Find your next adventure.
These are the tracks, caves, beaches, roads and strange places we have actually explored as a family.
Every guide combines our first-hand experience with practical information to help you decide whether the same place belongs in your own New Zealand adventure.
Fresh from the road.
Wharariki Beach
We went looking for the New Zealand beach we had been staring at on our computers for years. What we found was a wild coastline, huge rock formations, strong wind and a tide we should have waited a little longer for.
One road trip. Five completely different places.
Our first proper Scenic Route collection stretches from the limestone and heights around Tākaka Hill all the way to the exposed coast at Wharariki Beach.
Tākaka Hill Via Ferrata
Our first via ferrata started with an easy introduction, climbed into serious exposure and eventually showed us exactly where our limit was that day.
Rāwhiti Cave Track
A steep track through dense bush leading to an enormous cave entrance filled with formations growing toward the light.
The Grove Scenic Reserve
Nīkau palms, enormous limestone blocks, narrow passages and one of the most beautiful little forests we have explored.
Te Waikoropupū Springs
Water so clear that standing above it almost plays tricks on your eyes, with a much bigger story hiding underground.
Wharariki Beach
Famous rock arches, shifting dunes and the New Zealand beach behind a familiar Windows 10 lock-screen image.
Not just a list of things to do.
We use these pages for the information that helps you plan. The videos get to keep the adventure.
What felt easy, what surprised us, where we spent more time than expected and the things we would do differently.
Track details, access, facilities, restrictions and useful planning information are checked against reliable sources.
Geology, conservation, history and the strange details that made us stop and look a little closer.
The website helps you understand the place. The videos are where the weather, reactions, mistakes and family moments happen.
Apparently we are not very good at sticking to one kind of adventure.
That is probably a good thing.
Five adventures is only the beginning.
We are adding guides as we explore New Zealand, so this page will keep growing with new regions, road trips and places we probably did not know existed a week earlier.
The guides tell you where we went. YouTube shows you what happened.
Come along for the drive, the discoveries and the moments we definitely did not plan.
The Scenic Route is first a family adventure channel. This website is here to make the places we find more useful once the episode is over.
There is always another road.
And we are still new enough to New Zealand that we have no idea where most of them lead yet.