A year ago, as we laid out the rough plan for our trip, we had allotted about two weeks for New Zealand. We were thinking then in rush-rush-hurry American time, where a three-day weekend seemed like a gross indulgence, and two weeks. . . well, two weeks away from work was just this side of retirement. Two weeks! Who takes two weeks off work? Socialists, maybe. Or slothful Jerry Springer-watching gluttons, that's who. And besides, New Zealand is tiny. Just look at it.

Now, five months into this trip, two weeks seemed ridiculously short. Anything under six weeks felt like we were short-changing a country. Two weeks gives you enough time to pick-up your baggage from the airport and take a bus into town. That's about it.

Flipping through our guidebook, New Zealand seemed endless. Hiking, climbing, kayaking, fishing. Glaciers, oceans, lakes. Wildlife, forests, farms. Two big islands, North and South, and all of it looking like one big North Face advertisement, a playground for plump almost-middle-aged people like myself who want to pretend they are adventurous outdoorsy types.

Our dilemma was one that we face in every country. One that is magnified by the relatively small amount of time spent in that country. What to do? What to see?

New Zealand's North Island includes Auckland, the largest city in the country, and Wellington, the nation's capital. The island is more populated than the South, but most of it is farmland. A few mountains crop up here and there. It's bays and inlets welcome yachts and sailboats. Traditional Maori culture is stronger in the north, and the island's most famous tourist area is Rotorua, a volcanic area with geysers and boiling mud and other manifestations of Earth's belching innards.

The South Island is much less populated and more rugged. A band of ranch and farmland stretches down the east coast but much of island, especially the west coast is punctuated by dramatic mountain ranges. Huge portions of the island are set aside as national park and World Heritage Areas, one of the most famous being Fiordlands National Park. The South Island offers endless opportunities for skiing, hiking, fishing, and other adventure sports. Alert readers may correctly infer that the South Island also boasts beautiful fiords.

Sarah and I made the decision to skip the North Island altogether. We would skip the big cities and spend most of our time exploring the small towns and the emptier areas on the map. A rough plan fell into place. We had already booked a flight from Sydney to Auckland on the North Island, and we added another flight (after a 7 hour layover, yet another sign that travel in the "First world" isn't as smooth as we'd all like to think) to Christchurch, the largest town on the South Island. From there we would take a train south to Dunedin, a small Scottish coastal town, and then bus inland to Queenstown, the hub for hiking and adventure sports. From there we would do a three day trek, then see how much time we had left to explore the west or north coasts.

Travel the first day went according to plan. We got up at a horrendously early hour for our flight from Sydney. We napped like vagabonds on the floor of the Auckland airport, then caught a bumpy flight in a small plane to Christchurch, arriving at around 10 PM. My senses were so deadened by lack of sleep that after checking into our hostel I stayed up watching what is without any doubt the worst movie ever made, Steven Segal's "On Deadly Ground." I watched the whole thing from start to finish. I thought, "Oh wow, that's deep" during that mystical dream sequence in the middle where Segal goes on the spirit quest and chooses the old Eskimo woman over the young one and then becomes the eagle. That's how tired I was.

I'm a train junkie, and when I found that there was a train line running along the east coast of the South Island I bullied and cajoled Sarah into believing we had to take it. The train was more expensive than the bus and it wouldn't save any time, but like all junkies I rationalized and lied and connived until she finally gave in. I had called from Sydney and booked two tickets.

When we arrived at the train station, the friendly guy behind the counter informed us that there had been an accident a few days earlier (a train had hit a trailer full of sheep -- yuck!) and the track was damaged. We would be travelling by "coach" and sorry mate there won't be any refund. It took my brain a second to catch up. "Coach" equals "bus." Hey!

This was exactly the kind of thing that in Asia would have set us all into a furor, convinced that we were being cheated and scammed. We would have protested, demanded money back, demanded to talk to the boss or local dictator or whomever, and generally stormed out of the country believing that all corporate and government officials were corrupts ogres. For whatever reason, though, people here didn't get that upset. We were disappointed, but everyone squeezed into the buses without incident.

