New Zealand for me was in Nov. 2011 but stories written from that epic trip have just earned me a big Mark Twain award - First Place Series in the Midwest Travel Writers Association’s 2012 writing awards. That was last week in Louisville, where the group’s spring meeting gave me opportunities to get the lowdown on bourbon, food, shopping and a zipline inside a cave.

It was a strange switch to look back at my Kiwi Kronicles series while immersed in all things Kentucky. Maybe that’s why I sometimes feel I’m not quite all there, or here, for that matter. .
 I’m summarizing the work here to give you easy access to all the stories, which include some pretty neat you-are-there videos for those viewing them online. Just click on the colored text above to go there directly from here.

Those NZ stories, published early last year, included a look at the native Maori culture, immersion in the scenes where Hobbit films were done, a visit by train to an upscale sheep station, an after dark kayak paddle into a canyon illuminated by glow worms, a soak in hot springs and a trek into a primitive forest. My blogs included a wearable art fashion show in Wellington, a sheep shearing experience and the baa code on merino wool long johns I purchased, and a visit to an 1830s era mission, one of the country’s earliest settlements by Europeans.

 A really amazing interactive map, devised by my colleague Cheryl Sadler, was also a part of the series and I owe her a giant Thank You for her efforts with it. But it’s so cutting edge there was no contest category for entering it, the same scenario for my blogs and videos.
 And I hope you enjoy reading about New Zealand as much as I enjoyed writing about it.

A hairy  frond unfurls from the middle of a tree fern

Almost everything is different in New Zealand, but it was the forests that most captivated me. They’re called podocarp forests — a lineage that goes back hundreds of millions of years to a time when New Zealand was part of the super continent of Gondwana. Before being separated by continental drift it included most of the landmasses in today’s Southern Hemisphere, including Antarctica, South America, Africa, Madagascar and the Australian continent, as well as the Arabian Peninsula and the Indian subcontinent.
 The same rich nutrients that made podocarp forests so luxurious also were attractive for farming, so many of the vast forests have disappeared from New Zealand.

Podocarp forests in New Zealand have plants found nowhere else on earth.

Some tree ferns grow to great heights, but none are as old as mauri trees which live thousands of years. 

 But one still exists near Wharekauhau, which was featured in my most recent Kiwi Kronicles story and can be found at http://tinyurl.com/6soenb8.
Almost everything that grows in New Zealand can be found no place else in the world. Tree ferns, which grow in shady areas,  were almost everywhere I traveled, from Wellington to Taraunga and the Coromandel Peninsula. They have umbrella like tops, similar to palms, but have a curled frond protruding from the top of the crown in many cases. A silver fern was the popular insignia for New Zealand’s All-Blacks rugby team, which won the world championship just before I arrived in November. A tree fern frond is also found as a logo of Air Zealand.

Kiwi Dundee lathers with water added to a leaf he picked from the undergrowth

On the Coromandel Peninsula I joined Kiwi Dundee, also known as Doug Johansen, for a trek into the bush where vines snaked across and along the path and a high leafy canopy arched overhead. Walking — what kiwis call tramping — is a popular pastime in New Zealand and it’s  Johansen’s claim to fame. He charms the birds from the trees and sometimes brings crumbled bacon along to feed to an eel he's named that lives in a stream.
Johansen has worked tirelessly to ban both logging and open pit gold mining in the region because even though there’s plenty of gold beneath the earth,  removing it would damage the environment. He’s documented New Zealand’s oldest kauri tree, a monster that’s more than 2,000 years old and knows the ancient Maori sites like the back of his hand.  If you go to this part of the world be sure to book a guided walk before you leave at www.kiwidundee.co.nz

Tranz Metro is a commuter division of KiwiRail

The Wellington train station is not much different from train stations throughout the world

Taking a train from Wellington to Wairarapa in New Zealand gave me an excellent glimpse into the lives of  local folks who commute between the city and the rural areas where sheep stations, vineyards and small towns provide an idyllic way of life. The Tranz Metro service runs five trains a day in each direction (six on Fridays) for a journey that takes slightly less than two hours. Trains run less often on weekends, but Wellingtonians take them to visit Wairarapa vineyards, wine and food festivals, horse races and to take short breaks in the country. Special trains are scheduled for events such as the popular Toast Martinborough Wine, Food and Music Festival  which takes place the third Sunday each November.

