Amongst Gum Trees: New Zealand

14 days in New Zealand, North Island.

Taking along my eldest, Tim, who turned 10 this year for a catch up with my youngest sister, Lisa, free for two weeks with a mandatory training break.

My parents and my husband held the fort at home.

Nothing planned, just a return flight and camper van.

My calm was tested before I even left Coffs Harbour. Our flight into Sydney was canceled, which my travel agent forgot to mention. But he got us into Sydney on a later flight, rather bumpy with a massive thunderstorm ripping through on the other end, keeping us in the air for another half an hour. An end sprint saw us having our bags pushed back onto the plane that had already given up on us, making it to Auckland after all, just after midnight.

With so much stuff happening in my day to day life: planning, organising, checking. My head could do with a break. So I made this deal with my sister on the first day, we would swop roles. Where as she normally just have to follow her training schedule from the Dutch Rowing Federation, she would now take on the role of planner and organiser. Where I would just have to drive, or hike or wherever else she would get us into. Quite a bit as it turned out! Then, what else do you expect when you go on a holiday with a professional athlete?

Hiking we did, onto just about every mountain Lisa could find.

First day, I made the ignorant comment off: ”It getting to four 'o clock, we better start looking for a campground soon”.

Which got answered with: “We still have almost 3 hours of daylight left, lets do this hike”.

That set the tone for the rest of our holiday. Eat when it gets dark, let’s go.

Awesome!!!

Although Lisa put a lot of effort in getting a plan together each morning, more often them not, we would change our plans multiple times that day, going with recommendations from locals, or hunches.

Where mine would get us to some excellent coffee and food, Lisa would manage to get us on another windy gravel road...

We ended up chugging away quite some kilometres, on foot and by camper van.

Wherever we went, the scenery was amazing. The amount of photo’s we took was crazy. Every turn would bring another surprise.

Winding our way along gravel roads, for 230 kilometres on end, barely seeing anyone.

On to some hidden lake.

Boat trip on Lake Taupo.

My first go at mountain biking, in Rotorua meaning I’m now spoiled, I loved it.
Where Tim & Lisa quickly took to the more difficult trails, riding their hearts out.

We lost count of the many, many waterfalls we saw on hikes and along the road.

Wherever we went it was so green. With Spring in full swing, we couldn’t get over the many flowers popping up wherever we looked.

Feeding lambs at the farm of one of New Zealand's Olympic Gold rowers was great fun.

And so were the hikes he advised us to do. Even though they were rather crazy!

Rough, wild and windblown.

Hiking is so more relaxing, without the snakes!

Old mining tunnels.

Writing cards for the home front

Napier, one cute little art deco city.
Where we free camped along the black pebbled beach, where we gave aid to a sick baby seal and walked along the boulevard. We loved driving along the many different orchards covered in blossom, the many, many beehives brought us to a local honey factory where we tried many of their gourmet honeys as well as the amazing hokey pokey ice-cream...

...well earned after having conquered Te Mata Peak.

Caves, glowworms and natural bridges.

Whirinaki Forrest - Hiking amongst giants and...

...fern trees, so many fern trees.
And although this one was one of the “tamer” hikes, it was my favourite, just magic.

Playing "the floor is lava” at Mihi.

Bubbling mud, geysers and steam in the forrest.
Soaking in the thermal pools at night, rather smelly, but totally fascinating!

Even into the second week, the waterfalls didn’t stop amazing us.

Most nights we free camped. Keeping it peaceful, quiet and simple.
The first night was the stuff from horror stories, including a woman screaming on the top of her longs in the middle of the night, being chased by a ute doing burn outs. We survived this sibling spat and decided it could only get better from there. Which it did.