New Zealand feels like someone took mountains, glaciers, volcanoes, beaches, fjords and aggressively green farmland, compressed everything into two islands and then handed the entire country to Peter Jackson for marketing.
Turns out that worked pretty fucking well.
The scenery is ridiculous.
On the South Island, mountains explode out of valleys, glaciers crawl through alpine landscapes and places like Milford Sound make you wonder whether nature had recently received additional funding. Drive for an hour and the scenery changes again because apparently New Zealand has absolutely no commitment to a single geographic personality.
The North Island isn’t exactly slacking.
Volcanoes, geothermal fields, beaches, Māori culture and landscapes ranging from subtropical coastline to steaming holes in the ground make it feel like Earth is still actively testing features.
Then there’s Queenstown, where looking at mountains apparently wasn’t exciting enough, so everyone started jumping off bridges, launching themselves from cliffs and attaching elastic cords to their ankles.
New Zealand takes outdoor activities seriously.
It also takes driving seriously, whether you planned to or not. Distances aren’t enormous, but roads twist through mountains and along coastlines while approximately every viewpoint convinces you to stop the fucking car again.
The weather can change quickly. Popular destinations get crowded. And New Zealand is definitely not a cheap trip.
But none of that really matters once you’re there.
New Zealand is wild, dramatic, ridiculously beautiful and almost unfairly photogenic.
Come for Middle-earth.
Stay because the real fucking scenery is better.
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Auckland: Sydney Lite, Now With More New Zealand
I went to Auckland because the flight was cheap and I have very little self-control around airfare. Mother Nature promptly murdered my plans to head south, leaving me to explore a beautiful, walkable city that feels suspiciously like someone copy/pasted Sydney, removed a few million people and called it New Zealand.
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