Category: Escapades

Queenstown is a moderately-sized town that (as mentioned in the Lonely Planet guide) feels like a small city. There are far more people walking around the streets at night than you would expect, most of whom I imagine are tourists. We were hammered with information about all the activities you can do in Queenstown, including…

The trip to Wanaka on New Year’s Day was fairly uneventful. We stopped off at Lake Matheson for a bit of photography, but we weren’t given enough time to do the full walk, which (as I learnt later) would have shown us a fairly amazing view. We also stopped over at Thunder Creek Falls. Our…

Fabio made us all scrambled eggs and bacon on toast for breakfast before we left Lake Mahinapua, even though he was apparently still drunk from the night before. And then we were off to the tiny town at the base of Franz Josef Glacier. We stopped for an hour or so at the Bushman’s Centre…

Along the West Coast we were dropped off at Cape Foul Wind and the Pancake Rocks to have a walk and a look around. The former has a nice (short) walking track, but it wasn’t all that spectacular. There were a few seals visible on the rocks, but my camera and/or photography skill were insufficient.…

Westport is not a “happening” town. We were warned by our driver to stay away from two of the town’s main pubs, and probably the others just in case, due to previous incidents involving Kiwi Experience passengers. There wasn’t a whole lot else to see. A small group of us ventured down to the beach,…

The trip to the South Island began in spectacular fashion as the bus driver swerved illegally over to the curb to collect me as I ran out of the Wellington YHA. I hadn’t slept in. Far from it – I’d actually been killing time looking over my photos, and just happened to kill a little…

Wellington is a smaller but more interesting city than Auckland (the Kiwi Experience brochure describes it as the “cultural capital”, as well as being the actual capital of course). I and a large number of my fellow travellers spent Christmas Day and Boxing Day there. The bus skipped one of its normal stops – “River…

The highlight of the North Island is the Tongariro Alpine Crossing – a 17-19km (depending on who you ask) trek across the volcanic Mount Tongariro (and optionally Mount Ngauruhoe for the experienced masochist). A group of us from the Kiwi tour undertook the crossing. We were picked up from our hostel in Taupo at 5:30…

Waitomo is a tiny village in the west whose principal attraction is black water rafting, and it’s a good one. Before we were hurled down into the dark abyss, however, we were treated to the spectacle of rabbit shearing. The rabbits were presumably bred to obtain high quality fibres. Unfortunately for them, their fur traps…