Client Review: 100 Miles on Her Boots and 200 Dolphins Later
Barbara's New Zealand Journey with Nigel Perks
By Taylor Wells
Some people collect passport stamps. Barbara collects experiences that most people only dream about.
With four trips to Africa already behind her, gorilla treks, the Serengeti, Namibia, Botswana, Kenya, and beyond, plus Bhutan, Japan, Machu Picchu, and much of Europe, Barbara is not someone who is easily impressed.
So when John Spence told her New Zealand was worth it, she listened.
She has known John for over 25 years, back to his days running Aardvark Safaris in England, and that kind of trust is not built on empty recommendations.
She had lost touch with him for a few years after he moved on from Aardvark. She found him again the way you find the best things in life, by accident.
A woman at a gas station recognized her from a previous John Spence event and handed over his contact information. She gave him a ring, ready for her next John Spence adventure.
When John tells you a place is worth it, you go.
"I think he's the cat's meow when it comes to traveling," she says.
John had just come back from New Zealand himself, and he already had the perfect Expert in mind.
Enter Nigel
Nigel Perks is a born and bred Kiwi and based in Nelson on the South Island of New Zealand. He and John go way back both in the travel business, and Nigel had also spent a lot of time living in Tanzania. He knows how to build a safari-style itinerary, and that is exactly what he did in New Zealand.
"Apparently John did tell him that I was up for anything," Barbara says with a laugh. "So he for sure put together an itinerary that had us moving."
Nigel took that to heart.
Barbara traveled with her niece, and by all accounts the two were perfectly matched. "There wasn't anything that she didn't do," Barbara says. "She was just, okay, what's the next thing we do?"
Together they put 100 miles on each of their boots over the course of the trip.
Nigel had them up and moving most mornings by 8:30, keeping the kind of full, fast-paced rhythm that Barbara knows well from years of safari travel. She would not have had it any other way.
A Country That Announces Itself
The journey began in Auckland, with a drive south to Rotorua on the North Island, where they settled into the stunning shores of Lake Rotorua. The first few days were spent exploring the geothermal wonders of the region, thermal pools, boiling mud, the spectacular Huka Falls, and an authentic Maori cultural experience that brought the history and heritage of the Te Arawa people to life.
From there, they flew south to Queenstown, where Nigel was waiting.
And from that moment, the trip never really slowed down.
The Kiwi You Will Never Forget
One of the early highlights came on Stewart Island, New Zealand's third largest island and one of its most remote. They flew to the southern tip of the South Island and took another very brief flight over to the island, where they spent two nights nestled in the native bush above Halfmoon Bay.
The Stewart Island Wild Kiwi Encounter is not for the faint of heart. You go out by boat in the dead of night, then trek on foot through dense coastal forest in complete darkness, flashlights in hand, searching for the Southern brown kiwi. The silence is total. The anticipation is real.
Most New Zealanders have never seen a kiwi in the wild.
Barbara saw five.
"We would stand there and just admire the kiwi as it was feeding at night. It uses that long bill to go down into the ground and scoop up insects. It fights with its feet. Although it has wings, it's flightless. And he's a big bird."
It is the kind of moment that simply cannot be manufactured. No highlight reel, no nature documentary, no postcard prepares you for it.
You either find yourself standing silently in a dark New Zealand forest watching a flightless bird feed in the dead of night, or you only hear about it from someone who did.
Milford Sound, Jet Boats, and the Wild West Coast
Back in Queenstown, the pace stayed upbeat.
A scenic flight over the Southern Alps to Milford Sound, followed by a two-hour cruise through the fjord with a nature guide on board.
A jet boat ride through the pristine waters of Mount Aspiring National Park, then floating back downriver in a Funyak, drifting through hidden side streams and chasms carved by glacier water over centuries.
Then came the West Coast, the part of New Zealand most visitors skip entirely.
Nigel knew every pullout, every trail, every hidden bay. He would stop the car without warning, step out, and say, "Okay, here's the trail over here. Let's go."
"It's considered the wild part of New Zealand," Barbara explains. "Not a lot of people live there. Not a lot of towns."
Nothing quite prepared Barbara and her niece for Fox Glacier, where a helicopter ride lifted them onto the ice and carried them over the snowcapped New Zealand Alps.
"The helicopter ride was incredible because the mountains there are called the Alps of New Zealand and they're snowcapped. They're absolutely gorgeous," Barbara says.
And then, in the middle of nowhere at a place called Jackson Bay, Nigel pulled over at what could only be described as a food truck. He knew the owner. He ordered without consulting the menu.
"He said, 'The best green lip mussels in the world,'" Barbara says. "We had blue cod fish and chips and green lip mussels that were just absolutely fantastic."
No five star restaurant could have topped it.
That is the Nigel Perks experience in a single moment. No itinerary could have planned it. Only someone who knows every corner of that coastline would have stopped there.
Two Hundred Dolphins and an Orca
If there is one story that captures what New Zealand can deliver when the conditions align, it is this.
At Kaikoura, Barbara went out on the water for a dolphin swim. Kaikoura is one of the only places in the world where you can swim with wild dusky dolphins daily, and the numbers can be extraordinary.
On the day Barbara went out, two pods had merged.
"It was 200 dolphins that we swam with. We're not talking about one or two," she says. "The dolphins would be jumping out of the water doing twirls and then coming down into the water. But there were so many of them you couldn't believe it. It was just packed with dolphins."
And as if that were not enough, just off the side of the boat, an orca appeared with two calves.
All of it happening at once.
Kaikoura continued to offer spectacular views and surprises. A scenic flight over the Kaikoura Sea Canyon to spot sperm whales from the air. An albatross tour, where a wandering albatross with a 12-foot wingspan chased off every competing bird in sight.
"I explained to him that he wasn't going to make friends that way," Barbara says poking fun.
During her Peninsula Seal Walk, tucked nearby, a natural tidal pool filled with baby seals learning to swim, 20 of them splashing and tumbling over one another in a few feet of water.
Nature was truly the entertainment.
Nelson, Golden Bay, and Abel Tasman
The final stretch brought them to Nelson, one of New Zealand's sunniest regions and the gateway to three national parks. Nelson was the perfect place to exhale.
They wound their way there through the Marlborough Wine District, sipping and slowing down before one final adventure: a full day on the water cruising the stunning coastline of Abel Tasman National Park. Kayaking, swimming, native forest walks, and the kind of unhurried beauty that makes you wish the trip wasn't ending.
A graceful close to twenty days of pure, unhurried adventure.
The Recap
Barbara came home exhausted in the best possible way. Twenty days of adventure by day and luxury by night will do that to you. She would not have changed a single thing.
"It was an incredible trip. I would recommend New Zealand to anybody," she says.
She has worked with others. She will tell you plainly that there is no comparison.
"John Spence knows travel. He really does. He's the greatest person to learn it from. I have not been impressed with anybody else."
New Zealand did not just meet expectations. It surpassed them completely, the way only a John Spence journey can.