Day 20 (Sunday 14th January 2024) Brisbane to Toowoomba- end of the adventure till next time

 Funny, it took almost two weeks to get used to the New Zealand time zone of +3 hours, and now back in Queensland we are struggling to adjust to normal time. As a result, up early this morning, followed by a nice Aussie breakfast with bacon cooked as it should. 😃

The drive home was uneventful arriving home after just short of two hours on the road. Our darling daughter greeted us, with a perfectly clean and well ordered household. Thank you!

The yard however was a very surprising jungle-scape that took two hours to mow and clean up. Welcome to reality! 

Day 19 (Saturday 14th January 2024) Auckland to Brisbane Airport

 A lazy start today. We are based in the Auckland Airport Novotel awaiting our flight home late in the afternoon. After breakfast we sent off spend the last $25 NZDs in the airport shops, which is easily done. After blowing our spare change we waited in our room till 1pm.

Business class check-in went smoothly as one would expect and so did security. Gone are days of stripping everything off, the scanners have improved.

We then did a brief investigation of the duty free spirits. On the whole, the there are bargains if you do your homework. We tasted and took photos and retreated to qantas lounge to do our homework. During this time our flight was delayed from 4:30pm to 5:30pm for what later we learnt was for very unusual reasons. The lounge however was nice and far more pleasant than waiting at the gate. 

Closer to our departure time we headed back to duty free to pickup some bargains and headed out to our gate. We were almost at the gate, when gate number changed to gate as far away as you can get! (We got our steps up today!)

At the gate Qantas decided to delay boarding to allow people to find the gate. Eventually we boarded a took up our seats. Wow, very different to cattle class seats. The food and drinks were great too, certainly a step up.

Would we pay full business class price for flight from New Zealand in the future, certainly not? We do believe using points is acceptable for long haul flights and certainly will be an option for our future European trip in 2025. 

On arrival in Brisbane, we declared our wooden souvenirs that we collected. Sadly bio security didn’t like our cute kiwi Santa decorations because they were made from a pine cone. Apparently pine cones are suspect because of insects inhabiting them. A real shame, they were definitely delightful decorations but it is better to help protect Australia’s natural environment. 

Finally we checked into the Pullman Airport, lucky we choose to book the hotel because in the end we didn’t exit the international terminal till after 7:15pm some 2 hours later than planned. Driving home tonight would have been tedious. 

Good night 😴. 

Day 18 (Friday 12th January 24) Hamilton gardens to Auckland airport

 Today is our last full day in New Zealand. Sad. 

We started our day finding the statue of Riff Raff ( Rock horror Picture Show) outside the city museum. We also enjoyed a more extensive exploration of the city centre. Yesterday’s thoughts might have been hasty, we found some truely interesting and beautiful parts of the city part near our hotel. 

We would recommend the hotel, staff were great and facilities clean and well maintained. A great spot for general shopping at Centre Place as well as a couple of well stocked and well priced souvenir shops.

Our major focus after checking out of the Hamilton Novotel was to visit the city prize winning botanical gardens. The gardens are large and impressive. We saw a fraction of the gardens today but what we saw well worth the visit. Unfortunately limited time and sore feet meant that we had to leave without seeing all the different garden displays. 

Our trip to Auckland was slow due to road works. Often the speed dropped and signs indicated work but no work could be seen. Perhaps traffic ‘witches hat placement 101 course’ for budding road workers is what we experienced as no sign of digging, machinery or people or any obvious sign of road works.  Except long lines of witches hats. The other observation during our time in New Zealand is almost everyone speeds. We saw very limited police presence on the roads, so perhaps that is why people tend to speed? I guess we will never know. 

Once at the airport, we checked in at our hotel and did a reconnaissance of where to go tomorrow in the airport. We are staying at Auckland Novotel Airport tonight to make the final trip home as easy as possible literally cross the road to the international checkin counters. Also, today we learnt that we’ve been upgraded to business class for the flight home. We were lucky, we put in an option to use points to upgrade and it was accepted.. Another pleasant but busy day!

Day 17 ( Thursday 11th January 24) Waitomo Glowworms to Hamilton

 We were up and about early, for us, this morning to check out and be at the caves, ready for our expedition to see glowworms. Wow, what an amazing experience. We spent almost an hour in the caves, exiting out by boat. Unfortunately photography wasn’t allowed so no photos were taken. The sheer magnificence of the cave system was impressive but seeing glow worms was awe inspiring. Our guide was very friendly and professional. Like a lot of attractions in the north Island, they are run by local Maori families who have invested interest in the experience being successful. 

Outside the Glowworms caves

Glow worm caves at Waitomo 

After the Glowworms we took a road to Te Anga where we stopped at a natural stone bridge at Mangapohue. It is believed that steep walls of the gorge were once part a large cave carved by a underground river, eventually the roof collapsed except for current span of stone and earth forming a bridge. It is magnificent and photos can’t do it justice.

