Otago Peninsula (David Bellamy eat your heart out)High on a great weekend in Dunedin, but sad that five had become four, we drove out along the Otago Peninsula to visit a seal colony and try to find some of the elusive and very rare blue penguins. Our tour was on private farmland, and we were driven out to the viewing spots in an Argo. It's an amphibious vehicle with eight-wheel drive, that feels like a large quad bike but is a lot more sophisticated- NASA and th...

DunedinA great city that we enjoyed for several reasons... The sun shone all weekend. It's organised around a central octagon that streets radiate from - very easy to navigate and meet up with people. It's name is Celtic for Edinburgh. It's architecture pre dates 1960's bungalows (unusual for NZ). The gallery was a nice place to while away a couple of hours. The people are vibrant - it's a university town and a mix of all sorts of folks. The rugby stadium is cove...

South Island - East Coast: Part 1 With a week to get to the next match all the way down south in Dunedin, we made for the ferry. Napier (an art deco town built after an earthquake flattened the original in the 1930's) provided a scenic lunch stop.  Docking in Picton, we drove twenty minutes south from the port to Blenheim in Marlborough, New Zealand's largest wine region. Full of enthusiasm to taste the local vines we hired bikes and set off to explore. 40kms ...

Mt. Maunganui and Rotorua 2 (the sequel) We left Hahei with heavy hearts, wishing we could have spent more time there. But we also wanted to see a few other spots around the bay of plenty before the Rotorua game. Not for the first time, we were finding ourselves tight for time. We motored along the coast admiring some simply breathtaking views and after making a couple of stops (including NZ's answer to the French Riviera - yeah right, chortle) ended up in the v...

Coromandel Peninsula After being stuck in a cave in Whangarei for several hours.... we set off later than expected with the goal of hitting Coromandel town. As the light faded and the hope of making the intended destination before the camp site office shut diminished, we decided to stop just north of Thames. The camp site owner was, what we now know to be typical of the out of towners, an unshaven, unwashed hippy who had a butterfly house business on the side. H...