SV Gjoa: 2016

Wednesday, 28 December 2016

Tongariro Northern Circuit Track

New Zealand is a great country for hiking, or, tramping as it is called here. There are developed walks (tracks) that criss-cross the country with a great, hut-to-hut support system available on most of them. There are seven walks classified as 'Great Walks'. These are the most popular routes and the...

Sunday, 25 December 2016

Are we twitchers?

You may have noticed that I've been publishing a lot of bird pictures lately. Actually, I've just realized how much I like having birds in my life. I don't think we're classified as twitchers (a birdwatcher whose main aim is to collect sightings of rare birds) as we don't seek out only rare birds, carry...

Wednesday, 21 December 2016

The Road North

As we continued our NZ Road Trip, we made our way north around the coastal road that winds along the East Cape of the North Island. It's an isolated, very rural and undeveloped part of NZ where most of the Maori live in small villages. The road is so tortuously winding that it will probably stay isolated...

Friday, 16 December 2016

Gannets (and Terns) Galore

We've sailed in Scotland quite a bit and it was always a treat to see gannets in action, diving en masse, head first into the sea, at speeds of up to 145 kph. In Scotland, the birds usually nest on remote islands and you could only view them from a great distance. So, we were pleased to find that not...

Monday, 12 December 2016

NZ Road Trip

Here is our new home for most of the next three months, while we tour New Zealand. It doesn't look like much, but, trying to book a campervan in New Zealand for a reasonable price seemed an almost impossible task and we almost didn't get one at all. A few posts ago, I remarked that we were glad...

Tuesday, 6 December 2016

Napier NZ

The town of Napier, New Zealand, was almost destroyed in a 1931 earthquake. This has turned out to be almost a blessing in disguise. The town was rebuilt in the architectural style of the time known as Art Deco. There are many remaining buildings of the period concentrated in the central core. Everybody...

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