In November of 2017, we had the great fortune to spend a month tramping around the South Island, discovering both her natural wonders and quirky present.  These are our greatest hits:

• Swimming with the Dolphins
• Spontaneous play dates between our kids and the others of the campgrounds.  Our kids met penpals from New Zealand, China and the US.  Some campgrounds like the Top10’s have state-of-the-art play spaces and others have downhome, sweet ones.  But kids just love a playground and the ice, broken easily between kids, can build bridges to parents connecting and talking the way that parents do.  Parenting is universal.
  

  Our home for a month. Room to sleep six humans, a guitar, cello, violin and viola.

• Watching the Blue Penguins ascend from the Oamaru coast in “rafts”. Hundreds came in wave after wave of rafts – a mosh pit of tiny blue torpedoes.  They land, shake it off and toddle up the rocks, unknowingly on display in front of bleacher seats of spectators.  The hushed voices of the commentators, educate and make certain there are no flashes or loud noises… in English and Mandarin.
• Oamaru – coolest place we almost didn’t visit. There’s a hip retro vibe with the Steampunk HQ and the Michael O’Brien Bookbinders shop.  The pristine Victorian architecture and nostalgic museums lent an element of time travel to the journey.
  

  Oamaru and the wacky Steampunk World HQ. Sometimes mini blue penguins walk by.

• Glow Worm Caves We didn’t go for the fancy tour but instead walked through the mining tunnels of an old gold mine in Charleston, just south of Westport, on the West Coast.  In the early evening, we panned for gold and learned about the West Coast’s mining history.  (Roadschooling “mining history”, check!) With this price of admission we could camp in the parking lot for free AND the owner took us on a tour of the glow worm caves.  In a tour of just nine people, we held hips as if we were doing the bunny hop and walked through pitch dark tunnels save the glowing of the worms on the ceilings.
  

  Lorna communing with nature in Milford Sound.

• Milford Sound It’s the top destination in the South Island for a reason. The grand scale of its glacial bank cuts are humbling – Mother Nature’s perspective shift that cannot be captured in a photo, reminding us that humans are but a blip in the history of this earth.  We saw a sleeping whale, crested penguins and seals.
• Fox Glacier There are so many fantastic and fantastically expensive experiences in New Zealand that we didn’t do. But we did splurge on the heli-hike trip up Fox Glacier, reasoning that there’s a chance these won’t be around in another generation.  Maybe our kids will be spinning yarns to their grandkids about that helicopter ride up to the glacier to tramp around with crampons.  You can explain it to me scientifically all you want, but the color blue of a glacier just feels beyond logic.
  

  Exploring Caves on Fox Glacier with crampons. No waiver signed.

• Fern tree forests So many tramps and hikes through the dense forest of fern are awe-inspiring; the birdsong; the prehistoric riff on a rare rainforest; the moss and lichens catching the light just so; the peek-a-boo of the turquoise waters; the veil of sandflies when you stop to admire.  (You only notice them when you stand still – so don’t stop.)
  

  The Giant’s House in Akaroa. Great place to practice piano.

• We expected the natural beauty and the friendly Kiwi people, but we did not expect the quirky, lively art scene and rich culture. We loved the “Giant’s House” in Akaroa, the cardboard cathedral and public art of Christchurch, the Puzzling World and wines of Wanaka, the Scottish architecture and Cadbury factory tour in Dunedin and the shark boat and sheepdogs of Queenstown.

The Huangshan area of Anhui province is the misty mountain landscapes and red-lanterned villages of Asian paintings.  It’s the water buffalo in rice paddies and the farmers with conical hats picking chrysanthemum flowers for tea.  Every vista is postcard-worthy.  Our original draw to this area was to visit Master Zhou, a Chi Gong and Chinese Medicine practitioner and friend-of-a-friend.  Many Westerners travel to the city of Tunxi to get treatments from him and he has come to the US to teach and treat.  Our friend put us in touch with Master Zhou’s interpreter and we planned our stay around an introduction to the Master.

A quiet section of Hongcun – outdoor kettle and greens growing in every corner.

We had some Chi Gong movement demonstrations and even saw the master do a “trick”.  (You’ll have to wait for the YouTube.) The kids each had a private session with the Master and the three adults each had two treatments.  This is not whimpy needling.  His needles are an inch and a half long and he delights in showing you just how deep he went in each session.  When he described his technique, he said that you need to “chop up the blockages, like with a knife”.  And even before this was translated to us, his enthusiastic hacking motions made it plain for all to see what would be translated.  Master Zhou’s family took in a Shaolin Master during the Cultural Revolution and Zhou became his apprentice from a young age, preserving a lineage that spans eight generations of Traditional Chinese Medicine.

