Toronto, Canada

We've been back home now for a few days, trying to de-jetlag. Overall it was a really fun trip.

We finally got back to Toronto after a four-day transit back home. The arrival through customs at Pearson has improved since our last time through (pre-covid), although it's still behind all the other international arrivals we had on this trip. It also took almost an hour for the luggage to get from the plane to the carousel. I suppose we should be happy that our luggage arrived at all.

The highlights (in chronological order):

• Snorkeling with manta rays in the Astrolabe Reef 
• Flying over the reefs in little prop planes during local flights in Fiji
• Standing on the 180th meridian (the only accessible place in the world where you can do so)
• Snorkeling with all the colourful fishes and coral at Rainbow Reef
• Village walks on Taveuni
• Walking around Hobart
• Road trip to the Outback in South Australia
• Making it to Kati Thanda, our 4th of the Seven Low Points
• Driving along Highway 6 on the West Coast
• Excursions to Milford Sound and Doubtful Sound (Milford more impressive to see, Doubtful a more fun experience)
• Watching the sheep graze from our lodge in Tahakopa Bay in Southland
• Little Blue Penguins in Oamaru
• Seeing Wandering Albatross in Kaikoura (wingspan of 3.7m, the largest flying bird in the world)
• Glowworm caves in Waitomo and Te Anau (my favourite was Ruakuri Cave)
• Learning about wines from the many wine regions in NZ
• Orakei Korako Geothermal Park

We were lucky to not get sick over the whole trip. There was a lot of uncertainty with covid when we booked back in Feb 2022, but pretty much all the restrictions had been lifted by the time we started out trip. We wore masks on flights and other public transport, and in the occasional museum if it was busy.

It was our first trip where English was an official language in all the countries. Fiji has three (English, Fijian, Fiji Hindi) and NZ has three (English, Māori and NZ Sign Language). Legally, Australia has no offical language but English is considered the de facto national language. (There's a handful of other countries without an offical language, including UK, US and Japan).

Australia is the first country I've spent more than a couple days without having any currency from the country. (We had cash in NZ as a backup -- in a couple places they didn't take foreign credit cards, and some roadside fruit stands were cash-only)

We also traveled with a bluetooth speaker (in our case, an Echo Dot 5th Gen, which can be used offline as a bluetooth speaker). We used it quite a bit, especially in bnb's.

A couple last bits of trivia, the 38 days we spent in NZ is the longest I've spent consecutively in another country. At eleven weeks, this was our longest trip together. It's probably nearing the longest we'd like to be out traveling, after a while we do miss the routine of home.

Time to start thinking about our next trip!

San Francisco, USA

Day 3 (Fiji Standard Time) of our four-day transit back home, today from Nadi to San Francisco.

The flight didn't depart from Nadi until 10:15pm so we had all day to do much of nothing. We were able to get late check-out at 5pm for $100 FJD which was great. We spent most of the day in our air-conditioned room because we weren't adjusted to the 31C or humidity.

We had one last ferry ride from the Doubletree to the mainland and then a taxi to the airport. We forgot that we had been in the Fiji Airways lounge previously (we had upgraded at check-in for the flight from Nadi to Sydney). It was pretty crowded in the lounge, there were two large flights to LA and SF around 10pm, and I'm guessing most people had the same idea as us, to hang out at the lounge for most of the evening.

Our flight boarded and departed on time. We were able to get a few hours sleep 'overnight'.

Day 3 (Pacific Standard Time)

We arrived in SF around 12:45pm, after a pretty smooth 10+ hour flight. We also gained 18 hours by crossing the International Date Line so arrived nine hours before we took off. We had to clear US immigration and customs before rechecking our bags for the last leg home. Originally the NAN-SFO-YYZ flights had a nice connection, but before we started our trip, Air Canada changed the SFO-YYZ flight to leave an hour before we arrived. So we had 23 hours in transit in San Francisco. I had booked a hotel in Union Square rather than staying at the airport.

