Family Time in Paradise

Often our friends will ask us about the people who choose to come on one of our tours…Where are they from? Which country? Who would book a bespoke tour?

This is a story on the Monssen Family from Queensland, Australia. Booking ahead they were part of a larger family group meeting in Queenstown for a big get together, however, had decided to sort out some individual family time also. A way of connecting and enjoying their break in a smaller dynamic.

In come us! Here at Authentic As we wont give you high adrenaline thrill seeking rides, well maybe only momentarily as we cross rivers, or wont have you placed in prime spaces for busy areas of tourism, well only to drive past them on the way to something more secret. We love that high energy stuff too believe me but we have framed our business to offer the balance. And in doing so hope to connect our visitors to the nature of this great region of New Zealand in a bespoke and non hurried way, refreshed and ready for the next day, as often visiting folk can group lots of adventures and km’s to make the most of their time in this country.

The Monssens chose the day trip into Glenorchy, Paradise and Mount Aspiring Park. They love nature and recently moved up across Australia from a cooler farming background to the heat of Queensland. Who knew if you put an alpaca in your paddock of new born lambs it keeps the wolves away! Thankfully we don’t need to adopt that method, as Queenstown is wolf free. But its great to swap stories of farming history and methods here with those of our visitors. We endevour to learn as much as we can from bee-keeping to regenerative farming in order to pass on as much knowledge of current positive thinking to our tourists as we can. Yes there is a climate crisis but yes we can share ideas on how New Zealand is making change happen.

As well offering a local example from our honey tasting kit and walking time spent with native beech forest and mixed bush at Bobs Cove & the Rees Valley we also got a visit from a South Island Robin or Toutouwai this little one was hoping from the low branches of the beech onto the forest floor. ‘Pwee Pwee pwee’ he chirped.

Te Ara - an Encylopedia of NZ describe the Robins voice … ‘ its clear sustained song, with its richness and variety of phrasing, is perhaps the finest possessed by any native species’, (Williams 1966).

And we added his sighting and the date to our Field Guide Diary. Standing in the middle of nowhere without any sound but this little guy, brings that sense of peace to the busy times of travel and we pause and smile at his endemic simplicity in this huge world below the mountains.

But not to say we spend all our tours in deep contemplation. We do have a lot of banter and feel really at home with the children who come out with us. Little ones to teens are welcome to share their impressions of our world and we aim to create the best of adventures for them providing refreshment time to wonder and lots of jokes and dialogue to discover their personalities. One of the reasons The Monssens were choosing us was for our photography giving them a professional set of family images for the first time in ten years. Yep that happens to many folk as time runs away when life is busy.

At the end of a tour we know if we have done a great job at balancing fresh air adventure and calm moments as often small people will nod off on the way home settled and relaxed in the back of our Land rovers. If you are planning a summer trip to Queenstown as part of a bigger group or as a family we hope to take you out for some quality time in Paradise too.

If New Zealand birds are your thing, you can also download ‘Birds of New Zealand’ as an app now as well as a book from Auckland University Press.