Following copied from our excellent local newspaper –

Taupo & Turangi Weekender

Locals enjoy reading interesting local news.  It is far preferred ahead of the big Auckland and Wellington papers. 

(I particularly like their heading which has the outline of an angler casting so you instinctively know they have the local priorities in place…)

Following close on the heels of the article – see TRM Daily Report for 25 August – which was critical of Turangi and other NZ towns having not achieving world wide status as “trout towns”  etc. it is reassuring to read such positive news by Laurilee McMichael headed “Now calling Turangi home”. 

It is all about  young couple that spent a year researching NZ towns and chose Turangi to call home. 

These younger enterprising tourists really did their homework on the merits of all regions and towns of NZ and selected the best.

The Weekender story goes:

“They came, they saw, they liked it, they stayed.

And Robin Gayraud and Laura Symonds like Turangi so much they’ve bought a house and set up their own digital business from the laid-back town at the southern end of Lake Taupo.

The pair, who are from France and the United Kingdom respectively, have their own business running international website Backpacker Guide New Zealand (www.backpackerguide.nz) a one-stop-shop for young independent travellers visiting New Zealand.

It’s packed with ideas of places to go, things to see and handy tips for everything from finding seasonal work to understanding rugby. 

Funded by advertising, it has around 4000 articles online and has been running for three years, attracting around 2.5 million views per year. (Almost as many as TRM?)

The newest and most ambitious addition is New Zealand’s Biggest Gap Year, a year-long journey around Aotearoa that Robin and Laura undertook last year, where they left their Auckland home and travelled New Zealand in a camper van aiming to do 365 activities in 365 days.  It was on that trip that they fell in love with Turangi.

“Turangi was actually the place we loved the most” Robin says.  “We wanted to relocate and Turangi ticked all the boxes.  It’s super-central, etc…. Turangi was just a no-brainer.”…..

“In the Taupo region, it’s a bunch of doers, and we fell that is the kind of place we want to be in.  We had been to to many regions and had many offers to relocate and we thought here we were going to be with a bunch of people actively doing things.”.… etc.

What a wonderful story. 

Such ‘relentlessly positive’ smart young migrants creating their own future in Paradise. 

After seeing and comparing and writing up so much of NZ they must have had a first hand balance of choices, and they chose so well.  They loved NZ for all the little places rather than the big places.  Interesting to note they moved from Auckland to be here… And they don’t even fly fish (yet…).

So good to see such a positive story…

It really is a special place.

Pinched from: www.Backpackersguide.nz  

For more on what they offer in Turangi, go to:  http://www.backpackerguide.nz/?s=turangi

Meet Robin & Laura

Who are we?

Hey there, you travel-curious specimens, and welcome to BackpackerGuide.NZ’s blog! We’re Robin and Laura. Other than being “cheap as” backpackers, we are the BackpackerGuide.NZ travel writers. From the minute we landed in New Zealand, we both fell in love with with awesome country. Since then, we have worked tirelessly to bring this guide to life so every traveller can make the most of our awesome new homeland. That’s right, BackpackerGuide.NZ is written by two twenty-something backpackers with more than 15 years of travel experience between them.

So who are Robin and Laura, and what gives them the right? We can’t answer that second one, but we’ll give the first one a shot by referring to ourselves in the third person.

Robin

Originally from France, Robin has travelled pretty excessively over the last 11 years. From the jungles of Madagascar to the offices of Vancouver, Robin has experienced both ends of the work and travel spectrum. After travelling 16 countries, he finally called New Zealand home, because, well… It’s New Zealand. From then on, he’s been an entrepreneur, video game nerd and an outdoors enthusiast living and breathing for the tourism industry in New Zealand.

Laura

After finishing her journalism studies in the UK, Laura decided to try this whole travel thing out for herself and make her first stop New Zealand. Awkwardly enough, she outstayed her welcome when she couldn’t miss the opportunity to write a travel guide to this awesome country. When Laura’s not writing, she’s waiting for winter to come around so she can snowboard the volcanoes of the North Island and the excessive alpine terrain in the South.

 

TRM emailed them and they replied:  As the article mentions, we chose Turangi because of its central location, we love that we can swim, raft, bike, ski and hike pretty much in the same day. That is absolutely epic to us. We also love the small town life and the sound of birds every single day. What a treat!

Aside from that, you will find a lot about why we love Turangi as well as heaps of stories about what we did here on this page: http://www.backpackerguide.nz/?s=turangi