We had only planned to stay an hour or so, visiting with a Facebook friend in Tairua, a small town on the southeast coast of the Coromandel Peninsula. But it was seven hours and six…
Marcel Proust wrote a seven volume novel engendered, in a way, by the taste of a madeleine cookie: No sooner had the warm liquid [of tea] mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a…
In 1948, two scientists came to the coastal bluffs along the Tasman Sea just west of Auckland, and for the first time listened to the sounds of stars outside the Milky Way. It’s likely that…
The spiky stalks of rushes - large grassy rods - rose over our heads, densely packed throughout the long stretch in front of us. Even in the cool afternoon, we sweated with the effort of moving…
On a beautiful day Cape Reinga, the end of New Zealand, can feel so benign, if not at all peaceful. Busloads of tourists scurry about for a brief while, snapping pictures, huffing and puffing along…
We’ve long understood the value of slow travel, with the benefits of learning a culture, enjoying the less touristed pleasures of a place, meeting local residents and changing a travel plan based on what we…
“Welcome to the rocks that Wellington said don’t exist,” she greeted us. A wiry woman, impressively dressed in a broad-brimmed leather hat and a buckskin vest as if she were still ready for sixties counter-culture…
To the northeast of Auckland there are nearly 50 islands scattered about Hauraki Gulf. Some are large, like the Great Barrier Island, and some are tiny. Some are like suburbs of Auckland, like Waiheke, and…
New Zealand prides itself on celebrating the diverse array of ethnicities and homeland origins of its people. On its national holiday in February, it celebrates its founding document, the Treaty of Waitangi, which made peace…
Tree specialists know that uprooting and replanting a tree can put great stress on it, endangering its viability. We like to think of ourselves as more resilient than that, but the stresses are there when…