Thanks to its wide range of outdoor activities, Queenstown has rightly earned its reputation as New Zealand’s adventure capital. Many visitors come for the excitement of bungy jumping or jet boating against the backdrop of the region’s stunning mountains and lakes. But beyond these thrilling options, cycling offers a calmer and more personal way to…
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Long overdue then this one! Seventeen years ago this week I was backpacking in the North Island of New Zealand. Across a brace of trips to New Zealand, I have backpacked the North Island and the South Island but not yet Stewart Island. I ended up in Rotorua where I have backpacked through twice. I…
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As I just begin to plan a major pub crawl on a big reunion day with the lads in London during the World Cup, it’s a good moment to recollect the top 10 pub crawls from my travels, some I’ve told before on Don’t Stop Living, some I haven’t yet shared. These have been absolutely…
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“You’ll never see the end of the road when you’re travelling with me ” – Neil Finn (Crowded House). Looking at the 2,000 plus posts still to be converted from my written notebook to this website, I noticed that New Zealand occupies a bigger chunk of them than I expected so condensing is required. My two visits (2007,…
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It’s been a shocking eight years since my first trip to New Zealand and even five years since my second trip so the notebook still clogs up a list of 30 something posts still unwritten about this country of islands! I thought I’d get my food adventures in NZ typed up today and whacked into a…
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New Zealand’s ONLY Castle apparently is Larnach Castle, on the Otago Peninsula near Dunedin. I was aware that it probably wouldn’t be that old, given the fact that New Zealand itself is a relatively new country, but on arrival in Dunedin I booked myself on a tour out to it. I booked the tour from…
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I’ve been asked a few times about staying safe when you travel and it’s definitely something I need and want to write more about. I’ve written some articles about this before including mostly health safety and also personal safety in South America. But I haven’t really delved into which specific countries I have found the…
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Never underestimate the amount of FREE sightseeing you can do. Did you know that there are FREE museums all over the place, you just need to do your research beforehand. I used to go to museums a lot more than I do now, so these days I basically only go to FREE museums unless I…
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Apparently “everyone who has ever been to Queenstown, (the New Zealand one) has had a Fergburger”, so it’s one of those stupid “when in Rome” type of analogies, which generally I hate, but this particular one couldn’t pass. I tried a New Zealand fergburger, which is today’s Friday’s Featured Food! I had heard of…
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Today my Thirsty Thursdays feature comes from New Zealand. They know how to party there as I found out!! After settling into my new “home for 2 days”, I had noticed a flier advertising a Pub Crawl of Christchurch that very night – there’s one every Friday. The flier was in the visitors guide brochure…
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