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New Zealand Honeymoon
  • Jessica Indyk
  • Keanan Smith

New Zealand Honeymoon

A 30-day adventure by Jessica & Keanan Read more
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  • Trip start
    December 20, 2022
    New Zealand Honeymoon

    Less than one week to go!

    December 14, 2022 in the United States ⋅ ☀️ 25 °F

    It's hard to believe that we will already be en route to New Zealand a week from today! After a less than perfect experience with the initially booked travel, just having new plane tickets to get us there and back is a relief. We've gotten the packing process started, and made so many last minute Amazon orders. While there's still so much to do, we're both ready for the adventure of a lifetime!Read more

  • New Zealand Honeymoon

    1 of 2 super long travel days complete!

    December 20, 2022 in the United States ⋅ 🌙 70 °F

    Aloha! While our flight delay meant that we missed out on our grand plans for a beach sunset, we still were able to make it out for some Hawaiian tapas tonight in Honolulu. Our gamble on "basic economy" without the ability to choose seats paid off with extra legroom bulkhead seats for the 12hr flight. We bid on a "sky couch" for tomorrow's flight so we'll cross our fingers and hope we get lucky on that one as well! Back to the airport bright and early for the second half!Read more

  • New Zealand Honeymoon

    Kia ora New Zealand!

    December 22, 2022 in New Zealand ⋅ ☀️ 68 °F

    After a solid 3hrs of sleep (time changes just aren't my thing) we were greeted at the airport by the longest and thankfully also the fastest moving security line I have ever experienced. We were eager to board and try out our SkyCouch! The SkyCouch ended up being a little tight for 2 adults but we both enjoyed having the whole row to ourselves and being able to move around more than we typically would. Food was also pretty good on board and I got to try some New Zealand wines. The process for bringing our tent and hiking boots into the country was pretty elaborate, so we spent a while in that line once we arrived and then made our way to our hotel in the center of Auckland. After settling into our hotel, we walked down to Viaduct Harbor to grab a later dinner overlooking the water. The sunset wasn't until almost 9pm and is going to get even later as we travel south! Coming from the northern hemisphere on the winter solstice and landing in the southern hemisphere on summer solstice was quite the change, and I'm sure we're going to appreciate the long daylight hours once we're on the road!Read more

  • New Zealand Honeymoon
    1

    Auckland exploration

    December 23, 2022 in New Zealand ⋅ ⛅ 72 °F

    We both managed to sleep a little later this morning, but we still got a pretty early start. We got breakfast before exploring some of the city's parks and other walking highlights while we waited for museums to open.

    We then made our way to the maritime museum, which houses a really neat selection of exhibits, ranging from the first wooden canoes used by the Maori when they first settled in New Zealand, to the highly engineered, sleek, but massive carbon fiber boats used to win the America's Cup. We then took a ride in one of their sailboats to see Auckland from the water. The boat was crewed by a bunch of old, retired Kiwis, who clearly just like being on the boat and sharing their passion with others.

    For lunch, we walked over to the Wynyard Quarter to get some delicious fish and chips from the Auckland Fish Market. Then it was time to pick up our campervan - our home away from home as we leave the city behind. Keanan hopped behind the wheel for his first time driving on the other side of the road/car, and we had a very tense drive back to our hotel in Auckland, where we opted to let the hotel valet park it. We're both excited to get it out of Auckland tomorrow, and onto less populated roads, just as when we first picked up our car in Edinburgh 5.5 years ago.

    We then spent our evening enjoying our hotel's rooftop pool before going out for dinner and gelato, and crashing earlier than we have been so we're well rested for our first day of driving!    Read more

  • New Zealand Honeymoon

    Raglan

    December 24, 2022 in New Zealand ⋅ ⛅ 72 °F

    Tonight will be our first night in the van! We are parked at our first "holiday park" and Keanan is already sound asleep!

    This morning we checked out of our hotel in Auckland and started driving south to Raglan, an eclectic surf town on the west coast. While we had originally planned to just grab lunch and check out the main surf spots before heading along a scenic drive to a beach further south along the coast, our less than carefree drive here on narrow, windy, paved roads left us less than enthusiastic about the unpaved versions that would be necessary for that scenic drive. We decided to stay in Raglan instead!

