Too busy to…

In the course of three weeks in New Zealand I took over 600 photos which is far too many to post to the web so I have been ruthlessly reviewing, editing and cropping down to only the real highlights. This takes a lot of time so I thought I would start publishing the highlights so [...]

Fiordland is a remote area in the South West corner of New Zealand’s South Island. It has high mountains and deep glacier-cut valleys which were subsequently flooded by the rise in sea levels at the end of the last ice-age. When they were first discovered by Europeans at the beginning of the 19th century they [...]

We arrived in Kaikoura at lunchtime on Saturday but sadly the conditions at sea were too rough to allow us to see, let alone swim with, any dolphins so we had to rebook for the following morning. Rosie loved it, but I am apparently not dolphin playmate material and they didn’t take much interest in [...]

After a couple of gentle days exploring Wellington’s excellent Te Papa museum and the Marlborough wine region, it was time to hit some more areas of amazing natural beauty.
First was a day hiking part of the Queen Charlotte Track. We started at Ship Cove, a picturesque spot which Captain Cook visited five times over the [...]

Today we took a break from our hectic schedule of adventuring to enjoy a more sedate kiwi experience: wine tasting.
We learned:
* 35 years ago the main industry in the area was sheep and fruit;
* the vines are extensively pruned to ensure very high quality (and this low grape yields);
* 85% of the wine is exported. [...]

There must be something in the air down here as completely spontaneously, Rosie (who claims she doesn’t like heights) decided to jump out of a plane! Apparently she was overcome by the outstanding beauty of Lake Taupo on a gloriously sunny day…
Here’s a photo of her about to board the plane, she even came back [...]

The Tongariro Alpine crossing is claimed to be the best one-day hike in New Zealand, with spectacular scenery which was used as the backdrop to Mordor and Mount Doom in the Lord of the Rings films. However it seems that in New Zealand, beautiful scenery can only be properly enjoyed after a near-death experience (cf. [...]

After a brief trip north, we began our journey south on Wednesday through the rolling green hills of North Island—”it looks just like Yorkshire”, Rosie claimed. First stop was the village of Waitomo to do some black water rafting. Previously I had done the high-octane half-day trip but since we were short on time, this [...]

When planning this, my second trip to New Zealand, I was keen to visit the areas which I had been forced (by time constraints) to miss out before, and “everything north of Auckland” was an obvious gap that needed to be addressed.
The Bay of Islands is in the enticingly named “Winterless North” (made even [...]