New Zealand
Entertaining Violet
iPads are a great piece of technology. At four, Audrey has been an adept user for some time. This time it was very useful for keeping little Violet entertained during our flight. I hope that the people in nearby seats were not too offended with all the animal noises.
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New Zealand with the Grandchildren
Well, here we are in Queenstown, NZ with our grandchildren and their parents. We were up early on Monday morning to catch an Air New Zealand flight direct into Queenstown. it was a very uneventful flight across a featureless Tasman Sea, however once we crossed the west coast of the South Island, we flew over […]
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Christchurch Earthquake
In spite of the sarcasm in some of my previous posts about New Zealand, we actually have a lot of fondness for the country and it’s people. That’s why we have enjoyed so many holidays there. We were quite stunned to walk around the city of Christchurch on our last visit this January to see […]
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Return to Christchurch
The weather improved markedly as we travelled further up the west coast from Greymouth on Monday morning. I have now been to Greymouth five, or six times, and I have never been there while the sun has been shining – Grey by name, and also by nature! We stopped for a look at the pancake […]
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West Coast Wilderness
The west coast of New Zealand is very remote. The main road that we used across the Haast Pass was only .completed in 1950.there are very few towns and there are long distances between settlements. We began by driving along the same route taken by the Wanaka Challenge bike race. We drive carefully to avoid […]
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Staying by the Lakes
We spent a few days in thievery active town of Queenstown on Lake Wakitapu. This is the adventure capital of New Zealand with every possible activity ever created. It’s a good place for sight seeing, shopping and eating.The old steamship plods it’s way down the lake every day to take tourists to a sheep station […]
Read MoreMount Cook
We were at Mount Cook around this time last year and it was rainy with grey skies and drizzle. There wasn’t much to see at all. Today it was sunny and a perfect day to head up past Lake Pukaki to the village of Mount Cook. We did a bit of walking to a point […]
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Back to New Zealand
Well, it seems that traveling to New Zealand is become an annual thing for us. We never tire of visiting here and it suits Jill as it is a few degrees cooler than home in summer. We arrived in Christchurch on Saturday, January 8th, and stayed overnight near the centre of town. It is easy […]
Read MoreA Little NZ Deja Vu
Well, we found that Invercargill was pretty much like we had experienced on a previous trip, It was lunch time on Sunday when we arrived and our quick drive along the main street indicated that there were very few places open at which to buy lunch. We were saved when the ‘Golden Arches’ appeared on […]
Read MoreMore About the Local NZ Dialect
We are now in the town of Te Anau in Fjordland in the very south of New Zealand. We have just had a nice meal in a restaurant called The Ranch which is located at the top of the main street. It is a restaurant for serious red meat eaters. On our arrival, we were […]
Read MoreUnderstanding Kiwi
Jill and I are having a relaxed trip to NZ for the next ten days. We flew into Christchurch on Saturday and drove down to Timaru for our first night. We spent our second night at Mount Cook where it was very wet with low cloud, however the mountain was clear at dawn this morning. […]
Read MoreFinal Days in the Marlborough Wine Region
On our second day in Blenheim, we had to move 25 kilometres up the road to Picton because that was the only place where could find a motel for the night. It had rained heavily overnight, but it was fine as we set off on our little drive. We ambled past the Montana Winery and […]
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