If you’re looking for a New Year’s adventure, two words: New Zealand! Some years ago, I visited the small but stunningly beautiful country, and everything was spectacular – the scenery, the people, the food, the native animals, and the preponderance of woolly livestock where sheep outnumber people by 6 to 1.
It’s also possible to experience an incredible range of landscapes in a short drive: from beaches to mountains, up to volcanoes, around geysers, into rainforests, and through deserts. Just watch out for the 30 million sheep that call the country’s North and South Islands home.

The people are overwhelmingly hospitable, too, and I especially recall one bus driver.

During a day excursion to Cape Reinga at the top of the North Island, we traveled by tourist bus along 90 Mile Beach. And when I say along the beach, I mean on the actual shore just yards from the South Pacific Ocean where waves threatened to lap at our tires as we hurtled towards our destination at what seemed (appropriately) near 90 miles per hour. How this massive vehicle failed to sink into the soggy wet sand still baffles me.

Halfway through the trip, the driver slowed down and called back to our sons (one was 12 and the other eight at the time) and, to their astonishment, asked, “You want to steer?”  The driver scooted over, and our wide-eyed boys took turns in the driver’s seat, gripping the giant wheel and navigating the 40-foot bus loaded with some 30 fellow travelers, mostly too enthralled with the ocean scenery to notice their new chauffeurs. Only a handful appeared to hastily compose their last will and testament on used napkins.   
Foodies would love New Zealand, too, with its abundance of fresh seafood, including many delicious species we rarely encounter on U.S. dinner plates. When a restaurant waiter asked one evening if I was familiar with John Dory, I replied, “Never heard of him!” She was, of course, referring to the oddly named but tasty member of the Pacific flatfish family with the large black eye spot on its side to confuse prey.

Did I mention New Zealanders also love their sheep? Some are shorn annually for wool while the less lucky ones end up listed on menus along with the John Dory. There are almost as many recipes for lamb as there are sheep:  roast lamb, lamb shanks, rack of lamb, leg of lamb, lamb meatballs, lamb chops, lamb kebabs, Irish (lamb) stew, and shepherd’s pie (made with, umm, lamb) to mention a few.

Aside from tasty four-legged fleece machines and other livestock, New Zealand is also home to interesting native animals especially some beautiful birds such as the well-known flightless kiwi, the rare yellow-eyed penguin, and the colorful takahe with its brilliant scarlet beak and legs.

One critter you won’t find in New Zealand is snakes – another reason to love the country. By contrast to their larger neighbor some 1,200 miles (as the seagull flies) to the west, Australia is home to some of the world’s deadliest reptiles, spiders, jellyfish, and more, including some exotic centipedes so long they could probably kill by strangulation. But New Zealand has few malicious animals eager to bite, sting, or poison you.

For instance, most of the country’s 1,000 spider species are harmless, although I still had no desire to come face-to-face with the 6-inch leg-spanned Nelson cave spider. Nor was I keen to meet its main prey – the cave weta, a giant flightless cricket and one of 70 weta species that can grow to 4 inches. Either could probably kill you – by heart attack! Needless to say, it was a spelunking-free vacation.

With the exception of the rare katipo, a small poisonous spider related to the black widow of North America and for which no deaths have been reported in over 100 years, the fauna of New Zealand is as cordial as its human population.

Of course, no country is perfect. But if there is a slice of heaven on earth, it might just be New Zealand – unless, of course, you’re one of the millions of nervous sheep contemplating whether your future lies in the meat or textile industry.

And speaking of sheep, one final thing to love about New Zealand: you’ll have no trouble falling asleep.


Nick Thomas teaches at Auburn University at Montgomery and has written features, columns, and interviews for numerous newspapers and magazines. See www.getnickt.org.