New Zealand was very much a planned visit. B's good Kiwi friend Rebecca and her parents had kindly invited us for her wedding there on the 15th of March 2014. So ever since the invitation at the end of last year, we'd been planning our NZ holiday. We wanted to see and experience as much as we possibly could of Aotearoa (original Maori name for New Zealand, "land of the long white cloud").
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| B on our arrival at Auckland Airport (CNB 2014) |
After a layover in Melbourne, on the morning of the 3rd of March, we reached Auckland (Tamakimakaurau) where we stayed three nights, before taking an InterCity Coachlines* bus to Rotorua. Since my schooldays, I have always thought that the Maori people and the geysers of Rotorua represented NZ, so how could we not make it to this place? But we could only spend three nights in Rotorua before a long seven hour coach ride to Wellington (Te Whanganui-a-Tara), capital of NZ. Again we took the InterCity Coachlines because of their most efficient scheduling.
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| The InterCity coach stops for lunch at Hamilton on our Auckland-Rotorua route (BB 2014) |
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| Our InterCity coach at Rotorua i-Site before the long journey to Wellington (CNB 2014) |
We had only two nights to spare in this 'windy city' of Wellington before taking a Bluebridge Cook Strait ferry across from North Island (Te Ika-a-Maui) to South Island (Te Waipounamu). Cruising the Marlborough Sounds, and Queen Charlotte Sound into Picton was a fantastic experience.
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| Ferry crossing and the Marlborough Sounds (BB 2014) |
On our arrival at Picton, Rebecca and her Ryan were waiting for us. They took us to her parent's friends' home overlooking Waikawa Bay. Here we met up with Rebecca's parents Alan and Maureen, and (from Florida USA), Ryan's parents Jean and Gigelle, and his cousin Seide.
In Blenheim (Wairau), situated in the heart of wine-growing Marlborough, we stayed a week, where apart from being
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| Aotearoa, ke kite ano ... see you again |
*NZ's national bus network
3-17 March 2014
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