KEY POINTS:
Misha won't believe me that the throaty metallic sound is a tui.
"No, it is not a bird," he says, peering up into the beech trees beside Lake Te Anau. "It is must be an opossum."
Misha is fascinated by possums. He's Russian, so maybe it's a natural
affinity with fur.
The tui flits over our head and lands on a stem of crimson flax flowers beside the water's edge.
"A flying opossum," he adds, deadpan.
I'd hoped to wean him off opossums and on to birds, but I was failing miserably.
He wants me to stop at the less flattened examples of road kill to get a better look but I pretend to see them too late to stop safely. It's one thing to have souvenir shot glasses in the backseat, I'm not keen on a decaying possum.
This is Misha's second visit to New Zealand. He says its paradise and that the only thing wrong with it is that he has so far been unable to catch a fish here.
I show him photos of good keen Kiwi anglers bowed down under the weight of giant salmon and trout but he's not convinced. He suspects electronic jiggery-pokery. I can hardly blame him - last time he fished in the Waitaki Lakes, Lake Alexandrina, the Ahuriri, the Rangitata River mouth and the West Coast and not even a nibble.
So, national honour is at stake. Which is why on our first night away from Timaru we camped beside Lake Wanaka where its lapis blue waters begin their swirling journey down the Clutha River. The Clutha is the largest river by volume in New Zealand - surely there's one trout lurking in its depth with Misha's name on it?
Although the sky is a cloudless Central Otago dome of blue, there's a brisk wind whipping up the waves. But Misha is not to be deterred . He reckons the river banks will be more sheltered and plans to venture out at dusk.
The twilight lingers here and it's not until after 9pm that he sets out. He returns after dark, inevitably, its seems, fish-less but contented. It was beautiful on the river, he says.
Next morning we head south to Queenstown, stopping at Gibbston winery en route.
"I understand beer, but not wine," Misha says, "I need to learn."
We taste a riesling, a pinot gris and two pinot noir. It has a mellowing effect at 10am. A perfect way to approach A J Hackett's bungy jump over the Kawarau Gorge.
We spiral our way down to the viewing platform through the new visitors' centre - Misha's impressed with its sophistication but it's not enough to make him want to take the plunge.
A Canadian tourist, a young man in a grey t-shirt stretched tightly across a generous stomach, shuffles to the edge of the platform that juts out from the old Kawarau Bridge. He is silent, tense. He's counted down, pauses for another second and then jumps off, feet first. He doesn't make a sound, even as he gently pings up and down just centimetres above the river.
I look sideways at Misha. "No," he says. "Maybe next time."
He says the same thing when we pause to watch the Shotover Jet scream upriver in a wave of spray. "I think to do all these crazy Kiwi things I need to time to prepare ... and maybe to write a new willl."
Instead we sit beside Lake Wakatipu as the Earnslaw chugs past, a black hyphen of smoke following it, while Misha drinks a Dux de Lux Nor-Wester pale ale.
"Now, this I understand," he says.
- Jill Worrall
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Pictured above: Lake Te Anau at sunset. Photo / Jill Worrall
