The Luminaries

New Zealand has about 40 lighthouses still standing. Twenty-three are active and fully automated, the last lighthouse keeper having left his post in 1990.

Many inactive lighthouses have been restored; some of those are still in active service are accessible. Whether you visit them by car, mountain bike, ferry or foot, you will get a taste of the country's extremes, of some of its loneliest points, where the land ends, pounded by the Pacific or the Tasman; where gannets or gulls circle overhead; where seals and shags dive into the depths below; where the wind roars.