Today is the last full day of our first trip to NZ. We needed to get back to Auckland by the 4th so we decided on a random town on the west coast. I was drawn to Raglan thinking it had some reference to Irish history along with the poem/song; however, it seems the town history is not related to Ireland. We arrived rather late so we only had half a day to explore...
One of the remaining north island places I wanted to visit was the Waitomo Glow Worm Caves. We left the town of Hamilton to start our drive. Along the way, we found a Kiwi (the official bird of NZ) sanctuary. Like most tourists, we had been hoping to see such a bird but were disappointed that they were not everywhere. Turns out Kiwis are nocturnal ground birds! We...
Today was mostly about driving around the eastern cape or Gisborne Cape. Our goal was to explore the coast a little more, then head towards Rotorua. It was a much longer drive than expected, but there were a few rewarding discoveries along the way. The morning graced us with another nice sunrise. I managed to capture another time-lapse. One of our first stops...
Happy leapyear day! We had not spent much time in the rest of Napier, so this morning we went exploring was has been called the Art Deco capital of NZ. It was a little bit cloudy and rainy, but the weather eventually cleared. We also found a nice farmer’s market and sampled some of the local foods and produce. I love farmers markets! Next, we headed north out...
I asked my travel companion if there was anything in NZ she really wanted to experience. Besides the awesome suggestion for whitewater rafting, she said we needed to visit some wineries. While I am not much of a fan of wine, I do like learning about farming and processes. We discovered that here on the North Island there is a whole trail of locations starting on the...
We left Matamata and headed for Lake Taupo. On the way we found Haka (foam) Falls. The lake and similarly named town was a nice treat and I wish we could have spent more time exploring. However, we had a goal and an appointment the next day in Turangi, about 40km on the other side of the lake. If you look closely enough, you can see Mt. Ngauruhoe (LotR Mt Doom in...
One of our major goals on this trip is to visit the Hobbiton movie set, featured in the Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit films. This movie set exists on someone’s private farmland and has an army of gardeners and tour guides delivering the magic daily. We walked around the village visiting many of the hobbit holes, Bilbo’s house, and finally the...
The only real thing I scheduled on this trip was our Hobbiton tour on the 26th. I figured we had time today to make the short drive to Tauranga and then on to Matamata. The day started with a coffee and a visit to the nearby Bowenstown Beach. From here we started our drive to Tauranga. I was not sure what to expect or do here but had the name in my list of...
Today was more of a relaxed travel day. I had randomly chosen a hot spring/campground on our route to Tauranga. The day started with a surprise visit from the Camp Cat “Popsie”. We also stopped along the way at a roadside farm stand and purchased some fresh apples and prince plumbs. We stopped briefly in the town of Whangamata (the WH actually has an F...
One of the first locations we wanted to visit is called Cathedral Cove. Our campground at Hahei Beach would serve as a nice base of operations (as well as a nice beach to enjoy). This area was a great deal of fun to explore. We started our day with a hike to the Cathedral Cove, Stingray Bay, and Gemstone Bay. The total round trip took us about 2 hours of hiking...