Master Zhou proudly presenting his healing tools.

We stayed near Tunxi, in the well-preserved ancient village of Hongcun.  The town was full of selfie-taking Chinese tourists, art students sketching and locals, beeping their scooter horns in frustration at the crowds.  The movie Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was filmed here and we could imagine the rooftop fight scenes.  Grand halls and intricate drainage systems traced back the 1400’s.  Vibrant green vegetables grow in every available piece of real estate.  We remind Lucy (adopted from China) often, that while Europe was wallowing in plague and mud, China was thriving – creating sophisticated art, philosophy and architecture.

The rooftops of Hongcun, where Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was filmed.

On the off day between acupuncture treatments we hiked in the Yellow Mountain area of Huangshan.  It was a cold day, which I think kept the crowds at bay; but, it was still a popular spot.  We clocked 21,000 steps that day and that included a tram ride up and a gondola down.  The paths are cement with perfect steps cut into the hillside.  Although it was beautiful, the mountains felt like a cross between a national park and Disneyland.  Six hotels and snack stops peppered the mountain park, requiring porters to carry food, laundry and other supplies.  These porters not only carried leg-wobbly weight, but had to navigate their bamboo poles through the packs of tour groups.

Cloudy day hiking in Huangshan added to the area’s mystique.

Porter balancing impossible load.

The area is picturesque and the clean mountain air was wonderfully refreshing but the word is out, and you will share the Huangshan area with many, many other people.

And one more of Hongcun…

From Chengdu, we took a van for about three hours to Muka, a “minority” village. China is 94% Han Chinese. But that leaves approximately 69 million people who fall into the category of “minority”: Tibetans, Southeast Asian Hilltribe, Uigurs, and many more. This village is home to the Qiang ethnic group who were neither Buddhist nor Muslim, but had their own belief system before the Cultural Revolution.  This Qiang village had a few guesthouses, but no large large hotels.  We never saw other Western tourists in our three-night stay.

I want those shoes! Who’s with me?

The drive from Chengdu was surprisingly easy. The road was new and very well-maintained. This area was the epicenter of a massive earthquake in 2008, so that may answer why there had been so much money poured into it. I kept seeing mountains and wondering how Lucy’s tummy would fare, and then bup! into a tunnel. Tunnels through mountains: a novel concept after months in Nepal.  In this Qiang area there are loads of hydro projects, irrigation canals and tunnels.

Not your stereotypical China. Grateful to off the tourist circuit and seeing some diversity!

The Qiang are known for their stone houses (not a great mix in earthquake country), embroidered shoes and fascinating hats. The womens hats look like a folded dinner napkin on the top of the head and then held into place by two braids, Heidi-style. Like most places in the world, it seems, the grandparents are still wearing the traditional clothing and anyone under thirty is wearing the mono-cultural Western attire.

Qiang grandmas doting on Lucy. We loved their hats.

We looked around the old village a bit and found a home that Julie had stumbled upon before. We walked right in and looked around. A doorway is more of a suggestion than a fixed boundary and the TV-watching man of the house, beckoned us in to look around. The kitchen could be a feature in Sunset Magazine. A fern-covered stone trough for a sink with a constant flow of water. It had an open ceiling and led to a courtyard with stone table and benches. I couldn’t place myself – American Southwest? Big Sur? Xinjiang? Mexico? There were cactuses and oaks, pomegranate trees and grape vines, roses and gingko trees, hanging chilis and drying corn, live ferns and pet chipmunks.

This just may show up in Sunset Magazine, mark my words.

We all sat, mesmerized by this most-cool house and I wonder what Kai, Lucy and Lorna will remember of this place? Will they wake in the morning one day at forty years old, wondering if this place were real or a dream? Will they be inspired to follow design as an adult and incorporate some of these foreign, natural concepts that will seem to simply come to them as inspiration? I wonder what these remote places will mean to the adults my kids will become.

There is absolutely no way that we could have the moxie and foresight to come to a place like this without Julie. (I found here through the alumni board of Where There Be Dragons, a student travel company where we have both worked.) No one speaks a lick of English and your guesthouse serves your meals which need to be ordered up ahead, especially our vegetarian preferences. There are so many interesting things happening around us and Julie’s language, cultural knowledge and patience can answer our constant questions.