Good Bye New Zealand

Paradise describes this land pretty well.

We first hit land on the South Island in Dunedin. It’s a smallish place with some great buildings including a Cadbury factory. This is a photo of the railway station done in, as I’m sure you’ll all recognize, Flemish Renaissance πŸ™‚

Next day we were in Akaroa which was a tender port. There we visited what is known as the giant’s house. The lady who lives there made these wild sculptures for her garden. It was pretty interesting. Wellington was our next stop. It is the capital of NZ and was our first stop on the north island. We took a cable car up the hill to get a pretty good look at the city and then we walked down to the city through Wellington Botanic Garden and Bolton Street Cemetery.

Our next stop was Tauranga, although we never quite made it there. The port was in Mt. Manganui and that’s pretty much where we stayed except for our trip to Hobbiton which was about an hour away. It was the movie set for the Hobbit and to a lesser extent Lord of the Rings. Here we are at Bag End.

Plantings and gardens were pretty everywhere in the Shire.<<<
ur final day (we were in port 2 days) we walked around Mt. Manganui which was uphill the whole way. There were some great views.<<<<<<<<<
final stop in NZ was Bay of Islands. We went on a tour to Waitangi and saw the Maori meeting house and the war canoe being educated about the Maori.<<<<<<<
his is so long, but we were at a port 6 out of the last 7 days! Now we are off to Sydney and a few more stops in Australia.

On this leg we were as far south and as far east as we go. We now start going west and north until we get home in 2 months.

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