TRAVELING IN STYLE : Perfect Strangers : So They took the America’s Cup. As a Yankee Discovers During a Motor-Home Trek on the Kiwis’ Home Turf, It Couldn’t Have Gone to a Nicer Bunch.

New Zealand is just south of my Homer, Alaska, home by half a world and one wholeday. The question I most often hear when I tell people this is where I went on vacation is, “Why?” Good question. It’s green and gorgeous like 3,000 other green and gorgeous places 3,000 miles closer and, frankly, you can go to Yosemite and do about everything there is to do in New Zealand. So why go there? Well, if truth be told, half a world and one whole day is just far enough from Homer, Alaska.

My friend Bill and I needed no other reason to go there than that it was gettingpretty ugly around here. When your own country is gripped by intramural terrorism and free-lance paranoia, a journey to one of the most far-flung placeson earth suddenly seems completely logical.

The plan was simple: Throw our bikes on a jet airplane and fly at high speed to a place where it is summer in January--New Zealand, for example. Once there, we would rent a camper and gallivant around the two islands of this extreme southern outpost of the English language exploring, biking and generally not being in Homer, Alaska. We would spend two weeks on the North Island, cross on the ferry from Wellington to Picton and spend another two weeks exploring the more rugged and remote quarters of the South Island. That was the plan anyway.

Bill and I arrived at Auckland airport in the early morning--nerves still jangledfrom nine hours of flying. While trying to get our heads around losing a whole day crossing the international date line, we piled the mountain bikes into the galley of an enormous Mitsubishi motor home. For only $10 more per day, Maui Campa, the nationwide camper rental agency, upgraded us from a four-berth camperthe size of a small house to a six-berth model the size of a small barn. The little bit of truck driving experience I brought with me was of no use here.

New Zealand roads and vehicles are the mirror image of our own. So you pretty much take everything you know about driving and try to do it backward. I careened through the traffic arteries of Auckland using wipers for blinkers and door handles for gear shifts but soon got the hang of driving on the wrong side of the road from the wrong side of a vehicle with the aerodynamics of a chest freezer. It was quite some time before I even ran into anybody. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

We achieved escape velocity from Auckland and relaxed into the drive north to the Bay of Islands, one of the North Island’s premier vacation playgrounds. As soon as I was comfortable enough with the helm to actually look at the countryside, my first thought was, “This looks just like Marin County.” Bill opened his eyes finally. “No, more like Puget Sound--Friday Harbor maybe.”

And so it went. Every bend in the road brought a new comparison: Big Sur, Coos Bay, British Columbia. It became clear there was very little new about New Zealand. Actually the whole place feels like a subtropical Canada. Imagine life in California if Canadians ran the place. No, that’s too frightening. Just imagine New Zealand as a conglomeration of about every nice little place you’ve ever been to. Immediately familiar. Instantly at home.

It was quickly apparent that the biggest attraction New Zealand offers is the people themselves. Having arrived from far-off America locked in the dead of winter, in weather and in spirit, the people of New Zealand refreshed and surprised me in ways the landscape and food never did. I don’t think there is a better way to describe the New Zealand character than to tell you how they reactwhen you back over their car with a six-berth camper.

It happened in Whangarei, a squared-away little community tucked away in the hills below the Bay of Islands. I was totally at fault. I’d backed up at a stoplight to change lanes for a turn I’d missed and hadn’t seen the other six cars already lined up behind me. The unfortunate driver of the first car in line, an understandably incensed woman, leaned over the broken glass and twistedgrille of her nice white car.

“I’m really sorry,” I said.

“You’re not sorry,” she replied with a good amount of Commonwealth pith. “You’restupid.”

I had no argument with the observation, and loved the accent, so I allowed her to elaborate.

“You are an imbecile. Only an idiot would do such a thing. You are a very stupidperson, do you know that? Don’t tell me you’re sorry when what you are is stupid!”

Her point made--and taken--we moved the disaster to a side street and called the insurance company. Since New Zealand’s insurance industry is nationalized, thereis only one place to call. Within the 10 minutes it took for these formalities, the woman developed regrets over her ill temper and apologized. We helped her tie the hood down, pointing out that the one remaining headlight still worked, even if it was aimed better for shining possums than driving to Rotorua. This made her happy, and she decided it was probably all worthwhile because otherwiseshe’d never have met us. She drove away--trailing glass and dangling trim--with a warm smile and wide wave like we’d just waxed the car for her.

