Road Trip: Wellington to Auckland

Brown Sugar Cafe at Otaki

Back in Wellington, we prepared for our road trip with  friends Jim and Margaret.  Our purpose, aside from having a good time together, was to visit a mutual friend, George Marshall, who at 87 now lives in an Auckland retirement home.

The trip was not really about scenery or visits to tourist destinations along the way.  We simply didn't have the time although if we were stopped for some reason, and the light was right, I was not above memorializing the moment.

Sign in cafe washroom ....makes you think.

Afternoon tea break with alpacas and lambs.

It is a long day's drive to Auckland from Wellington, so we chose to break the journey in Ohakune, a ski resort near Mt. Ruapehu, one of three occasionally active volcanoes in the middle of the North Island.  One of Margaret's cousins owns a holiday home here.


Strangely, with all the other attractions that might have provided inspiration for a bit of statuary in Ohakune, the good folk of this town chose to erect a monument to the carrot.  I can now claim to have slept in the carrot capital of NZ.  While there, I looked for fields of carrots, market gardens, even local carrots in the New World grocery store, and could find no proof that Ohakune deserves this recognition, but there is online acknowledgement -- check it out: Ohakune.

So strange...a giant carrot.

After that, we headed up through the King Country towards Hamilton, passing through Otorohanga where there is a kiwi house-- a nocturnal aviary where one can watch these ultra shy birds. 

On the way to Otorohanga in the King Country --- rural and very scenic.