We Interrupt your Regularly Scheduled Blogging

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I had a couple of thoughts that didn’t necessarily fit in any particular day, so here you go.

First, a practical note. The list of entries on the RH side is sorted by month; now that we have crossed over into March, you’ll find the newest posts in the March drop-down.

New Zealand is beautiful. Since all of the tourist ads advertise that fact, it shouldn’t come as a big surprise. However, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a country with such “concentrated beauty” – where everything is “beautiful” or “rugged” or “amazing.” I wish I could do a search to see how many times the guide books use “spectacular” and similar words. Even in Australia we flew from top to bottom in search of certain places, whereas here the drives themselves are nice. Even big cities that might be excused for blandness manage to avoid it. Someone from the U.K. described it well when they said that they normally hop in the car, read a book until they get to their destination, admire the beauty, hop back in the car, and read while driving back. They complained that here in NZ they hadn’t made much progress in their books because the drives provide plenty of beauty themselves. It’s a good problem.

The other thing is that I have never really traveled internationally like this before. I’ve been abroad plenty of times. I’ve stayed in hostels. I’ve seen sights, done tours, etc. However, all of my international travel since I was 12 has been based somewhere – Beijing, Singapore, Oxford, etc. Watching and meeting locals is one of the top reasons I enjoy traveling, and this is facilitated by staying somewhere for a while or having a home base. You could say this trip is prolonged, but at the same time I haven’t stayed anywhere more than four days (Sydney). You get a different feeling (and see a different side of a place) when you can change buses without looking up bus numbers or argue with a taxi driver who is trying to cheat you by driving a long way. On the other hand, this trip has been routinely punctuated with dinners or lunches with Aussies or Kiwis -- which have been a highlight of the trip and have given us some “insider insight” into Oz/NZ.

Also, I hate how Blogger turns all my double spaces after periods into single spaces. Thanks for letting me get that off my chest. I feel better now.