Northern New Zealand Continued

After Paihia and Russell, we continued to head north.  We saw some beautiful beaches and some other interesting scenery.

 Both NZ and OZ have some of the most beautiful beaches we have ever seen! This is called 90 mile beach, but is actually 90 km beach...still very long and wide.  People drive on it.  It is on the top coast of New Zealand.

 We went through kauri forests and stopped at a place called The Kauri Kingdom.  Outside there were lots of old stumps and ancient logs that were found in various swamp lands.  This is one that they had inside the store and they'd carved a stairwell in the middle of it and this staircase led to the second floor of the store.

As I descend the stairs, it gives you some idea of the size of this log. It was a very interesting store and collection.

We took this little car ferry on the way to Opononi on the east coast.



 

We've never seen a sign like this one and thought it was quite humorous! As always, we have to trudge around every marina and wharf...truth be known, I like it too!

 

 



We've, strangely enough, only seen two of these signs so far.  The first one we missed taking a photo, cause we thought we'd see plenty of them. When we finally saw this one, just a couple of days ago, we'd almost given up hope!

 

Speaking of funny signs, we found this one in a pub and couldn't agree more with the sentiment!

 

 These are some of the town names in New Zealand...definitely Maori influence here.

 Try to wrap your tongue around these!

 

 

Northern New Zealand

From Auckland, we headed off to the Bay of Islands and spent 3 nights in Paihia.  We really needed this "down time" as we have been moving almost on a daily basis.  This is a lovely area, and we thoroughly enjoyed our stay.


 From Paihia we headed off on a drive to Kawakawa to see these toilets.  We didn't know what to expect, but they were pretty neat.

 They are called the Hundertwasser toilets and are mosaics with embedded bottles etc.

 Pretty cool, eh, and no charge to use them!

 Outside the toilets, coming down the main street, was this old tourist train.  We didn't take it, but it was nice to see it go by.

 This was the outside of those toilets.

We also went on a walk through glow-worm caves. They are owned by a Maori family and have been in the family for 15 generations.  Our guide was the great grandson of the original tour developers.  It was fascinating and he gave a great tour.  We couldn't take any photos inside, unfortunately, but had a hike up over the top and back into the parking lot.  There were very strange rock formations in the area.

 From there we headed to Kerikeri to see the oldest store in New Zealand.  Built in the early 1800's.

 The area was very pretty, in fact, we have really enjoyed our drives in NZ so far.  Lots of contrasting greens.

 Another view of the store.  There were also some other old building nearby and a lovely stream where people were swimming.

 This was another waterfall nearby.  Very pretty scenery.

 Today, we took a small ferry over to Russell.  What a quaint little town and we were very fortunate to show up at the time they were staging their "theatre".  It was all acted out in the street and moved from venue to venue.

 It was portraying the historical side of Russell, with duels, pirates, ruffians, brothels, strumpets, etc.  It was very well done and entertaining!

 Here the constable has found 'grog'!

 NZ is the land of sails...they say 1/3 of the population has access to a boat, and 1/5 of the population owns one.

Auckland New Zealand

From Hobart, we flew to Sydney, stayed overnight, and made our connection to Auckland.  We are now into the home stretch of our travels.  We've planned to travel the North Island first, then on to the South Island early February, then flying back home Feb. 17th.  We were pretty rained out for the last couple of weeks in Australia, so are hoping for better in New Zealand.  We stayed one night near the airport, picked up our rental car, and headed into Auckland.

 We took a harbour tour and a trip across the bay to Devonport.  This is Auckland from Mount Victoria in Devonport.

 This is a super yacht owned by a Russian Vodka producer...the boat is reported to be worth $400 million.

 This gives you some idea of the size of it.

 We did a walk about on the harbour.  They've done a great job with the waterfront, lots of lovely EXPENSIVE restaurants and bars.

 This cruise ship, Diamond Princess, was in town that day.  3000 people aboard...er, in town.

This is the ferry dock, just opposite the cruise ship terminal.

We finally met up with our friends, Bruce and Marianne Forbes.  We haven't seen them for about 30 years...they look just the same!!  They invited us for a lovely dinner in their even more lovely home.  It was great to catch up!

Tasmania

We have had only 6 days in Tasmania and have found (as expected) it was far too short.  Couple that with the fact that we've only had a couple of decent/rain-free days...well, you get the picture.  However, here are a few of the highlights.

 This is our rental car.

 The coastline has proved to be very rugged...we haven't done any swimming since the north of Australia.  The water would be pretty cold here too.  We've found that the land temperature hasn't gone much beyond 22 C. here in Tassie, as they call it.

 This is wineglass bay.  Ralph went on an hour hike.  I didn't feel my ankle was up to it.

Here he is at the top of the look-out.

This is one of the first bridges built in Tasmania.  All work done by the convicts.

In Tasmania, we have found a lot of this vegetation.  After a bush fire, the eucalypt appear to survive but the new growth seems to come right out of the trunk.  I don't think we've seen any areas that haven't had a fire at one time or another.

 These are the tree ferns.  It is kind of Jurasic park-like, isn't it?

 Obviously hard up for indoor entertainment, we went to an old car museum.  We took this for our son, Jeff...a firefighter.  who knew you could have a VW firetruck?

This is one of the classic motorcycles, a Harley Davidson.

 Back in Hobart, we drove to the top of Mount Wellington.  It was only 5 C at the top, and 15 C at the bottom...it was even snowing a little!!  BRRRRR!!!

 Ralph went outside to take the photo above while I hunkered down inside the viewing area.  We had already frozen to death walking from the car!

I believe Mt. Wellington is an extinct volcano...obviously a 'rock spitting' volcano.  This would have been a very difficult mountain to climb or build the road.  It is some 4000' high and this view is over Hobart,

This is one of the typical trucks we see on the road in OZ.  They have snorkel intakes because often the roads are flooded.

 A downtown Hobart harbour shot of a fishing vessel.

On board many of the boats, in the harbour, were these wooden crab traps??...or at least that's what we think they are.

 We were too cold to walk around downtown for too long, so headed out to Franklin where they have a Wooden Boat workshop and school.  We did a very interesting tour there.

 The boats were beautiful and they make them, more or less, as they did years ago. They even build big sailboats, up to 40'.

Some of the boats that have been built or reconstructed in this facility.