We arrived in New Zealand after cruising around the South and North islands on Radiance of the Seas; this allowed us to visit Milford sounds, which we did not visit on our previous trip ten years before. We also visited Picton once again. As we approached Auckland we were very excited to meet up with Susan's school friend Shelly who she had not seen for some time. It was raining as we left the cruise ship yet we had preparing ourselves for free Yoga on the beach, ANZAC biscuits and many many sunrises and sunsets to dream of.
Our accommodation for the first month was to be in an airbnb, Bazils Retreat a place we grew to love.
We would use the Airbnb as a base initially to tour locally. We had visited New Zealand before but covered North & South island on a hectic road trip in approx. 17 days. There is no way you can even scratch the surface in that time and we did not. This time it would be different and we decided the road trip would cover the parts of North island that the cruise had not covered.
Just some of the places visited were Mount Eden, Mount St John (Te Kopuke) and Cornwall Park, One Tree Hill. Rodders Beach Vintage Festival, Shakespeare park and a number of sunsets including Tindalls Beach (above centre). One of the things we'd remembered from our trip ten years earlier was the bird song. The sound of the birds in New Zealand in combination with the cicadas is just awesome and so distinctive. What we hadn't realised was just how much the birds would become part of our trip this time. Like Australia, there are many rare birds in New Zealand and we were lucky enough to see and take photographs of many of them especially during our visit toTiritiri Matangi, an island just off the Whangaparaoa peninsular. A predator free wildlife sanctuary for native birds of New Zealand.
Time to move on, a road trip covering the far North of the island then to the Coromandel travelling in a clockwise direction almost reaching Napier and a sharp right turn for Lake Taupo before returning back to Whangaparaoa.
updating with lots more information Jan 2024
Photographs and video on here are from our own trips, they're also copyrighted by us so no reproductions without specific permissions thank you