Twelve Feet, Six Continents, One Year

Our last stop in New Zealand was meant to be our most relaxing. The Coromandel Pensinsula is apparently the posh weekend getaway for the 40% of NZ's population that lives in Auckland. There's a ferry from the Big City to Coromandel town and plenty of evidence all around that these folk have second homes on the hillsides all around. And for good reason: it's beautiful here. For example, this is the view from our rental just north of Whitianga (pronounced, "Fiddy-ang-uh" with the first syllable rhyming with the artist 50¢). Our first outing was to a place called Hot Water Beach, where we were told you can dig down in the sand and create a natural hot tub for yourself. This is sufficiently true that the cafe next to the carpark rents shovels for a $10 deposit and $10 for up to three hours. Here's Cate at the bottom of the hole that we inherited and then expanded. Indeed, the water at the bottom was quite hot But it never filled up in a way to make it appeali...

This picture has to go first. It shows the ramp, the lights and the walkways at the Redwoods Elevated Trail Once upon a time, a long time ago (2019) in a place far, far away (USA), we had to make hard choices about how to allocate our time in New Zealand. Based on limited information, we gave ourselves four nights in Rotorua. We thought it would be a good base for exploring mighty Lake Taupo to the south, the famous glow worm caves to the west and various cultural and natural attractions in the immediate vicinity. In hindsight, it's clear that we'd need about a month to do the things in this part of the North Island that we thought we might pack into a few days. In fact, we did none of them. Our arrival was very simple. Rotorua airport is tiny and between us we rented 2 of approximately 10 vehicles held by Hertz at this location. It was a five minute drive from the airport to our rental house and we spent all of it relishing the fact that we were driving civilian vehicl...

My mother is fond of the phrase, "The way will open." As this picture shows, sometimes the way is exactly in front of you going in a straight line to where you want to go. My walkabout began in Wanaka, where the family headed west along the Tasman Sea coast to see the glaciers and I headed east to see the alps and lots of stars from the east/leeward side of the mountains. I picked up a tin can of a rental car that would have easily fit in the back of the campervan we've been driving for these two weeks. By late afternoon I arrived at the foot of Lake Pukaki in Aoraki/Mount Cook National Park. I enjoyed a short and easy hike to views of small ice bergs floating in the milky alpine lake. This landscape seems like a great location for making a movie. It's almost otherworldly. Someone should really think about it. Something with good versus evil, strange magic, epic battles...definitely hobbits. This is Lake Pukaki  I reached the Mount Cook ...