After a wonder two days in Blenheim celebrating our anniversary, it was time to take Daniel to see some of the North Island. We started the day off with our B&B's homemade muesli and 18+ different homemade jams from fruits grown in their own front yard. We made the quick drive to Picton to hop on the ferry that would take us to Wellington, the city where I had started this trip over a month ago! The ferry trip was beautiful going through the Charlotte Sound. It was a gorgeous sunny day and I saw tons of wildlife from the outside deck. I also got to watch a little bit of the Ellen Show from the inside deck! Luxury! Yes! The ferry was late arriving in Picton which was the first of many schedule changes that occurred on the North Island. We had several things we had wanted to do and see in Wellington, but we didn't arrive in the city until mid afternoon. We decided not to rush it and booked a room in Wellington for one night as soon as we got to town. Our first stop in Wellington was the Weta Caves, which is really not a cave at all, and it had nothing to do with nature at all. I was there with Daniel for 45 minutes and I still don't really understand what Weta Caves really is. This is all that I know... I believe it is a company partially owned by Peter Jackson that makes film props, costumes, and figurines. They had pieces from the LOTR movies and then other movies with magical creatures, monsters, etc. We didn't go on the tour, but Daniel got some of his LOTR fill here. Then we drove to Mount Victoria, the same lookout that Whitney and I had done when we first arrived in NZ. It was still a beautiful day and you could see a lot of the city and the harbor. I also took Daniel to the Botanic Gardens and we walked all through it until it got to be too dark. The next morning we woke up to another beautiful day (a little bit to our dismay - I'll explain later) in Wellington. We took a short run together along the bay and got ready to see a few more sites before we left town. We had a long walk to the Parliament building (aka the Beehive) and stopped by the National Archives to see the Treaty of Waitangi. This was a really, really old document that gave the Maori people many rights to their land and other things, but both the document and its promises were neglected for a very long time. Nevertheless, many of those rights are honored today, and it was a very important treaty in NZ's history. Next we went to my favorite museum in NZ, Te Papa. I enjoyed it so much the first time, I had to take Daniel back there. Unfortunately, we did not have enough time there because we had to get on the road because we only had four days to do the entire North Island.
The beautiful weather tripped up our plans a bit because we had wanted to do the Tongariro Crossing that day (a part of the Tongariro Circuit that Whitney and I had hiked) to get a better view from the top than I had gotten the first time, and to let Daniel see Mordor/Mount Doom. Part of our decision to stay in Wellington was because the weather forecast for both Wellington and Tongariro looked pretty crummy. I was not about to push my way to that Tongariro Crossing summit only to see clouds again and get rained on at very cold temperatures. (Read my post on the old blog about clinging to rocks for dear life, winds forcing me to the ground, and losing my pack's rain cover. Remember that? I do all too well) So we decided to stay in Wellington instead of driving at night to stay somewhere halfway between Wellington and Tongariro. On our trip between Wellington and Rotorua we passed by the Tongariro Crossing and Mount Ngauruhoe and of course it was beautiful and sunny. Daniel was satisfied to at least see Mount Doom, but I was sad to not be able to do the crossing, to miss the (well deserved) views, and for Daniel to miss the moonlike volcano landscape. Oh well! You can't do it all, and we had a good morning in Wellington.
We drove to Rotorua as a good stopping point in the middle of the North Island. We passed through Taupo and stopped to take some pictures of Lake Taupo at sunset. Driving between Taupo and Rotorua at dusk was amazing because you could really visualize how geothermically active this area is. Everywhere you looked you could see steam spouts near the highway and off in the distance. They were pillars of what looked like smoke, but we knew they were hot pools all around us. It was pretty cool- not something you see every day! We arrived in Rotorua and noticed they were having an open market one block from our hostel. Once we got settled we went to check it out! We didn't find much, but we didn't have any plans that night so it was cool to just see it all.
We decided in Rotorua to drive through Matamata on our way up the North Island. Matamata is a little farming town made famous by the filming of the Shire scenes in LOTR. Daniel took the full 3 hour tour of the Shire, and loved it, of course! He got some great pictures and really cool stories! I hung around in town in the meantime just walking, shopping, reading, and eating cake with coffee!
Our flight was leaving late Thursday night from Auckland, but I didn't think that there was much for us to do in Auckland so I made plans for us to stay in the Coromandel Peninsula until Thursday morning. Initially I had thought we would just stay there one night, but then with all the driving throughout the trip, we had another change of plans. We found a different place to stay for two nights leading up to flying home. We ended up finding a place to stay that was much, much better than the place I had originally picked. This was a guest house/B&B. It was one of our favorite little places! We had our own little apartment with a private bathroom, patio area, and kitchenette. It also had just enough space for us to spread out and get repacked (oh the dreaded process!) to go across the Pacific. The nice lady who owned it let us do our laundry for free (amazing) and by that I mean she pretty much did all of our laundry for us (even better). There is not much to do in the fall in the Coromandel Peninsula besides hike, see the Cathedral Cave, and visit the hot beaches. It was raining off and on so we didn't hike, but we did manage to see the Cathedral Cave (and forgot the camera! sorry!) and gave the Hot Beaches our best effort. The hot beaches is an area where you can dig yourself a hole in the sand, and it gets filled up with hot water like a natural hot tub. You can only access it around low tide. When we were there low tide was about 7:45pm. We got out there two hours early to get our little hole ready. The sun was still out when we arrived. We were definitely not the first ones there, and there were a whole lot of people coming as it got closer to low tide. It got darker and colder, and the waves were not settling down one bit. The tide was not going down hardly at all, and there was a very small patch of beach where we could feel the warmth. This spot was good to stick your feet in, but the cold waves would come up to your knees and take away all your body warmth! Daniel, along with many other go getters (or people who just like digging holes), gave it his best effort to find a warm spot. On this night, it was just not happening. It was dark outside and not a single person had found a warm spot that wouldn't get swept away by the waves every 30 seconds. We gave up. The hot beaches were not hot that night, but apparently a week prior the hot water was reaching 20+ meters higher on the beaches -safe from the waves! We were somewhat disappointed, but too cold to care in our wet bathing suits! At least we had one more almost full day in NZ!
We left Whitianga in the morning and drove to Auckland. I drove Daniel through some of the major parts of the city, but we didn't do much. We ended up at Mission Bay, the quiet, peaceful part of Auckland, where Whitney and I had escaped all the cars and rush last time. We got some coffee and enjoyed some reading, then had a delicious meal and ice cream for dessert. Finally, it was time to take our rental car in and get to the airport. It was really bittersweet ending the trip. I had an amazing time! With the cold weather approaching in NZ, though, I felt like we had done so much for that time of the year. We didn't get to snow ski or enjoy the summertime water sports, but that's for another trip! We were also pretty excited to come home and move into our new house!
Goodbye, New Zealand! Until next time!
