Twelve Feet, Six Continents, One Year

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...

After the bus brought us back from the Milford Sound cruise to Te Anau on Monday morning, we had lunch and drove to Queenstown. This is a city that is known as an adventure playground and, while we didn't bungee jump or skydive, we did have a good time. At the top of the gondola ride is a spectacular view of the valley below Then there's the jelly bean art And our highlight was the alpine slide (sorry, too scary to take a picture in motion) In the afternoon we took one of those jetboat tours. Elise and I got soaked!

If you visit Milford Sound on a sunny day, as we did, you'll see this This land has seen many battles. This is where Gandolf and Suaron collide. But even more pitched is the battle between the thrusting of tectonic uplift and the onslaught of erosion. On a sheer mountainside several thousand meters high, a crevice might be the work of the waterfall or the tearing of an active fault. We have arrived in Milford Sound, the number one destination on our South Island itinerary. A coach bus brought us from the gateway town of Te Anau, where we spent two nights at the foot of an alpine lake. We have boarded an overnight cruise. Remarkably, the sun is shining. The guide points out that we can see clouds forming on the hillsides as the moisture from the warm surface of the lake rises to meet colder mountain air. The boat moors and the passengers are offered a choice of water activities: kayaking, dinghy ride, swimming. Elise and I enjoy some quiet on the kayak ride while the others...

Probably the southernmost site on our trip: Slope Point, New Zealand Everybody was right: the distances in New Zealand are very deceiving. It takes a really long time to go anywhere. I'd guess our typical travel speed has been 45 miles per hour. One funny thing about this is that the national default speed limit is 100 kph (62 mph), which our navigation displays no matter where we are, including this gravel road. Going 42kph in a 100 zone; out the windshield you can see the gravel and in the nav you can see the curves! Anyway, we left Dunedin mid-morning on Wednesday and took about an hour to reach Balclutha on the motorway. We found a lovely municipal park with a picnic table, a great playground and a weird, small zoo. Then it was on to the Nugget Point Lighthouse, where we enjoyed a short hike hoping to see Penguins (no) but got rewarded with some baby sparrows in their nest (in the blind from which we hoped to spot the penguins!) Hoping to see some Yellow-Eyed Pengu...