I visited New Zealand for “tramping” from 17 to 26 January 2014.
For Aussie, NZ is one of most familiar countries like their another state. In particular, for outdoor-person, it is the most attractive neighboring country because of its very different terrain (although it is the nemesis for Aussie rugby fan).
There is a small national park called Abel Tasman in the northern edge of the South Island. Our destination for this tramping was a track along the coastline of the national park. We completed the route of 50-odd km spending four nights and five days which was a relatively slow pace.
Most people who I met during the tramping were visitors from the opposite side of the earth, i.e. backpackers of the UK, Germany, Netherlands, French, Israel and so on. Since here was, of course, in the mid summer holiday season, I met a lot of local Kiwi families too.
While enjoying those five days, I found two “contrasts”.