Touring New Zealand 2007

Touring New Zealand 2007 - Introduction

Introduction and Summary | Auckland, Waiheke Island, Wanganui, Mountain House and the Forgotten World Highway | Taumaunui, Rotorua, East Cape and Hawkes Bay | Napier and the Art Deco Festival | Inland Patea, Tokomaru, Wellington, Rotorua, Waihi, Coromandel and Auckland | Sailing in the Hauraki Gulf and Great Barrier Island

Introduction

This year we had planned to take a break from doing our holiday write up but within days of the usual start we were contacted by some of our usual recipients asking when we were starting so it looks like we will have to carry on. The 2007 travelogue is therefore, as usual, written as we go. They started as a regular series of lighthearted Emails sent out as "News from The Antipodes"where the text was writen on a palmtop and copied into the emails with little polishing and only a superficial spell check. This year they will be written partly on our new XDA Executive palmtop and partly on a laptop running Linux for security on the move. We will repeated the approach we have used for the last couple of years and uplifted them as we go to our web site and limit the emails to a summary.

We added some pictures as we went from Pauline's Digital Canon A75 Camera along with some of the best previous pictures from film and stills from the Peter's digital video camera. All the pictures on the pages provide details of where they were taken and on our return will have larger images uploaded so if you hover over them and they will clickable to open a larger version in a new pop-up Window.

The new digital pictures are in two resolutions so if you have Broadband you will be able to click here for more detail on the new pictures and click again to revert to lower detail pictures.

Index

Background Material

After each visit we also try to extract more from the chronological organisation and consolidate the content into specific pages. Some background pages which may be of interest are:

New Zealand Wines, Wineries and Vineyard Restaurants - brings together our favourite vineyards to visit. Selection is not solely the on the quality of the wine but is biased towards those with good vineyard restaurants, magnificent scenery and a friendly and helpful approach.
New Zealand Goldmining - Introduction to Goldmining Techniques and Travels in various Goldfields.
Kauri, both logging and the gathering and use of it's gum forms another unique part of New Zealand history worthy of investigation.
Active Thermal Areas - New Zealand is also an area which is very active geologically and has a number of fascinating thermal areas, predominantly North Island.
Maori Culture and Heritage - One can not fully understand and appreciate New Zealand without gaining some understanding of the Maori Culture and Heritage and the interactions with the first settlers and their way of life.
Sailing in New Zealand - An Introduction to Sailing in New Zealand with an index to our own sailing in the Hauraki Gulf, The Bay of Islands and the Coastal Passage between them and on up to Whangaroa Harbour.
The Whanganui River Story The story of the River and the river boats that served it.