Blasting through a cliff face, the beauty of Tarawera Falls are testimony to a partner’s grief | Morgan Godfery

In Mori legend Mount Tarawera blew her top after discovering that her lover, Mount Ptauaki, had left her

• Guardian writers and readers describe their favourite place in New Zealand's wilderness and why it's special to them

One of the cruelties of New Zealand tourism is that international visitors arrive expecting to find a vast, unpeopled land - the sharp peaks, rolling grasslands and roaring rivers of Middle-earth.

But when visitors land at Auckland airport they do so on a concrete strip at the edge of a muddy tidal harbour. The airport terminal itself is under perpetual reconstruction, the roads leading to and from it are clogged at most times of the day, and as soon as you escape the city using the main highway the view is more or less the same for the next two hours: dairy farm after dairy farm, unnaturally lush and green as farm owners fertilise and irrigate the land to all hell.