New Zealand

Exclusive interview with The Great Family Leap

Posted on Oct 1, 2015

Exclusive interview with The Great Family Leap

The Great Family Leap has been back in the Netherlands and we had the pleasure of interviewing Taco and Petra from The Great Family Leap about their adventure. How is it to be back in the Netherlands? “We are settling in quite well. It is great to have our own home and possessions back. We love the fact that we have a good extra long bed and the kids are thrilled with all their toys that they re-discovered. What surprises us most is the sheer amount of things that we have: so many books, so much kitchenware, so much of everything. And we miss the sun already, it is so grey and wet here in...

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Top 15 things we liked in New Zealand

Posted on Apr 26, 2015

Top 15 things we liked in New Zealand

We have just arrived in Hawaii and New Zealand already start to feel as a distant memory. But we had such a great time there, so we decided to write a short summary and list our top 15 highlights for you. Maybe it will inspire other families. New Zealand is a great country to travel with young kids, especially if you like nature and outdoors. It is not a low budget country though, but for us it was well worth the money. We visited both the South Island and the North Island, we traveled for 5 weeks in a camper van and we stayed in a house for a couple of weeks on both islands. In 85 days we...

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Fire and Ice on the Tongariro Alpine Crossing

Posted on Apr 17, 2015

Fire and Ice on the Tongariro Alpine Crossing

The Tongariro Alpine Crossing is rated as the world’s finest day hike and is described by the Lonely Planet as “Reputedly the best one day walk in New Zealand, the Tongariro Alpine Crossing  spectacular volcanic geography, from an active crater to the steaming vents and beautiful coloured lakes. The crossing is one of New Zealand’s life-changing experiences” The Tongariro National Park featured as Mordor in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.  Mordor is the great volcanic plateau filled with geological  wonders known as Gorgoroth.  Much of Frodo and Sam’s journey...

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Polar outbreak in New Zealand

Posted on Apr 11, 2015

Polar outbreak in New Zealand

Just read the weather forecast for the coming days: “Polar outbreak on Monday and Tuesday – A burst of cold air originating from the Antarctic ice sheet is expected to affect New Zealand on Monday and Tuesday. Unseasonably cold temperatures, strong winds and snow to low levels are expected over the South Island where this event is likely to have a high impact. The coldest air is expected to make its way north to the North Island on Tuesday bringing strong winds and unusually low temperatures” So it seems that the Indian summer that we had for a long time now in New Zealand...

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Camping days are over

Posted on Apr 2, 2015

Camping days are over

We are back in Auckland but this time without our camper van. A few days ago we returned our camper van and picked-up a rental car. We all felt a little sad, as we had been travelling in our van for five weeks and it had become a little bit our home. You get used to living in a van and it is surely a great way to discover New Zealand. But it is now time to move on and we have different plans for the last three weeks of our stay in New Zealand, so no more camping. So what did we do in the last week with the camper? We wanted to visit a new part of New Zealand and we were searching for nice...

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