    After grabbing lunch, we made our way down to the water to rent kayaks. One of the highlights is a stretch of the coastline known as the limestone coast with its signature "pancake rocks" which is located across the inlet from the town. The strong current made this crossing challenging and very splashy. Our first stop after crossing was a beach known for having the blackest sand in the area. It was really neat, with sections looking almost blue. From there we continued along the coast, going between various rock formations before heading back across the inlet.

    When we got back to our van we spent some time unpacking and organizing our things into it before going out to dinner in town. We followed up dinner with a drive down to a popular surf spot to watch surfers and the sunset.    Read more

  • New Zealand Honeymoon

    Meri Kirihimete!

    December 25, 2022 in New Zealand ⋅ ⛅ 73 °F

    Since Christmas is a national holiday here, we knew nothing would be open and it would be a great day for some scenic driving and some short hikes. We took advantage of our amenity-packed holiday park to make some hot breakfast, wash dishes and top off both our water and gas tanks before setting off.

    Our first stop was Bridal Veil Falls, a tall, narrow waterfall with a path and viewpoints from the top to the bottom. We then set off on a scenic drive through the grassy hills, along the coast. Not long after leaving Bridal Veil Falls, the road became gravel, which took us by surprise. It ended up being about 20km of gravel, luckily interspersed with paved sections for the steepest parts and very uncrowded, and Keanan handled it like a champ! After we got back to pavement, we stopped for lunch (PB&J) by a bridge over an inlet. One of the guys fishing off the bridge mentioned how boring and straight the roads become as you head further south, which at this time is definitely sounding like a welcome change!

    Our next stop was Marokopa Falls, which was not as tall as Bridal Veil Falls, but much wider and tiered. The path to the bottom of this one was closed off. A few minutes down the road, we came to Piripiri Cave.

    Just a few minutes beyond that was our planned camping spot for the night, Mangapohue Natural Bridge. We knew the hiking trail was closed for erosion, but it offered a picnic area and a long drop toilet so we could avoid using our van's porta potty, which definitely grosses me out. Since it was only 2:30pm, we decided to check out another potential camping spot another 20 mins down the road at Haggas Lookout. The lookout was completely overgrown and didn't have a toilet, so we turned back around to come back to the natural bridge.

    We watched some downloaded Jack Ryan in our van to kill some time when we got back and then brought our dinner and cooking supplies to the camping area to make our fancy Christmas dinner of pasta with tofu sausage! We both crashed pretty early (definitely before sunset) but on one of my toilet hikes overnight, I went looking for some of the glowworms that this area is famous for. I didn't find any, but the clear night sky was beautiful, and we will have plenty of glowworm opportunities on our black water rafting trip today!    Read more

  • New Zealand Honeymoon

    Waitomo Black Water Rafting

    December 26, 2022 in New Zealand ⋅ ⛅ 75 °F

    Today we got up early to head to one of the activities at the top of both of our must do lists - black water rafting. After being fitted for wetsuits and rubber boots, we were driven to the start of the tour, where we repelled down 35m to the cave below. We then ziplined through a dark cavern, lit only by the glowworms overhead. These were just the first of many glowworms seen on the tour.

    Glowworms are the larva stage of a fungus fly and use their glowing butts to attract insects in the cave to their mucus-y strands used to trap prey similarly to a spider web. They spend about 9 months in this stage before becoming adults. As adults they don't have mouths, so they only live 2-3 days, most of which time they spend mating and laying eggs. The first eggs to hatch, eat their siblings and the process repeats.

    Anyways, after ziplining we jumped into the cold water with our tubes and paddled and drifted through more caverns with glowworms lining the ceiling. We then ditched our tubes and continued by foot/swimming through the cave, climbing up waterfalls and sliding down slides as we went.

