Category: Travels
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Rotorua At Thanksgiving
We added our next destination to our schedule because our daughter said it was the best place to have a Maori experience. We have been lots of places with tourist attractions promising a Maori experience, but the one in Rotorua, the Tamaki Maori Village, was the first and is still…
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Napier -Art Deco
When we were planning this adventure, we told the travel agent we had no interest in wine tours. Other than being halfway to Rotorua, when we arrived in Napier in the Hawke’s Bay wine region, we were not sure why the travel agent sent us here because the only activity…
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Wellington
Wellington is on the southwest shore of Wellington harbor, a huge body of water at the south end of the south island surrounded by hills over 900 feet high on all sides. It’s water has excellent depths. The harbor’s entrance is almost one mile wide, making it the perfect escape…
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The Interislander
This was our last day in the south island. We left Nelson early to allow us time to enjoy the scenic route to Picton. We could have retraced our journey down Highways 6 and 1 through wine country, a distance of about 60 miles from Havelock to Picton. Although the…
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Nelson
We had not planned to begin the three and a half hour drive to Nelson at 2:30pm but that is when the Whale Watch buses discharged us at the parking lot. We did not regret changing our plans to make the attempt at a great sperm whale encounter. Dawn got…
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Kaikoura Whale Search
The morning we were to watch the giant sperm whale dawned with a beautiful blue but windy sky. Our first hint shoud have been when Clive, the hotel owner/chief, mentioned that it might be too rough for the catamarans. As we were loading up the car, he came out to…
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Christchurch to Kaikoura
Australia is the world’s oldest continent, while New Zealand is one of the newest islands on the planet. Both have very thin soil lines for opposite reasons – Australia’s has been weathered away while NZ’s plant life hasn’t been around long enough to deposit any great depth of soil. The…
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Christchurch Again
For our return to Christchurch, we asked the travel agent to find us a better accommodation than the mid-night arrival place that greeted us to New Zealand. The new nice place is only a block from the Vodafone sales office (that would have saved us a long walk our first…
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Orokonui (Leaving Dunedin)
The host at our Dunedin hotel did not have a high opinion of the sites of Christchurch. And after the devasting losses of the earthquake, we did not disagree with him. Our next target is the Banks Peninsula, the Christchurch equivilent to Dunedin’s Otago Peninsula. His suggestion was that we…
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Dunedin
Before we left Lake Te Anau, we stopped by the free bird sanctuary that is one of the breeding areas for the takahe, a flightless bird though to be extinct for 60 years but rediscovered in 1948 in the Murchison Mountains overlooking the Lake. We were not permitted to view…
Ginger Without Borders 