My appreciation to all the Kiwis who made tramping around New Zealand for four months the wonderful experience that it was. I’m definitely coming back.
Thanks are due to several friends who were coerced into reading successive drafts and who sometimes made rude but inevitably helpful comments: Kirsten Badenduck, Valerie Beatts, Sacha Blackburne, Than Butterfield, Wenche Fosslien, Sue Holland, Kerry Mahony, Sue Mills, Elisabeth Montgomery, Jennifer Schelter, Tania Stafford and Ingrid Zondervan. Thanks to Lucy Sussex for the final cross-examination. Any remaining errors are of course mine. Thanks to the staff at the Kathmandu Guest House for the familial atmosphere that made writing there so much easier, and to Valerie Beatts for lending me Per Ketet.
Thanks to Susan Keogh at Lonely Planet for accepting a dusty disc from a lowly backpacker making his way around Australia.
Finally, thanks to Mum for instilling in us the confidence that we could do whatever we wanted, and for picking up the pieces when we couldn’t.