The West Coast of New Zealand's South Island covers the distance between the two major cities in the North Island, Wellington and Auckland, but this part of the country only has 33,000 thousand residents and bugger all cell phone coverage.

This week's How Are You? Where Are You? podcast follows our journey up the coast and introduces some of the people we met along the way. All of them outstanding citizens.

This trip home is blowing any stereotypes we had about the people of this land out of the water. We have ridden into big walls of kindness, laughter, wisdom and friendship.

We visit some Greenstone carvers, glacier guides, a gold miner, a fisher and do our best to give some sort of verbal justice to the magical scenery, all while coming under attack by the wildlife in Arthur's Pass National Park.

Photos to match this podcast can be found at howareyouwhereareyou.com