This was a long drive; the kiwis must drive much faster than I do (yeah I know, hard to imagine!) because they said 5-6 hours, but we left at 9:30 and arrived at 5:30--on a Friday, so extra good timing for traffic ;-)
We had really nice scenery most of the way.
There are no real freeways through the countryside so we occasionally stopped in the widely scattered small towns for ice cream or to eat our cheese sandwiches. At one road side park, we found this rather interesting large sculpture of a "gum boot" made from corrugated metal, which seems to be popular sculpting material here!
We drove alongside Lake Taupo which was very long and very pretty but, alas, I have no good pictures. Wellington is a hilly city like San Francisco except that the streets are really narrow. Houses are perched on hillsides, cars park on the 2-lane streets which makes it especially exciting to come around a curve and encounter a city bus coming toward you. Remember, always yield to uphill traffic. We did finally make it to Art and Josemi's house which also hangs at the top of a hill providing a beautiful view of Island Bay below.
We took Art and Josemi out to dinner at one of their favorite restaurants for Moroccan food--it was delicious. Drove up to Mt. Victoria after dinner and I have mentally kicked myself for not having my camera because the panorama were 360 degrees of spectacular. Home for ice cream and lots of good conversation. Art (friend Marianne's brother) is a professor of Islamic Studies at the university in Wellington, and Josemi works at the Brazilian embassy downtown.
We had really nice scenery most of the way.
There are no real freeways through the countryside so we occasionally stopped in the widely scattered small towns for ice cream or to eat our cheese sandwiches. At one road side park, we found this rather interesting large sculpture of a "gum boot" made from corrugated metal, which seems to be popular sculpting material here!
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