An Unexpected Journey - Part 2

We decided to wake up early on Wednesday morning (4am) and to head out of Auckland.  I didn't need sleep!!  Marius' business partner, Andrew, was with us until Friday morning and so we decided to see something of the country with him too.  The Bay of Islands is North of Auckland and it didn't fall on our road trip route.  I'm so glad that we decided to do this "little trip" though - it was quite possibly my favourite stop-over.

The drive from Auckland took us around 3 1/2 hours, which meant that we arrived early enough to do a boat cruise through the some of the bay's 144 islands, to go and see the Hole in the Rock.  The boat cruise was an absolute holiday highlight and the scenery is just gorgeous.

This is the view from the boat, waiting to leave the harbour in Paihia...

 Marius and Andrew...

 Looking back at Paihia.  The clouds had come over and it was not very warm on the back of the boat.  Most of the people in the picture above headed indoors soon after we pulled away.  Not us though...

 Just across the bay from Paihia is the town of Russell, where we picked up more passengers.  Russell was an old whaling station and so has quite a history...

 We'd almost just left Russell, when Bottlenose Dolphins were spotted just off our boat...

 Squeal!!!  They got really close and the water was superbly clear...

  The bump in the back was where we were headed...

 We finally reached our destination and you just have to look at Marius' nose to know that it was COLD...

 Since Andrew was with us, we could get a picture of both of us at the Hole...

Amongst other things, we got to see Little Blue Penguins out in the wild too...

The weather finally started to clear up a bit and the blue skies came out... 

 And we got more dolphins!!  A mommy and her baby - I remember it being a lot smaller than this!...

 These dolphins were thrilled to see us and played in the surf behind the boat, right where I was standing!  It was magical...

 Of course I have about 7 million photos and only a handful are great, but I love them...

 And look - this one even smiled for me...

 Swimming off...

 Look how flat the sea is...

 A gull with a difference...

 Another highlight of this tour was a stop over on one of the islands...

 We took a little walk down the beach and I found a gorgeous shell for Jake.  Looking back though, there were people walking up that hill.  We'd only had 30 minutes to start with, we'd have to be quick...

 Marius is always game and the hike was quite steep, but well worth the effort...

 There's the boat we came on and the little beach where we'd started our island exploring...

Directly behind us - more pretty prettiness...

 And look how green everything is.  The grass in New Zealand is so bright, it's luminous...

 Proof that I was actually there and didn't just send Marius up with my camera...

 My guy...

 Our time at the top of the hill came to an end all too quickly - I don't think I could ever grow tired of those views.  Hey Marius... how about we buy an Island?  This one, specifically...

 New Zealand is very big on keeping certain areas pest-free.  They're putting a lot of effort into re-introducing birds and plants into these areas.  This island is a pest-free zone and so I took my pest home with me.  We'll need to find another island - I have another 3 little pests at home too...

The view from the jetty, looking back towards the hill we'd just climbed.  Doesn't look that high from here, but look how blue the water is...

 One of the skippers was feeding the fish off the back of the boat.   Damn me for leaving the hand line Jake packed me back in Auckland - these were impressive fish...

 Back in Paihia, the guys left me on my own for a few minutes...

 

Their dolphin tourism is big.  We apparently missed the Orcas by a week too...

 I imagine this place gets pretty busy in the summer...

 Beach bars and restaurants on the water's edge reminded me of home...

 I fell asleep in the afternoon sunshine after all my snapping and only woke up with Marius laughing at me sleeping in public.  Is his fault for making me wake up at 4am with jet lag!  The power nap was amazing and worth being laughed at.

While in Paihia, we decided to do a glow worm cave tour.  Now I know there's a bigger, better cave nearer to Auckland, but this one was the one we wanted to do.  It was smaller and more intimate and a bit off the beaten track.  This specific cave - the Kawiti cave is a family owned cave and the story of how it was discovered was beautiful and lovely to hear first hand.  Our guide was a young Moari girl and she was very sweet - we loved it.  Sadly - no photos allowed inside the caves!!

We had a picture taken together at the entrance though...

 You exit the cave into a forest and make your way back to the car park from there.  The three of us had some good laughs in the forest, Marius is a clown...

 The light was lovely and if I didn't have the two guys rushing me on, I could've spent the rest of the day in the forest...

 Green rocks...

We spend the night in a little el-cheapo hotel in Paihia.  I was EXHAUSTED and was in bed and asleep before the other two had even taken their shoes off.  We were up early to hit the road back to Auckland.  There were so many gorgeous places along the way that I'd love to have taken photos of, but there are no places to pull over and so most of my photos look like this...

 And this (it was raining)...

We made a pit stop for food and coffee along the road and managed to get some wifi to chat to the kids.  I was already homesick, probably because I knew just how much Jake would've loved our adventure in the Bay of Islands - the birds, the fish, the dolphins, the glow worms.  I missed him SO much already and his little love messages got me each and every time.

But for Marius and I, our little adventure was only just beginning and I was super excited to see what was around the next corner!

Love,

Sue XXX

An Unexpected Journey - Part 1...

New Zealand was AMAZING!!!  It is by far one of the most beautiful countries I've ever had the opportunity of visiting.  Both Marius and I were blown away by all that it had to offer.  And we only visited the North Island - everyone we spoke to said the South Island is by far the prettier of the two halves of NZ.

We're finally starting to get back into the swing of things.  I've managed to catch up on work and Jake starts his first exams on Thursday, so there's been no easing back into it!  Although, with jet lag, your body forces you to stop and now know what it feels like to be so exhausted you can't see straight.

