A month ago, I packed up my life in Dunedin and headed out on one last big road trip across New Zealand. Here is week three! dates of travel: 17-29 Nov 2016 I arrived in Auckland during rush hour, which sounds as awful as it was, and caught the shuttle to Jack’s apartment. I spent…
Category: new zealand
travel essay: christchurch, the broken garden city
It was like walking through a post-apocalyptic city. Lots were fenced in, windows were boarded up. Construction cranes took over the empty skyline. The sidewalks were broken, filled in with cheap asphalt between the cracks. The cathedral, a grey stone Gothic Revival church designed by Gilbert Scott, crumbled during the quake and is still surrounded…
one day in westport, new zealand
There are 26 Westports in the world, but only one in the Southern Hemisphere. This lucky town is a tiny surf spot on the (where else?) West Coast of New Zealand, two hours or so north of Greymouth and almost at the end of the road. I dropped in for two days and stayed for…
my adventures on stewart island
Mid-October, I requested Sunday – Tuesday off and I set my car up for some glamping (because when you have a world map pillowcase, it’s not really camping.) After work on Saturday, I tucked into my car and drove an hour and a half south of Dunedin to Jacks Bay, where I parked my car…
big road trip: week two
A month ago, I packed up my life in Dunedin and headed out on one last big road trip across New Zealand. Here is week two! ** dates of travel: 9-14 Nov 2016 From Dunedin, I went south. I had already done the Catlins so I contented myself with some time in Invercarill and Riverton….
12 things to do in the coromandel
The Coromandel is one of the more remote regions of New Zealand, namely because its difficult to access further north than Whitianga without a car. It is a jaw dropping beauty of a place, though, and it consistently ranks in New Zealand traveller’s top ten. I feel madly in love with the Coromandel peninsula when…
big road trip: week one
A month ago, I packed up my life in Dunedin and headed out on one last big road trip across New Zealand. Here is week one! ** dates of travel: 1-8 Nov 2016 It was absolutely pouring down when I drove out of Dunedin for the second to last time. I’m talking streaming down the…
new zealand: a hiker’s paradise, part four
This week in New Zealand: A Hiker’s Paradise, I begin with South Island hikes around Christchurch and the Banks Peninsula, inland toward Wanaka and Queenstown, and across to the West Coast. As stated in the last post, the climate changes quite a bit as you head further south. The landscape becomes more mountainous, the nights…
travel essay: hiking roy’s peak
The afternoon sun is hot on my shoulders as I make my way from my car to the start of the track. Above me, the peak rises almost vertical, the trail obscured by the shrubs and tussocks on the mountainside. There are still people arriving – like me, late to the party – to the…
practical advice for travelling to new zealand
Updated September 2019. I recently had the opportunity to guide a small trip through New Zealand (circa 2016). It sounds enterprising, but it was my brother and his friend, both in the country for a friend’s wedding. My brother hasn’t been here since he was 7 (or 6, he skipped his seventh birthday by crossing…