The Land of the Long White Cloud

You probably think it’s easy being a travel writer—the trips, the food, the adventures, the beautiful sights. But pity me, please, for having to write about New Zealand.

It’s been awful. I’ve combed through a thesaurus and found that there are only a small number of synonyms for “gorgeous.” I’ve sorted through more than a thousand pictures and have had to make agonizing decisions over which images I will feature online and with my articles. I’ve re-read my notes and realize that I could tell you about hundreds of extraordinary places and describe encounters with dozens of intriguing people—but I also realize that you, dear readers, have lives apart from this blog and that you may occasionally need to go to work, eat, and sleep.

So over the next couple of weeks I’ll be telling you about my time in New Zealand, reluctantly focusing only on what impressed me the most. I’ll resist the urge to post hundreds of pictures. I’ll follow the lead of the New Zealand highway commission and only use the word “scenic” if something is so spectacular it made me gasp upon first seeing it.

And to prove my journalistic objectivity, I’m going to say something negative about New Zealand, because otherwise you’re going to think I’ve been addled by eating too many kiwi fruits. So here’s my harshest criticism of New Zealand:

Even nice hotels often don’t have coffee makers in their rooms, so that guests have to make do with instant coffee.

There, that proves I’m not totally enraptured by New Zealand. And with that out of the way, let me leave you with a single photograph of this marvelous country, to whet your appetite for more. To the Maori, New Zealand is Aotearoa, the Land of the Long White Cloud. When the Maori came to these islands more than eight centuries ago, they had traveled thousands of miles by canoe from tropical islands in Polynesia. And then they came upon sights like the one below. To this day, visitors are still awestruck by New Zealand. Including me.