Driving Around The North Island
Day 4 started out much the same as the previous 3 days – with rain. We left the Bay of Plenty area around Tauranga and made our way south towards Lake Taupo. We had heard great things about the lake, and were hoping the clouds would blow away by the time we made it there. Unfortunately they did not.
In New Zealand, they do a great job of having roadside attractions/points of interest. We stopped at this waterfall area and managed to walk around a little bit in the rain and got a few pictures
This is Lake Taupo on a rainy day in February
An inquisitive seagull at Lake Taupo
After Lake Taupo we made the drive to Napier, which was a very pleasant, scenic drive with the weather getting better and better as we made our way south. In Napier we did the Bluff Hill walk for some excellent views of the bay.
We did the quick Bluff Hill walk in Napier. It was a short little walk up a hill that offered a great view of the bays around the city
Part of the Bluff Hill walk was up these stairs. We thought they looked kind of neat
Sunny on the Bluff Hill walk
Selfie time!
Travel Bella enjoying the view of the Bluff Hill walk
This is the Napier Port & Bay around the city. The top of Bluff Hill offered great views, and it managed not to rain on us while we were out!
After a quick picnic for lunch, we hopped back in the rental car and continued on way south towards Carterton, which is where our next AirBnb was.
A few times while driving around the North Island, our GPS took us on some interesting detours. No shoulders, no markings, driving a right hand vehicle on the left side of the road. No problem.
We left Tauranga around 9:15am and we arrived at our Carterton AirBnB at 7pm. It was a full day of driving around the North Island. We did manage to get some good weather along the way, and as we pulled into Carterton, we were greeted with the first real rays of summer.
It was a long day of driving and we were both pretty tired, but we ventured into Masterton a few KMs away and had a lovely dinner at The Lone Star restaurant.
We wanted to make sure we had a good meal and a good sleep because we were planning on getting up early for Day 5 and catching the sunrise on the east coast.
Stay tuned for those pictures!
You can see the rest of our trip here:
