Two days of lousy weather. Yesterday it rained all day. We drove to the Bay of Islands but did little touring in the rain. Today there was no rain but gale force winds reaching over 100 km/hr so we were not able to do much. We drove from Whangarei to Dargaville and found a room (a cabin in a converted rail car - confident it would stand up to the wind) and hunkered down. We did venture out in the afternoon to visit the local museum. Quite a good museum tha...

Left Auckland yesterday morning and headed north. Beautiful scenery. However, about 30 minutes north of Auckland the traffic ground to a near-halt. We creeped along for about 20 minutes and then saw a sign for a "tourist drive". We took it. Mistake! It led into some nice scenery, but no exit. 90 minutes later we retraced our way back to the place we left the highway. Signage here is not great. We arrived in Whangarei, the major city north of Auckland and...

Arrived in Auckland yesterday. We spent much of the day wandering around the central area. We walked to the Auckland Viaduct for dinner. This area on the inner harbour was redeveloped for the 1988 America's Cup. It is a lively several blocks on the harbour loaded with shops, restaurants, bars and pubs. We had a great dinner at an Irish pub. Today we took the hop on hop off bus tour and spent the day touring around Auckland. Quite a pretty city. Great sett...

Yesterday was a day at sea as we cruised from Christchurch to Tauranga. We arrived at the Port of Tauranga this morning. The port is actually in Mt. Maunganui, about 10 minutes from Tauranga. We intend to return to this area on our own after the cruise so we just wandered around the two towns and picked up tourist info. on the North Island. Mt. Maunganui is the smaller of the two and somewhat more attractive than Tauranga. We will probably spend a couple of ...

Spent the day on a tour of the Banks Peninsula and Christchurch. Akaroa, on the Banks Peninsula is about 90 minutes from Christchurch and is the location for cruise ships to anchor and tender passengers to shore to tour Christchurch and the surrounding area. Ships had previously docked at Lyttleton, closer to Christchurch, but the piers there were badly damaged by the 2011 earthquake. The Banks Peninsula and Akaroa Harbour offer fantastic scenery. The tour wa...