Writing this from LAX, we’ve now had our final day in Auckland. As the flight was quite late we decided to make the most of the day and we’ve already seen the sky tower that we wanted to, so we headed out of the city to the Aquarium.

The aquarium itself is quite big, with the key elements being a penguin exhibit and a big shark tank. Whilst not quite the experience of Ocean Park, the penguins were very good and you can see them underwater as well. The shark tank had a moving travelator to go through it; which Rebecca wanted to stay on all day. Three loops round was enough for us and I hopefully got some good photographs. After a few hours we headed out of town towards the airport and relaxed for a couple of hours in a town called Davenport. All good and got some nice shots back at the harbour. Leaving I noticed that we were near an airport, trouble is the wrong one! Thankfully loads of time so arrived with time to spare, packed, emptied our faithful campervan back (got a refund on the heater we purchased) and straight onto the plane.

Half way home now, waiting in LAX. Rebecca has been a star so far and the seats we have are very fancy business class looking. 12 hours more flight and London will welcomed

Up and out at a good time as we’ve a 3 hour drive to Auckland. Not very interesting drive, it’s getting more built up and lots of industrial areas around. Getting to Auckland we parked our campervan and bussed into the city.

Walked around Queen Street which is the main shopping area then decided as its a nice day to head up the Sky Tower; tallest building in Southern Hemisphere. Glass floors in the lifts and at the top! Got lots of photographs and decided to have a glass of bubbly!

Nice last meal out down by the Harbour “Viaduct” then grabbed a taxi back. Relaxing day!

Up late today and relaxing start to the morning. Headed out around midday to the wildlife park. Primarily it has trout, ducks and lions. Strange combination but really nicely all laid out and Rebecca loved the ducks as you can feed them. Also got really close to goats, sheep and other farm animals. Overall really nice relaxing afternoon at the park with lots of hidden walkways and bug ferns as well

Dinner turned into a load of starters in a trending and relaxing bar. Would love to setup something like this in Risborough! Belly pork, mussels and seafood selection. Nice when you also add 3 large glasses of Sav for Li and, well, it’s a brewery so got to have a few beers.
Tony

Started of the day quite leisurely this morning with an full cooked breakfast in the centre of Taupo in an Irish pub (they really do get everywhere). Next stop just a short 50 mile drive to Rotorua, booked in for a couple of nights at one of the Top 10 camps and headed out to our first stop, Te Puia, which is basically a walk through a number of large boiling mud pools and spouting geysers. All very nice and some decent size things to see rather than what we witnessed yesterday. In fact we ended spending around 4 hours there so quite a big place.

Dinner was out tonight at a local restaurant, Li had some amazing pulled pork whilst I reached for the lamb again; both good choices. Returning back the the camp we headed straight to the outdoor thermal mineral pools. Something quite nice about laying there in the dark, just watching the stars in 40 degrees water…..unfortunately, we had to take Rebecca, so nice yes; relaxing, of course not! Quick shower, bottle of wine…all good really

Tony

Back on the road this morning after our day off yesterday and we’ve got a 90 mile drive. What we didn’t realise is that the majority is on mountain roads and we don’t have the most powerful bus in the world

Destination, Taupo, was reached around 1pm and a quick bit to eat on the run and straight to a thermal walk trail. Should have only been 30 minutes, but we let Rebecca walk a lot of it so this took a while. Some nice hot rocks and vents giving of steam and the standard sulphur smell, lovely. All very Jurassic with the big ferns about as well but the are only so many photos you can take of a plant with steam! Nice little cafe at the walk as well, with chickens, Lama’s and peacocks (odd selection, we know!). Still Rebecca had good fun playing with them all

Next stop is the real reason for being in Taupo, the Haka Falls. The main river that flows thought the area, the longest in NZ enters a very narrow gorge, around 500feet long and the river pounds through at a serious rate of knots. If you fell in, you’re dead, period. Really nice photo opportunity so spent some time there as I haven’t the rest of he holiday really. Second stop was a dam downstream, again with a narrow gorge after it creating some big old rapids

Anyway, the A&E part. Basically I’ve had a serious tooth problem all day. This has happened before and I was given antibiotics to help. So, down A&E and 30 mins later out with some pills. All good but mouth hurts loads

Up and out with a nice cooked breakfast this morning. First stop this morning, the National Aquarium in Napier. Not really a touch on Ocean Park, but then not much is going to be; however good fun and Rebecca had fun on a travelator that travelled though a under tank walk through

Wine tasting! It turns out that the majority of the vineyards are down a bit south of Napier so we had a bit of a drive but not too bad. Managed to get in 5 vineyards in the afternoon. The wine here is quite different from that in the south island. The different vineyards really do produce wine that tastes different is the main thing. The reds were also quite a lot nicer than in the south and we bought a couple. Good news is that we found out the allowance is 5 bottles each; more than I thought originally Dinner was steak cooked by the Mrs and then a bottle of wine was required.

