North Island Continues…

So, as we left Roturua, we visited the Whakarewarewa  Forest where we saw some awesome Californian redwoods . These were planted back in 1901 and now reach heights up to 60m,  pretty high! It was a nice little walk through the forest, stopping for a coffee break before driving to the north coast.

We stopped at Tauranga at another play park and spent a few hours on the beach before carried on driving to find a campsite. Only to find out most of the motels and holiday parks were fully booked that weekend as it was their long weekend celebration of Waitangi! 

We finally found a holiday park which kindly let us have an upgraded chalet but only for one night as for the rest of the weekend they were fully booked too. We rang loads of places trying to find a place to stay over the weekend. We were pretty desperate at this point and quite blindly would take anything and we did! I could have cried when we arrived to this an “old farm with a basic campsite middle of nowhere” with nothing else left than backpackers room!!! It was most horrid stay ever! Needless to say, I hardly slept. Wouldn’t have a shower there, cooking was no option as it was filthy and having drunken fellow campers playing the piano badly late into the night and shouting at us when we asked them to stop as the children were trying to sleep… we couldn’t wait to leave in the morning! To make the matters worse, the owner couldn’t care less and we felt totally ripped off for the high price we paid for that place when elsewhere we could have had a nice chalet for the same price!

Luckily the following night we were in the total opposite, a luxurious holiday cabin with the children play parks, trampolines, tennis courts, hot water pool etc.

We experienced the hot water beach too, where you can dig a hole in the sand 2hours either side of low tide and the hot water spring water rises up leaving you to enjoy your own little hot water pool! The girls loved it.

There was near by a place called Hahei where we took a short walk to the Cathedral Cove, another beautiful beach.

Our travels carried on pass the Auckland to north. Stopped in Whangarei for one night, which was ok but nothing stunning. There was a nice harbour, with some restaurants and shops. Had a nice meal but the rest of town seemed a bit rundown with quite few shops closed and boarded up. The water falls were nice though where we stopped for another coffee break!

The Bay of Islands was another place everyone had recommended to us so decided to drive up there. It was a quite pretty drive and yes the place we stayed was beautiful with a nice atmosphere but I wouldn’t say stunning. Our campsite was opposite the Haruru falls so that was a nice view. Haruru falls claims to be second biggest horseshoe shaped waterfall in the world after Niagara Falls. We hired kayaks to get a closer look and had a fun morning.

But unfortunately, yet again the rain came so for the afternoon we decided to go for a drive to the next town. We stopped at a cafe called ‘The Rusty Tractor’. It was a very interesting place, beautifully branded with a brilliant play area for the kids and superb food.

On way back to Auckland we stopped for a night at the Red Beach in Orewa. We found a lovely campsite again and probably the best cabin we have stayed in to date. There was access to the beach from the park and we took a lovely stroll down  Jacobs ladder (reminded us of home)!

The last few nights we spent in Auckland. We had a great meal at Burger Burger just off the popular Ponsonby Road. Took a drive up to  Mount Eden to see a 360’ view of Auckland and the Volcano crater.

We also visited the skytower for more views. Emmi loved all the glass floors looking 180m below, I wasn’t so keen walking on them!!!

Another nice place to visit was Devonport (nothing like the one in Plymouth)!!! It was a lovely little village right across the Harbour.

We were privileged to watch Auckland Blues train the night before their first rugby match of the season on the day before we flew out (thanks to Ryan and Ashley)! It was awesome and the girls were excited to get signatures from the players and even got a team photo.

On our last day we went in to the city and happened to walk past an emergency services show. Had to pop in to see all the fire appliances     so that Steve wouldn’t feel homesick!

Low points of travelling…

Well our picture of NZ just isn’t get any better… arriving in the North Island and having the first days of rain, we were all getting pretty fed up…its quite depressing and the girls were playing up more when they couldn’t be outside playing when everywhere was so wet (I know the rain has never stopped them before but now we didn’t have all their waterproof clothing and wellies with us)!!!

This week has probably been the lowest point on our travels especially after our 4x4 hire car broke down!!! Yes once again we had problem with the hire vehicle, and this point when the hire company wasn’t really interested that we had now lost a day sorting it out. Steve was about to give up and come straight back home! It isnt easy when you are on holiday and together 24/7 when you are not used to being together all the time… for me it has been easier as I have got used to girls constantly arguing and constantly pushing the boundaries at home on daily basis, so I would rather be here to see all the beautiful places and learn about different cultures and just deal with it. For Steve on the other hand it has been much harder, he is bored…he is not kind of person just to be on holiday for this long, ‘doing nothing’. Not working on cars or going to gym, which is a bit hard middle of nowhere! And our experiences from NZ haven’t helped us on the way. Let’s hope the USA keeps Steve more interested!

We did found a lovely holiday park in Taupo and regardless of the rain we had nice time there. It was very similar to Wanaka in the south island. On our way to Rotorua we stopped just north of Taupo at Huka falls, which was impressive. To see the power of water in river Waikato gushing down at almost 250000litres per second!

There were several geothermal areas on the way to Rotorua which we could have visited but we decided to visit the one in Rotorua. Te Puia where we could see the scalding mud pools and shooting geysers. Biggest Geyser the Pohutu erupts about 20 times a day and reaches more than 30m high!

It was a great place and well worth to visit. We didn’t just see them, we learnt all about them on a guided tour. It was amazing to see what the nature can do. It was also great to learn about the area and the Maori culture. The girls were really good, nicely followed the guide tour and watched the Maori show…Emmi did jump up on my lap at one stage when Maori tribe was performing their war dance (The Haka)…she didn’t like them shouting and showing their tongue!!! It was a brilliant day.

We also found a nice indoor play centre for the girls to run around for few hours whilst me and steve had a little break that kept us all going again for little bit longer…

As we carried on driving to the north coast…

North Island

We flew to Wellington from Christchurch which only took 40mins! After the taxi driver tried to rip us off, we got to our hotel which was not exactly The Ritz.

Wellington was ok city. Busy with lots of tourist and students. On the first night there was a night market with lots of lovely food and we all enjoyed listening to a street singer, even got Emmi dancing! There happen to be a skateboard event on following morning, which Steve was pleased about. We all went to watch it until it started to rain little and got very windy.

When the weather improved we took a gondola up the hill to the botanical gardens. The gondola ride was great, the girls loved it. 

Also the botanialc gardens were lovely and you could walk from right of the top of the steep hill down to bottom of the gardens…we only did 1/3 of that as we wanted to ride gondola back down to town. We did found a great play park, as that is only what the girls wants to do! and enjoyed a great view from the top whilst having coffee and cake.

The ride down was even more exciting as we sat right on the front! 

The following morning we picked up our 4x4 for the rest of our time in New Zealand, but that is another story as you can imagine…with our luck hiring a car is just not that simple!!!