Wanda, my travel guruess, shrieked, "Australia and New Zealand, that's where you two want to go? Oz and Zed are underpenetrated tourist destinations, ripe for fresh look-sees. I can get you a great deal."

"Underpenetrated by whom?"

"By your ilk, naturally."

Never to disregard Wanda's importunings is my creed. Underpenetrated was exactly what I needed. Late in February we took a flight from Miami to L.A., arrived on time and waited there until our Air New Zealand flight took off for a seemingly endless thirteen hour flight to Auckland. Naturally we crossed the International Dateline which confuses the hell out of me. We arrived Friday morning in Auckland around six in the morning, groggy, grotty, and grumpy. And of course my fellow passengers were sleepwalking Groggy, Grotty, and Grumpy. Groggy's huge carry-on bag jarred my thigh, Grotty broke wind on the narrow ramp in front of me, and Grumpy swore at me for getting in his way.

I got my baggage from the carousel where two very peppy beagles were giving the baggage real good sniffs. Their tails were wagging, they were panting with delight, and they were happy to be working. One of them stood on his hind legs, put his front paws on the track and grabbed a loose sock going around with the luggage. His minder tried to pry it away from him, but then the two dog sniffers began to fight over it.

They loved that sock and were having lots of fun as enormous suitcases and duffel bags full of dope were off-loaded and whisked away. Never trust a dog to do exactly what he has been trained to do. After all he can't get high from grass, but the taste and smell of a real raunchy, odorous sock; that's another high altogether for a beagle.

By the time we got through immigration and customs it was 7:30 in the morning. After being up for twenty-nine hours, We were ready for some sack time. Oh, no, the hotel desk staff said. We were told that our hotel rooms would not be ready until 3:00 in the afternoon, so we were going to be taken on a four hour familiarization tour of Auckland, the biggest city in New Zealand.

I really didn't mind once we got going. Auckland seemed to have a lot of hills, an attractive harbor, and like cities everywhere was vying for some identity and distinction by having a skyline, in this case a skyline made up of modest skyscrapers. Numerous Aucklanders love and own boats so a considerable number of sailboats were in the harbor and marinas. February here in the Antipodes was their summer so many people were wearing shorts and tee shirts; the sun was blazing. The city of about a million people had a prosperous look; it was a going concern.

You can't see a city in a day or even our two and a half days there so I am no expert on Auckland. My days in Auckland included pleasant walks along K Street, the seedy red light district like London's Soho. On my morning walk along K street I saw approaching a broad hulking six foot Maori warrior who was wearing no shirt or shoes, only a pair of jeans and who was nursing a hangover from too much firewater on Saturday night. All around the city I encountered a few other people walking barefoot along the sidewalks.

After K Street my walks took me to Queen Street, the central street that starts at the top of a hill and runs rather steeply down to the harbor, and along the harbor quayside. A musical was playing at one of those new performing arts complexes that are springing up everywhere.

The city has a very high space needle that gives you a breathtaking view of city. It has small, very thick glass panels that you can walk on and look miles down below to the street. It's a scary feeling. On the ground floor of the needle is a large casino where a robotic, plodding group of gamblers, mostly of Asian descent, went through the motions of contributing money in an eerily lit atmosphere.

In the coming days as I traveled around New Zealand I found the people were, for the most part, good looking, outdoorsy, boatsy, fit-looking, and the words yeomen and yeowomen sprang to mind as I looked around. The place had a bunch of sturdy, stalwart and loyal farmers or people descended from farming families.

Everyone I met seemed to be proud of the country, and people were genuinely contented with their lives. I think everywhere you go in the world the malcontents avoid tourists on general principles. Who is going to seek out a tourist and say, "I hate this bleeping place." ? But Auckland and New Zealand do seem to impress visitors as good places to live with a citizenry that is genuinely proud of their home. They didn't mind being called Kiwis, but were not thrilled if you called them fruits. Kiwis, I found grow on vines over arbors like grapes. And often you would find Kiwis and grapes growing close to one another.

Some fellow tourists said that they thought the place was beautiful, that the people were friendly and contented, but that the country seemed unexotic and prosaic and the people bland. What do these hypercritical tourists want? Massacres in the streets? Bitching locals with pitchforks raised in anger? Many tourists love to look for the negatives. They've read too many Brysons and Therouxs. When we meet people who seem to like where they are, who they are, and what they are doing, maybe we should try to emulate them rather than verbally tar and feather them.

In Auckland I sat in a Starbucks Coffee shop and watched people in ropes and harnesses scaling and rappelling the sides of a hotel in a busy square down at the foot of Queen Street next to the harbor. Backpackers and hikers on the way to ferries stopped to gape at the climbers. Almost everyone in the land of Zed seemed to be engaged in some physical enterprise, staying in shape, enjoying the out of doors, keeping fit and communing with nature. I heard a lot of stories about ecology battles taking place with the country having a fierce ecology-minded faction. The large, noisy, militant, green faction of tree huggers and flora and fauna fanatics apparently was easily roused.

Often I watched as Kiwis went through their setting-out exercises, readying themselves for some full day of outdoor activity. They checked their stock of water bottles, tied and retied their sturdy thick hiking boots, fastened and refastened all of the hundreds of straps on their brimming knapsacks, arranged their expeditionary caps, scratched themselves, applied their sun screen, smiled and set out. Their first stop seemed to be a Starbucks, and they spent a great deal of time consulting and conferring with others, examining various maps and then refolding the maps methodically and properly. I got worn out just watching their preparations. I take very long walks, but I just do it; the prepping would spoil the fun of it for me.

Watch for more Kiwi and Oz lore in future articles.

John (Jack) Rooney's latest novel is "Last Passage to Santiago," a suspenseful travel-thriller that has romance, infidelity, and a kidnapping. His first book was the thriller "Nine Lives Too Many" featuring his series detective Denny Delaney pitted against the arch-terrorist Felix the Cat. That was followed by a chill-packed sequel "Clawed Back from the Dead." Rooney's book about India, "The Daemon in Our Dreams" was a blend of the naturalistic and the paranormal. In "The Rice Queen Spy" he presented the life story of a British secret operative who was "outed" and later went on to live an openly gay life while thumbing his nose at the bureaucracy that had betrayed him. The author's work schedule includes a new Delaney effort.

He was born and educated in Springfield, Massachusetts (Classical High and American International College), went on to receive a master's degree in English from Columbia University, and finished course work for his Ph.D. at N.Y.U. He has written book reviews, and feature and travel articles for newspapers and magazines. He served in the U.S. Army as a military policeman in Times Square and Vienna, Austria, and in civies in U.S. Army AWOL apprehension. His website is http://www.senneffhouse.com.