New Zealand - Land of the Long White Cloud

Another lovely holiday in New Zealand.  We've been there many times and this visit is to attend a family wedding near Auckland.  On arrival at Auckland Airport we bought a pre-paid SIM card so we'd be able to make phone calls and access the internet.  The phone calls worked out fine but the internet access was painfully slow - too slow to enable any blog updating, web surfing or even to use maps, so I'm writing this a few weeks after the event, back in Townsville.  We collected our pre-booked hire car from Ezi-Rent, the company we usually use, and headed off along the motorway to our accommodation.

We booked into our B&B, Bombay Bed and Breakfast, about 35 km south of Auckland.  The Bombay Hills are lush and green and the views are magnificent.  We really notice how green everything is when we're in NZ.  So different to the grey-greens, browns and reds of Australia.  Our few days here were spent mostly with family - pre and post  the wedding which was held at the picturesque Simunovich Olive Estate.

Nearby Pokekohe was hosting the annual V8 car races and the local shops were right into the spirit with racing themed window displays.

After the wedding we drove to Coromandel, on the Coromandel Peninsula across the Hauraki Bay east from Auckland, for more family time.  Once onto the peninsula, the road is very narrow and winding and hugs the coast.  Beautiful scenery along the way.  The 55km from Thames, at the base of the peninsula, to Coromandel Town takes about an hour.

Once settled in we were able to enjoy some fishing as well as the scenery.

One of the tourist attractions is the Driving Creek Railway, a narrow gauge railway built on 60 acres on the steep side of a mountain.  This privately owned attraction was built in the 1970s to transport clay for the pottery on the property.  

We travelled through the rainforest, along zig-zags and switchbacks, over bridges and through tunnels up the mountain.  After some time looking at the view and taking photos, it was back onto the train for the trip down.  The pottery artworks alongside the track were reminders of the reason this railway was built.

A day trip to the eastern side of the peninsula to Whitianga was across the mountains, through rainforest along the "309 Road".  We weren't able to drive up to Castle Rock due to road closures, but we saw this imposing volcanic plug from many vantage points.  On our way back we stopped at one of the many scenic lookouts to take some photos.

Saturday morning we decided to make the 1 hour drive to historic Thames to visit the markets.  We had freshly prepared mussel fritters for lunch.  These are a NZ institution and are delicious, packed with NZ green-lip mussels.  We were able to indulge in mussels quite often.







After Coromandel we travelled a few hours south to Tokoroa, in the middle of the North Island to rejoin family there.  This time we managed to visit nearby Rotorua.  We haven't been to Rotorua for many years and it has certainly changed.  We spent a couple of hours in the museum which is located in the old bath house.  Once again we were impressed by the way NZ museums are curated and managed.  They really do get it right.

The walk back to the car through the Government Gardens was very relaxing.

Our other excursion was a day trip to Hobbiton, I'll do a separate post for this one.