End of the North Island:

After leaving the Taranaki area of New Zealand, we headed down the west coast to the very bottom of the North Island. We were nearing the end of our time on the North Island at this point, and had already booked our ferry tickets to take us to the South Island. By the way, the crossing between the North Island to the South Island cost us $235.00 for two people and a vehicle.

While we were in the bottom area of the North Island, a few of the places that we stopped to see were:

Cape Palliser:

Cape Palliser is on the very southeastern corner of the North Island of New Zealand. It took us about an hour to get there from the Wellington area and we stayed in the area for a night.

At the very end of the road of the road that takes you to Cape Palliser is the Cape Palliser Lighthouse. You have to climb up a fairly intimidating staircase to get to the top, but it’s worth it when you’re there.

Once we got to the lighthouse, we walked up a trail behind the lighthouse and sat on the hillside while the sun set. Below us, you could hear the waves crashing on the shore, and we saw seals lying on the rocks along the water and barking occasionally. Across the water and far in the distance, we could see the white capped mountains of the South Island where we would be crossing to in a few days.

The coastline in this area of New Zealand is really cool and there are black sand beaches, and jagged rock formations along the coast and jutting out of the water. The water is a really vibrant light blue colour along this area of the coast as well.

The Pinnacles:

One of the places that we visited in the Cape Palliser area was called the Pinnacles. It takes about 45 minutes to get to the pinnacles and you can do a loop so that you don’t have to walk the same path both ways.

It wasn’t spectacular, although the valley that they are in is quite impressive. This was apparently a shooting location for a scene in the Lord of the Rings, but I’m not totally sure which one. I guess after this trip, I’ll have a good reason to watch all of the movies again.

To see the pinnacles themselves up close, you can take a bit of a detour and walk directly up the bottom of a dry creek bed and straight through the middle of the pinnacles. The pinnacles themselves are a bunch of sandstone pillars that have been eroded away over time and look like a bunch of small towers or spikes sticking out of the hillside. You can also see them from afar while you are walking along the trail from the parking lot, and there is a viewing platform that you can stop at.

Wellington:

We only spent a day in Wellington, but from what we saw, it was enough to realize that Wellington is a really cool city. It has a population of about 200,000 people and is built on a steep hillside surrounding a large bay of water. Because the hillside that most of the houses are built on is very steep, the roads around them are really steep and narrow so it would be frustrating to drive every day. But the payoff would be that nearly every one of those houses has an uninterrupted view back down to the bay. Wellington is known for being really windy, but on the day that we were there, there was hardly any wind at all.

Something about Wellington reminded my of San Francisco. Although I’ve never been to San Francisco, so I should say that it reminds me of what I think San Francisco would be like. My opinion is mostly based on movies and hearsay, so it’s probably not very accurate. So, to try to be as accurate as possible, you should probably just ignore that comparison entirely.

But I do know with certainty, that Wellington is an absolutely beautiful city. I’ve found, sometimes, that when I spend time in cities, I get a certain feeling from them. For example, for our entire time in Auckland, the city felt cold (not the temperature, just the feeling), unwelcoming, and somewhat stressful. But in Wellington, it was the opposite. It felt very friendly, easy-going, and all around it was a happy place to be.

I’m not much of a city person, but if I had to live in a city, I wouldn’t hesitate to choose Wellington.

A few of the things that we did for our afternoon in Wellington were:

Mount Victoria Lookout:

The lookout on top of Mount Victoria is likely one of the best views of the city. You can drive all of the way to the top where there are a couple of small parking lots, or you can park lower and walk up a series of walking trails to the top.

Once up there, you can see back down towards the downtown area of Wellington that is built right along the water’s edge, you can see the port, and you can see down the other side of the hill to the airport. We were there on a Sunday, so the bay was filled with people stand-up paddle boarding, sailing, laying on the beaches, and riding their bikes.

The Water Front:

After heading down from Mount Victoria, we stopped in at the waterfront, which is an area (as you guessed it) that is right along the edge of the bay. There is a large walkway that is lined with parks, museums, street performers, beaches, people slacklining, pubs, and restaurants.

Parking is a bit of an issue in the downtown area of Wellington, but we were lucky and were able to find parking at the Civic Centre Parkade, which has free parking on the weekends.

Leaving the North Island:

We stayed that night just outside of the city, and drove back in early in the morning to catch our 9:00AM ferry to the South Island. This concluded our time on the North Island, and we were ready to start the South Island leg of our adventure.

We were happy with what we were able to see on the North Island, and feel like we had successfully covered the majority of our main highlights. It had taken us just under a month to cover the area from Auckland down to Wellington, and we unfortunately missed seeing a few places because of time or weather.

It seems like time shouldn’t be an issue as we have an entire year in New Zealand, but we wanted to get down to the South Island in time for the start of summer as lots of companies do their hiring during that time. It was also nice to keep a steady pace as we found that we would stagnate slightly when we stayed too long in one place.

And with that, for good or for bad, we were moving onwards from the North Island to continue our southward migration with our final destination hopefully being the town of Wanaka. The first month of the trip has been fantastic and each day brings new places, new people, and new surprises, so we’re excited to see what lies in store on the South Island.