This week was our last one in this beautiful country and has been quite “light” compared to the first ones, for 2 reasons: we were really tired (for those who think we are on holiday, no we are not!) and the weather was not very good. Anyway, here are the places we enjoyed most:
Northlands
Mahinepua Peninsula:
We walked there on a very scenic track which gives a good insight of what the Northland region is.
Puheke Hill Reserve:
We wanted to go there… but we got stuck in the sand while looking for a car park, so we never got a chance to do what we had in mind! We are not joking, the van was genuinely bogged down! We were seriously far from the nearest civilisation and we hardly had any signal on our mobiles to call anyone. We’ve been very lucky to come across a local farmer who got us out with his big 4WD car!
Maitai Bay and Merita Beach:
Lovely weather for this lovely place, which has been the Northern most point we’ve been in New Zealand.
Waiariki Ngawha Hot Springs:
We decided to go there when the weather was a bit depressing (dark clouds, rain…). They are hundreds of years old hot springs, different than any place we had been to so far. Nothing fancy, just authentic place built by Maori people, for Maori people. We were very welcome though!
Omapere Arae Te Uru Signal Point:
Waipoua Forest Kauris:
We couldn’t leave New Zealand without seeing these majestic Kauri trees, native to and symbol of New Zealand. That was the last but not the least stop with our van, before heading to Auckland where spent our last days in the country.
Auckland
Well, let’s be honest, we spent 3 days there, but haven’t done much. We really needed some rest after these 6 busy weeks. We’ve spent a bit of time walking in town the first day, the second day we went to the cinema (not the kind of thing you can do everywhere…) and at the time we wrote this post we were getting ready for our flight across the Pacific Ocean to South America (3 flights actually)!
Our feeling after New Zealand
The views, the scenery were awesome throughout the journey. Our eyes and camera didn’t get a lot of rest during these 6 weeks. As we said before, you can probably get in Europe everything you have in New Zealand… but for this you’ll have to travel in about 15 countries. New Zealand has everything, even a very wide range of animals. We were also happy to get a bit a western civilisation before going to South America. However, let’s put it that way, we are NOT going to move to New Zealand! We both love eating and cooking, and this country is definitely not good for that. We also hated that in such a beautiful country, with a very special relation between people and nature, we were given 10 plastic bags for a few items in supermarkets, along with 4 or 5 useless receipts, or couldn’t find recycling rubbish bins anywhere… and as nice as it is, it’s also very remote. On a separate note, New Zealanders are BAD drivers.
What made this trip different for us:
Being attacked by cows.
Getting our van stuck in sand.
Getting a puncture.
Getting fined because we left the van parked 5 minutes too long, just to remind us we are never too far from UK.
Getting off the tourist path most of the time thanks to a VERY good guidebook which we can only recommend (it’s called NZ Frenzy, and there’s one book per island). We wish we could have the same kind of book for every country we are travelling to.
Looking for and spotting 1 wild kiwi, that was unforgettable!
Not planning anything.
We drove more than 8000 km (including about 20km for Wiola – rounded up to the nearest ten!) in 43 days and stayed overnight twice in unauthorised places!
To finish, here are 2 very bad quality maps which show our route. We started in Christchurch, South Island (map on the left), and finished in Auckland, North Island (map on the right).
Wiola and Nico on the road ! 