You know how, for the most part, you’d rather be travelling? Same with us. Yes, our entire New Zealand experience counts as travelling - but really, we like it best when we are sleeping somewhere other than our own bed. Not to say that we haven’t had some fun in our hometown lately. We’ve done some distinctly NZ things here and really enjoyed them. First, the rugby game. We knew we didn’t want to let our time here go by without catching a rugby match, and we ended up going to one with a big group from the hospital. Rugby is [View Full Entry]

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Coromandel and More South Island Splendor Hello again... Here's what we've been up to... We recently took a quick weekend trip to the Coromandel Peninsula. The peninsula is northwest of us, and is a hugely popular summer destination for Aucklanders. We decided to check it out before high season starts. It takes about 2.5 hours to get to Hahei Beach, where we were staying. The drive was filled with a few small towns along the way. Each are famous for their own reasons: one has great natural spas, another has an original railroad system, and so forth. All of them were [View Full Entry]

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Hola and happy new year to all...MOT that is... This is sort of a hodge podge of adventures that we have done recently--short, sweet and to the point---please check out all of our action photos! Before work began for me, we decided to take some advice from a fellow American ED doc (thanks Julie) and drive out for a good hour in every direction out of our home town of Rotorua. On one trip south to Taupo, we decided to explore our first high adrenaline native Kiwi adventure: Hi-speed jet boating. This, on the banks of the Huka Falls. Not your [View Full Entry]

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Yes, we've been bad bloggers, and we admit it. In our defense, we've rarely been home. This, September 18, will be our fifteenth night at home, compared with 16 nights being spent elsewhere. Not that we're complaining. We've been up to some pretty fun stuff. Our first out-of-town weekend trip here was to Hawkes Bay, also known as wine country. We set out late on Friday afternoon, and what a drive it was. Beautiful mountain roads, rolling hills, lush forests...ahh. At one point, we stopped at a scenic overlook just to stretch our legs. Wouldn't you know it, this virtually unmarked [View Full Entry]

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It should be mentioned that we spent about a week and a half in Hamilton for Aaron's orientation. Hamilton, which is a larger city an hour-and-a-half northwest of Rotorua, gets a bad rap for being a place where there's not much going on. However, we found it to be quite nice. It has a reasonably big downtown area, with lots of nice restaurants and boutiques. There are also the stellar Hamilton Gardens, which are breathtaking - and free to visit! We will return to the gardens in October to see the flowers blooming. Hamilton is also a convenient stop on the [View Full Entry]

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Hello to everyone and sorry that our 2nd blog took so long to produce! We just got a secure wireless internet account here in New Zealand so that is what the delay has been! Anyway, we were quite sad to leave Moorea as we really fell in love with the island. It's a spectacularly stunning island, with gorgeous sunsets (new pics included) towering mountain peaks, and sparkling clear blue waters! We were able to snorkel right below our bungalow and the amount and variety of fish we saw was amazing. We also did a really fun ATV ride into the mountains, [View Full Entry]

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Bonjour to all... So, life here in the islands of French Polynesia isn't too bad! It's 7 pm Friday evening, and Candice and I are hanging at the bar, reading/internet at our resort here in Moorea. We had an absolutely gorgeous day...we had a boat take us to a small motu (island) and drop us off for a few hours of the best snorkeling I've ever been a part of. Absolutely no one else was around. We could stand or just float in the water, and we observed thousands of the most beautifully striped/colored fish! Overall, our experience here over the [View Full Entry]

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