New Zealand -North Island

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We enjoyed our last few days in Chile although it feels like a long time ago as we’ve been so busy since! We had a relaxing few days strolling around the city taking in the sites in the sun. We had a great dinner and our last bottle of Chilean wine, a rather tasty rose (my first since I’ve been away!) for our last night in South America. We were both sad to leave what has been a whistle stop tour of the continent but were very excited to get to New Zealand. I thought I’d spoken my last words of Spanish at the airport but it took me least two days after arriving in NZ to stop saying gracias (much to Jon’s embarrassment!)

We left Chile late on Sunday and due to crossing the international dateline we only arrived in Auckland on Tuesday morning. We packed in a fair few tourist attractions during the 2 days we were there intermingled with a lot of shopping! I really have no idea how we will pack our bags now as we are constantly picking up more things! Jon was particularly pleased with his Highlanders rugby shirt! We saw penguins, giant turtles, stingrays and sharks at Kelly Tarlton’s Antarctic Encounter & Underwater World, took in some culture and learnt about Maori history at Auckland Museum, sipped vodka cocktails at the minus 5 bar where everything is made of ice and went up the Sky Tower to take in night time views over the city which was fantastic. We also watched a well deserved flick in English, yay! We certainly could have spent a lot more time in Auckland but we were keen to get moving as we don’t have much time to see the country. We picked up our campervan which was a lot bigger than we’d originally wanted. It’s pretty cool though as it gives us extra space so we can cook in there and chill out and watch a DVD in the evening. We were both planning to drive but since I’ve seen the length of it I decided my skills as a navigator our much more useful to our cause! Driving out of the depot was interesting but once we got out of the hustle & bustle of Auckland and on to the open road we were fine.

Our first stop was Rotorua were we took in some beautiful scenery before setting up camp for the night. I was surprised by how cold it was at night, I hadn’t anticipated sleeping in my Inca Trail hat! The next day we headed out to Waiotapu Thermal Wonderland to experience the dynamic thermal activity that Rotorua is famous for. We sat patiently at 10.15am to watch the Lady Knox Geyser erupt, I was particularly excited to see my first geyser and I wasn’t disappointed, it was very impressive. We then walked around the park which had a lot of thermal activity including exploding mud pools, champagne pools and steaming hot springs. The sulpher rich air took a bit of getting used to though! We then continued on to Lake Taupo, NZs largest lake formed from a previous volcanic eruption. Unfortunately we only had time to stop for the day so went for a run along the lakefront to take in the beautiful views. Our drive that evening was very picturesque and I marveled constantly at the stunning views from the van. We spent last night in a very quiet site on the beach in the middle of nowhere and drove to Wellington early this morning! We are now on the ferry to Picton, we have such limited time we’ve taken the advice of most people we’ve met and are heading straight down to South Island as there is so much to see there.

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