When the owner of my restaurant in Christchurch heard about the supermarket job I’d lined up in Queenstown, he asked me why I didn’t want a “hospo” job instead (short for hospitality in this corner of the world). It’s not that I didn’t want one, I explained, but more that hospo jobs in Queenstown weren’t … Read More

I grew up with a strange sort of fascination with the role of a checkout operator at the grocery store, and nothing would make me happier than when the bagger disappeared and I could help bag our groceries. That might explain the weird level of excitement I felt on the first day of starting work … Read More

Before arriving in London last August, the two girls I was traveling with and I did a quick tour of part of Scandinavia – Sweden, Estonia (okay, not technically Scandinavia), and four days in a lake house in Finland. As wonderful as the views were and as much as the three of us didn’t want … Read More

I arrived in Invercargill on a Friday night around dinnertime, a few hours behind schedule. According to my original sketched-out plan for the roadtrip, ETA was a bit earlier in the day, so as to give me most of the afternoon to explore the city. But I had sorely miscalculated how long it would take … Read More

“The face of the earth is changing so rapidly that soon there will be little of primitive nature left. In the old world, it is practically gone forever. Here, then, is Stewart Island’s prime advantage, and one hard to overestimate. It is an actual piece of the primeval world.”  — Leonard Cockayne, 1909 Growing up, … Read More

It’s not often we opt for the scenic route in life. It seems so often that directness is the norm, whether in a literal route to a destination or more cryptically in relation to life. When you sigh, “Guess we’re taking the scenic route,” it’s usually because you’ve taken a wrong turn somewhere along the … Read More

Having arrived in Dunedin after nightfall on a Wednesday and with plans to depart for Invercargill early Friday morning, I was left with one full day to blitz my way through the city, and blitz I did. A friend of a friend, Tim, was kindly letting me crash at his flat during my stay, and … Read More

After months of planning and scheming, the day finally came to leave Christchurch. I don’t quite remember when I got the idea to travel to Queenstown via a roadtrip around the southern half of the South Island, but the idea came nonetheless and I was soon on my way in a rental car. Gratefully, the … Read More