Costa Rica's dry season is the reason most first-time visitors from Australia and New Zealand go when they do. On the Pacific side it runs roughly from mid-December to April, which lines up neatly with our summer holidays, Easter and the April school break. The catch is that "dry season" descri..

By September, much of northern Botswana has gone months with little meaningful rain. The grass has turned the colour of straw, the smaller pans have dried to cracked mud, and the remaining reliable water — in the Okavango's channels and lagoons, along the Chobe and Linyanti river fronts, ..

There is an awkward shape to planning a Japanese autumn from Australia or New Zealand. The first national foliage outlook generally appears in September and is updated several times as autumn approaches, becoming more useful the closer it gets to the season. By the time it is precise, many trav..

Palawan is not a difficult place to time. The weather window is long, the photographs are honest, and the season is the part most guides already cover. What makes the trip difficult to book is far narrower: one small airstrip, a schedule that no longer starts where it used to, a baggage allowan..

Three countries, three different ways of moving through them, and one river system that quietly decides how the whole trip feels. The Victoria Falls–Chobe–Okavango circuit is the safari a lot of Australians and New Zealanders picture when they picture Southern Africa. 2026 has broug..

One of the most common mistakes in a Peru itinerary is going straight from the plane to Cusco. Cusco sits at around 3,400 metres. The Sacred Valley, an hour down the road, sits closer to 2,800. Arrive into the higher city first and a fair number of travellers spend their first two days flat out..

Korea keeps getting filed under "stopover" by Australian and New Zealand travellers — two nights in Seoul on the way to somewhere else, a palace, a barbecue dinner, gone. That filing is out of date. Give the country ten days and it delivers what a first Japan trip delivers: fast trains, d..

An American West national parks itinerary is the rare long-haul trip where the driving is a highlight rather than a chore: red-rock desert unspooling between Zion, Bryce Canyon, the Grand Canyon, Monument Valley, Arches and Canyonlands, with Las Vegas holding the door open at either end. For Au..

Right through this winter — July, August, September — wildebeest are massing on the banks of the Mara River and crossing in their thousands, crocodiles waiting below. The Great Migration is the safari event Australians and New Zealanders most often build an entire trip around, and a..

Vietnam is really three destinations wearing one visa. The north, centre and south all run on different weather calendars, and the most common planning mistake is treating the country as though it has a single season. This itinerary concerns itself with the first two — Hanoi, the karst ba..