New Zealand, Land of Kiwis

Lake Tekapo, South Island

I kicked off 2014 with a 16 day trip to New Zealand to tour the North and South Islands, climb a little, swim a little, eat a lot, and dream a little.  My first stop was the Epsom section of Auckland, where I visited the standard tourist attractions: Mt. Eden, One Tree Hill, Davenport, the Viaduct, and Mission Bay.  Nope, no Skytower.

Te Annau at dusk, South Island

The original plan was to spend two days in Auckland and drive down to Wellington.  Fate had other plans so we instead based ourselves out of Auckland for four days and flew down to Wellington in time for my cousin's wedding in Wellington.  Using Auckland as our home base, we visited Kawhia and the hot springs beach on Ocean Road, which nears the top of my list of places to remember for a lifetime (seriously, one of the most amazing places I've seen, next to the night J and I had the Placa Real in Barcelona all to ourselves at night, to boot!).  We also visited pungent Rotorua and feasted on fried oysters, fish and chips, and fried mussels along the way.

Windsor Blue at the Christchurch Farmer's Market

Flying down to Wellington, we were treated to a wonderful wedding and the coldest summer winds known to man.  After the wedding whirlwind, we made our way down to Christchurch, Queenstown, Dunedin, Milford Sound, and Bluff.  We could easily have spent 2 weeks on each island and still not seen everything...

More posts to come.  Yes, there will be doggie voyeur pics, and a "Fruits of..." post.