We had to wheel our luggage (in a $8 USD cart!) from T1 to T2, where the United / Air Canada desks were. We asked directions from a very helpful airline agent who guessed that we just came off a long flight and would prefer to walk to T2 rather than take the inter-terminal bus.

Unfortunately Air Canada couldn't take our checked bags until the following day. So we would have to lug six suitcases into town. Hopefully this wouldn't affect my Uber rating!

It was a beautiful day in San Francisco. We were lucky cause the previous week the entire coast of California had had torrential rains and flooding. Our hotel people gave us suggestions on where to eat and tourist for the afternoon. We had lunch at E&O Kitchen, just down the street from our hotel. By the time we were done it was almost 3pm, and we realized we were back in the northern hemisphere with early sunsets. So we went back to the hotel to grab warmer jackets for dusk.

We walked through Chinatown and then down Columbus Ave, where the restaurants changed to Italian. We continued down Columbus to Fort Mason for a view of the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz Island. Fort Mason is popular with joggers and almost everyone passing by stopped to take pics of the sunset. It was one of the better sunsets we'd seen on our trip!

We took a different route back to our hotel, down Polk St and then back across Sutter St. It was a pretty good whirlwind tour of San Francisco! It looks like a pretty cool place to visit with lots of character. We didn't have much steam left, but wanted to stay up a little longer to try to get back to our time zone, so we stopped in at the Irish Bank for a drink, and then called it a night.

Nadi, Fiji

Day 2 of our four-day transit back home, today from Auckland to Nadi.

Our flight was at 9:30am so we decided to get through all the airport lineups and then have breakfast in the terminal.

We had a little wrinkle cause we only had a one-way ticket to Nadi (our flight to Toronto was part our return ticket from Toronto to Nadi). So we we couldn’t checkin online, and instead had to go through a couple longer lineups to show proof of on-going voyage. It was pretty crowded so we wore our masks the whole time, including the flight.

The exit immigration process was fully automated. We’re dreading having to go through Pearson in a few days, which is the opposite of the experience here.

The flight was really pleasant on Air New Zealand. We got totally engrossed in our movies (Elvis for Heather, Tenet for me) and neither of us realized we had even taken off until we were about to land. Perfect movie lengths for a three hour flight!

Cause I booked our flights so many months ago I was able to book seats near the front of economy, and so we were first off the plane and first through immigration. Good thing cause there were only a couple agents and slow going.

Got a taxi to the DoubleTree. We’d taken the route a half dozen times during our Fiji leg of the trip and it was very familiar to us.

About half the staff at the DoubleTree recognized us, some of them even remembered our names which was really impressive, given the number of guests they encounter.

It was 1pm and our room wasn’t quite ready, so we had lunch while waiting. The downside was that we were still in our cooler weather clothes and it was 29C here. Oh well.

We were reunited with our left luggage and took a golf cart to our bure. The rest of the afternoon we spent rejigging our luggage yet again, this time with carryon for our overnight in San Francisco. We had our carryon suitcase now so had more room (on the flight here, our carryon was our weekend pack).

Had dinner yet again at the Doubletree. They had just changed menus so we had some new items to try. We both had fish dishes, both of which were walu, a common fish for eating here in Fiji. I also had a couple Fiji Bitters :)

Auckland, New Zealand

It was a beautiful morning in Waiheke. We didn’t have much time to enjoy the view from the bnb cause we wanted to catch the 11am ferry back to Auckland. This was our first of four transit days to get back home.

Things were going to plan until my Gmail app decided to upgrade itself while I was trying to look up the lockbox code to leave the car and house key (attached to the tow hook on the car). Heather was able to look it up and then we rushed over to the ferry line up. We made it on the 11am with minutes to spare.

Took an Uber to the Novotel at the airport, and then camped out for the rest of the day. We had lunch and dinner at the in-house restaurant which got only 2.6 on Google but wasn’t too bad. Had one last local Hazy Pale Ale :) I had read about the Nelson and Manteuka hops before we got to NZ, I really enjoyed them.

Our room had an excellent view of the runway and landing planes, as well as of Manukau Harbour and the surrounding mountains. It was really quite scenic. Heather also liked watching the little cars pulling the cart trains like little doozers.

