Why an epilogue?
Well, first of all, the last page ended on a bit of a depressing note and didn't want finish like that.
And then I can't decide on one proper ending, which sort of is connected in a roundabout way to New Zealand. When I watched "The Two Towers" the first time, I noticed that that one couldn't decide on one ending either.
First there's the heroic finale ("The battle for Helm's Deep is over. The battle for Middle-earth is about to begin."), then there's the quiet, self-referential finale ("I wonder if people will ever say, "Let's hear about Frodo and the Ring.") and the dark finale, ending with a view of Mount Doom.
So if that movie (which has been written by seriously smart and clever people [which isn't the same]) can't decide on one ending, why should I? (And "Return of the Kings" has even more endings..)
It also allows me to add some remarks that didn't really fit anywhere else.
One of the really nice things about driving in Tasmania or New Zealand is that people actively make way if you are driving a bit faster than them. Given the speed limits there, it's not much of a speed difference, usually someone going around 100 km/h with someone else rather doing 105 km/h. Or someone shifting gears early while going up a hill and someone else slowing down a bit more. Usually, this means that the faster car is stuck behind the slower car until there's the next long straight stretch of road and it can overtake. Until then, the driver of the faster car feels obstructed and the person in the slower car harassed.
There, (unless it's a tourist in a rented motorhome who doesn't know better) the slower car will often move to the side of the road, slow down and let the other car pass as soon a it gets close. So instead of both drivers grumbling for a couple of minutes about the other one, both can continue to drive on at their chosen pace. (This is only true for reasonably empty roads and not for congested highways, but it's still an impressive rational behavior that I haven't seen anywhere else. Being polite to other drivers. What a strange idea.)
Another car related thing was the omnipresent spoiler. Almost every car that was a bit more powerful than a compact car had a spoiler. Even some fairly expensive ones. For me, spoilers are usually a sign of a 'kids car', i.e. the first car someone buys after getting the drivers license. Some wannabe racer who would like to have a sports car, but can only afford some mediocre used car and thinks it would look more powerful by decorating it with racing stripes, wide tires, noisy mufflers and spoilers. So, in effect, spoilers say: I'm a fake and I don't even know enough not to advertise that. But in New Zealand (and also, to a certain extend in Tasmania) spoilers in all forms, from 'normal' ones to things that look like a giant coat hanger attached to the back of the car and strange wing like constructions that look like the tail units of airplanes, seem to be standard. Even on cars that are expensive enough that the owners should know better than to screw up the expensive design by cheap looking attachments. (I don't really care what people do with or to their cars, I'm not much of a car person anyway, it was just something I noticed while driving and walking around. Just one of these areas where there are different takes on things and you don't expect them.)
Another thing that was surprising in New Zealand was the safety concern. The usual image of New Zealand, especially with extreme sports popular there and the reputation of New Zealand pilots is somewhat 'who cares about risks' and gung-ho. So I was a bit surprised when there were all those 'danger', 'do not proceed' and 'extreme danger' signs at the glacier, as well as cordons blocking off the area. It all seemed quite European to me and didn't fit with my perception of New Zealand. It took me moment to figure out where the misunderstanding was. The warning signs were the same, but the attitude was different. The signs were mostly seen as information signs, not as prohibition signs. So everyone ignored the signs and just went to the glacier and, more significantly, nobody cared. In most other places, there would be at least a couple of people standing near the warning signs and, while not doing anything, complain loudly to each other about those who ignore the rules. In New Zealand the attitude seems to be "you have been warned", but if you choose to ignore the warning, it's your choice.
That seemed to apply to other stuff as well. While, for most activities, you have to sign the usual forms that absolve the company of every responsibility if something should happen to you, once you've done that, you're much less restricted in what they let you do than in other places. The 'devil may care' attitude seems to be mostly a myth, but New Zealand also isn't as paranoid about safety as it seems at first.
And one last thing on inaccurate assumptions: sheep.
Every tourist guide I read before flying south pictured New Zealand as sheep country (usually mentioning how many more sheep there are in New Zealand than humans). While there certainly are a lot of sheep in New Zealand, there are a lot less ubiquitous than the tourist guides make you believe. Most of them are confined to fenced in areas of sheep farms, so it's quite unlike Scotland, where most of the sheep roam free and you often see them on the side of the road (or right in the middle of it). Sheep were much more obvious even in Iceland than in New Zealand. Looking back through the pictures I took in New Zealand, there are three (in about 1500) where sheep are visible somewhere. (Which, admittedly, may say more about my choice of subjects than the abundance of sheep. If you're whale watching on a boat, sheep are rather unlikely to enter the picture.) While the absolute number of sheep may be large in New Zealand, sheep farms aren't really more noticeable than deer farms or cattle farms.
By now I have written more than 30000 words about the vacation and it's already two months since I came back and I still haven't found a good way to sum it all up.
Maybe the most important thing for me was that it opened up traveling again. I really like cold climate and northern countries and after having been to Alaska, Canada, Greenland, Faroe Islands, Scotland, Norway (including Svalbard/Spitsbergen), Sweden and Finland, going to Iceland in 2000 sort of completed the collection. After that, everything that seemingly was left as travel destinations where either unattainable dreams or going back to places I had already visited. I hadn't been on any long vacation of my own since then. All travels since then were either short trips (less than a week, usually just two or three days) or the vacation in the USA in 2002 where I mainly attached myself to a vacation my sister had planned).
To a certain extend, I felt I was running out of new things to do and places to go. But on this vacation, there were so many things to do that I had never considered doing before and almost all of them fun.
So, to quote some travel ad: "There are always new first times."
And that's about as good as an ending as it gets.