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I had planned my trip to New Zealand to focus on visiting family there. My parents had been over there from the UK for two months already with the aim of buying a house in Kerikeri in the Bay of Islands. By the time I came over in early March they had already found a house and were in the process of buying it. I spent my first week in New Zealand in Kerikeri, and can now see why they want to spend half the year there in summer. Kerikeri is a small town in the subtropical part of NZ, and in 1820 became the first European town to ever be be settled in NZ, so it has quite a bit of history to it. It's a market town, and seems to be a popular place for artists to live, so it certainly isn't short of galleries and art and craft shops. The house they've bought is lovely and is near the sea, and they're certainly going to love spending time there in the future. Kerikeri is a small town, something I'm certainly not used to coming from London, and by the end of the week, even I was recognising a few of the locals!
My parents and I left Kerikeri for a road trip to Wellington for my cousin's wedding via the Coromandel Peninsula. I hadn't been on holiday with my parents since I was 16, so I was interested to see if family holiday would still be the same! Although I've visited NZ quite a few times before, I hadn't been to the Coromandel before, so I was looking forward to this trip. It didn't disappoint, with stunning coastal views. We visited Thames, the town of Coromandel, a kauri forest, and a gold mine at Waihi. Kauri trees are ancient native NZ trees many of them over 600 years old. They're huge and situated in native NZ bush with plenty of other spectacular, but not nearly as large trees! The gold mine at Waihi was interesting as well. You can see the mine from a viewing platform, and it was certainly the biggest hole I've ever seen, so big that I couldn't see the bottom of it. They're planning to turn the mine into a lake soon when they've finished mining, so I was glad to see it before it's filled in. Probably the highlight for me though was visiting Cathedral Cove, which is a sheltered sandy cove accessible by foot or boat. We had great weather there luckily, so it was a great place to be. They recently closed Cathedral Cove to the public in order to film part of the latest Narnia film, much to the annoyance of many tourists who made the trip there especially to see the cove.
From the Coromandel we drove to Tauranga to see my Great Uncle Derek and his wife Florence, and from there on to Lake Taupo. I revisited the bungy jump that I did when I was in Taupo back in 2000. I didn't do it again though, and I still can't believe that I did it in the first place! My parents could quite get over it either when they saw the drop.
From Taupo onto Wellington for my cousin Martina's wedding. It was a fantastic day for a wedding with beautiful sunny weather, which I can assure you is unusual in Wellington, and stunning coastal views. It was such a clear day that you could see over to the South Island. My cousin arrived in style in a helicopter, which was certainly a novel way to arrive at a wedding. It was a great day, and a big family reunion for us.
From Wellington we drove to Hawkes Bay where I stayed with family for a few days before heading off to Singapore to start my South East Asian adventures.
previous travel blog entry
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