Reflections

This will be my last report from New Zealand. Today is my last day of travel in the Land of the Long White Cloud. Tomorrow I will turn in my little home on wheels and fly to Australia for something completely different. It’s a rainy day, I expected this. I’m using the time to get some of my packing done and to do a little reflecting on my two months in New Zealand. Did I enjoy it? Absolutely! Did it meet my expectations? In most cases, it far exceeded my expectations. I expected scenic countryside, but I didn’t expect it to be everywhere I looked. You can’t drive around a bend without seeing something interesting. I expected it to be uncrowded. I didn’t expect to have whole campgrounds to myself or drive for a hours through beautiful countryside without seeing another soul. Of course, it’s more crowded in the summer, but I figured there would be more people even in late winter and early spring. The North Island was more crowded, but even there I was surprised to be able to completely evade other people. I rarely had to wait for people to get out of the foreground of a scene that I was trying to shoot. Even though it was the “off season”, the weather was really quite nice. Sure, I had some rainy days here and there, but not as many as I expected. And I did get a lot of nice rainbows. Many of the locations on the South Island are more impressive than the North. I’m glad that I decided to do the North first or it might have been a little bit of a letdown. By doing it first, I could appreciate everything I was seeing without comparing it to anything in the South. It probably also helped me with the weather by starting in the North because I was able to follow Spring on its Southward path. If you like beautiful scenic countryside, New Zealand is definitely a place you should visit.



I wanted to finish this with something typically Kiwi. This is the label of New Zealand’s national soft drink. Actually they call soft drinks “fizzy drinks”, isn’t that just perfect! L&P is named for it’s two main ingredients, Lemon and Spring water from Paeroa (a town on the North Island SE of Auckland). It’s been around for a long while, and is quite good. I like it better than 7-Up or Sprite. Technically, the company is owned now by the Coca Cola company, But I haven’t seen it anywhere else but here. I absolutely love their slogan: “World Famous in New Zealand”! It’s just one of many things I’ve discovered here on my trip that is world famous here in New Zealand, but a secret from the rest of the world.