The Perfect Tours

Imagine waking up in a village where the ground beneath your feet is alive. Steam rises from the earth. Hot pools bubble beside homes. Mud boils naturally in pools and the distant roar of a geyser suddenly breaks the silence. And then you realise something even more fascinating: people have lived here for generations, learning how to live alongside these powerful forces of nature. That was exactly what we wondered when we visited Whakarewarewa Living Maori Village in Rotorua, New Zealand, with our family in April. My husband, our two children and I had already experienced many beautiful places during our travels around New Zealand, but Whakarewarewa was completely different. Located in the heart of Rotorua on New Zealand's North Island, Whakarewarewa is far more than a tourist attraction. It is the home of the "Tuhourangi Ngati Wahiao people", a place where Maori culture, history, everyday life and the extraordinary geothermal landscape are woven together. It wasn't...

Have you ever seen a beautiful place in a picture or on television when you were young and wondered what it would feel like to see it with your own eyes one day? Sometimes, certain places stay in our memories for years, even though we have never actually been there. For me, Mount Taranaki in New Zealand was one of those places. When I was a child, I knew this spectacular mountain as "Anchor Mountain" because it appeared in the famous "Anchor Milk Powder advertisement". The image of that perfectly shaped mountain became familiar to me long before I ever knew where it was. I remember seeing it in the advertisement and being fascinated by its beautiful shape and majestic appearance. At that age, I never imagined that the mountain I knew only from a television advertisement was a real place that I might one day have the chance to visit. As the years passed, that childhood image remained in my memory. I travelled, saw many beautiful places and experienced different lands...