Ahhh, New Zealand !

A very good friend of mine brought to my attention that while mentioning our month long trip to Australia last year, I didn't do justice to our all to short stay in beautiful New Zealand and rightly so. Although our visit was a mere five days, all of them gray and drizzly, and restricted to the North Island, our trip though the pastoral splendor that makes up half this country was anything but ordinary. We planned and drove a rather large loop which began and ended in Auckland. We stayed in bed and breakfast facilities enabling us to sample the marvelous hospitality and get to know our truly genuine hosts. We visited wonderful places along the way, stopping at the fragrant Hamilton Gardens, the Maori Arts Institute in Rotorua, the Pohutu geysers of Te Whakarewarewa, serene Lake Taupo, the wild Huka River with it's shotover jet boat ride, the hushed world of the glow worm grotto of Waitomo and the graceful falling vapors of Mt. Damper Falls. The experience of driving the Lost Highway, a single lane dirt road up over two mountain passes, over countless rivers and through several tunnels chiseled through solid rock gave us some of the more spectacular memories of the trip and gave us some sense of how well the rugged land is being used. Throughout our drive, we found every imaginable variety of grazing animals, well fed and content. And while I really haven't done justice to the whole New Zealand experience, I have fully documented our limited exposure in my travel journal and we are already planning to return, devoting much more time to this beautiful and varied landscape where people make you feel as if you're part of their extended family.