There are places in the world that don’t only surprise you, but they shift something inside you. For me, that place was New Zealand, or The Land of the Long White Cloud.
Back in Belarus, it was just a name from a geography book, the farthest country on Earth from where I was born. I used to picture it as a dot at the edge of the map – too far to ever reach. But life has a way of closing the distances we think are impossible. Years later, I found myself flying traveling to New Zealand, chasing that tiny dot that once felt like a dream.
And there it was – the “Paradise of the Pacific,” as people often call it. Mountains meeting the sea, green rolling hills, clear lakes, glaciers, geysers, volcanoes, and a sky so open it almost swallows you whole. In the Māori language, New Zealand is Aotearoa – The Land of the Long White Cloud. The first Polynesian navigators named it after the long, glowing clouds they saw before spotting the land. When I arrived, I understood why. Those clouds drift low and slow, like silk stretched across the sky. They make you feel calm, and small, in the best way.
My travel companion and I explored the South Island in a camper van, winding along mountain roads, sleeping by lakes, waking up to fog and birdsong. We hiked the golden trails of Abel Tasman National Park, where forest paths open suddenly to turquoise coves. We stood at the base of the Franz Josef Glacier, feeling the quiet power of centuries frozen in blue ice. And at Milford Sound, I took a small boat through the fiord, surrounded by cliffs and waterfalls falling straight from the sky. The mist wrapped everything in silence. It felt almost sacred.
But what stayed with me was the realization that I was standing in a place I once thought I would never reach. And in that moment, the world felt smaller, kinder, more possible, more reachable.
That’s what New Zealand taught me – that “far away” is often just an idea we carry. Once you move toward it, once you step beyond the fear or the distance, it becomes part of your story. Sometimes the farthest places bring us closest to ourselves.
I write more about my journey through Aotearoa – its landscapes, people, and quiet lessons – in one of my travel memoirs. Traveling to New Zealand was like a reminder that the world, however vast, is waiting to be discovered – one step, one cloud, one realization at a time.