South Island Has a Personality All If Its Own

“Many believe the South Island is less inherently New Zealand than its northern neighbour,” according to American travel writer Max Bonem, “But if you take the time to explore this stunning landscape, you’ll find that it has a personality all to its own.”

“You’ve seen it as the backdrop for much of Peter Jackson’s Middle Earth in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. You’ve heard of the majestic fjords, the misty mountains, and the endless lakes in shades of blue not found anywhere else on Earth. New Zealand’s South Island is all of these things, but these are just the beginning. The proclivity of the locals to lean toward the extreme – bungee jumping was invented here, for example – is matched only by that of the island itself, located on the famed Ring of Fire and home to some of the most devastating earthquake activity found worldwide.”

“[Franz Joseph glacier] is the region that provokes people to skip out on the North Island all together and just focus on this one section New Zealand’s terrain. Simply put, it’s awe inspiring, and not in a remotely superfluous way,” Bonem writes in a recent blog post.

Experience Bonem’s trip around New Zealand here.

Original article by Max Bonem, Paste Magazine, March 18, 2016.

Photo by Max Bonem.