Travel blogging tips from the experts: A Dangerous Business

This weeks travel blogging tips article features one of my favourite travel bloggers: Amanda Williams, author of travel blog A Dangerous Business.

Amanda and I share a passion for New Zealand, and she has already provided me with a wonderfully comprehensive post on what to do when in the land of the long white cloud, a post which proved to be immensely valuable to me when I came out here.

Today Amanda shares her thoughts on what it takes to start a successful travel blog, taken from the lessons she has learnt over the last year of building her own site, including thoughts on advertising, traffic stats, and the things she wish she had done earlier. Enjoy the read.

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Return to Rotorua

Ah Rotorua. The city where the ground boils and the air has a distinct odour of faintly rotting eggs. I’ve been here before, on a whistle stop tour, where I managed to take in some Maori Culture and a spot of geothermal activity, and back then I wished I had more time to spare in the place.

Now, my wish has been granted. Thanks going out to whichever deity sorted that out for me. I am now living in Rotorua, working full time in a pretty awesome hostel. As you can probably imagine, learning how to run a hostel has been a full time job, meaning that I’ve been spending a lot of time explaining to people about all the awesome things there are to do here, and not a lot of time actually doing them.

And there are loads of awesome things to do in Rotorua. From experiencing Maori culture with an evening hangi, to watching the ground spit steam and mud, to rafting over seven metre high waterfalls, to rolling down hills in giant hamster balls, to world class mountain biking – the list just goes on and on.

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New Zealand’s surf coast highway

In today’s post I’ll be talking about a part of New Zealand that isn’t on the usual route of many travellers heading through NZ, a route that often starts in Auckland, passes through the Coromandel Peninsula, then turns south via volcanic Rotorua and the Tongariro Alpine Crossing towards Wellington and the ferry to the South Island.

If you do have more time though, it is really worth the side trip to the Taranaki region, not only for the surf coast highway, but also for the Lost World Highway and of course the stunning Mount Taranaki which dominates this entire region.

Today’s post is being posted as part of the travel blogging communities effort to rally behind New Zealand in the wake of the Christchurch earthquake and to help promote New Zealand tourism. This wasn’t too hard for me to achieve, given that I barely shut up about the place, but every little bit helps.

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Climbing Mount Taranaki in photos

Mount Taranaki is the second highest mountain on New Zealand’s north island, at 2517m (around 8500ft for you folks on the imperial system).

The climb up it is a gruelling 17km hike, and this is generally regarded as being one of the toughest day hikes you can do on the north island.

With this knowledge in our minds, we decided to give it a go. The day we chose was absolutely perfect, with just a gentle breeze to accompany us, and no cloud forecast.

The hike started at the 900 metre mark, and from there on in it was all uphill, first through lush forest, then scrubland, before the really hard part – a tough slog up an insanely steep scree field and a scramble up the lava flow near the top.

Here are a series of photos to give you an idea of what this walk is like. Check out the end of the post for a bit more information on the walk, and a video of me making a tit out of myself on the way back down the aforementioned scree slope…

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Travel blogging tips from the experts – Hole in the Donut

In today’s travel blogging tips article I am delighted to be interviewing Barbara Weibel, author of travel blog Hole in the Donut World Travel.

Barbara is a travel blogger who has made travelling her life, and her travel blog generates sufficient income to fund this dream – the aspiration of many a blogger.

Barbara focuses on excellent narrative travel writing, and her stories of her travels are always a worthy read.

Today she tells us what started off her on the road she is on today, what success means to her, and how much work running a travel blog full time actually is.

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The lost world highway

There are many magnificent highways to drive in the world, but I would argue that New Zealand’s oldest touring route, the Lost World highway, has one of the best names of the lot.

Just the idea of a highway passing through a lost world conjures up images of immense T-Rex ploughing through jungles, sauropods hanging out in swamps, and pterodactyls wheeling overhead.

No doubt by now dinosaur experts are despairing at my lack of dinosaur knowledge, or my reckless association with Michael Crichton books and lost valleys. Maybe I should have gone with some Indiana Jones imagery instead.

Perhaps I should start the whole post over again. Stretching for 155km from Taumarunui in the east, to Stratford in the west, the lost world highway is a testament to early pioneering spirit in New Zealand. It offers a glimpse of fascinating history, as well as some geographical delights, including a hobbit hole containing giant fossilised crabs, the north island’s highest waterfall, and more crinkly landscape than you can shake a stick at.

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Maori Mountain Myths

New Zealand’s north island is not as blessed as the south island when it comes to mountains.

The southern alps alone are home to around thirty peaks which rise in excess of 3000 metres – only Mount Ruapehu on the north island comes close – and even he is short by 300 metres, coming in at 2672 metres.

There are, in fact, only three mountains on the north island which cross the 2000 metre line, Mount’s Ruapehu, Ngauruhoe and Taranaki. The first two of these can be found within the Tongariro National Park in the centre of New Zealand’s north island, which is where I have been lucky enough to live for the last four months.

