It’s not called ‘Windy Welly’ for no reason, as we learned as we arrived in New Zealand’s capital of Wellington, our first stop in the North Island. Despite beautiful sunshine, strong winds tore across the ferry as we pulled into the harbour.

After 8 weeks in the South, we were arriving in the North Island to spend time in the capital, located at the bottom tip, and then the volcanic region in the centre of the island. The North Island is by far the most populated area, and contains more of the ‘tourist attractions’, so many people spend most of their time here.

Wellington isn’t the biggest, busiest or most well known city in New Zealand, which actually makes it a very pleasant capital, where culture and vibe outrank hustle and bustle.

Wellington is wonderfully welcoming to travellers, you are allowed to camp overnight anywhere in the city (within reason), but to make things easy we went to a marina in the East of the city where freedom camping is encouraged, with access to toilets and water. The plan had been to then walk into the centre, but first we decided to have some lunch. As Ness was cooking some lovely pumpkin soup, she decided to pour it over her lap and the van. After tending to the burns on her leg we then spent a fun day washing the van and it’s contents. While we were washing the bedding, I popped across the road for a haircut. The barber evidently thought that I was his ‘bruv’ and the barber beside me was regailing customers with the injustice of how the police conducted an armed stop on him the night before as he was carrying a weapon of some sort. This isn’t the sort of thing you want to hear as someone holds a cut-throat razor to the back of your neck. My review on Google reflected that!

After that little diversion we did make it into the city, where over a few days we were able to enjoy the rich culture and beauty of Wellington. The city was built around a harbour which had literally risen out of the sea during an earthquake in around 1850, surrounded by a belt of beautiful rolling green hills.

The centre was split between a really cool, hipster area, a CBD with modern shopping and towering offices, a political centre of more classical architechture, and a wonderfully developed harbour making for a great place to hang out with a drink. We also enjoyed the New Zealand museum, which displayed some fascinating history in an engaging way.

The joyous thing about the place was how laid back it felt for a capital city, such an honest reflection of the relaxed sincerity which characterises Kiwis. It was a lively but chilled place, welcoming and personal rather than the cold harsh anonymity normally associated with a city.

We were sad to leave Wellington, and we remain confused as to why New Zealanders insist on calling Wellington Boots ‘gum boots’, but we were driving North to the Tongariro National Park. We were entering the volcanic area which New Zealand is famous for, a landscape formed by violence and magma, where the earth bubbles and boils.

We arrived in the unimaginatively named ‘National Park Village’, which is little more than houses and a car park. We would stay the night there for our shuttle to and from the famous Tongariro Alpine Crossing hike. This walk is commonly branded ‘New Zealand’s best single day hike, possibly one of the best in the world’. I’m going to give the game away a little by saying that we thought this was simply ridiculous. The paragraphs below will describe the beautiful and interesting walk, but in a nation as naturally gifted as New Zealand, it doesn’t come close to the top.

After reading that it was a long walk, we were on a 6am bus to the start point, setting off as the sun rose over the volcanic cones ahead of us.

We walked over boardwalks through fields made of cooled magma. The steady climb up to the first crater gave opening views of the surreal landscape around us. By the time we reached the plateau underneath the un-pronounceable Mount Ngauruhoe, the sun had risen to reveal a landscape of reds and yellows, and that we were standing in the middle of an ancient volcano. Above us was the ominous cone of Mt Ngauruhoe, made famous as Mount Doom in Lord of the Rings. Consequently there were crowds of people taking photos, imagining themselves in the little footprints of their hairy heroes.

Having sent some photos to hobbit-loving family members, we continued across the plateau and up to the rim of the next crater. Ring fellows were replaced with Instagram starlets as people queued for photos in a scene of plummeting craters and towering volcanoes, including the unassuming Mt Tongariro itself.

A ridge rose up between competing craters, to the highest point on the walk, where we looked down on a series of emerald lakes, glistening under the summer sun. We bounded down the steep slope, the soft volcanic sand absorbing our steps as we passed other walkers who were understandably uncomfortable with the precarious descent.

We headed away from the iconic volcanoes, passing another lake and reaching the Northern rim of the walk. We looked out towards Lake Taupo, to which we would be driving later that day.

The descent was a simple but tedious one, zig zagging down slopes of protected fauna, and between volcanic craters which were visually unremarkable but still highly active and destructive. You may recall from previous blogs that I have been suffering with back pain again, and from early on in this walk it became quite severe. On the descent which was so easy that we would otherwise have jogged it, I was in a lot of pain. By the time we reached the final car park I could barely walk, and was deeply relieved to be able to stop.

