Real journeys. Real lessons
Stories to spark your next trip
Journeys I've actually done
16 stories
New Zealand · Oceania
How many days do you need on the South Island?
We gave the South Island ten days and drove around 2500km, and the honest answer to how long you need is: more than you think, but ten is a sweet spot. Here is…
Otago Coast · New Zealand · Oceania
Waiting for the blue penguins at dusk
Some of the best wildlife moments do not photograph well, and this is one of them. On the Otago coast, as the last light finally drained away, we stood on a pl…
Christchurch · New Zealand · Oceania
Christchurch, the city that rebuilt itself
We started and ended the trip in Christchurch, and it is not the city it was. On 22 February 2011 a magnitude 6.3 earthquake struck directly beneath it, killin…
Doubtful Sound · New Zealand · Oceania
Doubtful Sound, where the captain cuts the engines
Everyone goes to Milford Sound. Almost nobody goes to its bigger, wilder neighbour. Doubtful Sound is around three times longer and ten times larger than Milfo…
South Island · New Zealand · Oceania
The South Island drive route that doesn't backtrack
The South Island looks compact on a map, and then you start planning and realise the good stuff is scattered across the whole thing: glaciers on the west coast…
Milford Sound · New Zealand · Oceania
Kayaking into Milford Sound
Milford Sound is the picture that sells New Zealand: a fiord cut deep into the southwest corner of the South Island, sheer black cliffs rising straight out of…
Moeraki Boulders · New Zealand · Oceania
The Moeraki Boulders
Scattered along a quiet beach on the Otago coast are dozens of almost perfectly round stone spheres, some of them taller than a person, half-buried in the sand…
Aoraki/Mount Cook · New Zealand · Oceania
Two Mount Cook hikes: the easy one and the hard one
At Aoraki/Mt Cook, New Zealand's highest mountain, we did two very different hikes in one day, and between them they cover almost everyone who comes here. One…
Nevis Canyon · New Zealand · Oceania
The Nevis: bungy first, then the swing
When I booked the Nevis there was a note on the page: can't decide between the bungy and the swing? Do both. So I did both, one morning, back to back, in a can…
Queenstown · New Zealand · Oceania
Queenstown's adventure menu, ranked
Queenstown is the adventure capital of New Zealand and the menu is genuinely overwhelming: bungy, swings, jet boats, luge, paragliding. You could spend a week…
Routeburn Track · New Zealand · Oceania
The Routeburn Track in a single day
The Routeburn is one of New Zealand's Great Walks, a 32-kilometre alpine crossing most people take two or three days to complete, sleeping in huts along the wa…
Wanaka · New Zealand · Oceania
Roy's Peak: the view, and the queue for it
You have seen the photo even if you do not know the name: a lone figure on a narrow ridge high above Lake Wanaka, mountains stacked behind, the whole South Isl…
Lake Pukaki · New Zealand · Oceania
Talking my wife into a skydive over Mt Cook
I had been trying to talk my wife into a skydive for years, and the answer was always no. What finally changed her mind was not me. It was a police officer we…
Te Anau · New Zealand · Oceania
The glowworm caves at Te Anau
After a full day on the water we had one more thing booked, and it turned out to be one of the strangest, loveliest hours of the trip. From the lakefront at Te…
Lake Tekapo · New Zealand · Oceania
Lake Tekapo's church and the darkest sky in the country
Lake Tekapo sits in the middle of the largest dark sky reserve in the southern hemisphere, a whole region of the Mackenzie Basin that has fought to keep its ni…
West Coast, South Island · New Zealand · Oceania
The wild west coast road past the glaciers
The west coast of the South Island is the wild side: a thin strip of road pinned between the Tasman Sea and the Southern Alps, where rainforest runs almost to…
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