My partner and I joined the Fitbit craze a few months ago and have been trying to get in our 10,000 steps a day. And since we’ve gotten a bit bored with walking through the streets of the Auckland CBD, we’ve been looking for walking trails near town. Last weekend we tried the Mt. Auckland…
East Cape is the easternmost point of the North Island.The East Cape Lighthouse was put up on Otiki Hill in 1922 – it was fully automated in 1985 and is controlled from the maritime headquarters in Wellington now. Getting there is an adventure by itself — I’ll blog about the drive around the cape another…
Over the Christmas break, we set out on a tiki tour and headed North of Auckland. Our plan was to put the kayak in the water for the first time in 2017 and paddle around the Kai Iwi lakes. But plans changed – between the crowds and the wind at Kai Iwi, we instead consulted…
We were driving through Taranaki yesterday and looking for a place to stop and stretch our legs – my partner suggested a place called the Three Sisters. Robert had been there before but it was many years ago so we decided to check it out. The Three Sisters is a rock formation on the beach…
I lived in Auckland for over a year and a half before finally heading over to Waiheke Island. We talked about it and everyone said it was great but it didn’t get to the top of our list until a few weeks ago. We had a free day and decided to do a little exploring…
It’s crazy hard to keep up a blog in New Zealand in the summertime! The weather is getting warmer and warmer, the sun is out and Christmas is in the air. This is my first time spending Christmas in the city – we were camping in the South Island this time last year. It’s still…
We were driving down the road a few weeks ago and got behind a semi with a sign for a fund raising event for a local school. Not your ordinary fundraiser though – a pig hunt. That’s certainly not a sign you see often where I come from!
It’s been several weeks since we visited a hot pool and that’s several weeks too long so we decided to try Waiwera Thermal Resort yesterday, just 30 minutes North of Auckland. There aren’t many options in the Auckland area and I had hoped to find a new spot to soothe the stress away.
On Taiaroa Head, just East of Dunedin, sits the world’s only mainland breeding colony of the Royal Albatross – the largest of all the albatross with a wing span that exceeds 9 feet (3 meters) and weighing in at about 20 pounds (9 kilograms)! Fourteen varieties of Albatross breed in the New Zelaand region, more…
Just about any tour of the North Island will take you to Rotorua. I didn’t quite get the hype when I first moved here but now I’m sold and I take all my visitors there if time permits. And if you go to Rotorua, it’s totally worth the time to visit Whakarewarewa Thermal Village. The…