We repacked our stuff to maximize our carryon in case our luggage didn't make it.

We took a little walk after dinner. We actually retraced our route from the international to domestic terminal just for fun. This was the path we had taken in miserable weather and in a big rush when we first arrived in NZ, unsuccessfully trying to catch our connection to Christchurch. It was much more pleasant today, a really nice sunset too.

Waiheke Island, New Zealand

Another day focused on eating (that’s one of the main reasons why folks come to Waiheke!) We were lucky that our time here was over a weekend - dinner is only available on Fri/Sat at most places.

We had lunch reservations at The Oyster Inn, in Oneroa. On the way in we stopped at the Ostend Market (it’s open Saturdays). It has a real community feel to it. We browsed through the stalls, some of the food stalls looked amazing if we didn’t already have lunch plans.

Anyways onto Oneroa. We were a few minutes early for our lunch reservation so checked out some of the art galleries along the main strip.

The Oyster Inn is in a prime location on the strip, with its 2nd-floor balcony overlooking the street and the bay beyond. We had the Te Matuku Bay oysters which were excellent, deep shelled like those from Bruny Island but meatier. We also had crudo with avocado, another popular dish in NZ, here served with wasabi peas. I tried a Pale Ale from Alibi Brewing Co, run by the same folks who own Tantalus, where we were having dinner tonight.

On the way back home, we drove up Trig Hill past our bnb to the lookout point, as suggested by our taxi driver yesterday. It had also been mentioned in Waiheke Local when I was surfing on what to do here. Anyways it’s a really cool lookout point, and relatively unknown. Great views of the island and its bays and inlets, as well as across to Auckland.

We had dinner at Tantalus Estate, which shows up on lists of top places to eat in Waiheke and also Auckland. (It’s not uncommon for folks from Auckland to just come to Waiheke for dinner).

On Saturday the only option is their tasting menu, paired with their wines. The food was really good, although we did find the courses a bit busy. The real star was their wines, which were all excellent. Unfortunately they don’t export to Canada.

Most other folk got up to walk around the vineyard in the middle of their dinners, a sort of 7th inning stretch as Heather called it. So we did that too, just before sunset. It’s actually not a bad idea for a longer meal.

It turned out our server was from Ajax, a suburb of Toronto. Five of the staff, as well as one of the owners were also Canadian, and over the dinner they all took turns coming over to chat. This was more Canadians than we had seen over the rest of our trip combined!

Our taxi ride home got a bit delayed (another customer was in a hurry and the owner asked if we minded getting bumped). The owner offered us another wine sampling, and then took us on a tour of the bar and private dining room in the cellar (and then also covered our taxi fare). It was quite cool to see the cellar.

Anyways it was a nice unofficial end to our long vacation. (The next few days are just getting home).

Waiheke Island, New Zealand

Our bnb host had recommended driving out to the east coast to Man O War winery, so I had made a reservation for lunch. Part of the attraction is the drive there.

I was getting more accustomed to the larger vehicle. We were also glad to have the SUV as most of the drive was over a rougher gravel road. The road curved its way through hilly farmland and the occasional vineyard. It was quite beautiful. Saw some sheep - I had been wondering if we had seen our last sheep back in Te Kuiti.

We arrived at the winery just before noon. It’s an iconic NZ coastal setting - there were families on the beach having picnics, other kids playing pétanque on the lawn in front of the winery.

Lucky we had reservations, as it’s a pretty small vineyard. Our table (half a wine barrel) had a little name tag, Reserved for Eric.

We hoped to try the Te Matuku Bay oysters but they were out; so instead had a charcuterie platter and some other nibbles.

A group of friends were gathering, looking like they were here for a wedding. Later, another person asked us excitedly if one of them was Dan Carter? We laughed and said we were the wrong people to ask. Then we asked them who Dan Carter was. (Apparently he’s a famous rugby player who played for the All Blacks).

Anyways we quite enjoyed sipping our drinks and enjoying the view of the bay.

