Cheery And Cheer: Travelogue - New Zealand Part Two

Thursday, March 19, 2015

Travelogue - New Zealand Part Two

We are now in Australia so I had better finish up with the New Zealand adventure. I will say it again; what an adorable country! And FYI, NZ escaped the ravages of Cyclone Pam - we got rain, plenty of it one day, but it moved out to sea fortunately and no real damage was done in NZ.

We pretty much covered the entire North Island - we had no time to do the South Island and we hear there are even more sheep on that one and the rugged mountains you've all seen in Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit.

What I enjoyed most about this country is that the scenery changes constantly. In one area, we went speedily from farms, then snap! we're in a desert where the army does all of its training and it looks like Nevada and then all of a sudden we're back in the forests and mountains and then around the bend it's soft rolling hills covered with sheep. We drove a ton and it never got boring because of the variety. Here's the rest of the trip in pictures.

Napier is a port town that is charmingly built in the Art Deco style and surrounded by crop farms. We ran into a couple more missionaries in that town and attended church there too last Sunday.

We left farms and entered Mountains on our way to the lovely city of Wellington.

Down at the harbor, a boy kept diving in to the water from various heights of the ladder and his dog would cry every time he did.

Area for military training

A few miles down the road the desert changes to this.

In the city of Hamilton, we looked for and met up with a young man serving a mission there who is from back home in NH and we were so thrilled we found him! We bought him and the group he was with a couple dozen donuts from a Dunkin Donuts we found down the street - and how convenient we could offer a bit of New England to him!