Snow-covered jagged mountains and a wind-swept, glacier-gauged lake front the sleepy municipal centre of Fiordland. The scenery and people look strangely familiar, as if I hadn’t flown to the other side of the world at all. I could be back in the American Rockies or in Norway. Hungry and cold, I find a pub. I settle on a barstool, lean over the counter and reflect on the day. There are few places in the world where you can still hitchhike safely, if at all. It was rumoured to be ridiculously easy in New Zealand and it was. The cars, some of them classic British models from the fifties and sixties, almost formed a line to pick me up, as if the hospitable Kiwis were competing to chauffeur me around. One driver not only went out of her way to drop me off at the backpackers, but she had thrown in a meal as well. I’m psyched to be here, with the conspicuous wide-eyes of a traveller newly arrived somewhere far from home. The barmaid, on the other hand, studies me with the glazed look of a professional.
