The Canterbury Tales (1/5/2006)

Hi Everyone:

And just like that, it ended. Twenty-three days and 4500 kilometers after touching down in Auckland, and nearly three years after launching our initial plans, we head 17 timezones into the past with 2000 photos and enough stories to numb your collective crania. And here we stand, tired and exhilarated, accomplished and eager to plan second trips.

The slide back into the West begins with a few days in Christchurch, hub of the Canterbury region and perhaps the world's most British city outside the Isles. Punts glide along the Avon River, and fin-de-ciecle trams loop around the main streets. The town even has a resident wizard and town crier, the latter of whom ends his daily announcements by proclaiming "God Save the Queen". (And no, yesterday we resisted the irony and did not punt on the 4th.)

Although Christchurch has a strong Kiwi flair behind its English facade, it far from typifies New Zealand. The NZ is experience is one of sweeping wildnerness, one that defies logic to pack so much into two tiny islands. Simply put, NZ resets your standards - it doesn't just assault your senses, it razes them to the ground and sows salt on the remains. In a day, you can drive from golden, tranquil beaches to violent surf pounding limestone cliffs (as we did on 12/24), and in another drive from windswept, rolling, rocky hills, through pine forests, across flat plains and arrive at jade mountain lakes (last Tuesday). Add to that, the weather is so unpredictable that you may have a baking overcast day or see rain out of a pale blue sky.

But alas, it's over. Three years of anticipation, ten countries visited since to dub "Nice, but not New Zealand", and we are heading home utterly satisfied. If I thought my original standard was too lofty, the Kiwis saw it, said thanks, and blew it right out of the Tasman Sea.

Thanks to all of you who put up with my inane blabber about this mystical Garden of Eden that I hadn't even visited. And now that I have, brace yourself, since it's only going to get worse.

And thank you, New Zealand.