We drove back along the southeast, passing by some more vineyards and a distillery. We hardly passed any cars at all - the main ferry access to Waiheke is on the west end of the island. It’s only about an hour to drive across, but most folks tend to stay on the west end around Oneroa where most of the restaurants and galleries are.

Later we went for dinner at Te Motu Vineyard. It was in a nice setting overlooking the vineyards. We had thought about walking there (it’s about 25 minutes) but ended up taking a taxi cause there’s no sidewalk. Dinner was good.

Waiheke Island, New Zealand

Another transit day, this time to our last stop on our trip before we begin the multiple steps to get home.

Auckland was originally our last stop in NZ, before we swapped out time in Suva with three days on Waiheke Island. This had to do with covid protocols at the time; spending less than 48 hours in Fiji on the way back meant we were considered in transit (and thus lesser protocols).

It did mess up other planning though. The car rental, booked much earlier at a really cheap rate, with changes not allowed, ended today. So we had to drive the car to the airport, and then Uber back to town so we could catch the ferry to Waiheke.

Some car rental stats:
South Island 2488km, 155km/day
North Island 1168km, 130km/day
Total 3656km, 146km/day

We also had to rejig our backpacks to fit into just a suitcase and our weekend backpack. It was an adjustment after having a car for six weeks which was an extension of our storage. The bnb hosts offered to take any items we no longer needed, like our cooler and freezer packs.

It was still drizzling as we made our way to the ferry line up. It drizzled pretty much the whole time we were in Auckland. Waiheke Island is a popular destination in the summer for folks in Auckland, and in the local media we’d read there had been some long lines for ferry. It wasn’t too bad though; we got on the next ferry (the 45 minute ferry runs hourly).

We reached Waiheke around noon. Our bnb here also included a car rental (a Hyundai Tucson). The car was available immediately, parked near the ferry; but we’d have to wait until 2:30pm before we could check in to the bnb.

We had lunch at Ahipao, which for a café servicing the ferry terminal crowds had really good food. I had eggs benedict, probably for the last time on this trip. It’s a popular menu item here in NZ.

The restaurant has some cool little milk dispensers for tea / coffee. They had the name of the ceramic place stamped on the bottom, from right here on the island (Waiheke Ceramics). So that’s where we headed after lunch!

Nearby was Obsidian Wines, and we were in need of a wine for dinner, so we headed there next. We got a bottle of their Montepulciano for our pizza take-out tonight.

That took us to 2:30pm, nicely timed to when we could checkin. Our bnb is in a cottage environment (most places here are), up a narrow road. To park you have to get the vehicle to hug the hill, so that there’s room to pass. It took me a few tries, I was still getting used to the larger vehicle. Anyways finally parked.

Lugged all our stuff up the stairs to our bnb. For the first time on this trip, we didn’t have potable water. So we had to head out to the nearby Four Square (a mini-market) for bottled water. And then park again. Although this time it took fewer attempts :)

For dinner we had take-out pizza from La Dolce Vita. (Nailed the parking this time!). The pizza was amazing, as were their salads. Went really well with our wine.

Auckland, New Zealand

For some reason I had planned three full days in Auckland. After spending the three days, I’d say Auckland’s a really nice place to live, with all sorts of different neighbourhoods and little local cafes and restaurants. There’s a reason why Auckland routinely shows up on best places to live. But as a tourist, it’s not terribly exciting. I’d say the same thing about Toronto. I hardly took any pics either.

We checked out the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, Auckland War Memorial Museum and the New Zealand Maritime Museum, and walked around the waterfront and downtown core. The downtown is undergoing some major infrastructure work and is mostly under construction (also similar to Toronto). We used Uber a few times to get in and out of the core; it was pretty reasonable.

We ate at some pretty decent Asian restaurants in Auckland. We also had dinner one night at Freida Margolis, which was a really cool neighbourhood bar. Only later we realized it’s also written up in the Lonely Planet.

Another observation is that Auckland is very car-centric. There is pedestrian infrastructure, but the car is always favoured. Even at what appears to be crosswalks, it’s the car that has the right-of-way.

