Best Reasons to Visit New Zealand

New Zealand is a great place to visit and I loved it, but it might not be for everyone. It is not Europe. If you want walking, outdoors, unique fauna, and easygoing people, it is the place for you. Here is a summary list, with links to relevant parts of my trip.

* Tramping - This is the #1 reason to come here. They an extensive system of trails and there are also low cost cabins placed so that you can walk for days in reasonably remote areas and still have a minimal level of comfort and safety.

* Scenery - Closely related to the tramping, you can find steep-sided mountains, rainforests, and pristine beaches, all in a relatively small area.

* Thermal Activity - New and old volcanoes, especially on the North Island, make for some more amazing scenery.

* Whale Watching - I went dolphin swimming instead, which was probably the single best thing I did in New Zealand. But I'm told that on rough days it is more like torture than fun.

* Bird Watching - There are many unique kinds of rare birds here and they are so bold that it takes no skill to watch them.

* Fishing - Some of the biggest trout in the world (bigger than this one). Deep sea fishing is good here too (bigger than this one). I met two professional fishing guides from the US who came here on a fishing vacation.

* Extreme Sports - For a lot of people this is a major activity. I admit I skipped all the bungy jumping, parachuting, and jet boating, but I did go hang gliding.

* Ocean Sports - NZ has a ton of coastline so sailing, surfing, and scuba are pretty huge.

* Skiing - I don't ski, and it was the wrong time of year, but here is a picture with snow.

* Flora - NZ also has lots of unique plants and some huge trees.

Worst Reasons to Visit New Zealand

* Castles - there is one (1). Built in 1871, my guidebook calls it "an overgrown folly."
* Churches - the oldest is a small wooden building built in 1836.
* Museums - try Europe instead. There are a few, especially Te Papa in Wellington, that are worth visiting, but only if you are already in NZ.
* Shopping - combine a small consumer base, an isolated land mass, and an unfavorable exchange rate, and you get really overpriced shopping. Wool is the exception.
* Dining - this was an English colony. 'Nough said.
* Partying - you can have fun, but it is not like Ibiza or the Gold Coast.

Six Months in One Picture

This is one of my favorite pictures of New Zealand because it has everything in one picture. You have the falcon (obviously), and the Kaingaroa sign, plus the truck, and then the mud. That is basically every day for months on end. Fun stuff, in a very testosterone heavy kind of way. I originally tried to post this picture months ago, but there was some technical glitch and I never got around to correcting it before because I always had so many new things to post. But here it is, finally.

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Falcon Attack II

My earlier Falcon Attack post was a relatively popular one, so I have added another good sequence of pictures. This shows Shane trying (unsuccessfully) to catch a falcon with the hat. I explained this procedure earlier, if you want more detail. The idea is the falcon hits Shane in the head (we hope), and gets stuck to his hat. You can see the hat more clearly in the picture below. One thing I will point out, as someone who has experienced many falcon attacks, is how low she is in the first pic. They can be hard to spot, and then they swoop up at your head at high speed. If she is hard to see, in the first pic she is just below the trees and left of center. In the 2nd pic, she is in front of the trees, in the 3rd she is at the top of the trees, and she is obvious in the 4th.



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