Stone bridge 

The next stop was the Marokopa Falls. After a 10 minute walk, we were rewarded by a fantastic sight. 

The falls

The volume of water running over the 40 metre falls was significant. Again, we recommend a visit if are in the area. The road to Te Anga is windy and scenic with forests, lush rolling hills and sheer drops to valleys below. The road is sign posted for 100kph most of the way but in reality is probably safe for 50-80kph on most of the road. You can go faster if you like flying into valleys below or running into one many tourists travelling on the road. 

Road to Te Anga

We arrived back in Waitomo after 1pm and stopped for lunch before travelling onto Hamilton. The trip took a little over an hour, and as usual the scenery was pleasant with rolling lush hills, trees, corn fields and sheep pastures. 

Road to Hamilton 

Our first view of Hamilton was a magnificent church (temple) on a rise devoted to the “Church of Later Day Saints”. A quick google shows Hamilton has many churches, certainly more than we would have expected. The city scape we passed through didn’t impress us much, it seemed slightly run down and had big city feel. It surprised us that Hamilton is considered New Zealand’s most beautiful large city in New Zealand! After checking in at the Novotel Hotel we went for an explore. The city centre is what you would expect but after brief drive we saw some of the suburbs which seem nice to the casual review. The city does have some world class botanical gardens that we hope to visit tomorrow. 

Novotel Hamilton 

We finished the day having a pleasant dinner at a Italian restaurant across the road from the hotel.

Day 16 (Wednesday 10th January 24) Turangi to Waitomo.

 Today we left Turangi for Waitomo, but first we stopped at the town centre for breakfast and to post some of our surplus clothes and bits and pieces home for princely sum of $109 NZDs. Our stuff should arrive home in 3 - 10  business days if all goes well.

Our cottage at the Sportsman Lodge

Looking towards Taurangi town centre 

We enjoyed our stay at Turangi but next time we will probably be based out of Taupō which is more central to interesting places. 

The road to Waitomo 

Dumpling the cat.

Our trip to Waitomo was enjoyable, lots of windy roads, going passing around and over mountains and rolling emerald green hills. We saw a lot more sheep padlocks as we travelled north. We stopped for a break at Te Kuiti cafe on the way. While enjoying a drink, an Asian couple came in with pram, but the pram didn’t hold a child but instead “Dumpling” the cat. A cute cat, but potentially unfortunate name! 

Shortly after we arrived in Waitomo, checked into our motel, rested and headed out for an explore. A pleasant day.

Day 15 (Tuesday 9th January 24) Taupō Flight and boat trip

 On each major holiday we try to take one scenic flight somewhere significant either cultural, environmental or historic in nature. At midday we arrived at Taupo airport to take scenic flight over the Lake Taupo and surrounds. We chose Chopper Worx as helicopter company based on reviews. All reviews are 5 star, so we got ready and boarded Carl’s 4 seat helicopter. Despite being in the rear seats, we got a great view of the surroundings. 

Taupo

Edge of Lake Taupo

Our flight took us over the township at 2500 feet and across the lake at 2000 feet dropping briefly to view the local 14 metre high Māori traditional styled face carved into a cliff face on the water’s edge.

We saw got to see Huka Falls from the air, very impressive sight. Our flight certainly met our expectations, and we would recommend Chopper Worx. 

For lunch we were recommended to try Jimmy Coop’s, a lake side restaurant with plenty of holiday ambience. We shared a tasting paddle of 3 local beers and one cider, all were great to our taste.

Jimmy Coop’s 

While enjoying our burgers and beer we reviewed our photos to discover that cliff face Maori carvings were not as clear as we would have liked. After some brief research we discovered the only way to see them is by water or by air.

Harbour 

We decided, we would like closer look and proceeded down to the boat harbour to see if we could purchase some tickets. Online no one could to be found for today, so dropped into the ticket office by the wharf and a helpful lady found us a spot on a sailboat heading out at 3:30pm. 

After a quick ice cream, we joined a truly multi-national group of 12 or so passengers aboard the “Kindred Spirit”. It took a pleasant hour to reach the carvings.

The carving up close were worth the visit, very impressive. We did learn from skipper that they were not an ancient sacred artefact but instead a relatively new Maori stone craving created back in the 1970’s by a Maori artist wanting to honour his ancestor’s achievements.  

After carving visit, the younger passengers and crew took an opportunity to take a dip in the lake. The crew also fed us pizza and choice of alcoholic and nonalcoholic drinks. Nicely done . 

At 6pm we reached the dock to disembark where another group waited their turn to go a journey to carvings. After a 45 minute drive back to Taurangi, we called it a day.