Well, we were rather fortunate and were able to take a 4-day get-away over Easter weekend and have the chance to explore the island a little bit.
We went from Paraparumu to Taupo to Hamilton and back (along with a few other detours!). One way was about 6 hours, but it was a beautiful six hours driving through the country side and seeing all the different landscapes New Zealand has to offer. I made a little map (I know, I know.... I made it on paint....I never really got past 4th grade computer class) so you would be able to kind of get an idea of where we were.
And now for the pictures!
The countryside was beautiful and green.
And covered in sheep!
And more sheep!
This is a brave little guy outside the fence that I made Ramzi pull over for so that I could get a picture.
We ran into some odd but cool things while we were driving. These blue/green marshmallow looking things are feed all bundled up. But it was fun driving down the road and seeing giant marshmallows everywhere.
We also ran into this fence that had shoes tacked on it, all up and down.
There wasn't a sign or anything as to why, but it was still super cool.
I like this picture because of the crocs. No shoe collage is complete without a pair of the most fashionable water sandals ever created.
There really were a lot of shoes.
Another cool thing we ran into was these hot water springs. There was steam everywhere!
At first we thought this every enthusiastic about steam sign was kind of funny...
But after having to drive through this we realized the exclamation point was a warning as well as an invitation to be excited about mother nature's awesomeness.
And this is just an example of how beautiful everything is.
Another one.
And another one.
This is lake Taupo. The first time we drove by it, it was so stormy we couldn't even see to the other side. But luckily we caught some sunshine on the way back and got this awesome picture.
We saw a TON of rainbows on our trip. Here are pictures of the best two.
We could almost see both ends!
Now this picture requires a little bit of an explanation. The reason why Ramzi is standing in the middle of a very windy and stormy day (note the hair in his face) is because somewhere in that cloudy tumult is Mt. Ngauruhoe, the mountain they used as Mt. Doom in the Lord of the Rings Movies. We were bummed we couldn't see it, but it was kind of fitting for such a mountain to be lost in a storm.
This is what it looked like on the way back. It's still lost in clouds, but you can actually see the mountain this time. And snow! The snow must have started happening after Frodo destroyed the ring and the volcano ;)
Here's the sunset on the first day of traveling. We were almost to where we were staying for the night, just happy and tired after a long beautiful day of driving, and God just decided to give us something else to smile about.
So, we also saw quite a few water falls on our getaway.
This is the first one. We only found this one because we got lost and had to take a different road than originally planned.
It was cool to just stumble upon it and be happy we were little lost.
This is Huka Falls.
It's not really a super impressive cascading waterfall, but is just super powerful.
And this is Ramzi at the Huka Falls lookout. He stood like that mimicking that guy for a good two minutes until I realized he wanted me to take a picture. I'm just glad the guy didn't turn around.
And this was a cool stop on the short hike to get to Marokopa falls. All the trees were covered in moss.
And here are the falls! This one was our favorite!
And here's Ramzi...being all gangster.
There's that handsome smile!
And of course we couldn't ONLY look from the lookout! We found a trail and decided to go down to the water.
To get even cooler pictures.
We were so wet and muddy after this excursion...but it was more than worth it.
And now...for all the food of our trip!
This was the breakfast spread at the bed and breakfast we stayed it. It was DELICIOUS! I am now a huge fan of marmalade.
We also ate Indian food more than anything else. This was a cool restaurant we found.
My my favorite was the Turkish place we found! It made both of us miss the Middle East.
HUMMUS!!
FALAFEL!!
YUMMY!!
And this was the first pub I had ever been in! The food was great and we got to catch the end of a Rugby game.
Drinking water in a pub feeling cool and grown up.
Awesome decorations.
And....more Indian food! Maybe our next trip should be to India.
This was a random cafe we found kind of in the middle of no where. But the food was good and very welcomed after driving for a while.
And this lady bug became my friend while we were eating.
Now, here are some cool things we got to do in the cities of Hamilton and Taupo.
This was taken at the Hamilton Gardens. They have all these different types of gardens built around a beautiful pond.
We tried to go another walk through the gardens but it started POURING when we were about half a mile from the car...so we just embraced it and enjoyed a stroll through the storm.
As it was Easter weekend, we made sure we stopped by the Temple.
These were funny bathroom signs at the Waitomo Cave adventures.
At Waitomo caves we went on a little hike to a beautiful lookout.
And we went through the glow worm caves. This is what they look like outside...
But this is how AWESOME they look inside! It was definitely one of the coolest things we did. We've never seen anything quite like it!
On our travels we also encountered a lot of cool street art.
This was near Hamilton Gardens.
Walking the streets of Hamilton at night.
And of course this Ghost Busters wall was the most inspiring thing we ran into...
Followed by the McDonald's Airplane
And the dog shaped building.
All in all it was a wonderful trip and a great way to get to know the island a little bit more. But we were very happy when we saw this sign telling us we were home on Kapiti coast once again. For what good is a vacation if you're not happy to be home again?
But! Stay tuned! I didn't even blog about the most exciting thing we did on our trip....HOBBITON! But that definitely deserves its own blog post....
