North Island was our first trip and explore of New Zealand. And I have drawn you all a handy route of our trip. To get too and from Auckland from Wellington we got a relocation hire car and a campervan. So this is a wonderful thing, you move the car for the hire company within a few days and you pay almost zilch for the privelige and get a free tank of fuel, hurrah!!
I feel like we should just get this over and done with, we have a confession ...we didn't go to Hobbiton, we didn't do Lord of the Rings. Now while I feel that we could get along with a Hobbit very well, I too a small creature and Steff with his overly hairy feet, we just skipped past it because the films sent us to sleep. Sorry, I'm just being honest.
More of my artistic talent
So our trip took us firstly over to the east coast to Napier and Hawke's Bay. This is a cute little place that's architecture is all 1920s Art Deco and Hawke's Bay is full of Vineyards! We then headed up the windy road to Taupo, this was the first time we had really driven though mountains and seen views that you would associate with New Zealand and we saw thousands of sheep, the stereotypes were all starting to come into play. We stopped in Taupo by the lake for the evening but pressed on the next morning to Auckland.
So we drove into Auckland the largest city in New Zealand where over a third of the population live, and we drove to the centre of the city like you would drive with more ease around the Newport Coldra with the new road layout since the Ryder Cup. The roads here are so small, the main highways are just like the Old Raglan road, everywhere! Only about 20KM out of Auckland did we finally hit two lanes and then three!! And there is no traffic either, it's pretty lovely! So we dropped luminous lime car off and found a hostel.
The next day we hotfooted it to Paihia, The Bay of Islands. Right at the top of North Island, a beautiful place with 144 islands dotted off its coast. Here we got slightly stranded due to Cyclone Luci but it was just super rainy and windy, nothing movie like. We walked a long way to see a distinctly average waterfall and passed the house where the treaty of Waitaingi was signed.
Then we got a campervan and it was wonderful! We had an insight to being middle aged and stopping off for a nice cuppa on the side of the road when we spotted a nice view. We are very much looking forward to retirement now. We headed to Raglan on the West coast for the first night. A cute little place known for its surf, a far cry from the Raglan off the A39. It looks very much like Rhossili but It's pretty cool as it has black volcanic sand.
The next day we headed down South stopping at Waitamo on the way. Here it is famous for their glowworm caves. It was pretty cool but uber touristy and expensive for what could have been for all we knew some good quality LED lights in the cave roof.
We loved our camper though and tomorrow we pick up another camper to explore South Island, wonderful!
H
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