We’d finished the walk in about 6 hours, so had a long wait for our bus. Sat there reflecting, the route was nice, but it was unworthy of the hype. The landscape was interesting, and unusual for people used to travelling in Western countries, but it didn’t compare to other volcanic regions of the world, nor to the beauty of other parts of NZ. We felt it would be more honest to describe it as ‘the most unusual and interesting single day hike that you can do in New Zealand with trainers and no navigational ability’. I admit that this doesn’t look as good in a brochure.

Our bus ride back was less than ideal, with us waiting in a gravel car park for an hour longer than we should have, leading to an appropriately British response of a polite email followed by a disparaging review left on Trip Advisor. We eventually jumped back into Kenji and continued North.

Due to a road closure we were forced to take a much longer route, followed by an emergency diversion to the nearest petrol station (about 50km away). We tested the true limits of Kenji’s fuel tank, but fortunately didn’t find ourselves stuck.

Late that night we pulled into our camping area of choice, a reserve located on a quiet bay of Lake Taupo. The same size as Singapore, this is the biggest lake in New Zealand (which has a lot of big lakes!) and gives name to the town of Taupo. Confusingly the name is correctly pronounced ‘toe-paw’, which I could only remember by imagining Saxon (our dog back home) with toes on his paw….a rather weird thing to picture.

We spent a few days enjoying Taupo, a beautiful town which benefitted from its beachside location and marketed itself as an adventure town. I’m sure that if you had money to go on the organised activities then it’d be great, but compared to the South Island we felt it was a bit dry.

We did love relaxing on the beautiful pebble beaches, and in particular we loved the Waikato river. This flowed out from the lake, heading North towards the sea. The first point of note was the spa pool, a small rocky bay to the side of the river, where a geothermally heated stream fed into the river. Set within a public park, and with a small coffee stand nearby, you could just walk down to the pool and relax in the warm water, in hot weather or cold. If you wanted luke warm water than you sat at the edge of the pool near the river, or if you sat right at the top of the stream, or stood under the little waterfalls, then you’d have water hotter than a bath.

It was a 45 minute walk up the river to the Huka Falls. This was a small canyon where the river narrowed and the turquoise water flowed spectacularly through rapids and out of a waterfall, exploding into the bigger river below.

A short drive downstream again were the Aratiatia rapids. These were another set of rapids on the river, but the top of them had been dammed to feed a hydroelectric plant. They would release the pressure at the dam every 2 hours by opening the gates, causing a dry canyon to quickly and spectacularly fill, and then empty as the gates were closed.

Another lovely part of Taupo was meeting two really cool groups of Germans. Indra and  Kris were a similar age to us, and were doing a very similar trip. Gunnar and Elina were a few years older and were in New Zealand for 6 months, using the generous paid parental leave given by the German government, where they were both given a full year off with €2,000 a month parental leave pay….. Putting the UK to shame. They had sold their house and purchased what was very much a home on wheels – a military type vehicle fitted out with a beautiful studio apartment in the back, and all the facilities you could ask for. They’re were travelling with their young son who was having a wonderful first year of life, something we found inspiring.

These guys were really lovely and we enjoyed our evenings with them. The two couples had met in Northland further up NZ, and had been travelling together since then. Having experienced travelling with another couple, we knew how rewarding and enjoyable it could be.

It was in Taupo though that we started to feel a bit underenthused about the North Island. The people here were just a little more ‘European’ in their approach, by which I mean a little less warm… for the first time in New Zealand we had people being unpleasant in the streets and on the roads; the landscape was less breathtaking, and there were practical inconveniences such as charges for using a Visa debit card (which they consider a credit card), ATM charges and a lack of WiFi. All small things, but when many North islanders would talk about how ‘backwards’ the South Island is, we were a little miffed. We still loved it, but started to miss the South Island.

We continued North to Rotorua, a geothermal town in the middle of the North Island. Pronounced with lots of rolling ‘R’s, Rotorua is a big tourist hub, attracting a lot of attention, and we’d planned to spend a few days there. It is known for having a lot of hot springs, bubbling mud pits, and being a great place to see Maori culture.

On the drive up we stopped at some of these springs and pits. They are certainly interesting to see, but the dirty hot pools weren’t inviting, and once you’ve seen a bubbling pool of mud, you’ve seen a bubbling pool if mud. This left the biggest feature of Rotorua – it’s smell! The stench of sulphur was inescapable. Reviews say that you get used to it after a few hours, but you don’t. Some places smell less than others, but it is just terrible.

