Ginger Without Borders

Australia is the world’s oldest continent, while New Zealand is one of the newest islands on the planet. Both have very thin soil lines for opposite reasons – Australia’s has been weathered away while NZ’s plant life hasn’t been around long enough to deposit any great depth of soil. The Maori were the first humans…

For our return to Christchurch, we asked the travel agent to find us a better accommodation than the mid-night arrival place that greeted us to New Zealand. The new nice place is only a block from the Vodafone sales office (that would have saved us a long walk our first day here) and across the…

The host at our Dunedin hotel did not have a high opinion of the sites of Christchurch. And after the devasting losses of the earthquake, we did not disagree with him. Our next target is the Banks Peninsula, the Christchurch equivilent to Dunedin’s Otago Peninsula. His suggestion was that we visit the Orokonui Ecosanctuary before…

Before we left Lake Te Anau, we stopped by the free bird sanctuary that is one of the breeding areas for the takahe, a flightless bird though to be extinct for 60 years but rediscovered in 1948 in the Murchison Mountains overlooking the Lake. We were not permitted to view the takahe up close because…

As the tour bus pulled up to the wharf at Milford Sound, the driver (and our guide for the road trip) said, “It is always a good day in the Sound when you can see Mitre Peak.” We could – it is in the lower right in this picture and rises 5,551 feet above the…