#6: Botanical Gardens

The city planners of NZ obviously had a grand vision and a love of plants. There are botanical gardens in every city we visited and even small places with a population less than 10,000 people had impressive public gardens. This often included water features, as pictured here in Dunedin, NZ, a rock garden, herb gardens and ROSES were the big highlight. They were at the peak of their season and I saw so many varieties, most with names I'd never heard of. We were sorry to have been a bit late for the rhododendron shows but what we did see was impressive - luckily for us it was a late spring and lots of rhodos were still blooming. Absolutely hundreds of hectares are given over to the development of public gardens in the towns and cities of NZ and I applaud the fact that we didn't pay for entrance and every one that we visited was a delightful public space. Joseph Banks came with Captain Cook to collect plants in NZ - his legacy lives on!

#5: Roadside Flowers

I think that of all the Canadian provinces, British Columbia takes the prize for the best roadside wildflowers. NZ has got tons of good ones too. The picture here is really a "dandelion" - the leaves are identical to the dandelion "weed" we have here, but these flowers are much nicer. I had the opportunity to always have a bouquet of flowers in the camper - sometimes it was colourful lupines (and yes, they have yellow lupines in NZ) and sometimes it was calla lilies or osteopernum plucked right out of the ditches. Geraniums grow wild as do freesia. There are also lots of beautiful natural grasses which get to look very elegant as they blow around in the mighty winds of the 'Roaring '40's'.

#4: Walking

I'm not sure if I can clearly identify the difference between a "track", a "trek" and a "tramp" but let's just call it walking! It's alive and well in NZ. Of course, my favorite hikes were in the mountains of Fiordland but I had quite a few gorgeous coastal walks, notably in Abel Tasman National Park. Another favorite was at Cape Foulweather, partly because the place so suited its name (named by Captain Cook, of course). We had plenty of opportunity to walk in wind and I was so played out by the wind at one point that I didn't actually walk down to the most southerly point in NZ that is not found on one its more southerly islands. Dave did so with difficulty.

Nearly every little town and every city has historic walks, nature walks, and tramps to simply be outdoors. If you love to walk, visit NZ.

#3: Te Papa Atawhai or The DoC

The Department of Conservation is the sort of "state park" or "national park" area of NZ. They offer very basic camping in a number of locations, although we found some of them difficult to access. It was the only time I really felt as if I was actually camping in NZ - they only offer an open field, a toilet and water with a suggestion that it be boiled (and in some instances it was get the water from the stream or lake).

The Department also manages thousands of trails on the two islands. We found all of them to be in excellent condition and they are absolutely free. Many of them had interpretive signs along the way. The only "tracks" that we did were part of the Abel Tasman Track and the Routeburn Track. The day that we hiked on Routeburn there had been a big rainfall and the trail had to be rerouted around a 176 m waterfall which was taking over the trail - but within several hours, they did have it done. I really have to applaud the Department of Conservation in NZ!

#2: The Food!

I've always loved food. NZ is a good place to be if you're a so-called "foodie". This is a picture of the seafood hotpot that Dave ordered in a restaurant known as Fleur's Place in Moraki, SI. The Lonely Planet led us to this establishment and I think it was a real find. Since our visit, I've learned that the woman who owns the place has put out cookbooks (hope to find those through our library system) and been awarded all sorts of prizes. We didn't eat out at a lot of different places, but I enjoyed every meal we ate. We had Thai food in Rotarura and Dunedin (both excellent) and our friend Bede took us to a Chinese food restaurant in Auckland. I'd say it was the best "Chinese" I've ever had and I loved how we could bring our own bottle and pay a corkage fee. Seafood is superb and all the produce in the grocery stores was beautiful to look at. The quality was good as well. I'd say that the local food movement is alive and well in NZ. I guess it has to be! My only regret is that since Dave isn't a lamb eater I didn't get to cook lamb chops 3 times a week. Luckily, the fish helped to make up for that.

TILBANZ #1: Sky

Things I Love Best About New Zealand. I'm not doing these posts in any particular order, but as a prairie girl, I have to say that NZ has fantastic skies. I often feel pretty hemmed in living here in a steep mountain valley and being in the wide open spaces of NZ felt like freedom. The forests there are really dense so that closed in feeling dominates when away from the coast, but most of the time I got to appreciate sky.

It was rather weird that we saw very few good sunsets, however. This one was probably the best one at Fox Glacier on the South Island. The Tasman Sea was probably 15 km to the west. The next morning the skies cleared completely and we had fantastic views of Mt. Tasman and Mt Cook. NZ skies are changeable and dominate the landscape.

32 000 Kilometres Later

We arrived home last night and figured that we travelled about that far during the past 7 weeks. Our trip to NZ was 11 500 km each way, we put on 7, 200 km driving around the two islands and we drove from here to the west coast, over to the Island, and back here again.

Over the next few weeks I'm planning to write a number of short blogs about the things I loved best about New Zealand so if you're one of my readers you can hunt me up and read what I have to say.

It was so very good to sleep in my own bed last night - in fact, it was so good that I'm heading that way now.