The North Island - Wellington - Raglan

After my road trip with Anna, it was time to head North. The next day I caught the ferry from Picton to Wellington for the final time, with beautiful weather through the Marlborough Sounds. I was sad to leave! I got to Wellington in the evening and met up with one of my friends there for a couple of beers and some fish & chips and a catch up. The next day, I was travelling further north towards Mt Taranaki and New Plymouth. We cut across inland to get to New Plymouth and I got a good view of the volcano on the bus getting there - I'm glad I got that view because when I got to New Plymouth, I couldn't see a thing due to fog. There were lots of things I fancied doing around New Plymouth, but a lot of them involved walking and looking at views, but the fog was so dense, I couldn't see a thing. I went to the park, but all the walks along the beachfront and to lookouts, would have been pointless unfortunately, so I booked my bus to Taupo a day earlier than planned.

Got to Taupo after a long bus ride that went a ridiculous route to get there. I went to Taupo to do the Tongariro crossing, which I wrote about on another post. But it was nice to be back at the blackcurrent hostel again, that was a friendly place and I got chatting with quite a few people that evening and we had a good time.

The rest of my time there was spent relaxing, enjoying being back in Taupo and recovering from the treck I did. I got to meet up with my friend from milford sound for a couple of beers as well which was cool to catch up.

From there, I caught the bus to Hamilton to get to Raglan. Raglan is a sleepy surfing town on the west coast of the north island. There is no coach company that takes you there, you need to get on the public bus with all your bags (and most people had surfboards as well). It was a comedy journey as the bus was rammed full of people with shopping bags, school kids, backpackers and surfers with bags and surfboards sticking out of every available space. The bus journey was very long and windy and I was pretty glad when it was finally over, but it was worth it. Raglan is so chilled out. The backpackers I stayed at was amazing, there was a hot tub for aching muscles after a long days surfing, free bikes to hire to cycle to the beaches, and hammocks to chill out and relax in, it was an ace place.

On my first morning I was planning to go out into town, when I heard that there were Orca whales around so I grabbed a free bike and cycled over to the beach to look for them. I was there a while but didnt see them, but the waves were quite big and I didn't really know where to look or what exactly I was looking for, having never seen a whale before. So I headed back to the hostel a little dejected, only to be told that the Orca's had come into Raglan Harbour to geed on the stingrays! So I headed out over to the harbour and saw them - it was great! There were about 5 adults plus a baby or two. They were dotted around the harbour and were feeding for quite a while. Then they slowly made their way back out to sea at about the same speed I was walking back to the hostel so I kept up with them which was fab! That afternoon I booked onto a surf lesson - I still suck at it just as much as I did the last two times I tried unfortuantely. The plan was to go out and practice more over the next few days, but the waves got really big and messy and even the good surfers were unable to stand up so there was no hope for me! I took the more relaxing option of a book, sunshine and a hammock - it was fab! I also took a kayak out round Raglan harbour which was lovely. I do like cycling and kayaking - they're so much fun! The water was really peaceful and it was a very gentle paddle across the harbour to the pancake rocks, a similar structure to those on the west coast of the south island. I got to have a really good close up nose at them and could kayak in and around them, it was great.

Whilst I was in Raglan, I was trying to sort out the next leg of my trip, meeting up with my friend Michelle on Waiheke island (an island near Auckland with lots of nice beaches and vinyards). It turned out that she'd seen a poster put up about a sailing trip to great barrier island (a bigger island further out of Auckland than Waiheke) for 3 days, so I left Raglan a couple of days early and headed up to Auckland in time to get to Waiheke for the sailing trip.