Every Hour on Holiday Another Gorgeous Spot

After a two-week winter holiday in New Zealand, Washington couple Nikki Magaziner Mills and her husband Keith Mills tell the Washington Post in a readers travel column that pictures cannot do the country justice. “You have to see it, to be there, to understand its magic.”

“We ate fresh-caught fish from a food truck near a ‘Don’t swim with the whales’ sign, hiked to waterfalls where baby seals played, saw a snow-covered volcano, climbed peaks for jaw-dropping views, enjoyed the wild turns of the weather,” Nikki Mills tells the Post. “We have travelled a tonne, and this was one of our best trips yet.”

“It was winter while we were there, and we spent at least part of every day of our trip monitoring the weather. Rain, wind, snow, perfect blue sky, sun, (little) earthquakes, road closures because of ice, a ferry crossing cancelled because of high seas – we had it all.

“But it wasn’t until the end of our trip, falling asleep to the roar of a rainstorm building in the valley near our little bed-and-breakfast, that we began to be thankful for every iteration of the weather. New Zealand is a ‘wild and wonderful’ place – rain, sun or snow. The weather, even when it was bad, was perfect.”