Monthly Archive: August, 2019

With a day of buffer time we had decided to drive closer to Auckland and make for an easier departure day. Last night Majella identified a holiday park at Miranda Hot Springs as a suitable destination, just a bit more than an hour from Auckland with a chance to spend more time luxuriating in a thermal pool. Our navigation aids...

Because we skipped a night at Opotiki on Wednesday we are now a full day ahead of schedule. That will require some rethinking of plans for our remaining days but we are nothing if not flexible. It rained steadily through last night. We were at least partly under a tree and heard a steady dripping sound on the van but...

My plan had us staying at Te Araroa near the north-east tip of New Zealand tonight. By coincidence, after skipping Opotiki and going anti-clockwise rather than clockwise yesterday, we arrived at Te Araroa on schedule today.  However, we are not staying there tonight. Instead we are at Waihau Bay. When we woke just before 7:00 am this morning the inside of...

Plans change. I had planned to spend tonight at Opotiki on the Bay of Plenty coast. That was for no reason other than to break our journey before setting off on a clockwise drive around the north east corner of New Zealand, returning via Gisborne. I had thought we might go further than Opotiki thus building a buffer of time...

Our destination for today was Waikite Valley Thermal Pools. The campsites there include access to the thermal pools which I knew Majella would enjoy. The shortest/fastest route suggested by our navigation aids was around the west side of the Tongariro National Park, past Lake Taupo, and on toward Rotorua. I wanted to go east and take the Desert Road along...

On our 2010 trip we drove south from Otorohanga along the west edge of the Tongariro National Park and on to Whanganui. Later on that trip we stayed at Taupo and viewed the mountains, Tongariro, Ngurahoe, and Ruapehu across the lake from the north. A friend and I walked the Tongariro crossing, west to east. My plan this time was...

My plan for today had been based on spending last night in the Mokau area, a couple of hours further down the road than we had been able to make it last night. Inevitably that put us well behind schedule but since I had (wisely) not filled in the day with planned activities there was time at the end of...

Today was our transition from quality accommodation in Queenstown to life on the road in a campervan. My plan was to fly to Auckland, pick up our campervan from Britz around midday and drive about 3 hours south to Mokau. I had located a camping ground at Seaview and booked a site for the night.  The day started according to...

Today was our second bookend day intended to buffer our trip to Doubtful Sound yesterday. We had no firm plans though I had penciled in a trip to Wanaka and we had an invitation to dinner with Margie Slattery-Smith, a sister-in-law of Majella’s brother, and her husband, Ned. We had no need to be out early this morning but were...