We heart driving

Jessie and I are driving maniacs. I doubt that any other tourists are as ridiculous as we are as we continue to drive the length of the Island following the sunshine around the country :)

While we were in the very North of the North Island, we stopped to see 90 mile beach - it's not literally 90 miles - I think it's around 60 ish.. - but anywhoo it's part of the highway system here -so there are cars and buses just whizzing down it. Rental cars are not insured to drive on it, so we parked Queen Charlotte a safe distance from the beach and just walked up to see it :)

We also saw the famous Kauri trees; Kauris are one of the world's largest tree along with California's Sequoias. Kauri can only be found in NZ and nowadays only in a few places on the North Island. We stopped to see the biggest of them all - the "Lord of the Forest" - it was GIGANTIC!! It would take 12 people holding hands to get around the trunk! And they believe it is 2,000 years old. Very sweet as - as the Kiwis would say...

Then we DROVE and drove and drove south to Waitomo. All the hostels were booked when we got there so we had to splurge on a B&B and it was glorious :) The owners were SO sweet!! They live in this great house on a hill that overlooks the valley and you can see the mountains and volcanoes in the distance. They have two little cottages they rent out - so that is where we shacked up last night and it was fantastic! After 11 hours in the car, I crashed as soon as I hit the bed :)