Last week I told you that nature fascinated me. I said how weird it was to know that the Franz Josef Glacier retreated or advanced when it decided not man. This week nature had two more tricks for us, though this time more everyday ones. Journey wise we drove up the west coast for a 100 or so kilometres, then cut right across to the east, and spent the last few days right on the top of the South Island. Once we reached the East Coast at a place called Kaikoura we were supposed to go out and watch Wales, or so I thought. Needless to say I was wrong, we were actually going to watch whales. In any case we didn't as the weather was so bad the boat couldn't go out. Then at the end of the week we should have been on the ferry across to Wellington but again the weather stopped us. In between we sat in hot pools, sunbathed on a beach and experienced a fairly recent New Zealand phenomenon.

If you look around the world you will see certain countries seem to produce certain goods. In many cases climatic conditions or the terrain dictate this but, in recent years, globalisation has come into play. To me, globalisation has two sides. Firstly the good side where we can, through as free a trade as possible, all help each other. If I have a bad crop and you don't, then you help me and vice versa. We can trade what we need with those who need what we have, if that makes sense. But there is a downside and I'm afraid that organisations like the World Bank seem to make this worse. I believe, and don't quote me, that in certain cases, it has been suggested to some countries to concentrate on one crop and provide everything for the world. So, Brazil, you grow coffee, Sri Lanka you grow tea etc. That's all very well until the bottom falls out of the coffee market, Brazil gets less income and can't afford to buy the goods it no longer makes. That's enough economics, unless the bottom falls out of the boxer shorts market, and I will return to where I was headed.

The wine makers of the world were, in olden days, France, Italy and Germany. They grew the grapes, they made the wine. But it was really only climate that made them such great producers. Now it's changing and other parts of the world are moving into making and selling wine and New Zealand is just one of these. There are several areas where vineyards abound and the Marlborough region of the South Island has become, in a very short space of time, quite famous for its wines. If you drive down a particular road just north of Blenheim you will see vineyard after vineyard or for reasons I don't quite understand, winery after winery. You see you grow grapes on vines so vineyards seems logical. What you make is wine so winery doesn't fit quite so well.

The climate around here is good for grape growing with plenty of sunshine and not much rain. Now I don't pretend to be an expert on the different types of wine but obviously the grape you plant makes a difference to the taste, as does the time you harvest and, so they tell me, the type of soil. I believe how long you let it ferment and how long you leave it all affects the taste too. But leaving the technical stuff aside the fact is that, in a very short space of time, New Zealand has become a leading producer of quality wines. Someone had a really good idea about 30 or so years ago and now it's all happening. Maybe there are some other countries around the world that could learn from this. Look at what you don't make or grow and see if you can.

While we are on the topic of industries, yes we are, New Zealand also caters for tourists in a very big way. The land offers so much, the climate is pretty good, the scenery is fantastic and they have the infrastructure, the facilities, to cope with all these people. In fact as a country New Zealand has a pretty modern infrastructure much of it because of the nature of the land. The main blocks of population, the cities, are dotted around the country so air travel has become very important. The roads are adequate, except perhaps in and around Auckland although what is a main highway to New Zealand may be a minor road in some parts of Europe. But what they lack is any real railway network. We did see this week the Trans Scenic railway, which goes from Christchurch to, I think, Greymouth, and there were rail lines running out of Picton where the ferries leave for Wellington.

But the overriding impression this week has been of the scenery. The coast near Blenheim, the Marlborough Sound and the Abel Tasman Park over on the other side are fantastic. This park is the smallest of New Zealand's thirteen National Parks but the most visited. Named after the first European to sight New Zealand, probably, the park is beautiful. We took an aqua taxi up the coast, got dropped off and then walked back through forest and beach to our pick up point. We saw a few properties, apparently this is the only National Park of the thirteen which allows private dwellings, but most of the time we were alone, happy and just taking in the beauty of nature. These are places it is totally right to preserve. This is what makes New Zealand such a fantastic place to visit and an even better place to live. If you have all this, why would you want to travel?

