We had never been to New Zealand before, but we knew quite a bit about it because Steve’s brother had lived there for many years in his younger days. We took this trip as a driving tour in February of 2015, staying mostly in apartments rented for a few nights at a time through AirBnB. Our total tour lasted three weeks, and encompassed both the North and South Islands, flying into Auckland in the north, and out of Christchurch in the south. This blog post only covers the first part, the North Island section of our tour.

Flying from Brisbane into Auckland on Air New Zealand, we picked up our car at the airport and headed off to a beautiful B&B in Auckland where we stayed for two nights. While we didn’t see much of Auckland itself on this trip, we were keen to see the Auckland Museum– Tamaki Paenga Hira in Parnell, and we stayed within walking distance from it. It was well worth the visit, with really interesting exhibitions on the history of immigration into the country, pacific and New Zealand islander cultures, vulcanism and climate, and NZ fauna and flora. We would gladly go back to Auckland for a longer stay, and would re-visit this museum in a heartbeat.

The first segment of our journey was exploring the North Island, and we immediately headed north out of Auckland to our destination at Russell, located on a peninsula jutting out into the Bay of Islands. The roads were good and the traffic pretty friendly, and from memory it took us about four hours to reach our destination. Our accommodation was a well-situated, multi-room apartment on York St, just back from the water and close to everything. Staying here for 3 nights, there were three highlights for us: taking a boat ride from the local wharf out into the Bay of Islands and appreciating its stunning scenery; taking the ferry across to Paihia and walking through town to the Waitangi treaty grounds – the location where the Treaty of Waitangi was signed in 1840 between Maori chiefs from the north island and the British Crown; and finally visiting the old mission on the edge of Russell, in a beautiful location on the shoreline, where in the mid 1800s the Reverend and his family established a printery and made prayer books and bibles for the local Maori people.

Heading South from Russell, we undertook a long drive which bypassed Auckland and led us down to Matamata, the town where Steve’s step father Dave Swap (born 1919) grew up, and in which Dave and his father had built the local town hall. This is a pretty little town set amid rich farming land. Our highlight here was visiting Hobbiton, the real-life movie set that was constructed for the filming of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings movies. It is wonderful! We were able to take a tour where we wandered the fields and hillocks scattered throughout the little town, past the hobbit-sized dwellings built for the movie, and soak up the ambience of this rural idyll, before concluding with a drink by the fire in the Green Dragon Inn constructed especially for the movies. A wonderful day!

From Matamata we headed south to Taupo, where our accommodation sat high on a hill with spectacular views of the beautiful Lake Taupo. During this drive we stopped in at Rotorua where we saw the spectacular forest of giant redwoods located there, and, a little further south, walked through the Waimangu Volcanic Rift Valley, the world’s youngest geothermal system, created by the volcanic eruption of Mount Tarawera in 1886 (this created a deep rift 17 kms long which was covered a layer of mud 20 metres thick). We saw still-steaming vents and cliff faces as we walked through this extraordinary landscape, in which the vegetation is bravely making a comeback having been completely destroyed over 130 years ago.

We essentially had a rest day in Taupo, enjoying the lovely views and trotting about the town, before heading off to the west coast town of New Plymouth in the Taranaki region. Along the way we detoured to visit, at Otorohanga, the Kiwi House and Native Bird Park. Here we saw, in a specially darkened area made to resemble the night time habitat of these extraordinary birds, adult kiwis scratching among the leaf litter. At times we were less than a metre away from these wonderful birds, which were much bigger and stronger than we expected. This was a detour well worth taking!

We stayed in New Plymouth for just the one night, but even so managed a lovely walk along the famous coastal walkway, marked by its huge basalt stones buttressing the shoreline against the large seas that come in from the Southern Ocean. We also were taken by the beautiful Puke Ariki museum and library which featured a marvellous collection of literature and other sources in local Maori languages.

Driving past the stunning, perfectly conical and still active volcano, Mount Taranaki (also known as Mount Egmont), we drove to our final destination on this leg of our journey, Wellington, the nation’s capital located on the southern coast of the North Island. Throughout our driving tour the North Island scenery was simply beautiful, with deep green fields. In Wellington we stayed in a nice hotel right in the centre of town for two nights. The city was crowded with fans supporting the two sides playing in a day-night World Cup One Day Cricket match at the local ground: England and New Zealand. The match was over very quickly – England was thrashed, dismissed for around 100 runs, and we had the pleasure of seeing England fans unexpectedly out of the ground in time for dinner – no doubt a boon for the local restaurateurs!

Wellington is a very hilly city, and we had the pleasure of taking its historic cable car up above the city to the beautiful Wellington Botanic Gardens. While Steve rested up, Jenny also visited the Museum of New Zealand, Te Papa Tongarewa. This fascinating museum is housed in an architecturally interesting building, and has six floors of brilliant historical, cultural and artistic displays. Many of these featured interactive elements, a great hit with young (and not so young) kids. Steve had no idea what he missed! During a morning walk in the city we went into a local craft shop and fell in love with a beautiful blue translucent glass bowl, which we purchased. This now has pride of place on the dining room table in our home in Brisbane.

And so ended our driving tour of the North Island of New Zealand. Early the next morning we joined many dozens of other cars and trucks in the queue to board the ferry which would take us across the Cook Strait to the South Island.

But that is our next story.