    We both had an incredible time and thought this was a unique and adrenaline pumping experience!    Read more

  • New Zealand Honeymoon

    Brock's Place

    December 26, 2022 in New Zealand ⋅ ⛅ 75 °F

    Tonight we're staying at a place close to Hobbiton that's just some guy's farm (Brock's presumably). The views are incredible and it even has flushing toilets and hot showers! Bonus picture of my awesome foot tan lines!Read more

  • New Zealand Honeymoon

    More from Brock's Place

    December 27, 2022 in New Zealand ⋅ ⛅ 55 °F

    Last night we had our first rain in the form of some scattered thunderstorms over a few hours in the evening. As they were clearing we got a beautiful brief glimpse of a rainbow!

    When I woke up around 5 this morning, the sky was starting to brighten with color so I grabbed my phone and camera to watch! These are my phone photos - I'll have Keanan post some from the camera later. I was watching alongside several spiders who have webs in the fence, so I played around with "microscope mode" on the camera :)Read more

  • New Zealand Honeymoon

    Hobbiton

    December 27, 2022 in New Zealand ⋅ ☀️ 68 °F

    This morning we made our way to one of NZ's biggest tourist attractions - Hobbiton. All in all, we found it kind of underwhelming, which we were expecting, but figured we might as well do it while we were in the area. It was neat to see how, what used to be an ordinary farm, was transformed into the movie set and to learn how scenes were filmed to create the effect of the hobbits being much smaller than the other characters. Some of the trees are either entirely fake or had their leaves and fruit stripped and replaced for filming and there were people whose job it was to walk the paths from the hobbit holes to the laundry day after day to create the worn grass look.Read more

  • New Zealand Honeymoon

    Whakarewarewa Redwood Forest

    December 27, 2022 in New Zealand ⋅ ☀️ 79 °F

    This afternoon we tried mountain biking for the first time! Whakarewarewa forest had some great beginner loops with lots of rolling bumps and banked turns, all while weaving between the towering redwood trees! We didn't take any photos while actually biking, so take a look at what's online if you want to get an idea of what the trails look like. Compared to road biking it's way more of an arm and hand workout. Because they like to do everything backwards here, the back brake is on the left, so that threw in the additional thrill of wondering if I was going to flip myself over my handlebars at any given moment! I imagine we'll both have sore butts and other muscles for our thermal features/spa day tomorrow!Read more

  • New Zealand Honeymoon

    Breakfast Shinny Dip

    December 28, 2022 in New Zealand ⋅ ⛅ 64 °F

    We saw this place after biking yesterday and thought it would be a good place to start our day. We enjoyed soaking our feet (and shins) while drinking coffee/iced hot chocolate and eating meat pies!

  • New Zealand Honeymoon

    Orakei Korako Thermal Park

    December 28, 2022 in New Zealand ⋅ ☀️ 73 °F

    This is a geothermal park we visited between Rotorua and Taupo. The setting is on a beautiful blue lake over which you take a short boat ride to reach the walking path. Their claims to fame are having the largest silica terraces in the world and the most active geysers in NZ.Read more

  • New Zealand Honeymoon

    Huka Falls

    December 28, 2022 in New Zealand ⋅ ☀️ 73 °F

    We stopped at Huka Falls for a brief walk, and drove along the shores of Lake Taupo on our way down to our holiday park in Whakapapa Village. If we're able to hike Tongariro Alpine Crossing tomorrow (fingers crossed - the weather is looking promising) we might head back up here to explore more. Lake Taupo is a massive lake (about the size of Singapore) that was created by a volcanic eruption nearly 2000 years ago. Stealing the description of Huka Falls from newzealand.com since I have a lot of blurbs to catch up on!

