Auckland, like most New Zealand cities, has the look of a colonial outpost. It’s in the street names … Khyber Pass Road, Kitchener, Wellington and Victoria … and in the architecture … street after street of bungalows in nougat and pistachio and cream, all roofed in red corrugated iron. Many downtown stores stretch verandas over the sidewalks, protecting shoppers from heavy and frequent rainfall.
The American presence is there, too … in the ubiquitous McDonald’s, Pizza Huts and KFCs. And Hallmark, Cigna, Metropolitan and Aetna advertise their presence. The three radio stations offer a strange mixture of country-western, pop and Euro-disco. Wherever I traveled in New Zealand, in fact, the airwaves carried the songs of Dolly Parton and Sade back to back, over and over. In some ways, this country reminds me of what the United States must have been like in the early post-war years: simpler, more open, trusting, less concerned with crime.
With a rolling verdant urban landscape not unlike San Francisco’s, the city straddles a fault line and has a dormant volcano in its backyard. Native Totorua trees, bottlebrush, magnolias and other subtropical flora thrive here. In the hills above the ocean, parks and rose gardens flourish in charming neighborhoods.
In Auckland in November, Christmas decorations are strung out across the streets, and preparations are in progress for the Santa parade. But this is Christmas in the subtropics … no snow, no chill in the air, no long nights.
Highway 1 out of Auckland is an immaculate six-lane road in top condition. New Zealand must have the best roads in the world. Traffic is light, and as in England, everyone drives on the left.
We traveled through land that is largely agricultural … the emerald, undulating Bombay Hills, where the Maori land wars were fought in the 1800s. South of here, where we are headed, the climate changes from subtropical to temperate.
The small towns of North Island have resonant exotic Polynesian names … Papatoe, Tekauwhata, Otoroahang. They are home to most of the 400,000 Maoris living in New Zealand. The Maoris are descended from Tahitians who immigrated hundreds of years before Captain Cook began his explorations of the South Pacific, setting the path for the British colonizers that would follow. To the Maoris, these islands were “Aotearoa,” or “The land of the long white cloud.”
Rotorua, which means “second lake” in Maori, was the second inland body of water discovered by the Pacific Islanders in their new land. A city of the same name nestles along the lava-colored lake, and is a magical place. Geysers and clouds of steam are everywhere like in a wonderland.
On the down side, the odor of hydrogen sulfide pervades the air … the smell of rotten eggs takes some getting used to.
On the edge of Rotorua is the Whakarewarewa Thermal Reserve, where much of the heaviest thermal activity is concentrated. Giant puffs of grey-white steam rise out of the stony ground. Primeval forests of pine and ferns rim the great rocks of the thermal wonderland. Great Dante-esque pools of silver, boiling mud rise from the hard land. Geysers leap and dance in the midst of white, puffed steam clouds.
We leave the hot springs and geysers behind, following the open, untrafficked roads through the spectacular New Zealand landscape and white-clouded sky.

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