And that was about it for Auckland.

Auckland, New Zealand

We had a checkout of 11am from our bnb in Te Kuiti and could only check in at 3pm in Auckland, so had a relaxed morning, and I was finally able to use a teapot to have a couple cups of tea :)

The weather was nicer today, and we could actually see the surrounding countryside on the drive. It was really beautiful, not the spectacular cliffs or switchbacks in the South Island but still really nice.

I was feeling a bit peckish so we stopped for a snack at a cafe in Whatawhata. Got a sausage roll which maybe wasn’t the best thing cause the pastry wrap was very flaky. So ate outside the car and then we carried on. It was very yummy.

The drive into Auckland was taking us right past Maungakiekie / One Tree Hill, which was on my list of things to see cause of the U2 song. It would also give us something to do until 3pm. Plus, according to the forecast today might be the only nice weather we’d have while in Auckland.

We were lucky to find a parking spot in the park. It was then about a 15 minute walk up the paved path to the top of the hill.

I had read that there’s no longer a tree so we weren’t surprised when we didn’t see any. The view was great from the top - Auckland sits at a narrowing in the North Island and we could see the water on both sides. We also had a view of the downtown and the Sky Tower, a 328m tower completed in 1997. (By comparison the CN Tower is 553m tall). Anyways it was a nice day to see the views from the peak.

We hadn’t had lunch so had a quick bite in a cafe, rushing to eat before they closed at 3pm. (We’re the world’s slowest eaters so rushing may have just been normal speed for others).

We then drove to our bnb. It was a bit different driving in a city again!

Our bnb was at the end of a dead-end street, in Grey Lynn, a residential area similar to Leslieville (where we live in Toronto). Unfortunately most restaurants were still closed for the holidays. For dinner we ended at Pocket Bar, a neighborhood wine bar. It was a nice atmosphere.

Te Kuiti, New Zealand

I was excited about breakfast cause our bnb had a teapot, but then we slept in a bit so only had time for one cup, as we had a couple more Waitomo Caves excursions this morning, the first (Waitomo Glowworm Cave) starting at 9:30am.

We had checked in yesterday and already had our tickets, so just made our way to the waiting area, in the main admin building.

The glowworm excursion was much more organized than yesterday’s Aranui Cave tour. There’s a tour with 16 people that starts every ten minutes and the guides showed up on the dot.

At 9:30:00 our guide welcomed all the 9:30 tour people, and scanned our tickets on entry. First thing was a bunch of green screen pics. Photography isn’t allowed in the glowworm cave so they photoshop you in pics you can buy later.

There’s a short walk through some stalagmites and stalactites, similar to yesterday’s Aranui cave. It also got progressively dimmer in the cave to make the glowworms more visible.

We all boarded a boat and then the guide pulled us through the caves in the dark using an overhead rope system.

We entered the first cave, with an impressive clustering of glowworms, about 15’ x 15’, about 20’ above us. It was larger than any cluster we’d seen in Te Anau Glowworm Caves, although those were much closer overhead.

We circled underneath the glowworms for about five minutes, before continuing on. That however was it for the tour. That’s when I noticed the tour is called ‘Waitomo Glowworm Cave’, with a singular cave. Te Anau had a series of caves with glowworms and I had figured this would be the same.

It only took 45 minutes for the whole tour so we had time to check out the gift shop before driving over to the Ruakuri Cave. Its entrance is close to the Aranui Cave.

This was also pretty structured. They had a limit of 16 people, and asked for our names to check in (so we didn’t need to show our ticket). There was a constant stream of walk-ins trying to buy tickets, only to be put on a waiting list. I think it’s just to make them feel better as there’s hardly any no-shows.

Our guide met us at exactly 11am and we walked about five minutes to the entrance. Our guide was good, the best of the three excursions we had here. We entered the long spiral walkway down 45m to cave proper. Once in we were completely in the dark, to help our eyes adjust.

