Tag Archives: road trip

Road Trip Highlights

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Did you enjoy riding along with us on our month long road trip across the north and south islands of New Zealand? We had so much fun exploring and adventuring  and sure hope you have the opportunity to explore it in person some day.

If you are interested in getting a copy of our itinerary, please email us at christine@svSugarShack.com.  The itinerary is broken down by day, with kilometers to each location, links to all activities, bars, restaurants, and hotels.  Here is a recap of our road trip.

Overall journey was well over 5,000km and took us about 28 days.

Here are highlights of each major stop:

North Island

Auckland- The City of Sails: Sky Tower and Viaduct

Loads of fun in Waitomo starting with the beautiful glow worms

And The Lost World Adventure where we abseiled 100m into the earth!

The road trip continues to Wellington, the southern most point in the North island and the capital of NZ.

South Island

We take a ferry across the straight to the South Island.  We visit the Nelson Classic Car Museum and take a Sky Wire ride over the valleys and trees.

The Abel Tasman Forest has several really cool hikes and caves to explore.

Next we make our way down the west side of the south island:  Westport, Charleston, Greymouth and Inchbonnie.

The absolutely beautiful pancake rocks stun us with their unique beauty.

We took a phenomenal helicopter ride over the Franz Josef glacier and dozens of other glaciers.

We get perplexed at Puzzling World and see a huge waterfall in Wanaka.

Definitely one of the highlights for me was our Shotover Jet Boat ride.  A truly thrilling and exhilarating experience!

My favorite day was our trip to Milford Sound where we took a 5.5 hour bus ride, 2 hour boat ride, and 45 minute plane over one of the world’s 8th wonders!

We make it all the way to the southern most point of the south island, Stirling Point at 46 36.53!

Stewart Island

Although we did not technically “drive” to Stewart Island (as you can’t bring your car over), we did take a ferry and enjoyed exploring this “3rd island” of New Zealand.

Our road trip finally turns us around and we have to head back north.  We start by going NE toward Dunedin which has the world’s steepest street (San Francisco has the world’s crookedest street).

We find beautiful, little blue penguins and a steampunk museum in Oamaru!

Christchurch is a city of potential being rebuilt after several natural disasters.

North Island

Tongariro National Park is the home of the world’s best one day hike.  Even though we could not do it, we did manage to hike over 15miles in 2 days.

Lake Tapu has many hot springs, geysers, and mud pools.

One of my favorite waterfalls is Huka Falls where 200,000 liters of water push through the falls every 9 minutes.

Orakei Koroko Geothermal Pools fascinated me with the vibrant colors, geysers, and hot pools.

The road trip continues on to Rotorua where we take a float plane over the lakes, volcano, and hot springs.

We loved the Redwood Tree Walk where we crossed over 28 swing bridges!

And we conclude our road trip with a relaxing day at Polynesia Spa where we soak in acidic and alkaline hot springs.

A truly once in a lifetime experience to be able to explore this amazing country by land.  Even though I felt like we saw a lot, we did not touch on so many other wonderful things.   I think a return visit will be in our future.

Events from this blog occurred in mid-February to mid-March 2023.  Our blog posts run 10-12 weeks behind actual live events.

Road Trip Across New Zealand

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The best way to see New Zealand is on land.  Sailing around New Zealand can be challenging as they have deep bays, rough seas, high winds, and not many anchor spots (so we have been told).  Plus, we have a lot of work going on Sugar Shack right now so moving her away from the docks is not really an option. So, a road trip is the perfect solution.

I had been planning this road trip for months and months.  Originally, Matt, Wayne, and I were going to take a campervan (or RV) but we decided to take our car instead.  Why do you ask?  Well, first of all the roads in NZ are incredibly windy, small, two lane (one lane each way) roads and driving a giant campervan seemed scary.  Also, the campervan sites are located between 2-10 miles away from the center of the main towns and we would not have had a way to get to and from the campsites.  And third, it was cheaper to take our car and stay in hotels than it was to rent the campervan.

