Greetings from The Shire!! I’m taking a departure from my normal work-related blog posts to give a little trip report on our honeymoon to the North & South Islands in New Zealand this past January. New Zealand has been at the top of my bucket list for ages and it beat my expectations, by a lot. Our trip started on the beautiful North Island of Aotearoa: Te Ika-a-Māui.
Bay of Islands in Northland
The transfer from the United States took us three days, but only 14 hours in a plane. We left on January 10th and crossed over the international date line three times before landing in Auckland at 6am on January 12th. From there, we drove North four hours to the Bay of Islands and a small, walkable tourist town named Paihia nestled along one of the many bays. The landscape on the drive varied. There were tropical trees and plants, rugged mountains jutting into the ocean, and…rain. My friend Mike who we met up with in Wellington apologized for the amount of rain they were having. That cracked me up. New Zealanders have a reputation for being great people and where else is someone going to be nice enough to apologize for the weather?
Diving in Paihia
Our first full day on the island it was POURING rain. Luckily, we were diving that day so a little extra water didn’t bother us! We drove about 45 minutes up the coast to a Holiday Park filled with puddles and drenched people hiding in their camper vans. This was our launch point to dive the Rainbow Warrior shipwreck, Graham and I’s first wreck dive ever. It wasn’t the clearest dive in the world, but it was amazing nonetheless. We saw a moray eel and dove through the ship, dodging pipes and other debris. There were beautiful corals, nudibranchs, and fish every where.
It was raining so hard that we stopped at a nearby island for lunch to visit “the hut”, which was a vacation rental run by New Zealand’s park system. We needed the shelter! The New Zealanders staying there, who were going a bit stir crazy at the time, welcomed us. After lunch we dove a volcanic island known as the figure eight. We saw huge urchins, kelp galore, and many, many beautiful fish. Just when we were starting to go blind from the rain and wind above water, it stopped. Only then were we able to appreciate the true beauty of The Bay of Islands.
Hobbiton Movie Set
On Day 2, we drove to Matamata, New Zealand to tour the Hobbiton Movie Set. Hobbiton is in an area just as stunning and beautiful as it looks in the movies. There are rolling hills and farmland as far as the eye can see. We had a beautiful, sunny day fit for a hobbit. The tour itself was a Lord of the Rings nerd haven. Everything is still there, looking exactly like it did in the Lord of the Rings & Hobbit movies. You see Bag End, Sam’s house, and the open green where Bilbao’s one hundred and eleventy-first birthday party took place. At the end, we stopped into the Green Dragon Inn for a pint. Delightful!
Rotorua – Geothermal Wonderland
We stayed in Rotorua for the next few days. One thing I will note is that New Zealand has a variety of cute rentals, many of which are well-appointed tiny houses in beautiful locations. Our Rotorua rental near Rotorua Lake in Hamurana was one of the nicest. It was the perfect place to relax at the end of a long day of touring.
The next day we drove down to Wai-O-Tapu Geothermal Park to watch Lady Knox geyser erupt and take a hike around their many, many beautiful mud pots and colored hot springs.
We stopped at the National Kiwi Hatchery to see baby kiwis. It turns out, in addition to humans introducing all kinds of kiwi predators, kiwis are also terrible parents. Moms abandon the babies straight away and dads get confused and step on the eggs sometimes. There is a group in New Zealand that sends trained volunteers out to collect the eggs and sanctuaries raise them until they are released back into the wild. This is the only way they will survive. There are so few kiwis in the wild today that there’s almost no way to view them outside of a Kiwi Sanctuary. In Fjordlands National Park there are signs indicating that kiwis can be found there, and so dogs are prohibited. The birds themselves are cute, but we weren’t allowed to take any pictures because flash can screw up a kiwi’s neurological development.
That evening, we took in a cultural presentation and hāngī feast at Mitai Māori Village. I’m glad we learned more about the Māori, but this was a very touristy event that I don’t recommend. We learned just as much at the Te Papa Museum in Wellington. The best part of dinner was the pavlova, which is an amazing meringue dessert found in Australia and New Zealand. It’s one of my new favorite foods.
Waitomo Region & Glowworms
Day 4, knocked my socks off. We did a glowworm cave tour through Spellbound Tours in the Waitomo Region. Our guide, Scuba, was a cave and spelunking expert. We hopped in a boat and sailed through a pitch-black cave with millions of glowworms for about 45 minutes. That was probably one of the top five things I’ve ever done. We also toured another cave and were able to see extinct moa remains and lots of cool cave features.
Rotorua – Polynesian Spa & Redwoods Treewalk
Then, we drove back to Rotorua for a dip in the geothermal-fed Polynesian Spa. This place reminded me so much of the wonderful pools in Iceland. We relaxed in a private pool before spending a few hours hopping between pools of various temperatures in their deluxe spa area.
Rotorua also has a stand of redwood trees that were planted in 1901 as part of an agricultural exploration project. You can go and walk among them. Or, you can take the Redwoods Treewalk and walk in them. Like an Ewok Village, there is a series of suspension bridges and platforms where you can walk high above the ground and enjoy the redwoods from up to 80 feet in the air. We chose to go during the day so we could appreciate the view of the redwoods mixed with black tree ferns. They are also lit up at night with lanterns suspended nearby.
Next week, I’ll take you deep into Middle Earth and talk about our time in New Zealand’s Capital City: Wellington. Let me know if you like this departure from my usual posts by leaving me a comment below!
2 thoughts on “New Zealand: The North Island”
Comments are closed.