Off we went this morning for a day trip to the Wairapa ( it's an area of the Nth Island on the Sth East Coast). It's a fertile farming area mostly for sheep & cattle grazing with some quaint country towns that we visited like Greytown, Carterton, Martinborough & Gladstone Pub where we had a delicious lunch. It also was an interesting winding track to get there in the car through a winding mountain range to the nth east of Wellington. Our last night tonigh...

Past few days have been nice & relaxing catching up with our friends Joyce & Snow. Monday we went for a look around the local area around Peka Peka, lots of little coastal hamlets before heading home for a BBQ dinner with Brent (Joyce & Snow's son) & Eva & Oliver (their grandchildren) their mum is away on a school trip to Vietnam during the holidays. Yesterday we headed off to watch the horse trials at Foxton ( Charlie saw quite a few that imp...

After a lovely night catching up with Joyce & Snow at their lovely place just out of town we got up & organized & headed into Wellington where we had a lovely look around the city & it's Harbour. Today was quite fresh & windy in contrast to yesterday when we arrived here which was amazing. We also went for a big walk & checked out the Botanical Gardens as well as the Te Papa (our place), which is a great museum etc of New Zealand history &...

We arrived in Hawke's Bay after traveling through some pretty isolated through the mountains roads coming across from Taupo. The sun was shining & we loved the look of this area. Our Nautilus accommodation overlooks the Pacific Ocean. It's a very unusual coastline, rocky beach & no swimming here as the underwater shelf drops away quickly close to the shoreline. Woke yesterday to a very bleak rainy day so we decided to do the rounds of some local wineries....

This morning we left Taupo & headed over to check our the Geyser field area on the road back to Rotorua. The Wai-o-Tapu Wonderland was a national park geothermal area. Quite amazing how the area looked like a moonscape with craters, lime & sulphur hot springs as well as geysers & bubbling mud pools. From there we trekked overland through the mountains down to Napier. There were some huge logging trucks & even bigger steep climbs but was an interes...