We sometimes run out of expressions of awe when inspiring vistas pop up around every corner. You can only say “wow” and “amazing” and “gorgeous” so many times. Once, in Italy’s Cinque Terre region, we decided to use the name of a nearby town, Poggibonsi, as a substitute. Turn a bend, take a deep breath… “Poggibonsi, that’s beautiful!” We haven’t yet landed on a suitable word to augment our vocabulary in New Zealand, but after nearly two months on the South Island, it’s high time we came up with one. 

The South Island gets all the glory in New Zealand. It’s where the most famous hikes are. It’s where the tallest mountains, called the Southern Alps, lie, laced by immense glaciers. It’s where the vast Fjordlands National Park is. It’s where Dutch explorer Abel Tasman first spotted the land known as Aotearoa to Maoris in 1642, though he thought it was part of a larger “Southern Continent.” And it’s where we spent much of our first two months in New Zealand. 

Our route was far from logical or planned—we started with some time up north in and around the national park now named for Abel Tasman. After a week in Wellington (across the Cook Strait on the North Island) we flew south to Queenstown for a five-day hike on the Milford Track. After that was our two-week figure-eight journey in a camper van through the Southern Alps and South Coast. Finally, we settled for a week in Dunedin, a university town on the southeastern coast that was a great base for exploring more sites up and down the southern Pacific coast. Yes, it’s very strange to us for the Pacific to be on the east coast! 

So while there’s plenty more to see on the South Island and we’ve only just begun to scratch the surface of the North Island, we thought we would share a photo gallery of our time in the south so far. It has truly been “poggibonsi.” Or maybe “hokitika.” 

To see the photos, click on Photos in the top menu bar, then New Zealand South Island Photo Gallery, or just click here. And do let us know if you come up with any more suitable words for “wow!”