    "The Waikato River, New Zealand's longest river, moves gracefully north from Lake Taupō between banks 100 metres apart. Just before the Huka Falls it enters a shallow ravine of hard volcanic rock. The effect is nature's large-scale equivalent of a fire hose feeding into a very fine nozzle. The previously placid waters roar and rumble at great speed along the ravine before bursting out over Huka Falls to crash into the turbulent pool 11 metres below. "

    Now for an early bedtime so we're ready for our hike in the morning!    Read more

  • New Zealand Honeymoon

    Tongariro Alpine Crossing

    December 29, 2022 in New Zealand ⋅ ☀️ 57 °F

    We woke up early this morning to make sure we fueled up and were ready to go on our 7am shuttle. When we arrived at the start of the hike, our shuttle driver told us that the weather for the day looked nearly perfect! We were probably overprepared - with down and rain jackets and 8L of water between us - but that's always better than the alternative!

    Here's the DOC's description of the hike:

    "This challenging trip begins at 1120 m, climbs the Mangatepopo Valley to the saddle between Mount Tongariro and Mount Ngauruhoe, through South Crater before climbing again to Red Crater, the highest point on the crossing at 1886 m.

    You will then descend on a volcanic rock scree track to the vivid Emerald Lakes, known as Nga Rotopounamu (greenstone-hued lakes). After passing Blue Lake, also known as Te Wai-whakaata-o-te-Rangihiroa (Rangihiroa’s mirror), the track sidles around the northern slope of Tongariro, then descends in a zigzag track down to the road end at 760 m."

    In general, I was very impressed with the infrastructure behind this popular track. From the ease of utilizing shuttles for otherwise challenging one way hike logistics, to bathrooms (nothing super fancy - drop toilets without toilet paper) with rock wallpaper to blend into their environment, to the boardwalks and plastic gridding at lower elevations to keep the erosion at bay, to very thorough signage and trail marking, they seemed to have thought of everything.

    The climb up to the saddle was challenging, but for me, the climb up to the red crater was the hardest, as we traded nicely formed steps for steep grades with slippery scree beneath our feet. The views from the top of the red crater made it all worth it - with all the emerald and blue lakes coming into view. Another favorite view for me was after blue lake when we began the switchbacks on the northern face and Lake Taupo came into view as we descended into the forest and to the end of the trail. We made it to the bottom with nearly perfect timing to catch the first shuttle back to our campground and snag a delicious burger from the food truck before it closed!    Read more

  • New Zealand Honeymoon

    Whakapapa Rest Day

    December 30, 2022 in New Zealand ⋅ ⛅ 66 °F

    We hung close to our campground today, recovering from yesterday's hike. We sat down by the stream running through the campground and read our books, watched the new Knives Out movie, Glass Onion, in our campervan, learned about volcanoes at the Tongariro National Park visitor's center and did some chores to clean up and reorganize our van. The campground also runs a little food truck operation that we had tried out after our hike yesterday and decided to come back for lunch there today to confirm whether it was as incredible as it seemed after hiking for 12 miles. It didn't disappoint! They put beets on burgers here, which I think is something we're going to start doing at home too!Read more

  • New Zealand Honeymoon

    Happy New Year from Wellington!

    December 31, 2022 in New Zealand ⋅ ☀️ 59 °F

    We got an early-ish start this morning for our 4 hr drive to Wellington. Once we arrived, we visited the Museum of New Zealand. There were exhibits on the cultural and natural history of NZ. One exhibit, on NZ's role in WWI, was designed by the Weta Workshop, who create the practical effects for many well-known movies. After we were sufficiently museum-ed out, we took the cable car up for a view of the city and dinner. We then took a quick break in our hotel room so we'd be able to make it out for the midnight festivities!Read more

  • New Zealand Honeymoon

    Crossing the Cook Strait

    January 1, 2023 in New Zealand ⋅ ☁️ 61 °F

    Today we loaded our campervan onto a ferry and said our goodbyes to the north island! The ferry route is quite picturesque as we passed through sounds/fjords approaching the south Island terminus in Picton!Read more

  • New Zealand Honeymoon

    Abel Tasman National Park

    January 2, 2023 in New Zealand ⋅ ☁️ 66 °F

    To see the most of Abel Tasman National Park, we opted for a tour that involved a combination of walking, kayaking and riding water taxis. Due to some choppy weather in the morning, our tour operator decided to switch up the usual order of activities - this meant we would walk in the morning and kayak after lunch. We started off piling into a water taxi that was on a trailer, pulled by a tractor. The tractor drove us down the road and backed our boat in at the boat ramp. We then had an exciting, bumpy ride out to Anchorage beach where we started our walk along the Abel Tasman Coastal Track.

