Follow Joe & Flora from Queenstown to Christchurch, changing plans along the way due to a fierce storm on the south island’s west coast.

Follow Joe & Flora from Te Anau, to New Zealand’s tourism Capital, Queenstown. In their usual casual style see they experience Queenstown with a severe dose of honesty and fun.

Follow Joe & Flora along Milford Road. The scenic and utterly amazing path leading to New Zealand’s tourism crown Jewel; Milford Sound in this fourth episode of the NZ: South Island Series.

Follow Joe & Flora Lloyd in the third episode of NZ: South Island Series from Scottish inspired Dunedin to the south-most accessible tip of New Zealand. New Zealand’s southland boasts amazing scenery and ample quiet roads to explore.

Leaving

It was all of a bit sudden, but when the opportunity to ride Australia as very extended adventure calls you don’t turn it down, you don’t flinch, question or hesitate either. You just hop …

It’s hard for Joe and Flora to make progress some times… even warming up the 990 Adventure can be a challenge, when accosted by questions from a passerby, about what IS a KTM, wow it’s so ORANGE.. wow it’s so BIG!

Auckland traffic was messed up. Though we got up quite early, there was no point rushing to leave until the traffic cleared up. We had it pegged at around 9:30, but even when we reached the main road, it still was clogged back all the way up the bridge. All for no particular reason…

Gisborne to Te Kaha — We pass over bridges spanning empty river beds, their parched rocks hungry for a taste of mountain water. This small reminder of how dry the season is and could reach critical if the weather continues on the same path. The road so far is good condition, and much better than we expected.

The remainder of the “Forgotten Highway” was an interesting scenic ride, yet we were both fixated on our hungry hungry hippos and the dashing sheep that were straggling on the road.

We start our journey West to East, riding the fattest bit of New Zealand’s North Island. Headed south west towards Te Kuiti, our cunning plan to follow the back roads was thwarted by the damned Garmin box, squawking at us to turn left and right at imaginary roads until it wrote it’s will at the dead end adjacent of a long impassable lake.

We tried for an early start, but trying to coax a 4 year old to eat his breakfast in a hurry is out of the question. My sister tried to hurry him along but he wanted to finish watching “Cats & Dogs” for the 40th time before we returned it to the front counter.

New Zealand is simply stunning in the summer, every year it peaks the list of popular tourist destinations, and rightly so. We still marvel at the scenery as we ride on a daily basis, and welcome any opportunity to share it. As warm days approach, our Canadian relatives flock south to the warm climate, eager to escape the bitter cold and take full advantage of the free accommodation.

Boxing Day. For some it means sales, others a hang-over and a general feeling of “I ATE TOO MUCH YESTERDAY!!!”, others it’s the annual Boxing day races, for us its picking a route that will avoid the most holiday traffic possible while still showing some stunning Coromandel Peninsula scenery.

26,000 kilometers of Australian Highway, sand, mud, and gravel roads. Three months of camping at truck stops, caravan parks, greasy food, unique wildlife and amazing landscapes… and twelve episodes of stunning HD.

Friday afternoon, the sun was out and it couldn’t get any stiller. In a bit of a last minute decision we decide on doing a 2-1/2 day ride to the tip of the North Island of New Zealand. To Cape Reinga and the lighthouse there.

The alarm chirped at 7:00 AM, the sun blasting through the dark curtains won’t help if we pull the covers over our heads. Without much hesitation, we climb out of bed and perform our wake-up rituals. The previous night we had done the bulk of the packing, which made the morning start less ominous.

There are rods for our backs and for our eyes, and cones for smoking and seeing. Rods distinguish shapes, cones determine colour. In the hour before dawn the rods rule – there are shapes without …