We’ve Begun a New Driving Tour of New Zealand.

Yesterday, we left for our next driving tour of New Zealand. This time to the North Island. We’ve planned our route with a view of maximizing scenery, and optimizing, driving times and distances. We may deviate from this route, as we go, depending on our whims, the weather and the available scenery but this is our basic plan.

We left Melbourne yesterday on the early afternoon Qantas flight and were very pleased with the high level of service that we received both in the business class lounge and in the air. We were looked after very well with Qantas staff going out of their way to help Jill and make us comfortable. We arrived into Wellington in the early evening (local time) and walked a very short distance through the terminal to the Rydges Airport Hotel. The only hassle was finding the location of the lifts to get to the right floor.

Before landing in Wellington, we flew over the northern part of the South Island and saw some of the rugged hills around the Marborough Sounds that we visited last year. It’s quite remarkable that Wellington (on the southern extremity of NZ’s North Island) is actually further south than the northern tip of the South Island.

This morning we were up early and after breakfast, we headed back to the airport terminal to pick up our rental car. It’s a Toyota RAV4 Hybrid, which is very comfortable. The only problem was that the illumination of the instrument panel was so low, I found it hard to see how fast we were travelling. We stopped by the roadside to try and fix it but I couldnt find a way to make it brighter – just one of the issues of getting used to a different vehicle. We eventually solved the problem by calling into a local Toyota dealer and asked for help. They fixed it instantly and we were very grateful for the time that they gave us.

Our drive to Palmerston North, where we are staying for the night, was a short one of only around 130 kilometer. We had arranged to pick up a few things on the way that we had ordered in advance and to buy some things for breakfast. 

The road took us past Wellington Harbour, and then north on the freeway which travels northwardds through a hilly section before reaching flatter country further on. Much of the land through which we passed was farmland where lots of potatoes and corn were growing.

We traveled through a number of towns, but the one that had the most character was a little place called Shannon. It had a number of old buildings, including the impressive Bank of New Zealand building and the historic railway station which was built in 1838.

It was a cool and drizzly sort of day, but at one stage the highway traveled close to the Kapity Coast, and we pulled into one of the beaches to see if there was anything photogenic. The clouds were low and the sea was grey, but the beach did have a bit of interest and we could see Kapiti Island on the horizon.

We had a quick look around Palmerston North after we arrived finding it lsimilar to other large New Zealand towns. It had some very pleasant gardens and is noted for the ugliest building, not only in town, but probably in the whole of New Zealand. This was the original headquarters of TNZ Telstra but is now occupied by the renamed Spark Communications business. It could only have been designed by a government architect.

Tomorrow we head further around the coast to our next stop at Stratford.