Kiwis seem polite nearly to the point of weirdness to an American accustomed to daily doses of good old-fashioned Yankee judgment and suspicion. Don’t ask directions of a local if you’ve already made dinner plans. People invite you into their homes as easily as we steal each other’s parking places in this country.

On the Coromandel Peninsula, the jewel of the North Island and a popular spot for vacationing locals, I approached an older couple standing by their surf poles just to ask what they were fishing for. I walked away 10 minutes later with their name, address, phone number and a standing invitation to stay at their Whakatane home when we made our way farther south along the Bay of Plenty.It was an automatic gesture and very clear it would never occur to them not to offer their home to a visitor. Of the many things about New Zealand that remind me of my own country, this does not. I say this somewhat wistfully because perhaps it does remind me of a way we were once and would like to be again.

Whether it be amid the hot mineral baths of Rotorua, the European-like charm of Lake Taupo or the Art Deco enclave of Napier, there is a natural honesty and straight-aheadness that pervades everything in New Zealand culture. A grocery store promises simply to lower your overall food bill. Auto body shops are panelbeaters. Restaurants advertise Good Hot Food. Traffic does not yield, it gives way.

This kind of affable, plain-spoken manner can be found even in the tragedies reported in the daily papers: “Mr. East, aged 58, was airlifted off Mt. Cook yesterday with head, neck and pelvis injuries after a chance meeting with a rockweighing close to a tonne.”

No description of New Zealand would be complete without mentioning the sheep, soI will: There are lots of sheep here. I will not speak of them again.

There are also cows and goats and domesticated deer in field after rolling fieldbecause New Zealand is pretty much one small farm after another stitched together by fence and hedgerow and interrupted occasionally by the same small town you saw two hours ago.

Paihia, the centerpiece of the greater Bay of Islands area, is typical of New Zealand’s many well-tended little communities. Rows of storefronts crowd Williams Road, the quiet main street, with seemingly every third door a cafe or coffee lounge, as they’re called. These coffee lounges are the staple of a traveler’s life in New Zealand. They provide reliably average food at the most dependable prices of any place I’ve ever been, including Indiana. There is always a good selection of heavy meat pies, mussel and onion sandwiches and other delights that will taste wholesome and good to anyone raised east of the Rockies and west of Philadelphia. There are at least two glass cases of pastries, each one filled with cakes and eclairs, sweet rolls and pudding. The proprietors are invariably attentive and cheerful and are missing only the Mom and Pop embroidered on their aprons to have fallen from a Norman Rockwell painting.

We were able to work off the local fare on our bikes, an excellent way to explore these little towns. We’d park the mother ship at any number of camper parks--usually available for $14 to $17 U.S. per night--and then venture out on the bikes to see the sights. As long as you remember which side of the road you belong on, biking is fairly safe. The Kiwis are aggressive drivers but seem to have their wits about them. Which is more than they have been saying about me.

The vegetation in New Zealand, like the people, seems familiar--and not. Palm trees look more Jurassic than tropical, and the endless green, green grasses, oncloser inspection, are not those of home. It is rare, particularly on the North Island, to see any stretch of landscape that has not been groomed by human hands. Hedges, terraces, orchards and pastures fill every frame. But I did not find this in any way unpleasant. It reminded me of the pastoral English countryside of legend, and perhaps the uprooted British who settled this territory intended just that.

By and large, the environment seems clean, although one native was quick to admit they aren’t necessarily conscientious. “Thank God there are only 3 millionof us,” he said. “Give us a couple hundred million and we’d make a heck of a mess.”

The sun here is hot and potent, a frightening reminder of a disappearing ozone layer. One man, a builder, told me how in his life he’d been able to work all day outside in the sun without harm. Now he must wear sun block, hat and sleevesbut still suffers the occasional burn. The Kiwis say this happened very quickly,within the past five years. This same man compared it to the way you wear a holein your clothing: It gets thinner and thinner, but you’re not aware of the problem until it becomes a hole. If the sun in our country felt like this for just one week, everyone would fairly glow with environmental awareness.

