Before leaving New Zealand, Hilary and I took one last road trip around the entire south island. There were a few areas along the west coast that we had never visited before, even though we had spent a fair amount of time travelling around while we were there.

The west coast is heavily forested like this with lots of lush beech forests from the heavy rain that this area gets before the moisture hits the wall of the southern alps. Oh, and if you’re wondering, I’m not a meteorologist or anything and I mostly just made that last sentence up, but it seems to make sense in my mind. Can’t you just imagine David Attenborough reading that out on the lastest BBC nature doc?