Adventuriety
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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Adventuriety
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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Adventuriety
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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Adventuriety / Inspirietry
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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Adventuriety
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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Adventuriety
Scott and I have been married a few years. We went to Australia and New Zealand on our honeymoon and overheard a couple at one of the places we stayed talking about how they couldn’t believe that they were already celebrating their 10th Anniversary by returning to the place that they had honeymooned. We thought that sounded like a good idea and now all of...
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Adventuriety / Domesticiety
We spent two weeks in beautiful, charming San Sebastian and it wasn’t long enough. We loved our apartment, not a block from the sea, and our sweet and helpful apartment manager, Ane. We hiked a lot and also spent time enjoying the city, food and a few other things. Ashley took a surfing lesson and spent as many minutes as she could physically endure swimming...
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Adventuriety
Scott is our hike finder and Basque country in Spain did not disappoint. We enjoyed quite a few impressive hikes within a one hour drive from San Sebastian and for our last hike in Spain Scott wanted an epic hike, but one that did not involve a lot of driving. to get to the trail head so he chose Peñas de Aya or Trois Couronnes...
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Adventuriety
Hernio is an iconic summit and the highest peak of the mountain range located right in the heart of Basque Country and very popular with the Gipuzkoans . In case you are wondering, Gipuzkoa is the name of the province and it is the most Basque of the whole area, with half of the population speaking Basque. San Sebastian is the capital of this province....
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Adventuriety
San Sebastian is very close to the border of France, about thirty minutes. We really wanted to spend a few days wandering around the Pyrenees Mountains and little villages in south western France, but we were so content in San Sebastian and the surrounding hikes that we only went to France one afternoon (but we made it count). Our sweet apartment manager, Ane (who had jokingly...
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