New Zealand
Stewart Island / Rakiura
Kiwi birds outnumber humans on an island where the aurora australis ripples overhead at night.
Kiwi outnumber humans by a factor of forty. Stewart Island at the bottom of New Zealand is the place where the national bird forages on beaches in daylight — behaviour so unusual elsewhere that ornithologists come here specifically to witness it.
Rakiura, its Māori name, translates loosely as 'land of the glowing skies' — a reference to the aurora australis that ripples green and pink across the southern horizon on clear nights. The island has roughly four hundred permanent residents in Halfmoon Bay, one pub, one shop, and a lifestyle built on fishing and conservation. Ulva Island, a ten-minute boat ride from the settlement, is a predator-free sanctuary where endangered saddlebacks and yellowheads move through the bush at ground level. The Rakiura Track, one of New Zealand's Great Walks, is a three-day coastal and forest circuit.
Solo
The evening kiwi spotting tours on Ocean Beach deliver an encounter that feels like a privilege. Watching a kiwi forage by torchlight, unhurried and unconcerned, is mesmerising.
Couple
The aurora australis from Lee Bay on a clear winter night. The light show is unpredictable, but the darkness of the island makes even a faint aurora vivid.
- Kiwi outnumber humans by a factor of forty — the birds forage on beaches in daylight here.
- The island is a Dark Sky Sanctuary where aurora australis ripple green and pink across the southern horizon.
- Halfmoon Bay has one pub, one shop, and roughly four hundred residents who chose this over everywhere else.
- Ulva Island, a ten-minute boat ride away, is a predator-free sanctuary where endangered birds eat from your hand.
South Sea Hotel — New Zealand's southernmost pub — serves blue cod and Bluff oysters in season.
Kai Kart takeaway does pāua fritters and fish and chips on the Oban waterfront.
Muttonbird — tītī — harvested by Rakiura Māori and served preserved in its own fat.
Chaitén
Chile
A town half-buried by volcanic mud in 2008, rebuilt beside the ghost forest it created.
Sete Cidades
Brazil
Rock formations so orderly that scientists once debated whether a lost civilisation built them.
Alto Biobío
Chile
Pewenche families still harvest araucaria pine nuts in a valley that resisted conquest for centuries.
Mawphlang
India
Sacred groves where thick moss absorbs all sound and removing a single leaf is taboo.
Denniston
New Zealand
A coal-mining plateau reached by an incline so steep that miners rode the coal wagons down.
Cape Reinga
New Zealand
Two oceans collide in a visible seam of foam where Māori spirits begin their final journey.
Farewell Spit
New Zealand
A twenty-six-kilometre blade of sand curving into the Tasman, closed to all but guided safaris.
Kapiti Island
New Zealand
Kōkako sing at dawn in a forest fortress cleared of every predator — sixty visitors daily.