If you haven’t already, please check out my post on our first week in New Zealand or our day in Auckland after a long flight.
I am really behind on writing my travelling blog posts so I am currently writing this almost one month after we left New Zealand!
Following on from the first post, we said goodbye to our family friends in Whakatane and headed on to the next stop.
Rotorua
Rotorua is known for a lot of geothermal activity so in between Whakatane and Rotorua we stopped off at some thermal springs for a relaxing bathe.
We arrived to Rotorua in the pouring rain but we still managed to explore the town a little bit before going to meet another family friend for drinks and a long overdue catch up.
The next day we went to Whakarewarewa Forrest and spent four hours mountain biking.
In the afternoon we explored the geothermal wonders at Waimangu Volcanic Valley. So much to see here including geysers, lakes, craters and more.
There are lots of little places to explore in and around Rotorua that have geothermal activity and are cool to check out. Please note that they might also have a smell like sulfur.
in the morning, before we left Rotorua, we made sure to check out the luge. This was so much fun, we had 3 rides on the luge and also a ride on the skyswing!
Waitomo
Our next stop was in Waitomo so we could check out the caves. We stayed at a backpackers for one night and had an early start the next day.
We decided to do the Black Abyss Cave Tour from The Legendary Black Water Rafting co.. It was awesome.
Abseiling into the cave and then ziplining, swimming and floating in the cave surrounded by glow worms before climbing out of it through two waterfalls.
I also managed to lose a boot in the cave. I lost it in a jump the beginning of the tour. So I ended up doing most of it with only only shoe!
We also met a lovely American couple from LA on our tour and spent a while chatting to them afterwards over lunch before heading onwards.
National Park
We left Waitomo and drove to National Park with the intention of doing the Tongariro Alpine Crossing. Unfortunately, we very much underestimated spring temperatures. We soon realized that the snow was too deep to consider the crossing and we did not have adequate winter hiking gear.
Instead, we did the Tama Lakes hike which took 5-6 hours. Lovely views of the waterfall, lakes and mountains and we had brilliant sunshine all day. We ended up doing 33,000 steps on this hike and we were knackered.
On our second day at National Park, we decided to treat ourselves to a day of skiing at Whakapapa. Yes we were still tired…. but this was our only opportunity to ski in the Southern Hemisphere on an active volcano!
Taupo
Our next stop was in Taupo which is a lovely town on the side of a lake. The lake itself is huge and is actually the crater of an active volcano.
We didn’t have long in Taupo but we still managed to check out the town centre, a lovely park and a local market.
On the way out of Taupo, we made a stop to see Huka falls. This is a must see if you are in the area! it has 200,000 litres of water rushing past each second.
Napier
We also had one night in Napier before heading further South. Napier is set in the Hawkes Bay area and is famous for its Wineries and art deco centres. The town is quite nice to explore and it also has a beach.
After leaving Napier to head south towards Wellington (our last stop on the North Island), we made a couple stops. Te mata peak gives a great view over the region and Otara Pa is a Maori pa site and gives some insight into the history of this hill.
Such a busy week in New Zealand
That was our second week in New Zealand and we managed mountains biking, caving, hiking and skiing. It was very full on but so much fun. As always, I can’t mention every single thing we saw or every place we stopped but these are the main highlights.
The first two weeks in New Zealand have been in the North Island and there is only one more stop before we cross the Cook Strait.
