A Photo Tour of New Zealand

Part I

The impetus for our trip Down Under was to scratch off another country from our bucket list and having heard how beautiful the countryside of New Zealand was, we continued our holiday trip by flying from Australia to New Zealand. We had two weeks to cover both the North and South Islands that make up the country. As a professional photographer the obvious choice for ground transportation was our own rental car which gave us the freedom to move around as we saw fit. The catch was deciding where to go in a country with tons of photo opportunities but limited roadways. Here is a map of the 1500 miles (2500 Km) we planned to get the most out of the time we had.

Being in the Southern hemisphere, it is Summer in New Zealand when it is Christmas time in North America. It also happens to be their rainy season so the idea of creating fine art photography on this whirlwind trip quickly flew out the window. We had little time between hotels, usually driving 4-5 hours every day to our next destination. With the exception of Queenstown and Auckland, we just stopped for the night and left the next morning.

There are only 3 international airports in New Zealand so we began our whirlwind tour in Christchurch which is still recovering from a massive earthquake a few years ago.

An entire village of shops and businesses called Re:START, made entirely of shipping containers, sprung up on a downtown city block.

Other areas remain intact, some representing the uniqueness that is New Zealand.

The actual area of New Zealand is rather small being just 250 miles wide and 990 miles tall. It’s really amazing how quickly the landscape changes as you drive from hour to hour.

As an island country there is a ton of coastline round New Zealand offering spectacular views almost everywhere you look.

Then, around the corner and up a hill and the baah, baah of hundreds of sheep fills the air. And that’s not all that fills the air!

Around the next corner comes the next breathtaking view.

With so much water everywhere it’s no wonder the locals and tourists spend so much time outdoors.

This stretch of New Zealand is along the Southeastern coast on our drive from Christchurch to Dunedin on our first full day in New Zealand.

On our second day we left Dunedin and drove out on the Otago Peninsula where there is a colony of Albatross.

The Albatross is the largest flying bird and can have a wing span of up to 12 feet. That may be a small one in the above photo.

This is another kind of bird we saw on the peninsula.

From Dunedin, we headed west on our way to Queenstown. We didn’t have time to visit the southern tip of New Zealand where there are plenty of barrier islands and more photo opps so we cut across the country and through an area where there were orchards of cherry trees and plenty of stands selling fruit. My next post will begin in Queenstown.

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