At the bottom, we passed through a series of airlocks, like we were in a James Bond movie. Our guide explained the airlocks were to maintain the airflow as nature had designed. They had learned from other cave systems in the world, where entrances built for tourism caused subtle changes in cave life from airflow that were only noticed over years.

These caves were the same age geologically as Aranui, but much more extensive and a far better experience with the smaller group. It’s a 90 minute loop that returns back to the spiral walkway. As a bonus, you can also see glowworms! In fact we felt the glowworm experience was better here in Ruakuri than on the Glowworm Cave tour.

Overall if you only have the opportunity to do one of the Waitomo Cave experiences, I'd definitely recommend the Ruakuri Cave tour.

And that was it for our day. It was still drizzling (it’s been miserable since we got to Te Kuiti). Which I guess as we had been touristing in caves didn’t matter that much.

We spent the afternoon at our bnb, catching up on reading, laundry, and our travel blog posts. We checked out the green screen pics from earlier in the day, we looked photoshopped in. We had grilled lamb and a Greek salad for dinner which all turned out rather well.

Te Kuiti, New Zealand

We had breakfast on our way out from Tongariro, at the same place we had lunch yesterday (Creel Tackle House). The staff remembered us and gave us a warm welcome.

Our last little adventure on this trip was a series of caves in Waitomo. The caves are very popular and you need to book ahead, although probably not months in advance like us.

We had tickets to Aranui Cave at 3pm. Our bnb had said we could check in early, which worked out great for us. So we drove straight there, about 2.5 hours, arriving around 1pm. Our bnb was surrounded by farmland and rolling hills, about five minutes outside Te Kuiti. The drive in reminded us of the Azores, lined with purple and white flowers.

We quickly unloaded the car, checked out the kitchen facilities, and then went over to the supermarket (New World) for groceries, before heading over to the caves.

It’s a bit confusing to figure out how to get to the cave entrance, as every cafe and store is a ticket agent for the Waitomo caves, and they all have signs looking like they’re the official. It’s similar to buying tickets online for the Vatican Museums.

We followed the road signs and google maps in the general direction. We stopped at the i-Site, which had been the official agent in other tourist attractions. They were very helpful, showing us on a map where to stop to check in, and then where to drive to start the excursion.

So we continued down Hwy 37 to the check in location. It’s the main admin site for the various Waitomo Cave excursions. We showed our receipt from our months-old online purchase, and they gave us tickets for each of the three excursions (Aranui Cave, Waitomo Glowworm Cave, Ruakuri Cave) we’d signed up for.

The start of the Aranui Cave excursion was another 10 minutes down the road. We parked and then waited for the guide at the starting point, which was very helpfully signed as ‘You are in the right spot for the Aranui Cave tour. Please wait here, your guide will be along shortly’.

Our guide showed up as promised by the sign. The group was much larger than I had expected - there were over 30 of us. We didn’t have to show our tickets, which I found odd. The guide collected tickets from folks who volunteered them but that was it.

The excursion starts with a five minute walk to the cave entrance, including a few dozen steps up. Backpacks and food/drink aren’t allowed, just water and cameras.

Once inside the cave, it mostly follows a raised boardwalk, single file, with railings. With 30 people it was slow going, especially with everyone wanting pics. We were near the back and didn’t hear much about what our guide was saying.

The caves themselves are relatively young geologically. We found them less impressive compared to other caves we’ve seen, such as those in Mulu Park, or the Jeita Grotto in Lebanon.

It’s a 20 minute walk to the furthest accessible point in the cave, at which point we turned around and retraced our path back to the entrance. For the return walk the group was more spread out, and so more enjoyable. Overall though, if we had skipped the Aranui Cave we wouldn’t have missed much.

We drove back to our bnb and had a coffee. Later we had dinner, spaghetti with meatballs, for a change in menu. The kitchen had a great view of the rolling hills and sheep grazing, a very typical NZ scene. We also saw a double rainbow!

Tūrangi, New Zealand

We weren’t doing the Tongariro Alpine Crossing today but we still wanted to do some trekking. The Tongariro River Trail that looped near our lodge, a 15km trail along the river, seemed perfect for us.

