Z is for New Zealand

And here we are! It’s the last day of the A to Z Blogging Challenge for this year.

It’s a fitting place to end this haiku journey of discovery around the highways and byways of this New Zealand – with a round up of the country itself.

New Zealand and New Zealanders have forged their place in the world by dint of their attitude to just get it done. It might take a bit of their famous ingenuity, but little can withstand the force of a determined Kiwi.

They are the stuff of legends – pioneering modern and not so modern inventions and innovations that they don’t always shout to the world. It wasn’t until I was living in New Zealand, for example, that I heard the name of Richard Pearse who reportedly beat the Wright brothers into heavier-than-air flight by nine months!

And then there are the other firsts: Kate Sheppard who inspired New Zealand to become the first country to grant universal suffrage; Edmund Hillary – the first to reach the peak of Everest; Ernest Rutherford – the first to split the atom.

New Zealand has spawned entertainment artists like Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, Russell Crowe, Keith Urban, Lorde, Crowded House, Shihad, Tex Morton….. and the list goes on and on.

I should also add the engineers, the linguists, the intelligence experts, authors, and entrepreneurs but we’d be here all day.

From Cape Reinga to Bluff (and then on to Stewart Island), New Zealand beckons visitors keen to see a world beyond their own – including Middle Earth.

For those who want to revisit city life, the main centres of Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin offer night life, shopping, exceptional dining and cultural experiences.

There’s plenty to do and see here. Many are deceived by its relatively small geographical size. It takes more than a couple of days to get a good taste of New Zealand. Take your time. Get out and explore. Maybe you could go to find the places we’ve visited this month – but map it out first, otherwise there would be a lot of back-tracking.

Thank you for joining me on this journey. I’ll have to think about where to visit next year.

Farewell from Aotearoa!
(Remember each vowel of Aotearoa is its own syllable.)

And now the haiku: