were being bought for us left and right. We held court at the bar while waxing happy about being where we were, and letting these folks from Fairlie know that we viewed them lucky for living where they did. This wasn’t patronization, but rather the truth: anyone who gets to spend their life in a place where nature is unspoiled and the air and water pristine is among the most fortunate on earth.

The coolest guy we met that night was Bob, who was the only brown guy in the place. Bob was a Maori from the North Island. He was working in Fairlie as a firefighter and had been to the States some years earlier where he trained with some fellow firefighters in Denver. He had traveled across the western USA and quickly developed a love for the place. He had nothing but glowing words for America and Americans. This was at the tail end of the GW Bush era, when antipathy toward my country was at an all-time-high, so I gotta admit that it felt nice to listen to someone offer up words of kindness and respect, as I had become accustomed to barrages of criticism.

This was a small pub in a very small town so it should also come as no surprise that our presence chafed the balls of one or two of that night’s customers. I noticed a dude sitting in the corner with a couple of his buddies who kept staring daggers my way. He was a big guy, probably a farmer, and just drank and glared as the night went on. I tried not to return his gaze and knew if I didn’t keep enough real estate between the two of us, that he’d have a go. He just had that hungry anger in his eyes.

Salvation soon came, however.

“Grab your bottle,” said Bob. “It’s almost time for the bonfire.” 

With that, the whole of the pub emptied out, and we walked across the street to a massive pile of wood in a small field. Scores of other townspeople were already gathered up, and just before midnight, someone put flame to the fuel, and the pyre went up in a blaze so big it hurt my face.

The villagers cheered as the flames licked high into the summer night sky, until just then, at the stroke of midnight, the rattle of a snare drum split the air, followed by the drone of bagpipes. Out of the dark, a fully-equipped bagpipe band came marching in, squeezing the bags and blowing into the reeds to the tune of “Auld Lang Syne.” Like much of New Zealand’s South Island, this town had been settled by Scottish immigrants who saw so much of the motherland in the rolling green landscape. I took a pull of the bottle of beer and let the reedy dirge wash over me before turning to Sam, who met my gaze with a look that said, “Can you believe this shit?”

The band played a few more numbers and the fire went from a chaotic roar to a more serene, coal-fueled glow. The villagers began to peel away in twos and threes and the band dissolved back into the dark, until just a few lovers were left leaning into each other as the embers of the new year softened.

Sam went back into the pub for a final beer while I stumbled to the payphone to call my girlfriend back in Korea. I found my calling card and, after pressing in the string of numbers that made up the code, she picked up and scolded me for ringing late.

I tried to describe what had just transpired, uselessly attempting to put the ineffable intoxication of travel into mere drunken words. I raved—telling her about the drive—about seeing Aoraki, about water that gave a new meaning to the world blue, about Meatloaf, the pub, the bonfire, and the pipers, but she was unmoved, annoyed even. As I placed the phone back on the receiver, I knew that we’d never last and was kind of okay with that.

Sam emerged from the pub with beer doped eyes, and we began the stagger back to our room. The dying light from the fire cast our shadows across the road, and for the first time in the trip, we had nothing to say.