Oh, and we went to a school in Nelson, a city I really loved, and one pupil asked us why we had made our base in Auckland. Why not Nelson, said Toby, everything seems to be in Auckland. Maybe he is right, maybe we have seen the light and could have another base in Nelson. Maybe we were in the dark in choosing Auckland. Well, Nelson, do you want us? Should we follow the pupils' advice and go for pupil power which works rather better than transpower which doesn't. By the way this is probably only clear to New Zealanders although I see CNN was reporting things today. I hope people in Auckland, where 80% of the city had a power cut yesterday when one wire broke, are back with us again. I'm sorry to pile on the agony.

I just watched the Under the Tuscan Sun on the TV. It is almost the first time we have had time to just sit down and relax for a moment and it was only because our ferry to Wellington didn't go to sea today because of the weather and we were caught in Picton. Anyway if you ever watched it or read Frances Mayes' book, you would know that three of the characters there are Polish. They are employed by the main character, an American woman, to do renovation work on her new Tuscan house. In one of the scenes the guy works with the electric cables and the woman asks if he is a qualified, licensed electrician and the answer is that he is qualified but as a literature professor. Now it may seem funny, well it was, but it is also very true. This is what often happened when the poor Polish economy and low pay pushed highly educated Poles to do manual jobs abroad.

Earlier today we met a Maori guy called Michael and his cousin Harold. We wanted to talk to them about Maori customs and, as they are involved in Maori tourism and education, we sussed out they would be a good source of information. They were not only very knowledgeable and intense on sharing their knowledge of Maori history and culture but they were also very interested in the Polish culture. I happened to be the first Pole that they had a chance to meet and talk to but then they remembered that there was also a Polish electrician (this is what they thought, he was probably a professor of literature really) working for them too.

Straight away I wanted to know how was that Polish guy like, what impressions he left. I had a sudden flush of patriotism and hoped that this anonymous Pole made a good impressions because Mike's perception of Polish people could have been to a degree, built on that very encounter. Then I thought about myself and how many peoples' perception of Poland did I influence during my travels. It is a responsibility. If you visit a foreign country how you behave will often leave impressions that will be associated with your nationality. It may not be a fair impression but it's human to make these, often unconscious, associations. Even if you happen to know not just one but many Japanese, Polish or whatever other nationality because there happens to be a lot of visitors or the whole community of migrants living next to you, you'd have to ask the question as to what was the reason for this group to migrate to or visit your country. They may be refugees, uneducated manual labourers, people looking for profits and material gains, intellectuals migrating for political reasons or just loud drunk holiday makers looking for good times. What I am saying is that the whole group may have very specific trends, which may not be at all representative for that nation.

But then it's great to see some national and cultural trends in people. Our past, history, culture and environment shapes our personalities and though we are all individuals, there will be some trends within us. Some may need to be changed, some may need to be understood but they all make us unique, diverse and interesting. We do moan about each other, make jokes exaggerating these trends, but we don't really want them to disappear, do we. How bad if we couldn't laugh at German organization or Maori time keeping. And you know what - sometimes it works really well. Come on who wouldn't want to be offered by the barman 15 minutes behind the bar to choose drinks for everyone in the bar for which he would very generously pay. I am quite convinced that my nationality could have something to do with it.

But back to our Maori friends. We were supposed to meet Mike by the entrance to the Miyazu gardens close to where his Maori village is located. We were there on time but didn't bother to call or sms him for the next 15 minutes as we were not too worried about him not being there, almost expecting him to be late in a truly Maori fashion. Now this little trend was learned both from our experience as well as was told to us by Maori themselves. Then we messaged him and two minutes later someone knocked on the campervan window. It turned out that Mike was on time, he was just waiting by a different entrance.

I admitted to being blase about time and why it was and found out that he made a point of being on time because he knew he was meeting Europeans. I liked the way he was able and willing to adjust. He might not have worried about time if meeting other Maori fellows who would be easy about it but he understood that in European culture being late was showing a lack of respect to others. So it's all about understanding and respect, it's not about being worse or better, it's about acceptance. Later on Mike told us that their attitude to time doesn't only come from being laid back but that in their culture, till not so long ago, things were not being done on time, they were not planned and structured, they were done according to people's needs.

In old times kids would often come to the Marae to learn. This is our learning house., he said But instead of sitting at the desk for 5 hours they would lay on the mattresses on the floor, when they were hungry they would go and eat, when sleepy they would have a nap" There is a saying in Maori "it's about people, it's about people, it's about people" But this is or at least should be true in every nation, shouldn't it. But it doesn't mean that it's only about us, us, us, it means also it's about others, others, others.