After 3 fantastic weeks in Austria over Christmas and New Years and another two in Perth where we finally and officially got our Australian citizenship and Aussie passports - whooooohoooo!!! - we were on our way to New Zealand. My sister, Maria, was joining us for this last leg of our travels and we were really excited about it. We were lucky to be able to spend the first few days in Auckland with a friend of Stefan who introduced us to New Zealand beer and gave us some valuable travel tips. Thanks again! :)
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| Strolling through Auckland |
After a few days in beautiful Auckland we were on our way to the Bay of Islands and the Coromandel Peninsula. Both areas full of awesome coastal scenery, fantastic beaches and beautiful seafood, nom nom nom!
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| Chum Beach - Coromandel Peninsula |
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| Cathedral Cove |
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| Hot Water Beach |
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| Who does the best Haka at Waitangi House |
On our way to Rotorua we stopped in Hobbiton, the original movie set out of the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movies, which we really, really enjoyed. Fairly expensive but good fun :)
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| Bilbo's Hobbit Hole in Hobbiton |
In Rotorua it was time for some first smelly encounters with New Zealand's geothermal activities. We found it was similar to Yellowstone but as cool, EXCEPT for the one geyser they make errupt by pouring a bag of washing powder in...WTF? We weren't really impressed by that. We did stay in a pretty cool motel with balcony views over a geyser which naturally errupted every few hours, awesome!
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| Wai-O-Tapu Thermal Area |
And for the next day we were booked on a tour to one of the definite highlights on our NZ trip so far, White Island, an active marine volcano. We had initially planned to hop on a helicopter to the island but the exorbitant and ridiculous price tag of $900 per person was a little bit over our budget... We've seen a few volcanoes on our entire trip but the White Island experience was pretty outstanding as this volcanoe really seems the most active of them all - as you can see below we even had to wear gas masks because of the toxic fumes.
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| On our way to White Island |
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| The gas masks were definitely necessary |
Taking the very scenic Pacific highway we then made our way down to Napier and the Hawke's Bay wine region where we spent a day driving and another day cycling through the vineyards tasting ridiculous amounts of wine. Very pretty region and also really good wines, we all agreed. Our daily wine consumption got higher and higher the longer we stayed in NZ... and really, only one bottle is never enough for 3 people :)
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| Hawke's Bay wine region by bike |
Moving on to Taupo we jumped on a Jetboat ride, on the same river they also filmed scenes of the Hobbit, and we also checked out the crystal blue waters of the Huka Falls, beautiful!
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| Huka Falls |
But now it was finally time for some more serious activities, the Tongariro Crossing, a little bit South of Lake Taupo, a 21km hike passing the volcanoes, Mt Tongariro and Mt Ngauruhoe. Mt Ngauruhoe is also known as Mt Doom out of the 'Lords of the Rings', so we were almost literally walking through Mordor ;)
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| Mt Ngauruhoe aka 'Mt Doom' |
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| Lakes on top of Tongariro |
Having picture postcard perfect weather we then took the Desert Road South towards Wellington with wonderful views of the volcanoes and the mighty Ruapehu.
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| Mt Ruapehu |
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| Castle Point |
In Wellington it was time for another Lord of the Rings fix when we visited the WETA workshop where all the creatures and buildings for the movies were created.
Then, another completely different activity awaited us, a Cricket World Cup game, New Zealand vs England. I never really liked Cricket and Maria was pretty indifferent as well. But maybe it was because NZ completely smashed England making the game last only 5 hours, maybe it was the ciders we drank or maybe it was Stefan's contagious enthusiasm but we really enjoyed the game. A wonderful end to our time on the North island.
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| Cricket World Cup Game - NZ vs England |
