Why I Love New Zealand: 10 Reasons

Here, in no particular order are 10 reasons why I love New Zealand:

Beautiful Milford Sound

1. Gorgeous scenery.  The landscape is magnificent and extremely varied. Mountains, hills, grasslands, ocean -- New Zealand has it all.  (It's as if everyone in Canada got to live in Vancouver.)  And, there is added value in exotic extras like volcanoes and bubbling mud!

2. Size matters.  It is a small country, about the size of Great Britain, so nothing is very far away.  That explains all those rented camper vans on the roads!  At the same time, New Zealand seems spacious because the population (4.5 million) is less than that of the Greater Toronto Area.

Wellington hillside neighbourhood

3. Hilltop homes. I love all the cities on hills with  houses perched to take advantage of wonderful views.  Every street is a surprise and every house is unique!

Love those flat whites!

4. Coffee culture.  Coffee is a serious business in New Zealand!  You place your order for coffee (a skinny flat white, perhaps) and wait while it is produced, like a work of art.  And no coffee is complete without a treat.  Try a ginger or lemon slice.

5. Air. I am aware of an exotic scent the moment I get off the plane  Is it the sea, the eucalyptus trees, the manuka (a scrubby tree with tiny flowers beloved of bees)?   New Zealand smells like a Pacific island.

Gum tree in bloom

6. Native bush.  Walk in the New Zealand bush (i.e. woods), and it is immediately obvious that the foliage is different - semi-tropical and intensely green all year round.  Depending on the time of year, ferns and palms abound, and trees burst with gaudy flowers.

Seal lion at Sandfly Beach

7. Wildlife.  Thanks to efforts to eliminate introduced predators, native birds are much more common.   And because there are no native mammals, hikers will never encounter a bear or cougar on a  trail, although they might meet a sea lion on the beach.

8. Maori. The Maori presence is everywhere -- in sport, schools, on TV and government signage. Place names are often in Maori/English.  Example:  Aoraki/Mt. Cook.

"The window on the wide world'

9. Active lifestyle.  New Zealanders seem to live outdoors all year round.  Even a former prime minister, Helen Clark, is a mountain climber.  Wind and rain?  Floods and earthquakes?  No problem for hardy Kiwis.  Read what journalist Juliet Larkin (daughter of friends John and Anne Smith) has to say about hiking the Dusky Track.

10. Restrained materialism.  Island life far away in the South Pacific means that Kiwis are still unable to purchase every little thing that is available in North America. There is no Ikea. No Target. No Ben and Jerry's. It makes for a somewhat simpler lifestyle where the occasional luxury really is special.

One More!  It's the important one. 

11. Kiwis.  New Zealanders are fabulous -- friendly, kind, witty, and down to earth.  Even people who have never visited New Zealand seem to know this, but we know it for sure because our friends embody these qualities in spades. They are all such fun to visit and so generous.  "What? The airport is closed because of fog? Come on back and stay with us as long as you want....!"  And we did.

Bless them.

And now, for me, it's back to the business of being retired:  Retirement is Work 

Auckland

We gave ourselves exactly 2 half-days in Auckland -- enough time to visit with Coral, Margaret's cousin, and have lunch the next day with our friend George.

Coral's yard.  The flat area was once a tennis court.

I had never visited the Stanley Bay area of Devonport, a harbourside suburb in Auckland, so I was delighted to stay with Coral in her Stanley Point villa.

Coral's house on Stanley Point

Her property looks across to the Auckland Harbour Bridge and goes down the hill to the water and a private beach.

On Coral's veranda

Auckland Harbour Bridge from the veranda.

A rather lovely old villa with fenced yard.

A more modest bungalow..

This is a lovely part of  Auckland with beautiful older homes
dating from the early 1900's.  They are primarily wooden with verandas and lots of intricate scroll work. I couldn't resist a few pictures.

