Mōkau has all the essential elements to make it a worthy road trip destination. Remote, mysterious, a dramatic land and seascape, full of great stories. In every epic adventure yarn, our hero must traverse a portal of big-time danger to reach a new place of very different dimensions and prospects, and so progress to the [...]
North of New Plymouth, on a bend in the highway where the road leaves the west coast and heads inland, is the small settlement of Awakino. It is nestled beneath the hills on the bank of the Awakino River, where the river turns a right angle and runs parallel to the ocean due to barrier [...]
We entertained my daughter’s Canadian in-laws for Christmas – imagine Christmas in summer when you’re used to freezing temperatures and a very good chance of snow. It was certainly a change for them. They’re keen divers and one of their days was to be spent at the Poor Knights. When they heard we’d never been [...]
All Kiwi travellers in every RV should by rights have boats onboard with them. A small rubber dinghy, a pair of kayaks, perhaps. It stands to reason, for New Zealand is endowed with as many fine waterways to explore as scenic roads in mountains and forests. Exploring takes on new dimensions with adventures afloat. And [...]
We wanted to have a Christmas adventure in Central Otago, away from the madding crowds. Which is only slightly different to maddening crowds. As usual, there was no real plan except it would involve Central Otago and there’d have to be a bit of to-ing and fro-ing as we wanted to use both the campervan [...]
If the Far North is laid back with its own slow pace of doing things, the Hokianga is the same but more so. Things were different a century ago; with timber mills operating on both sides of the harbour in the early 1900s, it used to be a noisy industrial centre, but when the supply [...]
Every summer that we’re in New Zealand we travel to the Coromandel Peninsula and take up residence in our family bach at Wharekaho. My parents bought the bach in the sixties, and like many New Zealand families it is traditional to spend Christmas at the bach. One of the special attributes of the Mercury Bay [...]
On the North Island/Te Ika-a-Māui’s western cape is the volcanic cone-shaped mountain named Taranaki Maunga. Beneath the mountain on the north side is the coastal city of New Plymouth or Ngāmotu, which means ‘the islands’ in reference to the nearby islands off Paritutu Rock. Thanks to the volcanic nature of the soil, New Plymouth is [...]
I pulled out a map (the old-fashioned paper kind that our kids laugh at), wondering how many bays and beaches were marked in the Far North. There are dozens. I lost count somewhere around 75. We’ve also got coves, inlets, harbours, points, islands and rocks. Perhaps the rocks are of limited appeal, but then again [...]
When we head Welly-wards we usually base ourselves at Raumati Beach, which isn’t wild at all. It’s an easy drive, or train trip, of about 53km from the capital, and a place where our beachfront accommodation gives easy access to miles of beachside walking tracks, overlooks Kāpiti Island and in clear weather has wide views [...]