Road trip!
26 April 2017 | Opua, Bay of Islands
Steve
On Easter Sunday we waved a temporary goodbye to Seaforth and jumped on an Intercity bus to Orewa to pick up our campervan that we’d left at Gulf Harbour. We met some friends at Orewa and got a lift to the van, loaded her up with our clothes and headed south to go to a Jimmy Buffett concert in Wellington. We stopped and stayed with friends in Hamilton and Sanson before arriving in Wellington. As well as the concert, we did the Weta Workshop tour (well worth it!) and scooted around Te Papa to see the Gallipoli exhibition before jumping on the ferry and heading to Blenheim for the night where we stayed with more friends. We then trekked to Christchurch via Murchison and the Lewis Pass – the road from Picton to Christchurch through Kaikoura is still impassable as a result of the Kaikoura earthquakes. We stayed two nights with friends in Christchurch and saw Jimmy Buffett in concert again (fantastic show!) before scooting northward to Tasman (just out of Motueka) for the night. Once again we hopped onto the ferry and drove from Wellington to Turangi. The next day we continued northward to Auckland, spent a night with family and cruised back up to Opua – back to our beloved Seaforth.
In 10 days of road tripping we drove 3107.3 km (not including the bus trip from Opua), saw 14 different sets of friends and family and saw Jimmy Buffett in concert twice. A huge thank you to all those people for their warm hospitality and wonderful friendship, and a heartfelt apology to all those we missed on our whirlwind tour. We love you all and will be back later in the year – no doubt with great tans and raft of stories to tell.