Ask Sarah v 6.0

My travels have led me to central Europe, about 15 years ago. As a history major before becoming a teacher and administrator, I was intrigued by what I found historically in Vienna, Graz, Munich, and Rothenberg.

My question for you is whether you have had the opportunity to visit ancient sites in New Zealand and what types of places they are. I know very little of this beautiful country, but would like to take this opportunity to hear from someone who is spending so much time there.

Any cool locale's description and maybe a picture would be great.

Thanks for taking the time to help me out.

J A Shannon, Principal
Dixon High School

Amazingly Insightful Answer 6:

I too got to spend three amazing months touring around Europe. My junior year of college I spent a semester abroad in Florence, Italy. When I wasn't packing on the pounds via mass consumption of pasta and gelato, I got to make the rounds to a number of the surrounding countries and see a really good cross section of all that area of the world has to offer.

As far as interesting "ancient sites" in New Zealand, they are actually few and far between in the techincal sense. Not much here qualifies as "ancient" seeing as the country is barely 250 years old. Ancient churchs, relics, etc. just aren't to be found. Really the only window into the past here is the land itself.

On a random note not necessarily related to history, there are absolutely no native mammals to New Zealand. All the sheep, possums, cows, etc. were brought over by the settlers in the 1800's. Before that the land was ruled by birds, as they were the only creatures that could get to the land mass once it broke off from Gondwana way back in the day. The cool thing is, the birds developed their own food chain/system of predators and dominant species equivalent to the mammal food chain. Also, as the Kiwis like to tell me, there is nothing in the entire country that can hurt you. No snakes, no bears, no poinsonous spiders, nothing. The worst you have to worry about are the annoying sandflies, which are about on par with mosquitoes (only without West Nile or Malaria). Kinda throws it in the face of Australia, which is lucky enough to house 8 of the ten deadliest snakes species, tons of sharks, crocodiles, several species of killer spiders, and one of the deadliest animals on the face of the planet, the box jellyfish (Go here to see the full list of nasty critters Aussies have to deal with: http://www.yesaustralia.com/Curiosidades-animaising.htm)

Now let's see...cool NZ locales...hmmm...how about the ENTIRE COUNTRY. The natural landscape is unlike that anywhere else on earth. The amazing, infinite variety of beauty is truly indescribable. And while I'm not professional photographer, I'll do my best to give you a glimpse. Enjoy!