* * Day 22, Blacksburg, VA, home from New Zealand

Home!

After about 28 hours of travel, we arrived home around 11:30 this morning, in time for me to attend my weekly Rotary Club meeting, where I did a 3 minute speech about the value of Rotary International fellowship for world travelers.

The travel was exhausting, but in reality everything went well. It is an age of miracles we live in, where everyday people like us will see more of the world in our lifetimes than kings and queens of Europe saw 150 years ago. Airline travel is exhausting and stressful, but we didn’t lose our luggage, we didn’t miss any airplanes, and all of our airplanes flew safely. Fact is, tomorrow you can be anywhere in the world. It is a blessing none of us should take for granted.

We drove all over New Zealand, perhaps 3000 kilometers, and spent around $900 in petrol. We had but one tense moment, when I was trying to pass a car towing a trailer up a steep, winding road, when the passing zone was impossibly short and the car almost cut me off from merging back left. Otherwise, drivers were great everywhere we went. No horn honking, no cross words. Jane and most notably Whitney did some driving, too, both successfully, with this being Whitney’s first experience driving on the left. We had no car problems whatsoever.

As I noted in an earlier post, we had more interaction with the “locals” than on any trip we’ve ever done before. The extraordinary friendliness of the Kiwis and the fact that we speak a common language (albeit with a different accent!), led to many profound discussions and many chance, brief conversations alike. An old adage goes that the best part of every travel experience is the people you meet, and we met the very best in the world on this trip.

The sparseness of population and development in New Zealand struck me acutely as we circled for our landing in Los Angeles, whose greater metropolitan area has twice that of the whole country of New Zealand. People have had their mark on Kiwi land as with everywhere else on earth, but with a lighter, more reverential touch. The cities of Auckland and Dunedin are pleasant and spotless (as was Christchurch before its downtown was largely destroyed), but New Zealand is about the countryside, which is universally stunning.

As our prior travel experiences have faded into our personal history, I know they become snapshots in our minds, and I am already having fond memories of our past three weeks. I remember wandering the hills at Shakespear Park on the Whangaparaoa Peninsula, riding the surf at Onemana Beach, riding horses in the steep hills south of Whkatane with Whitney, riding motorcycles to Raglan, walking the shore of Lake Taupo, sharing Christmas dinner on an outside picnic table with Libby Gairdner and her friendly family, driving the winding, Scotland-like hills over Akaroa, watching attentively for the amazing albatrosses at Otago Peninsula, driving the astounding road to Milford Sound in the piercing rain and taking in its world-famous view, hiking perhaps the country’s highest-elevation, most exposed developed trail at the Routeburn Track in the worst weather seen in years, seeing Mount Cook emerge from the clouds at the end of Lake Pukuki with the Fishers, doing the cave experience at Charleston, touring the coal ghost town at Denniston, riding the bicycle trail in Nelson, walking the Kaikoura Peninsula looking for whales, and touring the devastation at Christchurch. And so many more in between.

I know that Jane was as enchanted by the country as much this time as her other visit, 29 years ago. She really enjoyed the people we met and stayed with. Whitney and I had a couple of tense interactions, but as the trip wound to an end and I mentioned wishing we’d done a better job, she shrugged it off, saying “I’ve been living on my own for 3-1/2 years and on this trip we were together, really close together, for 3 weeks, so some stress wasn’t surprising.” We kissed and made up. From every indication, she had a great time.

In my office this afternoon, I’ve returned to 1188 email messages. I have photos to sort and prints to order. At home, there are clothes to separate and floors to vacuum. There is some work awaiting in our building, with my next book, and with the publishing business. The weather here is surprisingly mild, but it’s still winter and the sun is still setting by 5:30 instead of after 9:30 in NZ. The tired, worn mountains of Southwest Virginia are as bare, solid and friendly as when we left.

I have jet-lagged eyes with heavy lids. It’s great to return home, to eat my own food, to sleep in my own bed, to pet my dogs, and surround myself with familiarity. But the good feeling of the trip is something I’m eager to hang onto. I keep staring at the map and the travel brochures. Everything is expensive and our retirement fund has taken a real hit, but by tomorrow we’ll start saving our pennies and looking forward to the next trip.  It was the best holiday we’ve ever had in Kiwi-land, New Zealand, the world’s most appealing country.