NZ Feb/Mar 2023

 We had a fabulous night in our beautiful accommodation and after breakfast decided to drive up to the base of Mt Taranaki. Mt Taranaki does have a few ski runs on it but of course at this time of the year there is no snow, although there was a tiny bit right at the top of the mountain. We had some beautiful views over the Taranaki valley from here and it was worth the drive. The town of Stratford had some lovely old buildings in it and after speaking to our host about the lovely old buildings, she recommended we called into Eltham on our way down to Wellington as it had many listed buildings. The town was most interesting, full of beautiful old buildings but most of them empty. The town in fact resembled a ghost town but I did enjoy walking up and down the streets. From here we had an uneventful drive down to Wellington. We did stop in a large town called “Bulls” for lunch. There were many bulls around both live and statues but we found it a very unusual name for a town. There mus...

We decided to explore a little more around Lake Taupo before departing and so headed out to do a walk to a picturesque spot at a point near where the Maori Rock carvings were. We enjoyed an invigorating hour’s walk to the point and back before heading into Taupo for coffee. We also wanted to check out the nearby Wairakei geothermal Power station which had a lookout. Unfortunately the road to the lookout was closed. We suspect that as the station was located close to a pine forest that had been badly damaged from cyclone Gabriel, the road was closed due to trees falling across it. Anyway it didn’t matter as it was on the way to our next stop, Stratford. Originally, we had decided to “wing it” as to where we would stay and it was the only night we hadn’t booked into an Airbnb. Before leaving we thought that somewhere around the Hawkes Bay area like, Napier, Hastings on the east coast of NZ. Etc., might be a good place. (I was interested in Napier, due to all the Art deco buildings in t...

Leaving Rotorua we had a short journey to Taupo, a beautiful town located on the banks of the huge Lake Taupo. We saw many more areas of geothermal activity on our drive as well as areas where the cyclone had either uprooted or torn huge branches off large pine trees. We stopped in at the visitor centre in Taupo to sort out our plans for the rest of the day, before heading to the Huka Falls on the Waikato Rivers. A short walk took us to various viewing areas of these impressive falls. We then drove on to the Aratiatia Dam. This is a hydro-electric dam but water is also deliberately released from the dam three times a day to recreate the rapids that were once here. This is a tourist attraction. We watched the opening of the gates and the ensuing rapids before boarding a boat to go on a beautiful and relaxing river cruise. The cruise was fantastic, particularly the wonderful commentary from the skipper. He carefully took the boat right up to the Huka Falls and we were able to take some p...

I spent a few minutes this morning enjoying the peaceful, calm outlook from our unit, looking across Lake Rotorua, as well as checking out the beautiful garden on the property. We headed out this morning to visit Wai-O-Tapu Thermal Wonderland. It took us about 30min. to drive there and after purchasing our tickets we  drove a short distance to see the Lady Knox Geyser that apparently would shoot up around 10.30AM. I found it interesting that you could predict when it was going to happen. We had a lovely woman doing the presentation and she explained that the Geyser was actually formed by man, over 100 years ago. Prisoners from a near-by jail were busy working for the government planting trees, and discovered the geo-thermal waters of the area. They regularly relaxed in the warm, mineral pools after a hard day’s work and eventually started bringing their washing to there do as well. One day a man dropped his soap into a deep hole where the water was coming up from. After a few minut...

 This morning we left our beautiful accommodation that overlooked the local golf-course and headed back to the Waitomo Glow Worm caves. We had another tour booked, this time to visit a different cave and also included a boat ride through a cave full of glow worms. We walked down into the cave and observed more stalagmites and stalactites as well as some glow worms. We entered a beautiful chamber called the Cathedral. The acoustics in this chamber were amazing! From here we walked down to a small boat. It was completely dark and the only person that had any light was our guide. Photos were not permitted during this tour due to the lights disrupting the glow worms. It was the most peaceful, serene experience, silently gliding along in the boat and observing thousands of tiny glow worms on the ceiling of the cave. After this tour we hit the road again heading for Rotorua. It only took an hour and a half. We sorted out some bookings at the tourist information centre and then went walki...

 Leaving our rustic accommodation we headed for our next stop, the Waitomo Caves. We had booked a walking tour of one cave (The Ruakuri Cave) for 3.30pm so although the drive was only predicted to take 3 and ½ hours, we were a little cautious due to the weather damage to the roads and any unpredicted hold-ups we may encounter. Despite constant drizzle and at some stages heavy rain, the drive to Waitomo was uneventful and we had time for a couple of stops, coffee at Whiritoa beach and then Tamahere for a bakery stop, near Hamilton. We decided looking at the homes and facilities in this area that the rich and famous must live here. We arrived at the Waitomo Caves with plenty of time to look around and have lunch. Our afternoon tour of the cave was wonderful. Easy access with a spiral ramp leading us down into the caves. Not only did we see the beautiful, stalagmites and stalactites but also the glow worms. This tour took over an hour and half to complete and was well worth the money....

