Convoy!

Thursday through Saturday we convoyed our way back to Auckland. I had a blast. and enjoyed every second of scenery.

3 Canucks, 2 trucks, 1 kiwi. Lots of fun.  Lots of driving...

So Thursday, we got to take our sweet time in Queenstown and hit the road in the afternoon to head up to Christchurch.

First leg of the journey was through beautiful, amazing South Island.



Sorry, I don't even remember the name of this lake. Breathtaking tho.

Great company and amazing views made for a cool road trip. We stopped for some awesome wood baked pizza (pepperoni and jalapenos, my favorite!) for dinner and rolled into Christchurch a lot later then planned. So I didn't see much of Christchurch. I could see that a great deal of it was still under construction from the earthquake.

Same gorgeous anonymous lake, which will be named at a later date... I promise

We watched Bad Teacher over some beers and passed out thinking we had a few hours in the morning before getting back on the road.
Nope.
At 7am they got the word to be in Picton and on the ferry by 2pm. So off we convoyed.

The beautiful snow covered mountains gave way to green rolling hills.

 The countryside reminded me a lot of Sonoma county. These hills led us to a bright blue ocean and wild coast.



Part 1 of the convoy (meat locker and decompression chamber) as we hit the South Island East Coast



Wicked, wild, beautiful coast line

We left Christchurch at 8am and were on the ferry by 1:30pm.

The ferry ride was sunny and clear. Not always warm but incredibly scenic. Probably some of the best conditions one could have on the ferry between the South and North islands.  It took a little over 3 hours.



On the ferry, its mountains, not clouds, that are the white in the background

On the ferry ride sailing into the Cook Strait

I sipped on the best mocha of my life as we pulled into the Wellington harbor.

We drove into Taupo around 11:30 pm. We were lucky and saw a sick fireworks show on our trip. I also subjected the Kiwi diver to my country music. Country music is not popular here. Lol. It's met with poo face everywhere I go haha.

Lake Taupo is HUGE. It is also incredibly pretty.

Part 2 of the convoy (truck and Zodiak) at Lake Taupo

Saturday morning we had a bomby breakfast and walked through an art show in the park before we left the Kiwi with his girlfriend in Taupo and the 4 of us finished the drive back to Auckland.

Awesome sunset on the way to Taupo, camera really didnt do it justice. Thats right, Im still scapegoating my camera

I was looking forward to hanging out in Taupo for a few hours, but after 10 days on the move, my new friends were ready to have the trip be over. Can't blame them. As it is, we didn't make it into Devonport until almost 3pm.
It was a great trip with lots of driving, I felt like I have seen so much of NZ already. And all of it has been amazing.