The Far North

We spent our first few days in NZ working our way up the North Island. We drove up the East Coast through the Bay of Islands and headed all the way up to the far Northern peninsula, Cape Reinga. We then headed down the West Coast, driving through beautiful Ahipara and Opononi. Each curve of the highway brought more picture-perfect scenery. These are a few of our favorite shots from this stretch of NZ.




BAY OF ISLANDS





CAPE REINGA









AHIPARA




OPONONI

Arrival in "N-Zed"

We arrived in Auckland, New Zealand and picked up our new home for the next 3 weeks - the Nomad! We are driving our campervan around both the N and S islands until the end of the month - yee haw!

We spent our first night camping in Mahurangi Regional Park on the West coast, just North of Auckland. We arrived just in time for sunset and enjoyed our first round of cocktails on our new living room/bedroom/dining room/kitchen bed-combo-couch.









Yes, R&C. Yes, Cuban - stocked up at duty free.

Sydney

We spent our last few days in Australia on the East coast visiting Sydney and the beach town of Manly. It is a truly scenic and cosmopolitan city that really reminded us a lot of parts of California.
















They obviously get a lot of tourists who drive on the right side of the road, so you often see this reminder in front of crosswalks.

Montefalco, the sailboat

Indi's family friend, Ian, owns a sailboat that he has named Montefalco, in honor of their winery. We spent Father's Day (celebrated the first Sunday in September) out on the water with him, it was great! Especially that lunch spread, yum! How come we don't have any friends in California with boats????

Montefalco, the winery

Indi's family owns and runs a vineyard, Montefalco, near Porongurup National Park in SW Australia. We spent a weekend down there and even helped out a bit at the winery.

Their wine is all organic, preservative/sulphite free and AMAZING! We definitely got spoiled drinking their wine every night, yum! Mmmm, Sangiovese...

Perth

During our visit to Perth, we stayed with our dear friend Indi in Cottesloe, a suburb of Perth, right on the beach.












We went into the "big city" of Perth (very mellow!) for an afternoon, but also spent a lot of time just chilling out at home. It was nice to be in a house after months on the road in hostels and hotels.