This is a bit of catching up. Tonight, with one full day left in New Zealand, we realized that we have stayed in 18 places in less than 7 weeks That’s a lot of moving around, and we’re feeling it. So this post is about everything between Matamata (a little bit before, truth be told),..

"It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to." Tom: Back when I was in 6th grade, I found this dog-eared paperback book at school one day while browsing the library shelves. From..

Napier started out just being a stopping point between Wellington and Hobbiton…I mean Matamata. We talked about going up to Rotarua, famous for geothermal mud baths and a Maori village, but the more we read about it, it seemed a little too much like Queenstown in regards to crowds and craziness. So we made Napier..

Alas, it was time to say goodbye to the South Island, so we drove to Picton to catch the ferry to Wellington, NZ’s capital, located at the southern end of the North Island. It was a 2.5 hour drive to get to Picton and, as seems to be the norm here, the road, while scenic..

It is safe to say we’ve been getting plenty of exercise with this trip. Our first full day in Stoke, in the Nelson region of the South Island, was spent with another hike, this one in Abel Tasman National Park. We’ve been told that we should have started the trip in the North Island, as..

Following Dunedin, we had two full travel days. Although we talked about making an overnight stop in Christchurch, we opted to get a little northwest of the city—we would have only been there one brief evening, and this way we were able to get a bit of jumpstart on the next day’s drive. Scenery near..

It was tough to say good bye to Te Anau. There was more we would have liked to do while there, but it was time to head to Dunedin. Dunedin is on the east coast of NZ's South Island, and we decided to take the scenic route along the southern edge of the island, through..

Our next stop, Te Anau, is a place we would call home in a heartbeat (and there is a charming restaurant for sale…hmmmm). A beautiful drive—although most of them are—started Wednesday morning. Leaving the Fjordlands temporarily, we went through rolling hills covered in sheep. And lambs. And more sheep. There are about six times more..

We flew to New Zealand on Sunday, Nov. 3, landing in Queenstown on a bit of a roller coaster ride due to high winds in the mountains. Travel pretty much shot the day, since we lost a couple hours due to the time zone shift, so we got settled and headed to the town center...

Wow! That's the first thing that came out of Tom's mouth when we got to our hotel room in Melbourne. Robin scores again - confirming that finding great accommodations is her super power. (One of them anyway!) We were on the 27th floor of the Jazz Corner Hotel (named for Bird's Basement, a below-ground jazz..