The third of these, Mount Taranaki, lies 180km to the west, on the shores of the Tasman sea, and it is to this mountain that we are travelling in the next few days.

Two of these mountains (Ngauruhoe is geologically just an offshoot of Tongariro) are part of a classic piece of Maori mythology, which explains why Taranaki is so far removed from the main volcanic plateau, brooding as he does at the centre of an otherwise flat plain, surrounded by crashing surf and black sand beaches. The story goes something like this:

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Road sickness

There comes a moment in every travel blog when the author decides to share some rather vile story involving bodily fluids.

Be this folk throwing up on the bus next to you (a staple of my trip round China) or the fascinating trough style open toilets that you may happen upon (wait, that’s China again), every traveller has some fairly nasty tale to share.

Well, good news. I am about to set off on a mini road trip around the west coast of New Zealand’s north island, and this seemed like as good a time as any to share one of my more favourite bodily fluid related stories from the road.

The best thing is that this didn’t even take place anywhere particularly exotic, so you could even recreate it yourself without much effort. All you need is a nice hot day, a motorway and a leaky plastic bag.

I should advise that the following story does involve some rather disturbing imagery, and may not be best digested over a meal.

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Weaponised Bread

I have a test for you. Find a German person who is travelling. Ask them what they miss about Germany. After a little bit of lyrical waxing about the awesome singing of David Hasselhoff and the wonder that is Oktoberfest, I can pretty much guarantee you that at some point they will bemoan the lack of decent bread available anywhere in the world apart from Germany.

This is because German bread differs quite significantly to bread in the rest of the world. The main difference being its consistency: it is somewhat denser than your average loaf. I think it was probably originally some kind of building material, confused as a lunch time ingredient by a hung-over construction worker, and then adopted into the national diet. That, or it is an attempt at weaponising a food stuff.

There is a point to this bread based rambling. My dear girlfriend, who happens to be German, has just celebrated her birthday. I am usually at a loss with what to do for these events, particularly on the road and I decided this time round that I would try and give her something she wouldn’t normally get. Creating German bread (or at least attempting to) was my solution.

It turns out that German bread is, in fact, not the simple “mix cement with flour” baking process that you may suspect. Instead it turns out to be a multi-day event, requiring the creation of two separate doughs, overnight rising, refrigeration, two different types of flour, and more steam than a Turkish bath.

The main differences between normal bread and German bread, for those of you interested in these things, are the use of rye flour as well as normal flour, and the baking process, which requires a very hot and steamy oven.

I am pleased to report that after a lot of effort, and some serious kneading of a dough that was, to my mind, more suited to life as an emergency stopper for cracked damns than an actual foodstuff, the final product was met with great positivity. Which was the overall aim, so huzzah all round.

If you’re interested in trying to create your own deadly bread based missile, I mostly followed this recipe.

The rest of the birthday went as one would hope. There was a cake with candles. A present which had come all the way from Germany was opened. Rain fell pretty much all day. Snow was forecast to follow. Summer appears to have ended – the blackberries bursting out of the bushes are a testament to that.

On a totally unrelated note, the rain brought the revelation that fishing is probably the perfect outdoor recreational activity. The holiday park is filled with fishermen at the moment, and it seems that rain is not a barrier to sitting in a boat catching nothing all day. Unlike many other outdoor pursuits, where rain would entirely stop play.

You don’t need to be a fisherman to not catch fish all day I have figured – you can just sit outside in the rain and pretend just as well. It’s an option I will be offering to the morose looking hikers who peer forlornly at the grey cloud filled skies, unable to complete their journey across the Tongariro Alpine Crossing, and cursing the fickle weather gods of New Zealand.

I will leave you with that thought for the day, and of course, many happy returns to Vera, who has now managed to travel with me for nearly a year, possibly even more of a challenge than making it to thirty two ;)

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Travel: my selfish pursuit

Travel is a rather selfish activity. By that, I don’t mean that travel is turning me into a people hating world destroying recluse. No, what I mean is that travel is something that really focuses on being of benefit to the individual doing the travel, in this case me, and no-one else.

Allow me to explain myself. I am just coasting over the hill of thirty, having spent a couple of years now in my third decade. I have a pretty tight knit group of friends who I have grown to know and love over the years. And because they are all running about as late with the whole growing up and settling down thing as me, many of them hadn’t, by the time I left, gotten around to doing the grown up stuff yet. You know – the getting married, having kids… buying a house… sort of thing that responsible adults are encouraged to get on with doing at some point.

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Travel blogging tips from the experts: Bacon is Magic

In today’s travel blogging tips article I am delighted to be featuring Ayngelina Brogan, author of the wonderfully titled blog: Bacon is Magic.

Currently travelling in Latin America, on a journey that has lasted almost a year, Ayngelina set off with the intention of finding out more about herself and her life.

Nearly a year of travelling later, she has made the decision to lead a location independent lifestyle. On her blog she shares her stories of travel, her hopes and fears, and some wonderful photography.

Today she talks about her aspirations for her site, who she turns to when she needs advice, and her number one tip for increasing site traffic. On with the interview!

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