Our New Zealand adventure began on Monday morning which also happened to be Labour Day. We seem to be good at booking on public holidays… Firstly Diwali and now this! We arranged car hire from Auckland airport with Snap rental which was pretty cheap, including insurance. We picked up our Yaris, although our luggage was just a tad too big so we did drive everywhere with the back seats down! We usually feel quite nervous about driving abroad, following some scary moments in the US but had heard it was a lot easier to drive around NZ.

We had a 2.5 hour drive down to our first stop: Waitomo. It was very picturesque and we stopped off at a couple of viewpoints for some photos. It’s also a dream to drive here… there’s very few cars on the highways and it’s so scenic! Driving on the left helps of course… One recommendation would be to download your Google map offline first as you will likely lose GPS. You’ll also lose radio signal so a downloaded playlist is a must!

Our hotel was quaint, and colonial looking but the owner was very friendly. We headed straight out about 500m down the road to the caves. Gloworm time! We booked a combo ticket because you’re not allowed to take photos on the boat trip, but you can in Ruakiri cave. We met our tour guide and went down into the cave with about 20 other people. The caves are beautiful limestone and the tour guide was fantastic. We learnt loads about the geography, and the gloworms and were excited when we spotted our first one! The boat ride blew us away though. The tour guide pulled us through the caves silently using a system of rope pulleys. You’re in complete darkness except the ceiling and walls are lit up with thousands of blue and green lights! The gloworms use the lights in their tails to attract food; luckily they only need to eat once a month as they’re isn’t a lot of food down there! They create vertical lines similar to webs to catch food, and these are beautiful up close! The trip was fantastic; it’s a small family business and you can see how proud they are of the caves. We headed back to the hotel and went to one of the only restaurants for some food and wine. We were pretty tired after our karaoke night, and night flight so were asleep before 10.

The next morning we headed a little further down the road to Ruakiri cave for the second part of our gloworm trip. Once again we had an enthusiastic and informative guide who took us down a 7 layer spiral to 60m below ground. You do a 1.5 hour walk down there where you see incredible rock formations, and of course more gloworms! You can take as many photos as you like down here so we’ve tried to capture some of the magic. We also got up close to some gloworms and were surprised to see they were about an inch long, much bigger than expected. It was an amazing wedding present and we were in love with NZ already!

Next stop was Lake Taupo which is only 2 hours away. I wanted to take the route past Tongariro National Park though which was 3 hours. I had wanted to do the Tongariro Crossing which is a days hike, but in October it’s still snowy and you need full on mountain gear! So instead we drove past, hoping for a glimpse of Mount Doom (Lord of the Rings reference). We drove down a lane to find it covered in snow and cloud but I was still excited to find it. Once in Taupo we checked in with an extremely friendly reception. We stayed at a Heritage, Reef Resort which had a lake view from the balcony. Fun fact: Lake Taupo is the size of Singapore so we just walked a couple of miles round the edge and then went back to the hotel for a swim in the heated pool. There was also a thermal spa pool which was lovely. We booked dinner at the Vine on our landlady’s recommendation as she said it had a good atmosphere. We were greeted with a handshake from our waitress Barbara who started us off with a glass of honeymoon bubbles whilst we browsed the wine wall for our dinner choice. Bobbi had lamb and I went for chicken on beetroot and goat cheese risotto which was delicious. Then sat by the fireplace with a Toblerone cocktail for dessert before walking home.

The next day we parked in town and walked up to Huka Falls along the river. There were natural thermal pools at the side of the river so I wished we’d taken our swim stuff as it was a lovely day. The walk to the falls was 90 minutes and they’re worth the walk. They look better from the viewpoint round the back which a lot of people missed. Then we walked on to Craters of the Moon (in hindsight we should have driven there later as it would have been on our way) which is an hours loop walk round a lot of craters with geothermal activity. Lots of eggy-smelling steam! They had a new vent which was recently opened which had an even bigger cloud of eggy steam, which was delightful when blown in our faces. It was about a 2 hour walk which I completed with no moaning whatsoever. I’m not sure how to convey sarcasm when writing, so if you didn’t get it- that was very sarcastic. We were in a bit of a rush as we needed to drive to Rotorua in time to be picked up for our Maori experience.