We bought a car

You are probably thinking we are crazy, right? Well, we are a wee bit nutso, but not in this instance.  We were not planning on buying a car, but we did because the deal was just too good.  We bought a 2006 323i BMW with 18k miles for $3,800 USD.  Yep, and she was a beauty.

So, we had the reliable car, we had insurance, we had a jam packed itinerary full of action and adventure and we were set to go!

The Road Trip

Matt and I had already ventured to Coromandel and Whitanga which is on the East side of the North Island.  If you missed this blog, go back and read it! 

I had the opportunity to go to the North tip of the North island with friends and will take Matt back another time.  Check out this road trip to Cape Reigna.

So, our goal was to focus on the South Island. while still hitting a few highlights in the North Island.  We anticipated this being a 4500-5000km trip.  This is a rough idea of where we planned to go.  I anticipated several detours and unplanned stops along the way.

For the next three months, you will be reading all about our fabulous road trip, how long it took us to get to each destination, where we stayed, what we did, and what kind of mischief we got into with our friend Wayne.

So, please stay tuned and enjoy the ride!  It was a fantastic one.

Events from this blog post occurred between 20 February through 18 March 2023.  Our blog posts are running 10-12 weeks behind actual live events, so please be patient with us.

Road Trip Waitangi Treaty Gardens: Part II

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Our road trip continues the next day as we start to make our way back to the east coast towards Whangarei.  About half way to our final destination we planned on stopping at the Waitangi Treaty Grounds.  However, on the road we pass by a little avocado stand where we stop to make a purchase.  Usually it is on the honor system where you take your avos and leave the money in a box or bin.  However, as we were selecting the best ones the farm owner came up on a 4-wheel drive ATV and started chatting with us.

Mike owned the Matalaka Trust and was so amazingly kind and generous.  He showed us around his 8 hectre farm, explained how avocado farming worked, let us drive his ATV and picking machine and shared his private home brew beer with us!  We left with dozens of avocados!

Waitangi Treaty Grounds

We decided to take the one-hour tour and 30-minute cultural show at the Waitangi Treaty Grounds.  But before the tour started, we had 50 minutes to enjoy the very well laid out Te Kongahu museum.  It was so fascinating that we ended up circling back to the museum to see the bits and pieces that we rushed by the first time.  The award-winning museum presents the events leading up to, during, and after the signing of the Te Tiriti o Waitangi and the Treaty of Waitangi.

The tour took us by the world’s longest canoe or waka called Ngatokimatawhaorua.  This amazingly long waka was built in 1940 and is made from 3 very large kauri trees.  Two trees made the length of the waka and the third tree was used for all of the intricate carvings.  There were no nails, glue, or screws used in the making of this waka.  It is held together by twine.

This 6-ton waka grows to 12 tons when wet.  It takes several days to soak the waka before the wood closes the gaps and the waka can be deemed sea worthy.

Cultural Show

The cultural show is meant for the tourist to learn the ways of the Maori people.  They start off by selecting a tribe leader for the tourists and our friend Rokas was “voluntold” to represent us.  He was Chief Rokas and Simona was his “lady chief.” As chief, he had to give a little welcome speech just after the Maori leader gave his.  He did a wonderful job!

Through song and dance they shared their culture, beliefs, and background.

Each hand, arm, and body movements has a meaning.

They showed off their skills with the pom balls.

And their not so good skills with the sticks that seemed to land on the ground more than they liked.

This one guy had the best facial expressions!

Many carved tikis surrounded the interior of the meeting house.

We all posed with the dancers afterwards.

Here is a photo of our hostel.  We had 4 sets of bunk beds in one room with a shared bathroom.

It was a fabulous 2.5 day road trip with wonderful friends!

And here is our track around the North tip of the North Island.

Events from this blog occurred in late December 2022.  Our blog posts run 6-8 weeks behind actual events. Part I of our Road Trip was covered in our last blog post.