My goodbye with Jake was an emotional one, as expected.  I did it quickly, but still managed to cry my eyes out - 12 days is a long time to be away from a child!!  But he was fine and, once he was in a little routine, he was OK.  We chatted on Whats app plenty, which was amazing, but always seemed to make my eyes leak.  I missed him!!!  Coming home was amazing and Jake was thrilled to see me again, we hugged and hugged and I cried some more.  Poor Marius...

It's been weird getting home again and not seeing Marius every day.  We had such an amazing time together and it was also good for us to have time without the kids.  We did a lot of driving and saw so much.  Marius is a wonderful travel partner and we have the same ideas about things.  We spent so much time laughing over silly things and just generally enjoying each other's company.  We are both looking forward to planning our next trip together, although perhaps one with the boys first.

 The flights were long, with stops in Johannesburg and Sydney.  We flew SAA to Johannesburg and then Qantas the rest of the way.  What an amazing airline!!  The long flight from Jhb to Sydney was empty and I had 3 seats all to myself.  3 blankets, 3 pillows, 2 bottles of champagne, ice-cream and hot chocolate and I slept like a baby.  I can't even tell you what I had to eat on the flight, I think I just slept through the whole thing - it was fantastic. 

 

 Flying into Sydney...

 I landed at midnight, just going into the 20th of May.  I was tired, but excited to finally have reached my destination.  I bumped into Gimli from the Lord of the Rings at the airport...

 And Marius was there to fetch me - boy was I happy to see him...

That day, Marius had work to do and so I decided to do a hop-on-hop-off bus tour of Auckland.  I'm really glad that I did, it's such a gorgeous city and it was a great way to learn more about where I was.  That or sit in a hotel and wait for men... not me!!   so, this is where the bus collected me.  The building in the background is the old Ferry Building and the harbour is just the other side of that red fence...

Pretty metal work... nothing's chipped or peeling - it's like its' all just been freshly painted...

Heading out of the city - phew, it already seems so hard to believe that I was there.  Auckland is HUGE, but feels very much like Cape Town...

My bus route took me past our hotel...

I did make one mistake on the tour, I got off at the museum for the Maori cultural performance and only realised once I was inside that a) the tour cost about NZ$ 65 (R650!) and that it was b) a war museum, which was of almost zero excitement for me.  The museum itself is very pretty and so I spent my time taking photos outside.  There was also a cute gift shop, where I spent the rest of my hour till my bus came back to fetch me again...

I sent Jake a postcard here too.  It still hasn't arrived - at least I know now that postage is slow globally and not just here...

They've got this pillar up in memory of "The Glorious Dead"...

And I only realised after I'd trampled all over it taking photos, that it's actually on holy ground... whoopsie...

Roadside graffiti...

 Next on my route was Eden Park...it seems that most All Black supporters would rather lose to South Africa than Australia.  Funny how we'd also rather lose to them over the Aussie's too.  Wonder which the Australians prefer.  This statue is of Michael someone or other and I was riding in a bus, so sorry, but I cut the name of the grounds off a bit...

  A Maori carving guards the entrance to the grounds...

 Pretty houses in Eden.  Property is unbelievably expensive over there - they told us on the tour that you can't buy a house for under NZ$1,000,000.00 (R10,000,000.00) - that's a lot of zeros...

One stop I knew Marius wouldn't really want to do with me was visit the Auckland Zoo.  I think I mostly wanted to be able to take photos for Jake of animals that we don't get here.  I was most excited to see this Red Panda, which is completely unrelated to a Panda Bear, besides that they both eat bamboo.  He was hungry and his feeder was in his pen, so he was all smiles for the camera...

An Emu with a funky hair-do...

And a little Tasmanian Devil.  I thought these guys would be bigger and more vicious-looking, but he looks cute enough to cuddle...

I am really bad at remembering the names of things, like this bird, which I knew Jake would like...

So I have lots of photos of name boards to remind me.  The correct name for this Spotted Shag is Parkareka (with a rolling "r").  Maori is a difficult language...

The Little Blue Penguins are the smallest of all penguins - this little brown job was trying to chase them off the beach and the penguins were standing their ground...

A Tuatara...

Teeeheehee - totally unlike the baboons we get here, this one looks like he got a shock...

And on to Africa...  this part of a museum always makes me sad, especially since I know so well where these animals really belong. King Julian was there though, so that was exciting...

Just about the entire zoo is magnificent, but this cage for the zebras was awful!  I don't think the Kiwi's realise that we do actually have grass in Africa.  It might be brown grass, but it's better than hard sand...

Pretty flowers line the walk ways...

I could've taken a thousand pretty pictures - no idea what these are even called...

Maori totems...

Once everyone was finished working and playing, we met up again for more fun in the city...

This time for a trip up the Sky Tower, which stands at 328m - exactly 4m taller than the Eiffel Tower!  The pretty lights nearer the bottom are the exclusive Sky City restaurant...

Yep, that's a long way up.  51 floors up, to be exact.  I had a heart failure when a body fell down outside the window in front of me, only to be told that they were bungee jumping - phew...

Marius and I looking out over Auckland...

No, don't be ridiculous, I didn't walk on the glass floor... Only Marius was brave enough to do that...

Sunset over the city, with Auckland Bridge to your left...

I didn't have a tripod with me, but I'm quite chuffed with how these evening photos came out...

Pretty, hey??

We went off to pizza hut for supper and had the most divine chocolate caramel cheesecake for dessert.  Needless to say, it was a long day and I was exhausted, but running on an absolute high.  I was finally in Auckland!!

I'll share more photos as soon as I get a chance, hope you enjoyed part 1.

I have missed everyone, how are you all???

 Love Sue XXX