It was drizzling a bit as we set out. Google Maps satellite view was very useful to help us find our way from the lodge grounds through back trails to the actual trail itself, which was then really well marked.

It took us 90 minutes to walk to the Red Hut bridge, our crossing point. The other side ran adjacent to the town (Tūrangi), and so there were a few more casual walkers. We saw only joggers and dog walkers on our first half. There were also numerous anglers in their waders in the middle of the river. We kept our voices down so as to not disturb the fishies.

Got back to the lodge after three hours, an enjoyable little walk.

We quickly freshened up and went out for lunch. At first we tried to get into Hare & Copper, but it was a little fancy for us having just finished hiking. So we went over to Creel Tackle House & Cafe, which even from its name sounded more our thing. The front half of the place caters to anglers, and the back half is a busy cozy cafe. We had excellent sandwiches and coffees.

Got back to the lodge, and later that evening went down for dinner. The main chef probably had the night off as the dinner was not as good as yesterday’s duck.

Tūrangi, New Zealand

Onto the next part of our New Zealand tour, through the geothermal area in the middle of the North Island.

There’s a few geothermal parks around Taupō and Rotorua. We had chosen to visit Orakei Korako, based on our research it’s one of the more underrated ones.

The forecast called for rain to start there around 2pm. It’s a 2.5 hour drive from Havelock North, so after breakfast we drove pretty much straight there. We did stop to fill up on gas just outside Napier, good thing we did cause there wasn’t another gas station until we reached Taupō.

Also just outside Napier we passed through Esk Valley. We’ve had wine from there a few times this trip. The last vineyard we passed had along Hwy 5 had a sign, “last vineyard tasting in Hawke’s Bay”, lol. We’ll be back in another wine region when we get to Waiheke Island.

Arrived at Orakei Korako Geothermal Park & Cave around 1pm, the lot was about half full, which boded well.

Bought our tickets online, they had QR codes plastered everywhere with the link to their website, instead of having to staff a ticket booth.

It’s a two-minute boat ride across the Waikato River (included in the ticket). The boat goes back and forth on demand so it’s never a long wait (I guess unless there’s crowds backlogged).

The path through the geothermal park starts immediately on the other bank. It was pretty cool to see, different from anything else we’ve seen on this trip (as frequent readers may know, we like to have a variety on our trips otherwise it gets monotonous for us).

The walkway takes about an hour to complete, passing by geysers, mud pools and hot springs. There’s no railing on the side of the walkway, so we had to be careful when taking pics, that we didn’t take a step back into the boiling water.

Anyways it was really well done. It seemed like we were the only tourists in most parts; partially that’s cause it’s well designed. For whatever reason, it is under-touristed. We really liked it.

We had lunch at the on-site cafe. It started raining just as we were leaving, so we timed this really well!

It was an hour drive to our next place, Tongariro Lodge near Tūrangi. The town and surrounding area is one of the top places in the world for trout fishing. We were staying here cause it’s also a convenient jump-off for the Tongariro Alpine Crossing Walk.

The 19.4 km / 8 hour trail is considered one of the top day walks in NZ. It’s mentioned in all the guidebooks as a must-do. We booked the accommodation to have the option; but as we did more research we decided not to. For one thing, it’s now very popular - over 3,000 people walk it every day. This causes bottlenecks at the start and finish - you need to arrange for bus transfers. It’s sort of like the pics you see at the top of Everest, although I might be exaggerating. But the point is that we enjoy the isolation of walks in nature. Walking with 3,000 other folk just doesn’t have the same attraction for us.

Another reason for staying here is the excellent restaurant. We had the daily special, seared duck breast, which was excellent.

Tuki Vineyards, New Zealand

One of the classic pics of Hawke’s Bay is from Te Mata Peak at sunrise. We had three nights within a 15 minute drive of the peak, but the weather didn’t cooperate, it was overcast and rainy every morning.

