I have done so many trips with Adventure South I had to make a list to count them. Trips 1-11 were led, many custom designed, by long-time* Adventure South Guide (now friend, cycling and life mentor) Bas Kruisselbrink. He's now on another adventure, still cycling, but the team at Adventure South are continuing to match or exceed his precedent.
Why Adventure South?
Initially it was a random encounter: Saw an item on the Aussie 'Getaway' TV travel show in 2002, a trip from Christchurch to Queenstown and Milford Sound, and immediately booked for Summer 2003. The photo below is mine, from that trip and not a carefully crafted photoshopped marketing image, which shows how good it was!
I wrote this blog post after my fourth trip, having just booked the fifth, to answer a question lots of people have asked over the years. The reasons haven't changed, just add more amazing adventures and good friends made since then. These trips, most often largely returning clients, have covered most of New Zealand and further afield to Vietnam and Nepal.
Links go to blog post indexes, where I've written them, and/or Flickr Photo Albums;
- 2003 | NZ South Island | Milford Wilderness (Flickr)
- 2004 | NZ South Island | West Coast Escape (Flickr)
- 2005 | NZ South Island | Catlins & Te Anau/Doubtful Sound (Flickr)
- 2006 | NZ South Island | Northern West Coast (Flickr)
- 2007 | NZ South Island | Otago Rail Trail extended (Flickr)
- 2008 | Vietnam | Mekong Delta Cycle & Hanoi, Hạ Long Bay to Hội An (Flickr)
- 2011 | NZ South Island | Northern Coast To Coast Loop (Flickr)
- 2012-02 | NZ South Island | Marlborough & West Coast (Flickr)
- 2012-12 | NZ North Island | Northland Loop (Flickr)
- 2014 | Tibet & Nepal | Lhasa to Kathmandu Himalayan Traverse (Based on a World Expeditions trip but run by Bas) (Flickr)
- 2019 | NZ South Island | Alps to Ocean (Flickr)
- 2022-03 deferred to 2024-03 due to COVID interruptions | NZ South Island | Old Ghost Road Mountain Bike with Will & Lewis
In 2022, on a NZ wide drive/cycle trip, I relived, re-rode, a remarkable day from that first trip in 2003, revisiting Bennetts Bluff on the Glenorchy Road. It was amazing to think where an impulse decision, booking after seeing a travel show on a gloomy winter day, has led.
If you are thinking about it, do it before 'sometime' becomes no time.
All my Adventure South related posts, not just trip specific, are in this Index. I'm slowly 'retro-blogging' the earlier trips, adding links here as I go.
* Considered the term 'veteran' but he's bigger and faster than me!
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