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A Love Letter to New Zealand

Posted on March 7, 2025 in Travels

I knew that New Zealand would be chock full of amazing places, but I was unprepared for how vast, how varied or how beautiful it is.

Milford Sound, South Island, NZ

Sitting at the intersection of two tectonic plates, it is both geologically young and geothermally active. Photos can’t do justice to the scale of mountains, the colours of glacial melt water, the contrasting sensation on bare skin when hot springs bubble up through sand to meet cold water.

Rotorua, North Island, NZ

Hokitika Gorge, South Island, NZ

Look at a map of the earth from the ‘other’ side and you can see it’s mainly blue. There isn’t much land in the Pacific Ocean. Thousands of miles from the nearest landmass, Aotearoa stretches 1600km, from the tip of North Island to the base of Stewart Island off the coast of South Island. It’s only when you look down from a plane that you begin to take it all in.

Picture from Google Earth

This is a land of birds. From tussocky plains to swamps, from forests to mountains and even in towns, there is continual birdsong: wholly unfamiliar booming, whooping and burbling, punctuated by an occasional tiny piping jig*. Once there were giant birds and no mammals. The flightless, ground nesting Moas might have been the size of elephants but tasted a lot better and were hunted to extinction. Today the Kakapos and Kiwis remain in danger.

Kakapo Photo: Andrew Digby/New Zealand Department of Conservation

First stop on any holiday is to find a good bookshop and ask for local recommendations. Thank you to Wardini in Napier and Unity in Auckland,  I devoured The Axeman’s Carnival by Catherine Chidgey, *The Edge of The Alphabet by Janet Frame, Dead Girl Gone (#1 Bookshop Detectives) by Gareth & Louise Ward, Return To Blood by Michael Bennett and Containment by Vanda Symon. I tried and failed with The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton. The book I brought with me, Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Alien Clay, turned out have extraordinary resonance.

The ancient forest is either a fiercely competitive or extraordinarily co-operative place. Symbiotic plants – mosses, orchidaceae, bromeliad, vines and creepers – hitch a ride on the trees which are in turn competing for space with giant tree ferns. If you’ve seen the film Avatar (or indeed The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings) you’ll get the picture.

I’d been warned not to expect the greatest culinary experiences on my travels, but times are changing. Yes there is still a tradition of pale, pasty Scottish food – from blocks of mac ‘n cheese and giant pies to traybakes designed to induce a diabetic coma: lamington (sweet sponge dipped in jelly and sprinkled with coconut), caramel shortbread and giant fudge slices,  but all the local ingredients that you need for a healthier feast are readily available. Fresh fish and succulent lamb, seasonal fruit and vegetables that taste of sunshine.  Oh, and don’t forget the zinging beer and fantastic wine (there’s more to New Zealand wine than Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc). We found plenty of great places to eat out. Highlights included Black Dog Bar in Te Aunu, Boatshed in Queenstown, Hello Beasty in Auckland, Kika in Wanaka and Craggy Range in Hawkes Bay.

https://craggyrange.com/

https://kika.nz/

Not cheap, but absolutely top quality and we balanced the budget by cooking for ourselves most days. All the places we stayed had outdoor gas grills.

Air BnB works a treat in New Zealand, remaining truer to its original design of welcoming visitors into the homes of others. Although we always rented whole self-contained houses, in many places we got to meet the owners and to find out more about their lives: sheep farming in central Otago, market gardening near Lake Wanaka, creating ceramic and textile art in Waiheke.

It’s impossible to talk about the land without reference to the extraordinary friendliness of the inhabitants. New Zealanders appear sunny and friendly, relaxed and open, curious and charming. Even the tiniest transaction – paying for petrol, boarding a ferry – is an opportunity for genuine human interaction. When someone asks: ‘How are you, today?’ they appear sincerely interested in the answer. Such warmth makes a huge difference to any visit. It takes a while to adapt, to overcome habitual reserve, but once embraced, it’s a tonic for the soul.