Hiking Ngahopua and Hongi’s Tracks, North Island, New Zealand

Again, mist and drizzle shrouded the central North Island this morning, and again Vilis and I tramped through dim native forests thick with a sense of time gone past. Shifting cloud obscured or reveal...

Arohaki Lagoon and Rainbow Mountain, North Island, New Zealand

At 9 a.m., after driving farther into Whirinaki Forest Park, Vilis and I set out for Arohaki Lagoon on a track that led us first through scrub dominated by tea tree, toetoe, cabbage trees, bracken, an...

Hiking in Whirinaki Forest Park, North Island, New Zealand

This morning and throughout the day, cloud and rain sagged onto the North Island, dripping moisture onto the landscape and screening hills and lakes. After breakfast in the dry, spacious kitchen of th...

New Zealand: A Green Ravaged Land

In mid-morning, little shags perched on boulders protruding from the near-shore waters of Lake Taupo, their wings stretched to dry in the damp air filled with spitting rain, their slender, curved-tip ...