The drive south was though rolling farmland. Once again, we were in another place that looked vaguely like Wisconsin (I think 70% of the Earth must look like Wisconsin). There was a spine of mountains to our right. Everywhere -- and I mean EVERYWHERE -- sheep dotted the hillsides. People, Aussies especially, like to joke about how many sheep live in New Zealand (you can imagine the jokes), but even with the warning I hadn't expected to see so many. Field after field of sheep, sheep, sheep.

We stopped after a few hours for "tea," which was to become a common theme on our travels here. People are always taking tea breaks. This doesn't necessarily require the imbibing of tea, but seems to mean any break for food and drink. More often than not, "taking a tea break" means wolfing down a meat pie from the local take-away place.

Later, after five hours on the road, we pulled up next to an abandoned railroad station. We were in the small town of Palmerston, just a milk bar and a general store and not much else. Dunedin was only an hour down the road, but the New Zealand railroad folks were going to load us onto a train for the last stretch. This would have been fine, I like trains, but -- minor problem -- there was no train in sight.

They unloaded all us passengers and our mounds of baggage. The station had boarded up windows and thick veils of cobwebs and we couldn't get in, so we milled about outside, sitting on the platform and looking for shade. A large hill rose in front of us, just on the other side of the tracks. It was a steep, conical hill, bare except for dry yellow shrub. Way up at the top, maybe 800 or 900 feet above us, I saw a large monument. It was huge. The sun was shining from behind it so I couldn't ascertain the exact shape, but even from a great distance it was impressive. Monumental. WWI memorial, I guessed.

While we were waiting for the train I struck up a conversation with the lady sitting next to me. She had been brought up on a sheep farm near here and now worked in a wool factory in Invercargill. She had lived in the area for all of her 65 years. I pointed up at the monument and asked if she knew anything about it.

"Aye," she said. "Beautiful, isn't it."

I agreed. Elegant. Even from down here.

"It was built at the beginning of the century." She explained that the town wanted to build something that could be seen far out at sea.

"Anzac?" I asked. "World War One?"

"Oh no, dear! It commemorates the first frozen mutton locker in New Zealand." Sensing my disappointed she added, "It was quite an achievement."

Our train eventually appeared and brought us from Muttonville down to Dunedin. The town was settled by Scottish immigrants and has endured several waves of prosperity and despair through various periods of gold rushes, timber speculation, and commercial fishing. It is home to New Zealand's first university and also the Guinness-certified world's steepest street (which didn't look all that steep to me). The town has gorgeous architecture; a beautiful stone railroad station, old banks, and a big cathedral on town square. True to its heritage, a big bronze statue of Robert Burns anchors the middle of the town square.

As a sort of homage to Burns' most famous poem "Ode to a Haggis," Sarah and I went on a quest for haggis. If ever there were a place in the world outside of Scotland that could serve up oats-'n-guts shoveled into sheep stomach, this was the place. Actually, it didn't sound that good to us, so we were really hoping we could find what the locals might call a "wee haggis", but we struck out completely. The one restaurant that served haggis recently went out of business, and the one butcher shop that still makes it was closed. Sorry Burnsie!

We spent the next day exploring the Otago Peninsula that juts out into the sea east of town. High up on a hill overlooking the sheep-covered hills and the town below sits Larnach Castle, a full-on Normandy style castle. It was built in 1871 by a local banker-politician. It was interesting building, small by castle standards but larger than a mansion, but the most interesting part of the tour was hearing the sordid tale about 'ol Larnach, who committed suicide in Parliament House in 1898 after supposedly receiving a letter from his son confirming rumors of his affair with Larnach's 3rd wife. Family squabbles caused the castle to be sold to the government, where it served a brief stint as a sanatorium before falling into extreme disrepair, the ballroom being used by local farmers to house sheep in inclement weather. In 1967 a young lady bought the castle for $750, and over the last 30 years she has done a miraculous job of restoring it to something of its former grandeur.

