New Zealand: Our Kiwimoon North Island Adventures
Hey guys, we’re back from New Zealand and I just want to share with you every minute of our honeymoon adventure! I want to make sure I jot this down while the memories are still fresh because it was such an amazing trip. We were there for two and a half weeks, so I’m breaking this into two parts, the north island and the south island! Here’s the north island scoop:
Day 1: Travel. After the wedding we were exhausted, but at least we played that “honeymoon” card, and got bumped up to Economy plus on the first leg of our flight! We flew through LA on the way there, and SF on the way back, but lucky only one layover each way. The craziest part of traveling was losing a day in the air–we left on Sunday and landed in Auckland on Tuesday! It was super confusing when people asked when we got married because I honestly couldn’t brain that one.
Day 2: Auckland. We landed in Auckland super gross and tired, from the wedding, not sleeping on the plane and to top it all off, they had gate checked one of our bags in Newark (our departure airport) and of course it had never made it’s way to New Zealand. We were cranky, couldn’t find the receipt for the bag, but eventually got it sorted with Air New Zealand, who were quite helpful and even gave us temporary bathroom kits which were a lifesaver since we had packed all our bathroom gear in our carry-on.
We were staying at the new Four Points Sheraton in Auckland with Tyler’s points since he travels so much for work, but since 10am was a bit early even for early check-in, we ended up going to the Auckland Museum to kill some time. It was a cute little museum with a little bit of everything–some Maori artifacts (the indigenous peoples), history on the birds of New Zealand, some pottery exhibits, cultural tattooing, geology of the volcanoes in the area, basically a really cool hodgepodge of interesting New Zealand stuff. They also had a modern women’s exhibit where they featured a ton of fascinating women, compared the gender gap in salaries among other metrics, and had a wall of books where you could write “confessions of a bad feminist”.
All of this was fascinating and it was a super cool place, but we were dragging at this point and needed to crash at our hotel, so we did cut it a little short, grabbed some food, and were quite happy to get a cute note and some New Zealand chocolate welcoming us as newlyweds to our room!
Day 3: Waiheke Island. Our first full day in New Zealand, and of course we were going to fill it with…wine! Waiheke island is about a 45 minute ferry ride from downtown Auckland, so we headed over early in the morning and stopped by Obsidian winery. We opted to use the local bus system on the island since it was cheaper than the “hop on hop off” bus system, but it meant we had to do a little more walking to the wineries themselves. Obsidian Winery had cute puppies to greet us so of course I was in love! The wines were pretty good, the rose one of our favorites.
From there we headed over to Casita Miro, a recommendation from one of Tyler’s coworkers, this place was a cute little spanish-style restaurant that was also a small-production vineyard. They really don’t distribute as most of their wines are made to sell in their restaurant. We opted for the 4-course meal, which in retrospect was far too much food and absolutely delicious. The highlights of the meal were the fried goat cheese fritters topped with honey and almonds, and the crudite plate which had amazing bread and olive oil made from olives grown on the estate. Our favorite wines here were the Aphrodesiac in the red department, and the Sauvignon Blanc in the white. Surprisingly they had a viogner, which we don’t often see outside of Virginia as it’s the state grape here.
It was a wonderful relaxing day, perfect first honeymoon day, though we were a little rushed getting back to pick up our rental car, but we made it, and despite some stress driving on the left side of the road in Auckland in rush hour, managed to survive and have a chill evening walking around Auckland.
Day 4: Glamping in a hobbit hole. This was one of those relaxing days we built into our trip, basically grabbing some delicious Japanese food and some cheese and bread for dinner before we left Auckland (I forgot we were that much closer to Asia!) and making our way to Hamilton where we were staying for the night at “Underhill”.
This super cute getaway is tucked into a little glade on a working sheep farm. Apparently the cave was originally used by the hosts’ grandfather to hold meetings and such and in the past few years they’ve turned it into a little getaway experience for travelers. While it’s not actually affiliated with the official “Hobbiton” or “Lord of the Rings” franchises, it’s definitely got that rustic hobbit-hole like feel. Complete with a little pond, no electricity, a wooden stove, and luckily heated water, it was a wonderful little place.
We spent a little time playing the provided horseshoes and bocce, but actually ended up reading some Lord of the Rings out loud together, snuggled up in the great big bed. It was wonderful and relaxing, and really cool to light all the candles up at night. The only downside to this place was the composting toilet was in a little outhouse a few steps away from the warm and toasty sleeping/kitchen area. The site had an outdoor bathtub that we didn’t use, but also a quaint little separate outhouse with a sink and modern shower set against rustic stones.