Unfortunately we’d already had more than enough sulphur for our trip. When we visited the sulphur mines of Ijen in Indonesia (you can read about it here) , our tour guide gave us a small piece of sulphur, a rock the size of the tip of your thumb. We’d put this in a side pocket if a bag and promptly forgotten about it. Ness carried the bag around for a month, wondering why she couldn’t get the smell of sulphur out of her nose. She thought it might be the bag itself so washed the bag with the rock still inside, making it smell even more. Eventually we discovered the source, and have no desire to see or smell sulphur again.

We spent the night on a spit of land sticking out into Lake Rotorua, so the wind took away some of the smell. The next morning we headed to the Maori village of Whaka. Since the letters ‘wh’ in Maori are pronounced as ‘f’, this makes for an interesting name, though the full name is actually a little longer (the red sign below).

Whaka was a ‘living Maori Village’ which was very much orientated around tourists visiting. We were shown around the village, where hot water springs are abundant, providing water for washing, heating and steam for cooking. The superheated pools meant that you could drop vegetables wrapped in cloth into the water and they would cook in seconds, meat would roast in a few minutes.

Behind the village were some geysers, where plumes of water and steam fired tens of metres up from the ground.

The highlight was a ‘cultural show’, where a group performed songs, dances and rituals of the Maori people, including of course a haka. We enjoyed it so much we stayed and watched it again.

We decided not to stay any longer in Rotorua, the stench had gotten the better of us, and so we went to get a head start on our next destination.

We had planned to go to the Waitomo Caves, famous for seeing glow-worms, and had organised a tour for this. We intended to arrive just in time for the tour then go, but we were now arriving in the area over a day early, so tried to find other things to do.

One of the travelling apps we have showed a few sights, some 40 minutes beyond Waitomo. We thought we’d go and check them out.

That was absolutely the right call! Despite being barely on the map, and certainly not well known for tourists, these were some of of the best bits of the North Island for us.

We firstly went to the Marokopa Falls. We’ve seen a lot of waterfalls now, and this has got to be one of the best we’ve seen anywhere. A small path leads through the woods to a platform, where you look out across the valley at the huge falls.

Another small track led from the platform down to the falls, where we could hop across rocks and explore underneath. The scale of it was huge, and for most of our visit there was nobody there. We visited first in the afternoon, and loved it so much that we went back the next morning!

After the falls, we went to a small cave where we cooked dinner (cooked in the car park, not the cave) then saw our first glow-worms in a beautiful cave decorated with stalactite formations.

Then, after waiting until late in the night, we drove a short distance to the Mangapohue Natural Bridge. This is a huge rock arch, some 30m high, with a river flowing through. We weren’t going to see the arch right now in the dark, instead we were to see what Ness describes as possibly the most magical thing she’s ever seen. Walking down the river, as your eyes adjust to the darkness, thousands of glow-worms appear around. The walls of the canyon, above and below you, are covered in them. Upon reaching the arch you then have this beautiful swathe of green lights above. In the still night and with no sound other than the trickle of the river, it is a truly special place.

We spent the night there, so we could return to it the next morning, able to see the beauty of the arch itself.

Having returned to the waterfall and had lunch, it was time for our tour of the caves. We were doing it with Waitomo Adventures, who run a variety of activities, most involving abseils and zip lines. We had decided that we didn’t need to pay the exorbitant costs of those activities, and actually would have happily done the cruisy tourist thing of taking a boat through the caves, except that was even more expensive. Instead our tour was a walk / scramble / swim / float through the caves.

Our guide Brad was excellent, and we were fortunate enough to be the only ones on the tour that afternoon. After getting kitted up in some attractive wetsuits and ‘gum boots’, we walked to a small hole in the ground with a ladder. A short climb down the ladder and we emerged in a labrynth of caves, with a stream running through. We were guided through them, and since Brad realised that we were quite keen he did his best to find the hardest way through for us.

Of course the best part was seeing the glow-worms. We had seen a lot the night before, but it was simply stunning in the caves, thousands of them lining the ceiling everywhere, with their silver whisps glistening as they dangle below, ready to catch insects passing through. We learned that the glow (from their less glamorous afterproduct) is to attract the flies on which they prey, until one day the worm hatches and becomes a fly itself, living for only a day.

The trip was a thoroughly enjoyable one, after which we treated ourselves to a nice meal before getting back into Kenji.

We were to make a long evening drive to Northland, the long finger of land extending above Auckland – a place of beautiful beaches, rich history and a sub-tropical climate. Our trip through the bulk of the North Island had been a fairly brisk tour, for a variety of reasons none of which we regret. It had been good, but we felt ready to move on to the next area.

You can read more about our awesome journey through New Zealand on our New Zealand Page