A week holidaying recently in New Zealand felt like seven madly postcard-perfect and entirely binge-worthy days spent, not just in another country, but on a wholly different planet. Here’s the highlights –

Looking like a cross between a stealth spy plane and a super-stylish magpie (bird), nothing comes close in the aviation world to the distinctive ‘black-ops’ look of the country’s national airline. Sexy and secret-agentish, carry-on luggage, for those who really want to complete the look, can include an attach-case handcuffed to the wrist.

In the ‘first impressions’ department, Christchurch Airport gets the job done in Garden-of-Eden abloom. On the return journey I picked up a couple of good reads from the bookshop too!

See the lady above? That’s Jacinda Adern, my favorite ever New Zealand Prime Minister. (Yep, I got a list. For Aussie PM’s, they include Paul Keating, Bob Hawke and Scott Morrison and U.S-wise we’re talking Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush). She was in office for six years up until 2023.

So there we were in a quaint little downtown coffee shop in Christchurch with the girl behind the counter looking for all the world like Jacinda Adern‘s twin sister… er, clone.

Doing my very best Captain Obvious impersonation and believing with every fibre of my being I had stumbled upon a discovery as unique and momentous as unearthing a brand-new element on the Periodic Table (something no one has done for going on ten years now, btw!), I confidently approached the counter and enquired if anyone had ever remarked upon the resemblance.

“Do you know how many times I’ve been asked that?” was her composed and no-doubt long-suffering reply.

I’ve been to eight different countries (lived in three) + five different states of Australia. Nothing comes remotely (pun intended) close to the smorgasbord of sheer poetry-in-motion scenery on offer in the ‘land of the long white cloud’.

”Middle Earth-ian’ – ‘Jaw-droppingly surreal’ and ‘Positively Prehistoric’ are the best descriptions I can come up with. And they’re all understating it, at best.

And because I know there’s very few things in this world more yawn-inducing than looking at another person’s holiday snaps, I’m gonna thankyou ahead of time for staying the ‘journey’ and checking them out.

But first, a couple of sub-five second videos – the first one taken from our hire car, the second from a bumpity-bump-bump ocean ferry ride. Ready?

This country’s natural wonders are so gold standard it’s no wonder so many movie directors, particularly those of the fantasy/epic/adventure genre variety, have chosen N.Z. for their principal location shooting.

Icecream is a thing I take seriously. So seriously in fact, I’ve been known to judge a country purely by the quality of its sweet dairy. In that department, I’m so pleased to announce, New Zealand comes out plumb top of the class.

If there’s a better strawberry ice-cream (jam-packed with real whole strawberries, I am obliged to mention) out there than the one I tried in Queenstown, then truthfully I am yet to taste it.

They’re called ELECTRONIC SHELF LABELS and New Zealand’s got ’em. And Australia doesn’t! Digital price tags are cool, I reckon. Another reason to move to N.Z.

Traipsing through the polished marble foyer of one of the many hotels we luxuriated in during our NZ adventure, (laying it on a bit thick there, I know) I -and nobody else in my ‘party’ – was stopped in my tracks one morning when I happened upon a merry guest staging her own one-woman knitting party, while kicking back in the requisite plush leather lounge chair.

My first thought, and always (delusionally!) considering myself the joker, was “Good God… has it come to this?” Tee hee!

Some moments later, thankfully, more grown-up cognitions entered my brain, along the lines of (1) Shut up Glen. Just would you please shut the frig up! She’s doing what makes her happy and that should make everyone, including the cynical likes of you, happy (2) in another 10 years’ time MATE you’ll be doing the bloody same thing…or at least the male equivalent (painting miniature toy soldiers) and (3) Er, hello? This IS goddam New Zealand bro – the country with the highest sheep to people ratio in the world. If there was ever a place to whack out the knitting needles in your holiday down time this, for blueberry pie’s sake, is it!

That headline may be a little misleading. But only if you know the difference between a glacier and an iceberg, which, even after researching it, I still don’t.

What I can be sure of is that the ‘ice sculptures’ pictured below were, in real life, about 200 times larger than they appear in these photos. We were told that 90% of their bulk was under the surface, submerged down in the 300-meter-deep lake. Iceberg, right?

Hadn’t seen this before. A dog (name: ‘Happy’) performing harmonies on it’s master’s rendition of Roy Orbison’s YOU GOT IT.

To get the general gist of this just skip to the final 15 seconds of the video. That’s the song’s finale with fully voiced doggie crooning. After three days in Queenstown, I left torn between believing I had been uniquely entertained and thinking the whole act to be mildly exploitive. In the end I went with the ‘entertaining’ idea.

Yep, that’s me. THE COLLECTOR. This New Zealand trip added big time to my personal badge collection, my t-shirt collection and most definitely my old school heap of postcards. Check out this beaming mass, arranged on the tiles of our kitchen floor…

What’s movie icon Humphrey Bogart got to do with New Zealand? Not a lot, from what I can tell. It was however the 2024 documentary I watched on our return flight home, so in my mind, yeah, there’s now a connection.

‘Play it again Sam?’ New Zealand, if you’re listening… I would ABSOLUTELY love to.

While in New Zealand I noticed something unique about their web addresses.

At first, I thought I was imagining things. But no, it’s real. As real as the Kiwi bird not being able to fly. Poor thing.