I met with Mike and Hailey one Sunday afternoon out at Piha, on Auckland’s West Coast. I’ve known Mike for a very long time and have some fond memories of his high school antics with my brother. I’m looking forward to being able to celebrate their marriage in July and also take their photos!
I was super lucky to get four nights in the amazing south island this past weekend. It was a mountain biking trip, but truth be told its all about the photos these days…..We rode Skyline in Queenstown, Cardrona Ski Field and the Sticky Forest, river and Dean’s Bank Trails in Wanaka. Fantastic scenery, lots of scotch at the Cardrona Alehouse, and good times all round. On the last day I took a lonesome drive from Queenstown to Glenorchy, and then up into Paradise Valley which transitions into the Mt Aspiring National Park.
We had an awesome little getaway to Aussie in March this year. We’d been to Brisbane in 2007 which was my first ever overseas trip with my then-girlfriend (now my lovely wife!). Its amazing how much Brisbane has changed since then. I remember our initial impression was of a rather bleak and bland inner city (when comparing it with Melbourne) with not much to do. Its fair to say our impression has now changed dramatically since then – an abundance of cafes and active public spaces line the city streets. You can’t help but enjoy it.READ MORE
This past week I was lucky to have four amazing days in Nelson, riding some incredible (and tough) mountain bike trails with my friend, Mark. He also happens to be my former manager so that worked out quite nicely didn’t it?! Thank you lovely wife for looking after the princess, I love you xo
On the first day we drove to Kaiteriteri Bike Park from Nelson. There are some amazing trails there the just seem to ‘flow’ around the various valleys that dissect the park. After bombing down a few runs and loosing it briefly (battle scars now on my arm), we took the bikes to Kaiteriteri Beach and cooled ourselves off in the blue waters that are the beginning of the Abel Tasman National Park. Very cool waters indeed, but what a beach.
Here are a few recent photos from my D750 that I have been enjoying over the past coupe of months. Its also looking to be a stunner of a summer here in New Zealand.
In August we traveled to California to sample the USA for the first time. We saw it as a great chance to make the most of the cheap airfare on account of Sienna’s age (you pay next to nothing for an under 2 year old) and who doesn’t want to travel?! We saw driving the iconic Pacific Coast Highway as a great thing to do for our first big trip away, and a great way of mixing things up and seeing different cities/towns and landscapes. It worked.
I had a funny sense of Deja Vu today as I decided to take a walk on a sunny day through the nature walks around The Falls Hotel in Henderson. I remember coming down here to take photos of the stream when I was fourth form in high School. I had my first camera, a Nikon FM10 (which was a fully-manual film camera), and the tripod that my Oma and Opa had given me for my birthday. It feels like only yesterday, but in fact was over 15 years ago!!! Freaky. Anyway, this was a lunchtime well-spent as you can see. Autumn is delivering the goods.
One of the great things about having good friends that live all over the country is that you have a good excuse to do some travelling. Our really good friends Tom and Arapera were getting married on her family farm in Oamaru, so it was a great reason to take a few extra days off work and make a proper holiday of it. We headed down to Christchurch (henceforth referred to as Chch) and took the morning to take in the changes to the city. WOW. The have cleaned things up a lot but you can really feel the devastation…entire city blocks just ‘blank’ waiting for new development. It was great to see that progress was being made. The Cathedral… well i’ll just let you see the picture and leave it at that shall I?!
We have been to Russell (located in the Bay of Islands) a number of times over the years. We usually take up residence in the Top 10 motor camp with a tent. This time was a little different given my wife was due to give birth in about 1 month – needless to say an air bed on the ground in a tent was not an option!
What to do in Russell? Walk around, look at the history, then site at one of the bars along the waterfront and enjoy the sea breeze. There is a certain nautical ‘air’ about the place that I really dig.