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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, so we had to walk quite a bit with our luggage to find the correct pick-up spot; when we finally did, we grabbed the keys to another Toyota Corolla and zoomed out of town as quickly as possible. Picton is a small fishing village on the northern tip of the…
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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, which had been a ghost town the day before, was now a madhouse of people. For those familiar with the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy, you will recognize Wellington as the hub of production for the cast and crew in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Wellington is home to the…
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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 to make a pun about cattle (“this café is unbelieva-BULL”). After lunch, our car zoomed across several smaller mountainsides and eventually wound its way to the West Coast, where I shouted in glee upon seeing the Tasman Sea, which spans between Western New Zealand and Australia. About an hour from…
