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South Island, New Zealand
On our first morning in the South Island, we woke up bright and early in order to catch a cab to Picton to retrieve our rental car from the ferry terminal. To make a long story short, the cab ride lasted about 30 minutes and cost us $105NZD. Our cab driver also took us to the wrong rental car location,…
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Martinborough, New Zealand
On the twelfth day of our adventure, we woke up in the morning with the sad prospect that today was our last day in the North Island, as we had a flight to the South Island at 5pm that evening. Wanting to toast goodbye to the gorgeous North, we decided to head to wine country in Wairarapa, situated about an…
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Weta Cave, Wellington, New Zealand
On the day after Christmas, we woke up to the discovery that it was Boxing Day, a term that we Americans only partially recognized as a British holiday of some sort. Our hotel clerk quickly informed us that Boxing Day was a public holiday in New Zealand, where the stores run huge sales and people get out and shop. Wellington,…
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Putangirua Pinnacles, New Zealand
The walking track guide didn’t give much instruction other than “follow the stream,” and since New Zealand is currently in the midst of a super long drought, that was easier said than done. Several times we lost our way and had to double-back on the path to make sure we didn’t get lost in the middle of the mountains.
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Wellington, New Zealand
Wellington is a four-hour drive south of Tongariro National Park, which is where we woke up on Christmas Eve. For most of the drive, we passed through beautiful countryside and farmland, spotting cattle, sheep, goat, alpaca, deer, and horse farms. We popped in at a small café in the tiniest little town you can imagine—“Bulls,” which made every effort possible…
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Tongariro National Park
Tongariro National Park is situated about an hour’s drive south of Lake Taupo, and is home to three famous volcanoes: Mount Tongariro, the smallest; Mount Ruapehu, the largest; and Mount Ngauruhoe (arguably the most famous, since it served as Peter Jackson’s “Mount Doom” in the Lord of the Rings films). These three mountains are hugely important to the Maori people.
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Lake Taupo, New Zealand
We left Waitomo bright and early on the 7th morning, eager to reach Lake Taupo before noon. Lake Taupo is a spectacular, massive lake, much bigger than Lake Rotorua, which we’d seen earlier in the trip. It’s the largest lake in New Zealand, known formally as “Great Lake Taupo,” and as we learned that day, it was formerly a supervolcano.…
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Stars Above the Water: Waitomo Caves, New Zealand
They were the titiwai, or “stars above the waters,” as the Maori call them. Seeing the titiwai felt like lying on the grass on a pitch-black night in the middle of nowhere, staring up at the stars above.
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Hobbiton Movie Set, New Zealand
In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien So goes the famous first line of JRR Tolkien’s The Hobbit, the prequel to his famous Lord of the Rings trilogy that has touched so many of our lives. On the seventh day of our December 2017 honeymoon, Matt and I woke up after a pretty restless night…
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Rotorua, New Zealand
In the morning, we woke up early and drove straight to Rotorua—a lakeside town about an hour inland from the coast. Rotorua is known for its geothermal activity, as the town sits on the caldera of a massive volcano that last erupted several thousand years ago. This volcanic activity makes the region home to several geysers, geothermal hot springs, bubbling…
