Notes From A Small Island

In October 2001, as America was about to kick down the front door in Afghanistan, I remember watching a Taliban press conference on CNN. A Kiwi reporter asked the Taliban, "is New Zealand at risk of a terrorist attack at home because we've aligned ourselves with the US"? "Where did you say you are from?”, asked the Taliban leader. The reporter replied, “New Zealand. It's a small country off the east coast of Australia”. The Taliban was speechless and just moved on to the next question.

So perhaps New Zealand isn't huge on the international stage, but this little country packs quite a punch. We spent the last 16 days on the South Island, and it just a staggeringly beautiful place. We had some great company on this part of the trip too – the Sadlons joined us for 10 days, John (Andrea's brother) joined us for 14 days, and Dana was here the whole time. Lots of laughs, lots of wine, lots of card games – a great couple of weeks.

We started in the Waipara valley and rented a converted barn at a winery for a couple of days, enjoying bonfires and the local pinot noirs at night. After that was the Marlborough Sounds, where I could spend the next year happily staring at the serene crystal green waters. The local specialty is green lip mussels, and they are both delicious and massive (some people cut each mussel in half with a knife). Following that was a trip to the Franz Josef glacier, where we spent part of the day climbing through blue ice under equally blue skies. Then came Queenstown, the adventure capital, where a few in the group chose to fling themselves off a bridge with a rubber band attached to their ankles. We followed that up with a trip to the Milford Sound, often considered the 8th wonder of the world. 9,000 foot mountains rise straight up out of the sound, and thousands of waterfalls suddenly appear on rainy days (which we had our second day there), crashing down thousands of feet of mountain -- it was just absolutely amazing to see. We then headed to Mount Cook, the highest peak in New Zealand, where we hiked to a glacier (under more impossibly blue skies), followed by a dinner of fresh salmon on the BBQ that had been caught that morning. Finally, we wrapped things up in Christchurch with a fine evening of Guinness and Burmese food. And of course all of this happened on a small island, not even the size of Virginia. Yet we saw 3 wine valleys, 3 glaciers, massive crysal blue lakes, green sounds, giant mountain peaks, and endless rolling fields dotted with sheep.

New Zealand is so easy to fall in love with – jaw dropping scenery, the people are lovely and over-the-top friendly, prices are reasonable, roads are in great condition – and everything is just very laid back. Very good living.

We are on our way back to Australia now – and coming from here, they have a lot to live up to.