No Ball Drop? No Problem: New Zealanders Do New Year’s Eve (Nearly) First and Best

There are few people in the world who are lucky enough to be the first to see the sunrise on New Year’s Day and I was one of them. Far off the beaten tourist path, I spent New Year’s Eve on the East Cape of New Zealand, the easternmost point of a country not far from the international dateline. I was halfway through a yearlong working holiday in New Zealand when some locals welcomed me into their New Year’s Eve festivities, starting with a South Pacific-style feast and ending on a beach, drinking champagne, watching the sun rise from out of the ocean.

New Year’s Eve festivities began when the couple who owned my hotel went to the local dock to buy the day’s catch from local fisherman. These fisherman pull their catch directly up onto the dock and whatever they don’t plan to eat themselves, they sell to anyone stopping by. New Year’s Eve also happened to coincide with the local fishermen’s competition, so each fish was weighed and the winners were auctioned off to the highest bidder. The hotel owners bought the third place finisher in the hapuku competition (grouper fish), as well as a half dozen crayfish, which altogether was enough to feed several dozen -- twice the number of people staying at the hotel. The food was served directly off the “barbie” (barbecue) along with the kinds of pasta and potato salads you’d find at a summer picnic in the U.S. Until this point, I’d never eaten fish so fresh and so I hadn’t been a seafood lover; this one meal changed my opinion forever. It was succulent, delicious, and far from the pork and potatoes my family usually serves at this time of year.

We all sat around the hotel courtyard, licking our chops and drinking Tui, the local beer, in our shorts and tank tops. By midnight, we were all best friends and sang as we watched a nearby town’s tiny fireworks from the beach. By sunrise, only a handful of us remained on the sand, among the first in the world to see the sun rise above a crescent of blue. It was my first New Year’s without a scarf, hat and gloves, and my first New Year’s eating from a barbecue near the beach. Far from watching the ball drop in Times Square or any sort of media broadcast, instead nature provided the awe-inspiring fireworks of the new day. It is wonderful to experience the way others around the world celebrate the holidays that we all know and love, starting new traditions that I’ll carry with me forever.

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