Beth's Babbles: Rotorua to Wellington

Joe here, taking over Beth's blog for this part of the journey, from Rotorua down to the bottom of the north island in Wellington.

Eerie mist

We left Rotorua and headed towards Gisborne via Whakatane. The journey there was breathtaking.

We passed the iconic Lake Rotorua, and the various other smaller lakes along the way. As the day was beginning to heat up, there was mist creeping across the top of the water on the lakes and streams. We went through an awesome mountain range, where the clouds cling to the tops despite it still being sunny. As the shadows move with the rising sun, the icy dew begins to melt into a misty vapour.

Beautiful turquoise river below misty hilltops

Plenty of low cloud!

It was several hours before we reached Whakatane (genuinely pronounced fuck-a-tony), skirting the coast and looking out to the beautiful pacific ocean. We eventually ended up at a camp ground - where I accidentally churned up all the waterlogged grass. The owner was not impressed!

We left the next morning for Gisborne. On the way through the ever-gorgeous landscape we saw a farmer fertilising his crops with a helicopter. That's certainly a new one to us, and we wondered just how much land he must have to have to use a helicopter!

We finally got to Gisbourne. A short drive from the town is the Rere Rockslide - famous waterfalls where the rock is so smoothly eroded that it is otherwise known as a natural waterslide, and it is a popular spot for people to take a body board and go crashing down them! This sounded like a lot of fun, however after discussing over breakfast in town we decided it was too cold for that, and we should head further south.

We travelled some more distance until we got to a farmhouse lodge near a town called Hastings. The lodge was extremely old (by New Zealand standards) but was big in character. But the biggest character was the caretaker, who remarkably resembled the Prospector from Toy Story 2, and had the sense of humour to put anyone at ease. There were also 12 dogs running around these grounds, which Beth enjoyed immensely.

In the morning we left early and travelled towards Wellington. We saw snowy mountains for the first time in the distance, as well as plenty of goats, sheep, cows and even falcons soaring above our car.

Our first view of snowy mountains - a change from the north's rolling green hills!

We eventually came upon a town called Dannevirke - originally settled by Scandinavians, where the most awesome chocolate cheesecake was to be found in a cafe called Yummy Mummys.

Onwards once more through various villages and scenery, we arrived at Porirua where we visited a police museum. It was all about police and criminal history in New Zealand, and you could also try on some of the uniforms!

Who do you think wears it better - Beth or Joe?

We also went bowling... but don't talk to Beth about who won...

The following day we finally arrived in Wellington and set our sights upon the Great War Museum with it's exhibition from Sir Peter Jackson (Lord of the Rings & Hobbit fans) which was both extremely informative and moving. There was an insane amount of detail that had gone into the making of the sets and models, as well as the information about battles and individual soldiers. It was a great exhibition and I hope it continues to show other people the horrors and futility of war.

Afterwards, we had originally planned to go back to Porirua for lunch when suddenly Gimli's clutch blew leaving us stranded at the side of a busy motorway! There was smoke everywhere and the whole car stank! Luckily for us a very helpful stranger was just on his way back from work and towed us to a garage. After a few painstaking hours (and a lot of money spent) Gimli was back on the road - though still smelling like death.