There and back again

With less than a week now to go before our flight back to the States, I'm starting to get asked: how does it feel to be leaving New Zealand? And let me tell you, no one is more interested in finding an answer to that question than I am. There are a lot of thoughts and feelings flying around right now, and not a lot of them are very articulate.

But here's the best analogy I've come up with so far: it feels like you're nearing the end of a truly delicious dessert. And even though you know you're not really hungry anymore, and so it's really the right time to run out, you still feel a little anxious about being finally, irrevocably out of mouthfuls. Because it's so incredibly scrumptious, and because you don't know when you'll get a chance to have it again, and so part of you still wants the dessert to go on forever. Or at least, if you have to be done eating it, you wish you could keep tasting it whenever you wanted to. You feel nervous that the memory of the taste just isn't going to be enough. And yet at the same time you know that in a while, after the "where did my pudding go?" sadness wears off a little, you'll be glad that you didn't overeat. You'll know that your portion was that "just right" amount that leads to maximum appreciation of your dessert experience.

So here we are, taking our last bites of New Zealand, trying to enjoy every one. And watching New Zealand like you watch loved ones, when you know you're going to be apart, and you want to memorize every little detail about them to keep with you while they're away. Here's some impressions of what our last road trip to the Coromandel had to offer.