South Island, New Zealand

I recently returned to the South Island, for the first time in almost 40 years. New Zealand has grown from a country of one million people to one with 5-6 million, so there has been an accompanying increase in building and expansion of cities. But while the population has quintupled, the thing that I remember most about the South Island is it's natural beauty.

Our cab driver in Queenstown said it best, "You can't drain the lakes and you can't shift the mountains." We spent a day driving from Queenstown to Christchurch, and while we did very little, we stopped often, and really enjoyed the views. I could spend a month here. The thing that I worried most about planning the trip is driving on the left, which has been varying degrees of difficult in the past, but it was okay.

This is just a smattering of what you can see without getting off the road. I do not remember these rock formations from my first trip, but in addition to the lakes there are many mountains (they were mostly encased in fog when I was there), some with glaciers.