Watch the world of New Zealand's North Island go by from a comfortable seat on a train

Along the way we passed through the five and a half  mile long Rimutaka tunnel - nothing compare to our Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel, but the the second longest tunnel in all of New Zealand.



The train is very straight forward and easy to negotiate, even for folks who don't live with regular train transporration in their lives.A cruise through the www.kiwirail.co.nz website has convinced me that next time I visit New Zealand I'll be booking train tickets for part of my explorations.

The fashion is like nothing you’d ever see on the streets of Auckland or Wellington - or even the moon - but the annual World of Wearable Art Show in Wellington, New Zealand draws entrants and interest from all over the world. Called WOW for short, it’s a showcase for up and coming fashion designers — but with a fantastic twist. My group at the Society of American Travel Writers autumn meeting in Wellington was treated to a special showing of costumes created by winners of the 2011 show and I was standing up in front shooting videos you’ll see here..
Materials used in these wearable contrivances includes books, car parts, recycled plastic bags, human hair, coins, ballet shoes and anything else the young designer could  conceive.
Some of the winners have gone on to work for WETA, producers of the notable Lord of the Rings films and the Hobbit, and for Cirque du Soleil among others. The show,  which this year is Sept. 28, awards $150,000 in prize money plus scholarships to the creative winners. The full show runs for two weeks around that date.
Meet young Claire Prebble in the second video  with this blog. She’s been entering the competition since she was just 8 when she and her mother entered The Junk Fish. Since then she’s entered WOW 15 times and became the youngest winner of the Supreme award when she was just 18 in 2004.
Claire is a New Zealander, but other entrants hail from the U.S., Australia, India, Thailand, Japan, Germany, the Netherlands, Israel, Fiji, Canada and the United Kingdom.
Find out how you can enter at www.worldofwearableart.com

The Elms, built in the 1830s as a mission house on the Bay of Plenty, is the oldest European building in this part of New Zealand.

Many of the books in the library at the Elms were brought by missionary Alfred Brown from England when he came to New Zealand in 1829.

Early New Zealand missionaries came to end the Maori people’s occasional cannibalism, bring them to Christianity, and teach them English.
An Anglican mission house, built in the 1830s, housed the earliest missionaries and their descendants who occupied in until 1992. Today it’s a museum and a must-see during a visit to Tauranga.
I’ll focus on that area, in the northern part of New Zealand’s North Island, in my Kiwi Kronicles series which begins in the News-Herald on Feb. 12.
 The Elms, as the mission house was named,  is the oldest European heritage site  on the Bay of Plenty. It  was built as an Anglican mission house in the 1830s. Although the city of Tauranga has grown up around it, the house was lived in from 1847 to 1992 and everything — from its furnishings and outbuildings to its gardens reflects the past.
Because early missionaries had to be self sufficient, its library contains original books covering topics that range from the expected theology, to medicine, music and gardening.
The wood framed house is small, but it was heartily welcomed by Alfred Brown, his wife Charlotte and their two young children when it was it built to replace a home made of rushes that first housed the missionary family. Missing the oaks of his English homeland led Brown to plant an acorn brought all the way from England. Today it is a giant tree among the Norfolk pines that are more customary vegetation in New Zealand. To build the stately Georgian style home, Maori workman floated native kaury logs down a nearby river and built the house to face the sun in the north. The walls of the house were filled with rushes to keep it cool in the summer and warm in the winter.
 Brown traveled on foot around the area teaching English to the Maoris and bringing the word of God to them.
Their son died as a child and Charlotte followed a few years later, meeting her end in Auckland where she had traveled to seek medical help. Brown remarried in 1860 , the year that land wars between the settlers and the Maori ended his mission work.
Some of the 17 acres which originally surrounded the home were sold in 1913 to pay for its maintenance  when lean-tos were built on each side of the house so a kitchen could be installed in one and bathroom plumbing in another.
Those who followed the Browns cared lovingly for the home and added to the gardens, which today are a wonderful combination of old England and New Zealand plantings.
A chapel, built to replicate the original church, is today a popular venue for local weddings.
It's a fascinating slice of early life in New Zealand. 