There wasn’t any viewpoints on the drive so we made it in good time to check into our motel. Apparently it had a spa pool so we looked around the room for it. There was a very large window in the bathroom which opened out into a courtyard which was about 3 foot square with two taps in it. Turns out the spa pool was ‘fill your own’ and I started to fill it with hot eggy water. Unfortunately (or not maybe) we didn’t have time to fill and cool it.

The Tamaki Maori experience comes with a hotel pickup so we boarded a minibus for a 5 min ride to the Gathering Place. They show a short video about the history of the Maori people and there was about 150 people there. You’re then divided into coaches, and we had an extremely enthusiastic and entertaining driver. He explained that as a coach we would need to choose a chief…. And as no-one volunteered, and we were sat at the front, Bobbi was made chief! Or Chief Robbie we should say as he misheard and being British, we couldn’t possibly have corrected him. Chief Robbie had the responsibility of leading his tribe (coach) round the village activities, but first he had to do the welcoming ceremony. A Maori tribesman would greet him with protruding eyes and tongue and we weren’t to laugh as that would be considered offensive. Bobbi then had to accept the peace offering of a fern leaf and bump noses with the Chief. As part of the experience, you visit different parts of the Maori village, where the residents spend 5 mins explaining a part of the Maori culture. Chief Robbie volunteered me at one to have a go at a traditional form of dance where the ladies swing round a ball on a rope in a rhythmic way. He then kindly filmed me perform a perfect routine. Or filmed me desecrate the Maori culture with my terribly uncoordinated movements… If you see the video I’ll let you decide. Other stalls included some traditional games, weaving and then Bobbi learnt the Haka with the other men in our tribe which was great. They then take you to see the hanghi ovens where our dinner had been cooking. They cook it in pits and they lifted up the cages of food which had been slowly cooking underground. Whilst they took it away to prepare, we were entertained with a variety of singing and dancing which was really impressive. At dinner we sat with a couple of American ladies who were very enthusiastic about being sat with Chief Robbie and his wife! The food was lamb, chicken, Kumara (NZ sweet potato) and veg and it was really good. There was kiwi pavlova for dessert as well. Fun fact: pavlova was invented in New Zealand! The coach ride home was really fun as the driver was able to greet, and do impressions in 61 different languages. We also sang national anthems for us, America, Canada and Malaysia among others. There was also a rendition of the Wheels on the Bus as we drove around one roundabout several times! It was a really great evening and Chief Robbie was reluctant to let go of his title.

The next morning we headed to the Polynesian Spa for opening at 8:30am. There’s 8 different thermal pools, all outside with views onto a nature reserve. It was another sunny day so we enjoyed trying all the pools in the sun, before going for another eggs Benedict. We then drove to the Lord of the Rings tour, and we were worried we would miss it due to roadworks but they fit us on a later tour as they run every 10 minutes. You board a coach which drives you down the farmland into Hobbiton. If you’ve seen the movies, there’s over 40 hobbit holes and it’s all set up as per the Hobbit movies. They’d taken it all down after the LotR films and had to rebuild it for the Hobbit trilogy. A tour guide takes you round and there’s lots of photo opportunities. We geeked out and took hundreds of all the little details. It was definitely made better with the glorious sunshine! You end the tour at the Green Dragon Inn where you get a cider or beer included in your ticket. There were so many details we loved and will definitely be watching all the film’s when we get home so we can say ‘Remember when we were stood right there’. It was one of the reasons we booked NZ and it exceeded our expectations! I just want to go back and stay the night there. After the tour finished, we had a 2 hour drive back to Auckland to drop the car off and then flew down to Queenstown. This was our first Air NZ flight and it was so easy. We did self bag drop, worried slightly that our bags would end up somewhere else, and boarded the plane. There was loads more leg room than Malaysian Air and it was just a 2 hour flight down to Queenstown to start the second leg of our NZ trip!