My final days: North Island

My leaving day is looming close. My bags are out and starting to get packed. With four days left, it's all getting real. Fortunately I was able to spend the past two weeks traveling around enjoying myself and soaking up as much of the country as possible. I did a lot and took way more pictures than reasonable, so I'm going to do it in two posts.

The first Saturday Sean and I went to Waiheke Island. It is just an hour ferry ride off the coast of Auckland and full of beautiful scenery and wineries. When I was waitressing one of my customers tipped me a free lunch for me and a friend at his vineyard restaurant on the island. We had tried to go a few times, but it never worked out, so I was quite excited that I finally got a free day and the weather was absolutely beautiful (which it hadn't been in about a month, so that was somewhat surprising).

Can you believe it's the middle of winter?

We arrived at the island, explored a local beach a bit and then headed to the vineyard. The view was stunning and we were greeted in the most friendly and personal of ways. Though it was indoors, all of the walls were glass so the view wasn't inhibited. When the hostess realized I was sitting with the sun in my eyes, she quickly dug up a few pairs of sunglasses for me to borrow and a large hat selection in case I was interested. I asked what my "free meal" would include, expecting restrictions, and they said whatever we wanted. The menu had a selection of tapas and a few mains that each fed two. We each ordered a glass of wine and one of the mains and the waiter insisted we order more. He picked not one, but three tapas for us to have as well. I was a bit nervous because they were all vegetable dishes, and if you know me, I don't eat vegetables, but I said I would try them. None of the plates had anything left on them in the end. It was all incredible. Then the pork dish came out. It could have fed three people, but it was so amazing we somehow managed to demolish that too. The waiter told us he had more drinks coming for us as well (we had already had two glasses and finished the meal). I don't drink white wine either, but the pinot gris I had was one of best glasses of wine I have ever had. I tried to buy a bottle but they said they were too low on stock so it wasn't for sale anymore. I bought a bottle of the wine Sean liked since it was his birthday the next day and both the waiter and the hostess came running over because they thought I was trying to pay for my meal. They kept insisting I couldn't pay for anything and calmed down once I told them I was buying a bottle to take home. The hostess ended up being the wife of the man who gave me the tip and we had a lovely conversation about the winery and what her husband does. In the end we didn't have much more time to explore the island but the both of us were so satisfied we didn't care too much. We totaled up what our meal would have cost and it came out to around $180. I was absolutely stunned at how well we were treated, especially considering we weren't paying anything for the meal. Best tip I ever got!

The winery

The view from our table

We found awesome chairs carved out of old tree stumps.

On Sunday my friend Spenser arrived from the good old USA and we did some exploring around Auckland. I managed to find new places I hadn't seen before. It was another beautiful day out, despite the forecast.

 
Monday we headed to Rotorua and stopped at Mt. Maunganui along the way. We got a great deal on white water rafting in Rotorua, so despite the fact that I forgot to bring my bathing suit along, we headed down the river. We went down the highest commercially rafted waterfall in the world, at 7m high, and had some fun in the rapids. It was the last day of the season before they dumped some of the water out of the river, so we rafted it at its highest level possible.

View from Mt. Maunganui

and then the rain started coming

yep, that's us

Hot spring in Rotorua

We explored town a bit and then headed down to Taupo. One of the girls on our rafting trip was from Hawaii and she ended up hopping in the car with us and heading to Taupo as well. On the way we stopped and did a hike at the Rainbow Mountain Track. The views were incredible and it was probably my highlight of that leg of the trip.

In the background you can see Tongariro

You can see Lake Rotorua in the background

We got into Taupo and saw a lot of the things I did last time, so I didn't take too many pictures, though it was just as cool as the first time. We happened to be in the area of the dam around the time it was due to open, so we figured we would head over and watch it. It was absolutely gorgeous and we were glad we got to see it. It was incredible how quickly the water rose and how intense it got.

The pool of water under the dam right before the water got to it.

On our way back to Auckland from Taupo we stopped, at Spenser's request, at Hobbiton where they filmed the shire scenes in Lord of the Rings. It was really neat to see the detail they put into the set. The amount of work they put into something that was maybe shown for half a second was incredible. After the first movie the sets were all removed and fake duplicates put in place, but after the Hobbit movie they decided to leave it all up. It was really cool to get to see the original sets despite not really having seen the movies.

We got really lucky with the weather again and it started raining just as we were leaving the tour. We headed up to Auckland to unpack and repack for our flight to Queenstown the next morning. See the next post for those adventures.