After the castle, we explored some of the unique wildlife on the peninsula. First we visited the breeding ground of the royal albatross, a giant bird that returns here each summer. It was a cold, windy day, but in our brief walk around the reserve we saw a few of the majestic birds soaring effortlessly on the currents with their 9 foot wingspans. Next, we traveled to a nesting area of the yellow-eyed penguins, one of the rarest species of penguin. Years ago, a farmer noticed the penguins and he began leaving a few of his sheep pastures empty for them. Over the years, he has broadened the reserve and also dug an elaborate system of tunnels and blinds. On a tour strangely reminiscent of the Viet Cong Cu Chi tunnels outside Saigon, Sarah and I ran stooped through the tunnels, observing the penguins at remarkably close range. These penguins aren't pack (flock?) animals, but every few minutes near dusk we would see one emerge alone from the water, waddle up onto share, stare suspiciously and the fur seals sleeping on the beach, and then trek over the sand dunes and grass to its nesting area, where a young chick was waiting for a tasty dinner of regurgitated half-digested fish mush (which probably still tastes better than haggis).

We woke early the next morning to catch a bus over the dry, barren mountains to Queenstown. We had one day there to prepare for a uniquely New Zealand activity: tramping.

New Zealanders are avid outdoors people, and one of their national past-times is tramping, or hiking as we call it in the States. Everyone tramps in New Zealand, young and old. One New Zealander, Edmond Hillary, even tramped his way to the top of Everest a few years back. "Tramping" is done on "tracks" (trails) and of all the tracks in the country eight of them are revered above the rest. These are known as the Great Walks. They vary in length from 3 to 5 days. They boast incredible scenery and people come from all over the world to hike them. Booking entry permits is essential in all the Great Walks, and the most famous one, the Milford Track, is booked months ahead. Sarah and I were booked on the Routeburn Track (pronounced root-burn), a 32 km track that traverses two national parks in the mountains west of Queenstown.

Tramping in New Zealand is a civilized affair. Rather than camping in tents, most people stay at the backcountry huts that the Department of Conservation has constructed. We would still need to bring sleeping bags, food, and clothing, but we could leave behind the tent, cook-stove, gas, tarp, and we would be assured of a dry place to cook our dinner and lay our head at night. Numerous companies in Queenstown cater to trampers, so it was very easy to rent our gear and to arrange for the stuff we were leaving behind to be forwarded to the other end of the track.

The next morning was dark and gray and cold. At first I thought the skies would clear, but about fifteen minutes before our bus reached the trailhead it started to rain. Not hard rain, but steady cold drizzle. Seattle stuff. The bus was dry and warm, and everyone sat in silence, trying hard to think of a good excuse not to get off.

The trail began in a wet, dense forest, not unlike the forests on the western slopes of the Cascades in the Pacific Northwest. We frequently crossed streams and waterfalls on small suspended bridges. We climbed gradually for an hour, then leveled off in a long narrow valley. After a few hours we reached a hut and paused for a granola bar. The rain was really coming down now, and we were soaked. One more push up a steep section brought us to our hut, the Routeburn Falls hut.

The hut was nicer than I had expected. It had three large rooms -- two bunk rooms and 1 kitchen/dining/sitting room -- connected by a large balcony that wrapped around the perimeter. It was perched on stilts and overlooked the valley floor down below. Above, close by, were snow-covered peaks and along side us was a waterfall. The rain was still coming down and the temperature was dropping, so first order of business was to get out of our wet clothes and into something dry. The hut was unheated, so even under all our layers of wool and fleece we still shivered until we got our first few cups of tea heated over the gas burners. We spent the afternoon reading and talking to the other trampers. At night, the bunkhouse was completely silent, not even a whisper of snoring. I guess everyone was tired.

The next morning over oatmeal I heard some snotty little kid yell, "Look Mom, it's snowing!" Everyone, including Mom, glanced outside but didn't see anything, so we ignored him. You know kids.

An hour later in a thickening snowstorm we crossed the treeline and hiked through an exposed meadow towards a pass. On the other side the skies cleared and we caught some views of nearby range of peaks. Our trail maintained its elevation. For several hours we traversed along a ridge above the treeline. Eventually we came to nice viewpoint where we could see our next hut at the bottom of a valley. The last hour we switchbacked down, back into the forest, and reached the hut at around 2 PM.