Coping with public and private transport since 2001
Waking up to an overcast sky is never good when on holiday, but seeing today also is really cloudy and wet is somewhat reassuring. We know today we can’t walk the Crossing as we have to leave town to go to Wellington, but in this weather it wouldn’t be nice at all. Even though the wind has gone down it
Continue readingToday, we woke up to the slight sulphurous odour which seems to be ever present in Rotorua. Because this smell has a reason for which the tourists come to this place, us included, we said our goodbyes to the host John and drove out of town towards our next destination: Tongariro National Park. After a short drive though we decided
Continue readingOh Rotorua. You and your stinky, sulphury odours from the depths of hell. How wonderful the sights are, and how revolting the smells. Today, we went a short distance out of the town of Rotorua to Waimangu Volcanic Valley, which is the site of a hydrothermal blast back in 1886. It is still really active in the sense that there’s
Continue readingWe woke up this morning to the tune of singing birds, nut looking out throughout the window didn’t yield the nice view we were hoping for. Grey overcast skies with a chance of rain were to be the weather for this day. Whangamata was destined to receive a few drops of rain over the next few days, which meant that
Continue readingAs we visited the ‘big ticket’ highlights in the area yesterday already, and we didn’t feel like driving the 100-ish kilometres again today, the first destination for us was the local visitors centre. Over here, these are called I-Site, and we quickly located one in downtown Whangamata, right in the neighbourhood of one of our favourite breakfast places: Subway. In
Continue readingWaking up in a really old country style house in the middle of nowhere in New Zealand is, well, just nice. Having the host cook you breakfast at the time you wish is, well, even better! The Drury Homestead is run by Carolyn and Ron, who took the place over not too long ago and completely renovated it to its
Continue readingToday is the day we are leaving the Hokianga region and are heading back down south towards Auckland. We even venture down a little bit further, and settle for a good nights sleep in Drury. But first: breakfast! The trip will be around 300 km’s but as the roads over here are not quite straight the average speed will be
Continue readingAfter yet another fabulous home cooked breakfast by Lynda and Roger (she does fruits and bread, he does eggs and bacon) we were off from Paihia towards the Hokianga region. But first, we had some unfinished business with a certain boardwalk in a nearby forest. On the track from Waitangi Treaty Grounds to Haruru Falls, a boardwalk is erected to
Continue readingDay 4 of our trip, and we are still in Paihia. Good place to be. We started our day with an excellent breakfast at Blue Marlin B&B after which we went our merry way. As the forecast told us the afternoon would bring us showers and a chance of a thunderstorm we decided to alter the plans to not include
Continue readingYup, the title indeed is just that. Sailing with dolphins. The business case there is quite straight forward. You take a boat, a catamaran in this case, stick quite a few tourists on it, and go sailing in the Bay of Islands while searching for dolphins. The kicker here is that you’re allowed to go for a swim WITH the
Continue reading