Oh The Places We Will Go

10/01/2025

for.....

Koen to try to go skydiving. He tried in Franz Joseph and again in Queenstown now, Taupo.

We woke up with perfect weather, and Koen got to jump from 15,000ft, he experienced 60 seconds of freefall, reaching speeds of 200kph

From above, he could see Lake Taupo, Mount Ruapehu, the coast-to-coast of the Central North Island – all the way from Mount Maunganui to Taranaki and best of all his favourite he could see Taupō Motorsport park 😀.

10/01/2025

10/01/2025

From New Plymouth, we drove to Taupo, where we spent two nights, we visited and walked Craters of the Moon, which is a geothermal walk. It was a pretty cool experience. You could see steam rising from the ground as well as feeling the heat. You could see water and mud puddles bubbling. As we have had such bad weather during our trip we have had to be flexible with our plans to enable us to do all the adventures we set out to achieve. We chose to leave Heidi's place a few days early and head to Taupo, as this was our last chance for.....

09/01/2025

Photos of Dawson Falls, Mount Taranaki climb, Stratford Speedway

08/01/2025

Whilst catching up with my sister and her family in New Plymouth we explored Lake Mangamahoe (lake circuit) Dawson Falls, Festival of Lights, visited the local shopping centre (with the best view), watched the cousins do BMX practice. Went to the Straford Speedway. Ash, Koen, and Stu went on an 8 hour hike up Mount Taranaki in Egmont National Park (this is the mountain we can see from my sister house), Koen has a great story to tell!! D had a ride on Goldie and enjoyed time with the cows, chickens, and Mango. Koen did some target practice with a slug gun. We ate like Kings and Queens with Heidi and Stu feeding us produce from their land.

Unfortunately, the weather wasn't in our favour, which made it a little hard to do some of the things we set out to do like climb Earitutu Rock and get a photo of Te Rewa Rewa Bridge.

05/01/2025

After two nights in Christchurch to recharge our batteries, we flew to Auckland and drove to New Plymouth to spend a week with my sister and her family.

Stopping at Mangapohue Natural Bridge on the way.

03/01/2025

Whilst in Dunedin, I wanted to do the Dunedin Street Art Trail. Unfortunately, the kids were not interested, so I had to settle for spotting the street art on our drives 😔. As we were leaving Dunedin heading back to Christchurch, I did make one request, a photo with Ed Shreeran was a must!

https://dunedinstreetart.co.nz

On our way back to Christchurch, we stopped at Lake Tekapo for some lunch and checked out the lake, footbridge, and the church of Good Shepherd.

01/01/2025

From Queenstown, we headed to Dunedin for a few nights. We visited the Larnach Castle & Gardens where the Baker familys lifelong passion to restore the castle still continues today. The castle is located on the Otago Peninsula.

After spending a few hours here and having a having a coffee in Ballroom, we drove to Sandymount Recreation Reserve, where we walked to the viewpoint. It was quite a unique walk, walking through paddocks with sheep before arriving at the stunning lookout. These sheep don't don't how good they have got it.

From here, we headed off to the Albatross Centre to do some bird watching 🤣🤣 I mean the Albatross Classic and Fort Taiaroa tour. We learnt about the Albatross and their breading cycle. From the viewpoint, we were able to see 4 nesting Albatross. Apparently, there are 22 on the island currently nesting. This is the only mainland place where you are able to see an Albatross nesting.

We then continued through the underground fort tunnels to see the fully restored 1886 Armstrong Disappearing Gun.

This gun can fire a 45kg shell up to 8km, not a bad effort for 1880s. This Gun has been fully restored and is in working order.