Travelterrific

Ever dream of flightseeing over New Zealand's mystic mountain? Here's my experience in the sky over... KIWI COUNTRY Christchurch seems to lie somewhere between Heaven and Middle Earth We were hovering over a Tolkienesque landscape, where clusters of mountains rose like fat fingers from deep valleys, when Jim, our helicopter pilot, posed the question: “Ready to touch down?” “Are you serious?” I asked, incredulous that he’d hazard stopping precariously on a jagged fingertip of land. “No worries,” he laughed pleasantly. “This high in the sky on a sun-shiny day, we’re blessed by the protectors of Middle Earth.” Deftly, Jim maneuvered the whirring bubble to descend on a plateau, where he urged us to hop out. To our jaw-dropping delight, we found ourselves facing – though still hundreds of miles away from – a mountainous netherworld that could have been a digitally contrived film backdrop, but was truly real and natural. Centuries ago, this vision of Aoraki Mount Cook – its mam...