Whether you’re looking for an armchair travel adventure or an introduction to New Zealand for your own visit, my New Zealand travel trilogy, Cry of the Kiwi: A Family’s New Zealand Adventure, fits the bill perfectly and is now available worldwide in print and e-book formats.

Live and learn, the saying goes, and it has certainly applies to independently publishing my New Zealand travel trilogy, Cry of the Kiwi: A Family’s New Zealand Adventure. I’m not a geek by any stretch of the imagination and at times felt completely overwhelmed by the challenge. Yet, through trial, error and persistence, the three books – Once a Land of Birds, This Dark Sheltering Forest and Tang of the Tasman Sea – are now available worldwide in both print and e-book formats. 

The Cry of the Kiwi trilogy is the story of my family’s travel adventure of a lifetime in the spectacularly beautiful country of New Zealand, one of the Southern Hemisphere’s most popular travel destinations. Broken into three parts that correspond with our time spent on South Island, North Island, and again, South Island, the trilogy takes readers along on my family’s journey of discovery and physical challenge, from South Island’s rugged Southern Alps to North Island’s most northerly point at Cape Rēinga. For ten months, we embarked on a homeschooling and outdoor adventure odyssey, immersing ourselves in New Zealand’s diverse landscapes, nature, culture and history.

During our time in New Zealand, my family was based in Lincoln, South Island, where my husband, Vilis, had a short-term scientific research position with Landcare Research. The aim of his research was to aid the country in getting rid of stoats, a kind of weasel that’s public enemy number one of New Zealand’s native birds. Part of this research involved the four of us driving quads over muddy tracks while trapping stoats on North Island’s Central Volcanic Plateau. Long days in the outdoors introduced my sons to the rigours of ecological fieldwork, and all of us to the lush, cluttered beauty of a North Island rainforest. During time off from studies and research, we travelled throughout the country and hiked hundreds of kilometres of tracks that took us over volcanoes, through sheep pastures, and up and down mountains.

Our time in New Zealand wasn’t all roses. We suffered homesickness, injuries and loneliness. Yet those ten months embodied the realization of a travel dream, a dream that tested and strengthened and rewarded us. We left Canada not knowing what to expect and returned home broadened in ways we had never imagined.

“We came to New Zealand to explore a place far from home, to look out over different landscapes and step out on new trails. We’ve done that in the sense of this country’s physical reality, however, other explorations have been internal. Some of the different landscapes we’ve explored are inside us, and some of the new trails we’ve hiked haven’t led us up mountains, but to new  peaks within us.” – Tang of the Tasman Sea

Here’s what my New Zealand travel trilogy, Cry of the Kiwi: A Family’s New Zealand Adventure, holds for readers:

Explore New Zealand’s spectacular landscapes with an award-winning nature writer. Each book contains more than forty photographs and a map showing our travels.

Delve into Kiwi culture as experienced by a quirky homeschooling family.

Escape into more than eighty outdoor adventures, including research aimed at aiding New Zealand’s endangered kiwi birds.

Learn intriguing historical and ecological facts about the last large landmass to be settled by humans.  Each book includes sidebars of intriguing information, a glossary and a complete list of references.

Now you can share in our story! Tap on the images below for more information about each book, excerpts and links to retailers.

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