What I am not shy to tell you.: A hop over the puddle

I returned 3 days ago from being in New Zealand for a month. It was a great trip.

Darcy and I went over for a holiday. I had always wanted to go to New Zealand. In fact, 5 years ago I was deciding between a trip to NZ or a trip to Australia, as air fares were way way cheap and I really wanted to travel. In the end I decided on Australia as i knew a couple of people here, then I met Darcy and now here I am. How different my life would be if I had decided to to go to New Zealand instead. I have no way of knowing. But just the same I am glad I came here instead.

And just the same, New Zealand was fantastic! A very lush and green country, chock full of sheep and cows and pine forests, thanks to a heavy logging industry, feeding China. OK, the logging was disturbing. There is so much reforestation with North American trees that if i wasn't driving on the left side of the road, there would have been nothing to make me feel I wasn't back in new Hampshire. But it wasn't all that way. Once we got to the South Island, plant life seemed to get much more native, and it was really breathtaking.

We started in Auckland. Auckland seemed pretty cool, very spread out so we only sampled a tiny part of it. It is at the top of the North Island, with smaller islands surrounding it and heading further North. It is not very big, even though it is New Zealand's biggest city, about a million people. We were only there a day and a half, so we checked out design galleries, I met with a company there for future freelance work, and we ate some good Japanese food. Then we hit the road.

We drove past many many many many green fields full of grazing sheep and cows. Many. There are more sheep in New Zealand than I could have conceived of. And we only saw a portion of the country.

We drove around Rotorua, where there are many geothermal springs, and we got to see boiling - and I mean boiling - water streams and water holes, and bubbling hot mud pools. We then went on to Wellington where I had another interview and we stayed with friends Kelsi and Malcolm. I met Malcolm while working in Sydney, and discovered that his girlfriend Kelsi is from Weare. Yes! From the town I grew up in! And she went to school with my brother Jack! Very very strange. They are a cool couple. Wellington is the nation's capitol, and as NZ's second largest city has a population of 400,000. Small country.

After a few days we took a ferry from Wellington, which is at the bottom of the North Island, to Picton, the top of the South Island. We spent a couple of days in the Marlborough area, a wine producing region famous for its Sauvignon Blancs, but for my tastes and Darcy's also makes some killer Pinot Noir. The best I have had in the Southern Hemisphere! We then traveled west along the coast, and experienced stunning terrain and trees. We cut through the mountains and reached Middle Earth. Big gorgeous snow capped mountains, with masses of rocky fields, windy fields and electric blue rivers at their feet. We took nice little hikes and enjoyed the fresh chilly winds. We also took a fun boat ride through a gorge, which I think is short for gorgeous! New Zealand is a very young land, they still have earthquakes and their native wildlife is unique and has evolved much less than surrounding islands (according to a tv show I saw once), and you can feel it in the freshness and power of the water, and see it in the bands of color on the side of a rock wall, or in the dramatic crevasses in a mountain created by a massive earth quake. The place is stunning and feels good.

We flew out of Christchurch, a small English looking city, but Darcy headed back to Brisbane and I went back to Wellington. The company I had met there asked if I could return for a 2 week job, so I did. It went well, and I enjoyed spending more time in cooler temps, but by the end I was looking forward to being in my own bed. I hope to return to New Zealand sometime soon. It was beautiful.