Don’t be afraid to stretch your boundaries a little.

Language can sometimes be inadvertently misleading in that certain descriptions that you think mean one thing can actually turn out to mean a whole lot more than you had originally supposed. One of the biggest culprits in the travel arena is the niche market known collectively as ‘Adventure Travel’. Adventure Travel (at least to my mind) tends to conjure up imagery of young, fit and primarily male participants who revel in canoeing and abseiling along

Hanmer Springs

My second last night in New Zealand and I’m spending it in the small town (most towns on the south island are small towns) of Hanmer Springs famous for — yes, you’ve guessed it — its hot springs. As coincidence (or bad luck) would have it, my back finally gave out on me yesterday. It’s been at me for a few days now and I’ve suffered from it for almost thirty years. No doubt due

Kaiteriteri

Kaiteriteri is the only other place besides Queenstown that I’m spending two nights in. Kaiteriteri is a small seaside resort located just a few miles north of Motueka, which itself is located some 60 kms northwest of Nelson in the far north of the south island. The drive today from Barrytown was about 300 kms and took me around 4.5 hours on a route that bypassed Westport and through Murchison. The rain is still falling

Queenstown — Day 2

Oh the joys of not having to pack and unpack again! That’s probably the worst part about any itinerary that has you staying just one night at each location. The guest house that we’re staying at in Queenstown has the most extraordinary views over Lake Wakatipu and the Remarkables and the couple who run it are delightful. Indeed, the whole B&B ‘experiment’ has been a resounding success to date as the accommodations chosen have been

Milford Sound

If you look at both Queenstown and Milford Sound on a map of the South Island, they appear to be approximately 70 or 80 kms apart but because of the tortuous topography of this part of the south island, you have to travel almost 290 kms via Te Anau in order to drive between them. The last 60 or 70 kms between Te Anau and Milford Sound itself is a lovely drive and passes through

Aoraki — Mt. Cook

When planning my trip to New Zealand, I considered a number of different options — hotels, camper van and bed & breakfasts. In the end, I opted to go down the B&B route. My reasoning was twofold: (1) B&B’s by their very nature, tend to have more character than the relative anonymity of hotels; (2) You’re more likely to get a feel of a country by statying in someone’s home and benefitting from their local

Christchurch

I arrived in Christchurch around 1.30 after having caught my connecting flight in Sydney. When you look at New Zealand on a map it looks quite close to Australia — almost like the way Ireland is close to England. What we forget however is the scale of both countries. The flight from Sydney to Christchurch took almost 3.5 hours. When I subsequently looked up the mileage between the two cities, I was surprise to find

Stopover in Singapore

It was only on my way out to the airport to catch my onward flight to Sydney that I passed by a cordoned off area of the city centre. It was then that the penny dropped.  The Formula 1 Grand Prix circus was in town (for three days as it turned out) so that probably explained the high prices everywhere. My 4-star hotel had cost me about €280 for the night which is not cheap

The joys of international travel

Connected through Heathrow yesterday, having flown in from Dublin on Aer Lingus. Despite there being three hours connecting time between the flights, my bag never reached the Qantas flight in time with result that I have to kill 24 hours in Singapore in the clothes that I'm wearing. I got 100 Singapore dollars straight away which was something I suppose but it barely coverd the cost of a cheap shirt and underwear in M&S. Also

First Mobile Post

Wow! The onward march of technology never ceases to amaze me. So I can blog away on my forthcoming RTW trip, I've just added a neat app to my Samsung Galaxy SII that will enable me to upload content directly from my phone to the TravelBug website. How cool is that?

The art of getting a quote that is both competitive in price and relevant to your needs starts with gathering all the right information about what you want to do (or think you want to do!).