It has been cloudy and stormy and beautiful here in Queenstown. It seems like every type of weather is just another way for the mountains to showcase their magnificence. We needed exercise today, but there was little chance of a hike to a view and so our trusty leader decided that we would retrace part of the Ben Lomond track and summit Bowen Peak, another...
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We traveled around the North Island of New Zealand for a week and now we are spending some time catching up on school and enjoying the very popular Queenstown and our first look at the South Island. Queenstown is an adrenaline junkies dream come true, summer or winter. If you can jump off of it, climb up, down, around or through it, bike, paraglide or...
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We planned one week on the North Island of New Zealand. We wanted to show the kids some of the places we visited on our honeymoon and then see something new. Looking around on the internet, Scott found a very interesting beach called Hot Beach (more on that later) but it looked intriguing enough to plan a few days around it since there were plenty of...
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We left the magical Bay of Islands and drove towards Waipoua State Forest, another place that we had visited years ago. The kids have seen our giant California trees, but we wanted them to see New Zealand’s behemoths, the Kauri trees. photo by Grant A major threat to the Kauri, identified in 2008, is kauri dieback, a disease caused by a fungus-like water mold that attacks...
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Scott and I spent a night in Bay of Islands on our honeymoon and have three vivid memories from our visit which is amazing to me because we have no pictures to jog these memories. The first memory involves a one man catamaran and some uncooperative wind. You have to remember that Bay of Islands is absolutely beautiful and pristine and it’s mostly about the water. The...
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