[outlier]

Best things about New Zealand:

1. No advertising. It was amazing to spend two weeks in a marketing vaccuum. Amazing in a positive sense.

2. No people. The natives complained about how crowded their parks are getting, but at the Nelson Lakes NP I ran into a total of four people over the course of eight hours of hiking (three of these were in the trailhead parking lot). IMHO, western American landscapes are at least as impressive as those in NZ. But in NZ, you feel like you OWN them, almost like you're the original discoverer of everything you see since there's no one else there to prove you wrong. You don't quite get that at Bryce or Yosemite or North Cascades.

3. Those soft licorice things they got are awesome. Just the black ones, though. Not weird and sticky like the Australiainian variety.

Only complaint was the restaurant food (FWIW -- yes, I'm the same person who's sick of eating out in NYC). All that seemed to be available was fish & chips (although they do a good job of this), hamburgers with beets on them, and Chinese and Thai food.

o