The flight was good up to Auckland and we got our Nissan Note hire car for the week and headed south to Tauranga which is on the east coast and the beach!
We stopped briefly at Waihi to have a quick look at one of the lovely beaches here on this coast and had a quick walk to stretch our legs.
Our hotel for the night was The Hotel on Devon St and was so nice - we had a great Mexican meal too in town.
The beach is lovely and the surf lively so there were lots of surfers at this time of the morning - the beach stretches the full length of the Bay of Plenty which is huge, around 259 kms of open coastline. The town itself is now the sixth largest in NZ and has a great climate and with its' beautiful big beaches is a real drawer for tourists and locals alike, especially retirees!
I took lots of photos here so there is just a short SLIDE SHOW below for you -
And so south and we stopped in lots of places to take photos. It is about three hours again from Tauranga to Taupo and to get there you pass through lots of lovely countryside - it is dairy country and there are lots and lots of cows!
Just before Rotorua we came across the Okere Falls which were lovely and just off the main road on the right.
So Taupo at last and what a gorgeous lake it is. It is the largest lake in Australasia and nearly surrounded by mountains. It is a crater left by a giant exploded volcano and it world famous for its' trout fishing. We were staying with people of lots of nationalities and they were saying these waters and the adjoining rivers have the largest brown and rainbow trout in the world here, nearly twice the size they are used to catching. It really is a lovely place and during the next week we were to spend a lot of time going through here or spending time in the town walking round or eating at its' restaurants.
TTFN
Take care and love each other.