Later this morning the clouds parted a bit, so we drove over to Te Mata. You can drive all the way to the peak; many people instead park at the lot at the main gate and then hike up the rest of the way. We drove further in to a parking lot about 500m drive from the top, cause the remaining road was single car width and takes forever to drive.

So we parked and walked up to the peak. It wasn’t too busy, about 50 or so other tourists also at the top. The forecasted rain probably kept some folks away. We quickly took our pics, cause we could see the rain showers approaching us. We made it about half way back to the car when the rain reached us, we had our raincoats so we were fine.

We didn’t have much else on our itinerary today. We drove to Hastings, a twin town to Havelock North, and took more pics of art deco buildings. Almost all the stores were still closed for the holidays.

We got back to our place and got ready for some wine tastings. There’s a couple vineyards within walking distance, so I had called earlier in the morning to book the tastings.

First up was Black Barn Vineyards. It’s a popular stop on the tasting route, they’re set up to handle about 100 people. They did sell charcuterie pick-your-own boards which was great for us, as we hadn’t had lunch. So had some cured meats and cheeses and sampled some wines. Can't go wrong with that!

Te Mata Vineyards was a five minute walk back towards our place. They’re a smaller vineyard with a more intimate tasting room.

We then walked another five minutes to get to our cottage. It was cool that both vineyards were within walking distance , I hadn’t planned around that. Otherwise it’s not really feasible for me to do any tastings as the driver.

Later in the evening we had our dinner, grilled steak paired with a Cabernet blend from Te Mata. I haven't really liked any of the bbq's at the bnb's we stayed at, they don't get hot enough for a decent sear. Oh well, at least the wine was good!

Tuki Vineyards, New Zealand

The restaurant was closed at Porters, our hotel in Havelock North, so we checked out and went out for breakfast. There was a bit more open this morning, although a lot was still closed, some through till Jan 11!

We had an excellent breakfast at Bay Espresso. It was super busy but we still got our food and coffee fairly quickly. Their eggs benedict was pretty good (it’s a fairly common breakfast item in NZ).

Our next place was under ten minutes away, a cottage on Tuki Vineyards. Originally we wanted to do a chasm walk near Martinborough but it was closed on Jan 1; so instead just booted it up to Hawke’s Bay. Tuki was already booked so we ended up at Porters for one night.

We couldn’t check in until 2pm, so drove over to Napier. In 1931, there was a 7.4 earthquake in Napier which wiped out most of the Hawke’s Bay area. The buildings were rebuilt in the Art Deco style of the 30s and many of those buildings still stand today.

We walked around the central area of Napier taking dozens of pics. It started raining so we decided it was a good time to see their museum. The sun was poking out again when we exited so walked around a bit more.

On the way to Tuki we bought groceries for dinner for the next couple days.

Tuki is a small wine producer, and they have a single cottage on the vineyard. We wanted to stay at a vineyard for a night or two on this trip, and so here we were!

We had pasta with chicken and lemons, mostly cause the lemons are in season and looked amazing in the store. The pasta turned out pretty good.

Havelock North, New Zealand

The most interesting thing of today was getting the car out of the carpark in Wellington. There was no ticket or anything when I drove in three days ago, it’s all digital. I entered my license plate at the machine to pay, and it brought up a pic of me entering. It calculated how long I’d parked. I then paid, and then when I drove out it recognized the plate and opened the gate! Maybe this sounds boring if you’ve seen it but I found it quite cool compared to the archaic parking lots I’ve used in Toronto.

We drove four hours to Havelock North, stopping for lunch at Hell Pizza in Palmerston North, one of the few places we saw open along the drive. We walked around Te Marae o Hine (The Square) and then carried on with the drive.

Even in Havelock North there was hardly anything open (and the town is known for its multitude of cafes and restaurants). We stayed at Porter’s cause of their restaurant, but due to lack of staff, their restaurant was closed Sun/Mon. One of the few (only?) restaurants open in town was the Rose & Shamrock, the local pub. It was really lively, full with a nice mix of ages and families, locals and tourists. We managed to snag a decent table for two. Ordered some pub food and had some beers. It was a nice night out.