North Island New Zealand

We love this country!!! It is an outdoor haven with so much natural beauty to see and experience. Autumn is our favourite season – and this is a great time to be in New Zealand with temperatures that are not too hot, and not too cool – with the leaves all starting to change colours (although not nearly as vibrant as we get back home with those frosty nights). It’s also harvest time, so there are lots of festivals and events that we’re hoping to take in.

When we left the Northland region we had a long day of driving ahead of us before reaching our next stop – the Coromandel Peninsula. This is an area of the North Island which everyone has recommended to us, so we were looking forward to experiencing it.

Coromandel Town on the western coast of the peninsula was a nice stop for lunch by the side of a beautiful beach. We had a fantastic family run through the woods here. These ‘run / walks’ are becoming our favourite way to see the numerous tramps and treks through the woods here. We ended this family run with an impromptu strip down to our undies for a refreshing swim and swing. These unplanned stops and spontaneous moments are often the highlights of our travels.

Vea having fun on a tire swing by the Sea.

Crossing the Peninsula we booked into a campground on the East coast at a place named Hot Water Beach. As we were driving into the campsite, we immediately saw our ‘Walkabout’ Swiss family friends and parked our camper van close by. We soon learned that it was prime time for heading to the beach for the hot water pools – so we got to experience this amazing natural phenomena before sunset.

Close to Hot Water Beach is another amazing natural wonder called ‘Cathedral Arch’. This is a eroded tunnel through a rock formation ending in a fantastic white sand beach. There was a large swell with huge beach break and rip currents – so we kept to a safe distance after our lesson learned at Waimea Bay in Hawaii.

Cathedral Arch natural rock formation

We’d been hearing a lot about recommendations to visit ‘Hobbiton’ which is the Hobbit village movie set. Our plans were to visit this after completing the Coromandel. We spoke with someone who had just been there and mentioned the cost was $75 per person – so we decided to give Kai and Vea a choice… either visit Hobbiton for a few hours or instead spend that money on renting mountain bikes for a day. They immediately said yes to mountain biking – so we made our way south to Rotorua.

Rotorua is a meca for mountain biking in New Zealand with a huge single track forest terrain for beginner to advanced skill levels. The bikes that were rented to us were top of the line ‘hard tails’. Kai and Vea were fitted perfectly for their size and we were all pumped to explore the amazing trails. Vea surprised us all with her endurance and spunk through some strenuous climbs and technical descents. At the end of the day we were all exhausted but full of perma-grin smiles.

mountain biking in Rotorua

Continuing on our way south we visited a thermal park named Wai-O-Tapu. This place was incredible. It was a great homeschool lesson in volcanic geothermal activity for all of us. The park setup was really well done – enabling us to get so close to many unique natural features. We ended up spending the entire afternoon here exploring all the thermal pools and features.

Wai-O-Tapu thermal pools

Our ferry to the south island is booked for April 12th – so for the next few days we made our way south towards Wellington. On our way we passed through Lake Taupo which turned out to be a very camper van friendly town for ‘freedom camping’. We pulled into a great lake-front parking lot which had a really fun playground right across the road that beat any of the paid campgrounds we’ve stayed at so far. Kai and Vea had a great time just being kids and playing in all of the structures and swings.

The flying saucer at Lake Taupo’s playground

Our next plan was to embark on a 9 hour tramp called  the Tongariro Alpine Crossing – which is just south of Taupo. This hike is renowned as one of the best 1-day hikes in New Zealand. Everyone was really excited – but just as we were booking our shuttle to the trail head we learned about a weather system approaching which would make the conditions dangerous. All the tour shuttles for the hike were cancelling – so we decided to do the same and save this hike for a future trip.

We pulled out the map once again and decided it would be better to head west instead of east with the current extreme weather systems rolling in. Arriving at the Kapiti Coast late in the afternoon we found an amazing freedom camping place about 5 feet from the beach. The best part of camping and living in this Bula Bus is the freedom camping. We’ve found many amazing river-side, ocean front and dense forested free spots. One of Kai’s favourite was located right next to a huge soccer pitch – which provided us a great opportunity for a family sunset soccer game.

Vea ‘Bending it like Beckham’ in the freedom camping soccer field

The last few days in the North Island have been rainy days – our first so far in New Zealand.  We’ve enjoyed some lazy mornings and long breakfasts with time to catch up on our journals and blog posts. Being close to Wellington, we decided to visit one of the North Islands wine regions in a small town called Martinborough. We rummaged through our backpacks to find our least stinky clothes and headed out to the wineries in our “dress sweats” for some rainy day wine tasting. Apparently these are all boutique wineries, and we were quite surprised how expensive the cellar door prices were at $40 – $50 for the average bottle. Our strategy quickly adapted to drinking all the tasting wines and then dashing out before the awkward moment when we had to make a decision on whether to buy something!

We’ve had an amazing two weeks travelling through the North Island, but now we’re all super excited to catch the ferry on Saturday and head to the South Island. Our ferry leaves from Wellington at 9 in the morning and it’s a 3 hour crossing to Picton. More wine-tasting areas await with the Marlborough region there. Kari is very excited to visit one of her favourite wineries – Villa Maria. Kai is looking forward to seeing the Southern Alps that he’s seen in some of his snowboard magazines.

We’ve added some more photos of our second week in the North Island to the end of our last photo gallery.

All 4 now.