As with most things they have no control over, the Kiwis take it in stride. Theyhave a good thing going here and they know it. They don’t seem inclined to clog up their lives with a lot of worrisome details. A great example of this is the preponderance of high-risk recreation available to the casual tourist: Bungee jumping, sky-diving, para-sailing, mountain trekking, jet-boating--all are yours with little or no formality.

In Nelson, where we spent the bulk of our two weeks on the South Island, we wenttandem sky-diving, a sport where you are strapped to the front of somebody who does this a lot and throw yourselves from an airplane 10,000 feet over New Zealand. This is probably the most ridiculously exciting and dangerous thing I’ve ever done, and they never even asked my name until it was all over and timeto pay.

New Zealand’s nationalized insurance provides little motivation for people to run around suing each other. It shows. From the free, open gas burners in campgrounds to free-falling a mile with a stranger, it is clear the people here have not given over to the fear of each other. This may explain who the New Zealand people are more than anything else I could say.

My last night in Nelson, I walked the Wakefield Quay with its miles-long promenade and watched the moon rising over Tasman Bay. Nelson is a lovely town full of galleries and artists and the inventive entertainment and distraction that come with their presence. By the time we arrived, we’d had about enough of cruising in the recreational equivalent of a moving van and decided to stay put.There was a piece of home to Nelson: the green rolling hills, the harbor protected by a natural spit called Boulder Bank that could be the Homer Spit I see from my own home as easily as the lighted Victorian homes on the hillside could be the comforting proximity of my own friends and neighbors.

The warm interiors shone like the hearts of their occupants. Secure and inviting. Peaceful and now familiar. I don’t know precisely why I came to New Zealand, or why anyone else should go, but I know the memories I carried back across the globe and the seasons with me. They are not necessarily the memories of a land I keep thinking I’ve seen before somewhere, nor are they the indelibleadventures of a trip to another hemisphere. They are the simple experiences of visiting, for a short time, with a people who seem to have figured out how to live in a way I thought we’d forgotten.

That was worth the whole trip down and back.

Guidebook: Kiwi Culture

Telephone numbers and prices: The country code for New Zealand is 64. The city code for Auckland is 9. All prices are approximate and computed at the rate of $1.45 to the American dollar. Hotel rates are for a double room for one night. Restaurant prices are for dinner for two, food only.

Getting there: United, Air New Zealand and Canadian airlines have nonstop flights from Los Angeles to Auckland. There are several companies offering camper rentals. We used Maui Campa Rentals, Richard Pearse Drive, Mangere, Auckland, Private Bag 92133, Auckland, NZ; telephone, 275-3013, fax 275-9019. Rates vary by vehicle and length of rental; plan to spend about $85 per day for a four-person camper May 1-Sept. 30; $149 Oct. 1-April 16, 1996.

Where to stay: Holiday camps, with facilities for recreational vehicles, include: Kiwi Camps (over 50 nationwide locations), tel. 6-753-5697; fax 6-753-5826. Good, clean, family-oriented camper parks; $6 to $7 per person per night. Anglers Lodge, Amodeo Bay, Coromandel Peninsula (North Island), 7-866-8584. Rate: $65 for double. Fearon’s Bush Camp, Montueka (South Island, west of Nelson), tel. and fax 3-528-7189. Facilities include motor home and tentsites and cabins; $6 per person per night for a motor home. Hotels: Harbour House Bed and Breakfast, 371 Wakefield Quay, Nelson, tel. 3-548-7430. A 123-year-old home overlooking Tasman Bay, with two guest rooms and private baths. Rate: $55, with breakfast. Albion Hotel, Hobson and Wellesley streets, Auckland, tel. 379-4900, fax 379-4901. A 20-room hotel that’s a five-minute walkfrom the city center and the harbor. All rooms have private bath. Rate: $59.

Where to eat: The Tides, Williams Road, Paihia, tel. 9-402-7557. On the Bay of Islands, about a 3 1/2-hour drive north of Auckland. In the words of its Britishowner, a “casual smart” restaurant, specializing in fresh New Zealand produce and seafood, shellfish and lamb. Three-course meal: $55. The Boat Shed Cafe, 350Wakefield Quay, Nelson, tel. 3-546-9783. A casual restaurant specializing in seafood; $50.

For more information: New Zealand Tourism Board, 501 Santa Monica Blvd., Suite 300, Santa Monica 90401; (800) 388-5494 or (310) 395-7480, fax (310) 395-5453.