We were both excited to be visiting New Zealand's art deco city, Napier. How pray tell does an entire town get built in one era when these things usually grow organically over time? Blame the earthquake of 1931 which levelled most of the town. It was rebuilt in the fashion of the time, Art Deco. We once heard (and it stuck) that the easy way to remember the dates for the era is 'between the wars' - WWI AND WWII respectively. Until the crash of 1929 when things w...

Tauranga was a 'first' visit for both of us and with no plans beyond a long walk through town, fish and chips and a long walk back along the beach, we were looking forward to it. It was a blazing sunny day with a clear blue sky and we went up on deck to see us dock at the Port of Tauranga. Fun fact. Despite being called the Port of Tauranga, the town it is actually in is the beach side town of Mount Maunganui. We could have googled pictures of Mount Maunganui's ...

4-7 March 2023 - Sea. Literally forever. En route to New ZealandIt was only 4 days but it gave me a chance to recover from snorkelling my sick self all over the reefs, fishies and turtles of the Cook Islands. Well start to recover anyway. Funnily enough, the antibiotics had almost knocked the horrendous sore throat out - but I developed a diabolical cough in the relapse staage after Papeete - Luckily flinging up a lung is situation normal on the Magnifican't. ...

The Cook Islands. This was a 'first' for both of us and obviously a glaring oversight. All I can say is when I lived in New Zealand I was a very poor church mouse and when I moved to Australia, well it's damned awkward to get to when the airlines mantra appears to be 'screw the pax and lose the bags' - especially for connecting flights. Apparently direct flights from Sydney to Rarotonga will be starting later this year. James's excuse? Would have been very diff...

The last time we visited Tahiti was in December 2010 - our first foray in house-swapping and what a huge success it was too. We swapped apartments with a lovely Parisian Doctor and his wife - they left us an apartment on a small private marina, a BMW and a Citroen, we left them our apartment with views over the city of Sydney and our kitty cat Tasha. We all had an outstanding time. We spent the month in Tahiti diving, cruising around the island's main road (AKA t...