So, hot off the press, Li got accosted by a bloke on the camp site claiming he hadn’t eaten for a week. She’s just gone and given him a pack of instant noodles that we didn’t want and a bottle of really horrid red wine that we bought for 28pence and was about to chuck out!!

Before I start I wanted to remember to write that we’ve discovered that Rebecca knows her own name and has done for a while now; we just didn’t realise. Putt Putt is how she says it so we can be forgiven I think for not realising this, but it is 100% how she says Rebecca!

Anyway, getting up at the crack of dawn this more made it all too clear that we made a good decision last night in getting to Picton. Away for the 8am sailing and after an un-eventful sailing, except Rebecca redecorating the table, we arrived 3.5 hours later at Wellington. It’s not really that far but by Christ the boat minces along like you’d not believe.

Quick stop at the Natural History Museum in Wellington to see the only Colossus Squid in the world (which I suppose was quite large, but expected bigger) and we left heading north for Napier. 200 miles, and the only thing of interest was the biggest, seriously huge Chinese takeaway you’ve ever seen. One rice, one chow mien and with two platefuls we’ve only eaten about 25%. Best value in NZ we’ve seen so far. Good campsite in Napier, now going to have a beer and chill for a bit; lots of wine tasting to do tomorrow!
Tony

Up and out around 10:30 today, leaving behind us the madness from the SeaFest and driving north for a couple of hours to Renwick. The drive is really nice along the cost road and on the way we found a seal by the shore to photograph and then picked up a lobster size crayfish to have for lunch. Li then spent the next 40 miles getting it out of the shell and although nice is a lot of effort

Renwick is in the middle of the Marlborough wine region, so as expected this is a good time to do some more tasting! Four vineyards this time and we picked up a few more bottles, all good although we do think that there is a lot of similar wines here, nothing really stands out as different from the others

Leaving the wine region we travel north again to the coast and the town of Havelock which, they claim, is the Green lipped mussel capital of the world. With this in mind we stop off at the port and grab some mussels. They are seriously big and so much better than you can get in the UK

Leaving Havelock we travel to Picton and bed down for the night as we’ve got an early start for the ferry

Tony got up early and headed down to the ticket office and managed to get another ticket for the SeaFest which was great as he didn’t have to wait long. We tucked in to a bacon and sausage sandwich for breakfast; the sausage looked like its been cut by a drunk, it was a thick lump one end and a thin slice at the other.

The SeaFest turned out to be basically an enormous wine/beer fuelled fancy dress party with lots of seafood and all day live bands. Costumes ranged from guys in blow up Emus, the Flintstones, superheroes to girls in condom foil wraps.

We started off with scallop skewer, seafood chowder, scallop pie, potato rosti, whitebait pattie (which tasted like some omelette thing). Obviously lots of beer was drunk as well. Rebecca loved all the live music and spent a good couple of hours “dancing” to it. Everything started to get a bit mad though later on when the rain and hail came down as everyone dived for cover in the main marque where the band were playing

Enough of that, fish and chips on the way home around 4pm and then the evening watching some films and drinking some wine. Glad we’re not outside camping, sounds nasty out there!
Tony & Li

Decided to stop off in the thermal springs this morning in Hamner Springs before setting off to Kaikoura. It was lovely to relax in the the thermal outdoor pools and Rebecca had a smashing time. However, it was a little nippy getting from one pool to another. Tony was a big kid and checked out the big water slide….not sure who is the child here!

Finally made a move on to Kaikoura (east coast) and it was touch and go on the camp site as it was booked up for the Local Seafest. We managed to get the last spot in one site near the town.

We decided not to do the Whale watching, they wanted £150 for both of us and Rebecca wasn’t allowed to come with us. Decision was easy as she wasn’t allowed and the cost too.

We also only managed to get one ticket for the Seafest tomorrow. We didn’t anticipate how big of an event it was. it was sold out and by luck a guy in the queue had a spare ticket. So Tony is going to have to hunt for a spare ticket early tomorrow morning. Fingers cross we get another ticket.