New Zealand (North Island), Auckland, Napier and Wellington

We arrived in New Zealand a week earlier than expected following some visa issues about entering Australia, so, we made the decision to fly to Auckland early and book an additional week in the city. We did enjoy our time in Auckland and after a few rest days, we soon got back to doing the ‘tourist thing’ - hopping on and off buses and walking the streets in search of new sights and new experiences. The city was not our favourite in New Zealand, but it was a fast moving, modern and cosmopolitan place with much to admire. The Auckland Sky Tower was very much the focal point and we enjoyed the views from the summit, if not so much the express lift to get us there!

We also enjoyed our first proper NZ wine tasting experience here as we caught the ferry across to Waiheke Island, which is essentially a wine growing and wine drinking paradise. We toured the island and found an excellent place for lunch at the Tantalus Estate Winery. We also caught a different ferry to Devonport Island, quite a small place, but we ‘enjoyed’ our walk up to the highest point on this island and the views certainly made the challenging walk worthwhile. Auckland was also the first opportunity to do a bit of shopping for a while, so we took advantage of upgrading one or two items and I made the best decision to purchase the new Samsung Galaxy S 10 Plus phone, a superb investment purely for its camera capabilities, with many photos featuring heavily as Instagram posts and included in my personal Shutterstock Photograph Portfolio ever since!!

Auckland and New Zealand was the first time for us on our travels that we hired a car, so quite an exciting moment when we picked the car up towards the end of our Auckland time and we prepared for what transpired to be an island adventure of some 5,000 kms driving as we moved south to Napier and Wellington, before a 3 hour ferry crossing would take our adventures to the South Island, where the views and driving experience were simply unbelievable. I just loved driving in New Zealand, quite good roads, mainly 100kph limits, quite fast but sensible drivers and, compared to most places, the roads were very quiet so you could enjoy everything around you at your leisure.

So, our first long drive was to head from Auckland down the east coast to a place called Napier, where we would stay at a Motor Inn for 4 nights. This was also the first (and last) time that we nearly ran out of petrol, having not realised how far you can drive in NZ without seeing a petrol station, so we ended up running on empty for 20 mins until the car’s GPS found us the nearest garage! Relief from filling up we arrived shortly afterwards at Napier, a small coastal town renown for its unique concentration of 1930's Art Deco architecture and located within close proximity to the renowned wine-producing region of Hawke's Bay. We stayed at a lovely location overlooking the sea, so quite a contrast from our central city location previously. The town was nice but not really our thing, so we drove out to see other places like the adjacent town Hastings, some fabulous valley and sea views and an increasing number of wineries.

Last stop n the North Island would be to the small Capital City of NZ - Wellington, located right at the foot of the North Island, with easy ferry access to the South Island from here. Wellington was busy and much more what we had expected to see of a NZ city, whereas Auckland was very much a Pan-asian community, Wellington was the sort of population mix that we would have expected, with quite a splattering of tourists too. We loved the city and could well imagine living here, the city offered enough activities, night life, good shops and sights to please pretty much everyone. We were back to a high rise city centre apartment, with excellent views across to the harbour, but we did feel a bit nervous on the Sunday evening here when we felt the effects of a small earthquake, not best staying on the 7th floor on such an occasion! In fact the weather began to feature quite heavily in our minds around this time, when the local news was talking of bad weather and further earthquakes on the South Island, with some quite bad damage resulting, it did give us second thoughts about our next destinations, but only briefly!

Excursions from Wellington included a drive to see the 'Pinnacles', a beautiful National Park, made even more famous when it featured as a setting in the 'Lord of the Rings' trilogy. The walk up to the main viewing area was arduous and took us about an hour and half, but fortunately for us it was quite a cool day, otherwise it might well have been too tiring!

In the centre of Wellington, we enjoyed the short, 10 minute trip on the Funicular Railway to visit the Zealandia Eco-sanctuary and the Wellington Botanical Gardens - both well worth a visit.

For additional Photographs, take a look at: -

1. Our Instagram account @martinandviviana

2. Our Shutterstock Photograph Portfolio, where our images are available to purchase

3. YouTube to view the collection of short videos, that have been compiled to document our travels

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