Goodbye North Island- it's South Island Time!

So long Wellington

Oh man!
I love the South Island!
I crossed the Cook Straight on the ferry and am so excited to be in a new part of  NZ.

On the inter-island ferry

I drove west across the top part of the north island. From Picton to a little town somehwhere between Takaka and Collingwood. I'm not sure where. I was so tired. I just kinda pulled into a holiday park in a daze.

My first night on South Island

And that's where I saw my first penguin!
There he was, just chilling. I think I blinded him while trying to take my photos. So I tried to get a pic without using my flash. Not that successful.

Penguin!!!! I'm so excited! Bucket list: check!

Cute little guy!

The next day I drove to Farewell Spit and spent the whole day hiking. The hike was great and had a little bit of everything.

View on the hike

 

I was the only one on the beach

Beach view from inside the cave

I don't know who this Cliff guy is....but he's got some great views....

The landscape was so varied, pastureland, cliffs, beach, mountainy scrubland.

Cape Farewell

The cliffs with farewell spit in the far background. I gotta little too much sun 

It's  one of my favorite places in NZ. I hiked to Farewell Cape, the northernmost part of South Island.

 

The dunes at Farewell spit

It's an Immense white sand beach

I'm all camped up and cozy now at another holiday park. This time in Collingwood. Tomorrow I hope to settle the logistics for my 3 day Abel Tasman park hike.

Camp time: cool clouds at sunset

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.