Maybe it was the No Jet Lag pills I tried to take every two hours for the 20 or so hours I was underway from Cleveland to reach New Zealand. Or maybe it was the sheer adrenalin excitement of finally arriving in Wellington, the beginning of a journey that’s been on my bucket list almost forever.
But I hit the streets before I even unpacked and headed up the unlikely named Cuba Street just a few blocks from my downtown Wellington hotel.
I’d been sandwiched between two very portly people in a middle seat on the 14 hour Los Angeles to Auckland leg of the journey. I pressed flesh with each of them since they overlapped into my Air New Zealand seat. So I took refuge in an Ambien, a prescription sleep medication I rarely use when going to Europe. That’s because flights to Europe are maybe 6 hours long and I’m still groggy when I arrive.
No problem this time. I slept like a baby until hunger pangs awakened me at 4 a.m.
I was wide eyed and alert by the time I’d reached Auckland and transferred easily to my Wellington flight without any airport confusion. I was really glad to have a window seat so I could watch the New Zealand landscapes unfold beneath me before my aircraft entered the clouds.
Soon we’d arrived in Wellington, location of the conference of the Society of American Travel Writers and my home for a few days. Cuba Street, which took its name from a ship that brought settlers here in 1840, still has many of its historic old buildings. It’s mostly a pedestrian street with a distinct bohemian vibe, much like a lot of college towns I’ve visited, with many sidewalk cafes, funky boutiques, street musicians and bike racks.
I stopped for lunch at a cafe called Floridita, one of several spots playing on the Cuba and Florida theme. Great meal, good local beer and a check of about $18 — gratuities are included in New Zealand eateries.
Wellington was originally settled by the English and Scots — a fact reflected in its place names. But everything also has a Maori name, since the country is totally bilingual.
It’s on a harbor indented into the North Island from Cook’s Strait and is breezy to the max. Locals feared that our group of travel writers would fall into the Windy Wellington alliteration. You can hear the wind whistle on the video with this blog.
On a break between meetings, I zipped my raincoat, secured my hood and headed for a walk along the waterfront to shoot some of the video here. It was November — early springtime — but cold, I’d guess in the 40s with the wind and rain making it seem much worse.
There, right outside the Convention Center, was an Occupy settlement of tents and lean-tos... just like in the states. Their arguments were the same as those heard at home. Too much government, too little representation and economic issues such as unemployment and the housing bubble.
I’d traveled  8,700 miles from my home in Mentor and many things were the same.
But I’ll have several stories about my visit to New Zealand and I hope you’ll follow them in coming weeks. The first ones will run in the paper on Feb. 12 and will be online before that.

I'm embarking this afternoon on a lifelong quest to spend some time in New Zealand, with a 13-hour flight tonight from LA toAuckland, then on to Wellington. Because I'll cross the international dateline I arrive Monday morning. I don't know how our daylight savings time end will affect the time, but it will be five or so hours later there than at home. Not so much a diff as some places in Europe, but none-the-less I'm trying out No JetLag, a natural ingreddent pill said to reduce the jetleg almost entirely if taken every two hours from departure. In LA that will be 10:30at night or 1:30 am in Cleve, where I usually hit the sack at 9 p.m. I expect to be sound asleep shortly after take-off... The pill is made in New Zealand which is a jetlag distance from almost everywhere else. People think it's right next door to Australia, which is in the neighborhood, but still another 4 hour flight away if memory serves. Ive flown Air New Zealand down under before, last time to Melbourne, Australia and remember the Auckland Airport as a welcoming place where I was able to take a pay-for shower and buy some woolen hats on my layover.

I expect to be blogging from Wellingotn, and later on from the Bay of Islands and Cormandel, where I'll be kayaking and checking to see if the wrecked ship hung up on a reef is still spilling oil.

Stay tuned. It should be fun.