This is the  Martha open pit gold mine in Waihi New Zealand. To give you a sense of scale, when the mining is finished it will be flooded to form a 634 ...

I was watching the most recent Narnia movie this weekend (Prince Capsian) as the Pevensie children stepped off a train platform in London and appeared to come out of a cave in ...

This is a view of the shipping channel near Mt Maunganui, New Zealand taken from the Mt Mauao Reserve which is a hill at the mouth of the harbor. Climbing the hill ...

See the tiny dump truck in the lower right of this picture. That dump truck has tires that are 8 feet (2.5 meters) tall. You are looking at the Martha open pit ...

Te Puia in Rotorua is an area where you can see some of the geothermal activity in the Rotorua area as well as Maori cultural presentations. This Maori “warrrior” is trying to ...

This building in Rotorua, New Zealand was built as a bath house where one could “take the cure”. Now the building is the Rotorua Museum. It was for many years both a ...

Chris, the Amateur Traveler himself, talks about a recent trip to New Zealand’s North Island where he went to the Waitangi Treaty Grounds and took a dolphin watching cruise up by the ...

Mount Ngauruhoe is an active volcano in New Zealand in the Tongariro National Park (the world’s 4th oldest national park and a UNESCO World Heritage Site). Mount Ngauruhoe erupted 45 times in ...

One of the highlights of my trip to New Zealand was blackwater rafting in the Waitomo Caves. Blackwater rafting is basically spelunking with an inner  tube to ride the underground river. The ...

While I was in the Bay of Islands I took a cruise to the “Hole in the Rock” with Dolphin Discoveries. They see dolphins on 96% of their cruises and this one ...