This morning we had booked ourselves into a sea-kayak tour to see Cathedral Cove and other areas of beauty along the coast. Rob was so good, as I know kayaking is not his favourite activity and yet he was happy to do it with me so we could share a double kayak. We arrived at the designated meeting place at Hahei beach and were taken by a mini-bus to “Cook’s Beach” (named after Captain Cook who landed there for shelter to see the eclipse of Mercury and Venus.) After the obligatory safety talk we set off. We were in a group of 3 double kayaks and our tour leader, Karissa. The weather was fairly good with no wind although there was quite a swell but luckily no white-caps! We paddled around the coast with Karissa pointing out various points of interest. When we arrived close to Cathedral Cove, we enjoyed the spectacular sight of the cove. The tide was high as was the swell so we were unable to kayak into the cave and cove. Due to storm damage from the cyclone the walk down to the Cathedral...

After a great breakfast provided by our hosts, we left our fabulous accommodation quite early as we knew we had a long day of driving in front of us. We had a quick explore of the local coastline and saw many surfers out enjoying some beautiful waves and weather. We had to drive south today, back through Auckland and as the last time we travelled through the main part of Auckland was when we first landed and it was dark, we were quite surprised how big, busy and populated it was. (Auckland’s population is 1.6 million) We managed to get through the main part of the city without any issues and headed for the Southern Coromandel Peninsula and Ranges, stopping at a lovely town called Thames for lunch. As I have said, we have been so lucky as our trip has yet to be impacted badly by the recent cyclone. Today we were unable to go on a major road because it was still out of action due to major slippage and damage. We knew this so we took a longer route all along the coast road, through Coroma...

  It was another beautiful day as we said goodbye to the Bay of Islands and headed across to the western side of the island. Our first stop was a delightful little town located on an estuary that flowed into the Tasman, called Hokianga. We stopped at a café for coffee before exploring more of this magnificent area. We went on a walk to the site of the old signal station at Arai te Nature reserve close to the town of Omapure. The weather was perfect and the seas were fairly calm. From here we drove inland to the Waipoua Forest, home of the massive Kauri trees. We took a short walk into the forest to view the largest of all the trees, Tane Mahuta. This Kauri tree was over 2,000 years old! A guide/ranger was sitting on a seat near this magnificent tree and was able to give us some fascinating information about the tree and also the disease that is threatening the trees. (To view the trees we had to have our shoes thoroughly cleaned and disinfected.) She also said that we were extremel...

  Today we decided to drive to the northern most tip of New Zealand, Cape Reinga. Before the long drive north we stopped at some lovely waterfalls, close to Paihia, Haruru Falls. A short walk from the carpark led us to some very pretty, fast flowing waterfalls. From here we headed north travelling through fertile and attractive country that reminded us both of the Atherton Tablelands in Australia. Certainly the climate is very similar and they grow similar crops of vegetables and berries. We saw vines and large areas of avocados growing too. Moving further north there were many cattle/dairy cows and many, many sheep! The scenery was beautiful and once we arrived at the Cape Reinga Lighthouse it continued to impress us. Here the Pacific Ocean and the Tasman Sea meet. You could see a line of swell where the two bodies of water met and it did look a little like a washing machine. You certainly wouldn’t want to be out there in a boat! After an invigorating walk to the lighthouse and a ...

We were up bright and early to go on our “Hole in the Rock” cruise around the Bay of Islands. We left Paihia at 8.30am picking up a few more passengers at Russell before exploring the islands. Our captain was both entertaining and very informative. She told us of the history of the Bay of Islands from the Maori times to when the first Europeans arrived. We managed to select great seats outside but out of the wind. We had a spare seat next to us and as the trip was quite full a lovely young English woman asked if she could sit next to us. Rob of course was very quick to respond with the affirmative! Anyway we learnt a lot about her. She was a florist touring around New Zealand in a small van. She was working in Auckland but had taken a few days off. She was able to secure florist work whenever she arrived in a new town over the Summer due to all the weddings that were happening. She had spent time in Australia doing this and said she would keep working this way in New Zealand until wint...

  We had a comfortable night’s sleep and when ready in the morning, headed out to a nearby shopping centre for breakfast before hitting the road again. The main motorway was easy to navigate and we made reasonable time arriving at a lovely and charming town called Whangarei. Here we explored the Town Basin Marina, the Hundertwasser Art Gallery building and Artisans markets where we spent time watching a glass blower at work. We saw a fabulous huge, rolling ball clock which was a unique sculpture with 35 bowling balls running along stainless steel rails and dropping at various times to give you an accurate reading of the time. We happened to be there when the clock changed from 12.59pm to 1pm and we excitedly watched balls going everywhere. We have been quite lucky with the roads, fallen trees and power etc., since the tropical cyclone, earlier this week. Most of the roads have been cleared and are passable with caution but today we did have to make a detour from the main northern ...

  Well after everything the world has been through over the past few years, it was great to be able to travel overseas again. We decided that New Zealand looked good for this holiday but considering the past six weeks or so we wondered if we’d made the wrong decision. First the city of Auckland had terrible floods at the end of Jan. The airport was badly affected. Then on Tuesday 14 th Feb, tropical cyclone, Gabrielle struck the north island badly affecting many areas, with strong winds damaging properties and down pours washing out roads and causing more flooding. Finally on Wednesday 15 th , a strong earthquake struck the city of Wellington! Anyway despite all this we arrived in Auckland around 7PM (N.Z. time) after leaving home at 6:15AM. The New Zealand Breakers basketball team were on our flight returning to Auckland after their matches in Australia. They were so tall and most of them were in economy class though at least 6 had the exit rows which they would have needed! Thos...