    The walk was beautiful - passing through fairly densely forested paths, with peeks out to beautiful beaches below. There are apparently 70 different types of ferns that grow here and it really has a rainforest/jungle vibe. One of the coolest features was a swing bridge over a gorge. We also saw several birds we learned are called wetas. They are a flightless bird and pretty bold - even snagging a bag of cashews from one of our group members at lunch later. They also have a lot of traps set up along the trail to catch invasive predators (rodents and hornets) that threaten the native species.

    We then met up with the rest of our group for lunch at Bark Bay. After what was a pretty delicious lunch - especially after having been shoved into a kayak the whole morning - we got situated in our kayak to see some more of the park by water. We saw several varieties of birds and some neat rock formations as we kayaked along the coast. We then headed to Tonga island to see the fur seals! After watching them roll around in the water and sun themselves on rocks, we headed into shore at Onetahuti Bay for a quick swim before boarding a water taxi back to Marahau.

    The process for bringing all the kayaks back was fascinating and I was surprised they all stayed attached to the water taxi on our speedy return. Returning at low tide, it was more obvious why we were transported by tractor in the morning as tractors are needed to drive into the water to retrieve the water taxis and haul them up the boat launch.

    We took a bunch of photos on the underwater camera for this outing, which I'll have Keanan add to this post :)    Read more

  • New Zealand Honeymoon

    Marahau to Kaikoura

    January 3, 2023 in New Zealand ⋅ ⛅ 75 °F

    Today we had one of our longer driving days of the trip. We had planned to break it up with lunch at a winery, but since apparently January 3rd is still a holiday here, most places we tried were either closed or completely booked. We gave up on eating at a winery and were just lucky to even find an open restaurant, where we ate before returning to a winery to do a tasting. Along our route we drove through many vineyards, but also a bunch of hop farms, which are set up interestingly to accommodate their climbing. The drive down the east coast was gorgeous, with nearly constant views of the rocky coast and beautiful blue water.Read more

  • New Zealand Honeymoon

    Swimming with Dolphins!

    January 4, 2023 in New Zealand ⋅ ☁️ 61 °F

    We had likely our earliest morning on this trip, waking up at 4:30 so we could check in for our tour by 5:15 (and we got to watch the start of the sunrise as we arrived as a bonus). We chose the earliest tour option with the hope that the sea would be the calmest. While it likely did get more rough later in the day, the sea was rated as "moderate" when we arrived, which meant that there was a high risk of sea sickness, and we wouldn't be able to travel outside the more protected area. We took the motion sickness meds they offered us and hoped for the best!

    We found what the guides referred to as the main pod of dolphins much closer than expected. Apparently they typically stay further out than we would be able to get with the moderate swell, so they expected we would only be swimming with a smaller group. This pod was huge! It was maybe a few hundred dolphins, all hanging out near our boat! We jumped in to join them!

    I probably should have expected it since they had us in thick wetsuits with hoods, but the water temperature definitely took me by surprise - it was freezing! I pretty quickly forgot how cold I was since, within moments it jumping into the water, we were surrounded by dolphins! I enjoyed diving down to swim alongside them and even swam some butterfly with them! They were putting on a show the whole time - doing jumps and flips out of the water all over the place!

    After about a half hour, I noticed that Keanan had gone back to the boat and I started feeling queasy from riding the swells. My body decided the best course of action was to completely empty my stomach on the spot. The dolphins seemed interested and curious, and one even escorted me almost all the way back to the boat. I found Keanan in a similar state, so we hung out on the back of the boat with a few other passengers - all clutching these lovely blue buckets they carry for exactly this purpose. I definitely did not envy the guide whose job included emptying and cleaning out buckets...

    We don't have many pics to show for this trip since we were both puking our brains out for the photo taking portion of the trip, but swimming with these guys was incredible and totally worth it!    Read more

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