Hedged, gated property

The next day, we saw George in his new apartment, and were seated around the headmaster's desk that dominates his main room while he quizzed me over the top of his glasses about the "vagueness" of my Christmas letter.  I felt a great impulse to  promise that I would "do better next time, Dr. Marshall".  He is a sweet man with a great sense of humour so there is the possibility that  he was not completely serious!     

We had a very elegant lunch at the Cornwall Park Restaurant in the One Tree Hill Domain. Jim and Margaret recall having had tea here when they were first dating and the restaurant was simply known as "The Kiosk" .

George, Bruce and Nancy

George, Margaret and Jim

Road Trip: Wellington to Auckland

Brown Sugar Cafe at Otaki

Back in Wellington, we prepared for our road trip with  friends Jim and Margaret.  Our purpose, aside from having a good time together, was to visit a mutual friend, George Marshall, who at 87 now lives in an Auckland retirement home.

The trip was not really about scenery or visits to tourist destinations along the way.  We simply didn't have the time although if we were stopped for some reason, and the light was right, I was not above memorializing the moment.

Sign in cafe washroom ....makes you think.

Afternoon tea break with alpacas and lambs.

It is a long day's drive to Auckland from Wellington, so we chose to break the journey in Ohakune, a ski resort near Mt. Ruapehu, one of three occasionally active volcanoes in the middle of the North Island.  One of Margaret's cousins owns a holiday home here.


Strangely, with all the other attractions that might have provided inspiration for a bit of statuary in Ohakune, the good folk of this town chose to erect a monument to the carrot.  I can now claim to have slept in the carrot capital of NZ.  While there, I looked for fields of carrots, market gardens, even local carrots in the New World grocery store, and could find no proof that Ohakune deserves this recognition, but there is online acknowledgement -- check it out: Ohakune.

So strange...a giant carrot.

After that, we headed up through the King Country towards Hamilton, passing through Otorohanga where there is a kiwi house-- a nocturnal aviary where one can watch these ultra shy birds. 

On the way to Otorohanga in the King Country --- rural and very scenic.

Collingwood, Takaka, Nelson

There are so few residents in Collingwood that the Ballards know everyone, and that is one of the pleasures of living in a small, isolated community.  The people who live here -- artists, retirees, craftsmen, historians--are very friendly and look out for one another.

Everyone in town looks in on the widow who lives in this interesting new house.

Bluebird Cottage, our Collingwood abode because Tigger Ballard gave Bruce asthma.

Takaka, 30 minutes down a twisting highway, is the nearest town of any size and where Keith and Pat buy groceries, go to the library, or volunteer at the museum.

Pat, Golden Bay Museum volunteer

Bruce heads towards the Takaka Public Library

Two hours from Collingwood, the big smoke of Nelson has doctors, theatres, galleries and an airport.

A random passenger provides scale for this 11 passenger Cessna, our Sounds Air plane to Wellington

Collingwood

On the tip top of the South Island's north-west coast is the area known as Golden Bay and the town of Collingwood, home to summer people and to folks like our friends Keith and Pat Ballard.  They are from Dunedin, but they love living in the sunny north and decided to build a second home there!

We drove to their corner of New Zealand, renting a car in Christchurch and following the twisting roads through mountainous countryside. The scenery would have been fabulous but it was obscured by mist and rain. Foiled again by weather!  We would have to wait another day for sunshine.

Lucky Ballards!  Who wouldn't want a house with this view, especially if the tide were in...

Pat, Keith and Nancy on a Collingwood walk to the old cemetery

We'll start hiking when the cows (about 100 of them) come home.

Keith and Pat were happy to show us some of the exceptional hiking trails.  Two hours on the Kaituna track took us past the remains of gold fields.

The Kaituna track crosses the river where prospectors sluiced for gold.

Collingwood is very close to Farewell Spit, and although we didn't have time for a trip to the top there is a pretty walk near Cape Farewell along the Wharariki Beach.

Wharariki beach is often windy.

Same walk after a coffee break.  That's a whale skeleton behind us.