According to somebody’s official estimate, about 100,000 people thronged the central avenue of Courtenay Place yesterday to gawk at those who created the Hobbit movie. This in a town of about 400,000 people. Imagine if…
Maori legends tell that the Whanganui River formed as a result of a love triangle among volcanoes. Mount Taranaki once lived next to three kinsman in the center of the North Island, his fellow volcanoes…
Since 1989, the town of Whangamomona has been an independent republic. According to legend, back in 1989 the New Zealand government decided to move Whangamomona from one administrative region to another. This proved very disturbing…
We were checking out at the natural foods store of Commonsense Organics, and the cashier asked where we were from. The States, we said, and Texas. Ooh, he said, then maybe I shouldn’t ask you…
Since we’ve arrived in Wellington, we’re often asked what we do to fill up our time here. In other words, what do we do when we’re on “endless vacation”? First of all, we’re not really…
For Americans, getting power for your stuff in SE Asia (Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Myanmar) is very easy. Everywhere we went, we found electrical outlets in which you can also stick standard U.S. two-prong electrical plugs. Easy.…
We were just one hour into our hike along the famed Abel Tasman Coastal Track, one of the nine great walks of New Zealand. And it was tea time. We were familiar with many of…
If I can't take my coffee break, My coffee break, my coffee break . . . If I can't take my coffee break, Gone is the sense of enterprise, All gone, and something within me…
It’s a Kiwi smorgasbord: a display of Maori cloaks woven over a two hundred year span, an exhibit of European fine arts collected by the wealthy here, a “colossal” squid from the Pacific depths splayed…
Hiking in New Zealand is often made possible by the cooperative effort between landowners and the hikers. This is a similar relationship to the one we found in Europe. Without this cooperation we would be…