Day 4: Glowworm Caves. Once we had checked out of Underhill, we went off to the Waikoto Glowworm Caves. This was highly recommended by some family friends on our wedding and when we found out that our swimming with dolphins experience was cancelled due to weather, we figured this was a great addition to our itinerary. We stopped along the way and sampled some yummy food, including kumara sweet potato skins. Apparently these are “native” sweet potatoes, or about as native as you get, brought over by original Maori settlers.
Unfortunately you can’t take pictures in the caves to prevent disturbing the glowworms, but I promise you it was a great experience. It basically looked like little stars on the ceiling, and it was gorgeous to see. Apparently glowworms are larvae, and use their luminosity to attract bugs to eat, where they then get stuck in mucus strings that hang down from the larvae. There’s a part of the tour where they turn on lights and show you the dripping mucus strings and I won’t lie it takes a little of the beauty away from them, haha. But it’s really cool to see how they work and stay alive. And it’s also cool that the majority of tour guides there are actually descendants of that Maori guy that discovered the cave and has had ownership ever since.
Day 5: Spa day. We made our way to Rotarua and since it was our honeymoon, or Kiwimoon as I like to call it, decided to pamper ourselves with a spa-day! We booked a package at the Polynesian spa, getting to soak in geothermal waters pumped up from local springs, doing a couples massage, getting a cute little private spa room, and finishing the day with clean juices and smoothies and food. It was a wonderful relaxing day, and we just wandered around a little in the area before turning in.
Day 6: Te Puia & Hobbiton. Spending a couple days in Rotarua was nice because we got a little more lay of the land than some other places, and one of our favorite places to eat was “Eat Street” or a cute little alleyway of restaurants with outdoor patios and live music a lot of the time. By the time we left, we had eaten at most of the places on the street to be fair, the favorite being Croucher Brewing.
As we were leaving Rotarua, I was insistent that I wanted to see a kiwi bird, so we stopped at Te Puia, and it was a great stop! This cultural center was filled with a little bit of everything and again the Maori people tied to the area were heavily involved which I really appreciate. We got to take a free tour and see several gysers go off, a kiwi bird (although you’re not allowed to take pictures because they’re nocturnal), and one of the coolest and most memorable parts was the active Maori arts school they have on campus. They teach wood carving and stone carving and weaving to name a few, and adhere to all the traditions surrounding these arts (women are not allowed to do wood carving for example), and Tyler even ended up getting a necklace made by one of the students in the gallery they have there.
That evening we made our way over to the Hobbiton set for a tour and banquet, and guys, yes it’s definitely touristy, but it was also super fun. To be fair, some of my enjoyment came from seeing my husband’s wide-eyed open-mouthed gaping at everything, but it was pretty cool to be on set and see everything. They made 2 sizes of hobbit holes: 40% and 90% so they could use the smaller ones to scale normal sized people and make them look larger.
We got to walk around with our two tour guides throughout the whole town of hobbiton, and then made our way to the Green Dragon Tavern where we grabbed some drinks and the lights went out! Luckily they had a backup generator, and the feast was still on. Guys. There was SO. MUCH. FOOD. Literally every inch was covered with traditional hobbit fare like legs of lamb, bubble and squeak, roasted vegetables, and bread to name a few. And then once that was done, they cleared it off and replaced it all with desserts. The berry cobbler was amazing, and I tried pavlova which is a meringue/cake like thing that was pretty good.
The only downside to Hobbiton was that due to the power outage, we didn’t get to see hobbiton all lit up in the dark on the way back like we were supposed to. I’m sad we missed it, but the rest of the experience was fabulous if a little long, since it made us get in pretty late to the next place we were staying.
Day 7: Birthday in Tauranga. Since we had originally planned to be in Tauranga to swim with the dolphins and that was cancelled, we instead decided to have a nice relaxing day where we did a short hike up Mt. Manganui in the morning and then relaxed in the geothermal pools at the base of the mountain. These were actual swimming pools though geothermically heated, as in, had chlorine in it. We chatted with two girls who lived in Australia but were traveling for work and trying to fit in some sightseeing around their work schedule. They were attempting to go to a kiwi fruit farm, and that’s one thing that never occurred to me to do! I wish we could have gone, but given our schedule, we had to get back to Auckland so we settled for some delicious ice cream instead!
Day 8-9: Travel. We stayed in the Auckland Nomads hostel, which was fine but nothing to write home about. We had gone the cheap route so an 8-person dorm, which was fine, but all dudes except for me. They were all nice and ranged from 18 years old to 28. We ended up hanging out with the other 28 year old for a bit since he was a bartender in Auckland, and had a nice evening before we flew to Queenstown on the South Island the next day.
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I’ll leave you on the cliffhanger as we’re off to the South Island for now because this post is already so long! But some of my favorite parts of the trip are yet to come on the South Island, so check back for more!
