Spoiler alert: we made it safely home! And the back-to-reality hit almost immediately…..after seven loads of washing, 331 emails, and delivering teenagers to parties and appointments for the rest of the week, our holiday seems much longer ago than it really was!

We took advantage of the late checkout and enjoyed another free breakfast delivered to our rooms. By the time we had packed and loaded the bus at 10am, we felt we had seen the city of Auckland and enjoyed it. Zac had noticed Mt Eden out a window at the Skytower, so after some research we decided to head there as we left the CBD.

The main mountain in Auckland is Mount Wellington (confusing!), but it was nowhere near as impressive as Mt Victoria (which we visited the summit of in…..Wellington), and did not even appear to have a lookout. So instead we headed to Mt Eden, which was actually a crater of a volcano. It was a decent post-breakfast hike up a hill to a lookout over the city, in the middle of a suburb that reminded me of Sydney’s north shore (and is now on our list to stay at next time we travel there).

After taking in our last views of the landscape, we stopped at a park for morning tea (well, attempting to finish the last of our fruit and grocery items!), soccer and frisbee. We then returned our bus and were dropped off to the airport for our flight home. We’ve travelled 2,006km and enjoyed such a variety of experiences, good health (apart from Oli’s ear infection), and mostly accommodating weather – many wonderful memories have been made!

Auckland airport does not have a lot of choice when it comes to food, so another round of Maccas was consumed, a few last souvenirs purchased and then we were homeward bound. The flight was a great one, which did a lot to allay the fears of the anxious flyers, and it was interesting to review the flight path and see so many places we had visited.

Before term 3 and our regular routines resume, I must record everyone’s favourite things….and start planning the next Jones adventure! 😀

I thought we were having a sleep-in today, but everyone else voted to get our (free) breakfast delivered at 8.20am, so we have kept consistent start times each day. The OB Joneses are in two 2-bedroom units next door to each other, so I shared a room and sat down to breakfast with Abi, Sam and Belle.

Once everyone was ready our first destination was the Skytower. We did this to “tick a box” and didn’t really have high expectations of this experience, but were pleasantly surprised and really enjoyed it. Even better, every child went free with a paying adult simply because we visited in July! The brave (ie. Ross) offspring loved it, while the others (ie. Nik) offspring enjoyed it, stayed away from the edge, and did not utter a complaint when it was time to leave (I’m looking at you Tim, Abi and Zac…..actually I am standing with you 😉). We were able to watch people bungy past the window from the level 51 viewing platform, and stopped at the cafe on level 50 for cappuccinos and ice cream cones for the kids. The kids told me that the Skytower is built to withstand an earthquake of magnitude 8 – I asked them to keep their stats to themselves until we were back on solid ground…..

Once back safely on the street level, we walked down to Queen’s Wharf and the Britomart area which had been mentioned many times in my research. SO much of the city and that area is under construction and subject to roadworks, we found it a bit underwhelming. We returned to Albert St in search of lunch, and Beck came across a food court in an historic building called Queen’s Rise. A cafe there called Lowbrow served inexpensive kids’ meals, delicious burgers, and spicy ribs (Ross, Luke, Jarrod and Tim shared a bucket of them). We congratulated Beck for finding a little gem in the obscure location, and then bought a few souvenirs and walked back up to our apartments for a rest.

Luke and Jarrod kept exploring and came across Princes Wharf which is MUCH better than Queen’s Wharf! They booked us in for a pre-dinner game of putt putt golf at Holey Moley right on the waterfront, and then we walked across to Wynyard Quarter, past the headquarters of Team NZ sailing and many luxurious cruisers and boats. We wandered past a theatre and restaurant and residential precinct, as we walked the loop back round to Princes Wharf, to O’Hagans Irish Pub where Luke and Jarrod had booked us in for dinner at 6.30pm. Those two are welcome to go exploring and make executive decisions henceforth – it was a beautiful dinner, great atmosphere, and a lovely end to a great day and excellent holiday!

Everyone is probably going home for a rest though – we have been constantly on the move, travelling and exploring. I think this is the earliest night we have turned in since the first night! Although with Sky Sports on TV here, Abi and I (and probably Aunty Beck, defence-queen-of-the -bib-wearers) are watching Australia in the netball World Cup 😉

Our last morning at the Farmstay started with poached eggs for breakfast, straight from the farm! We packed up and were on the bus by 9.30am, and headed off to Auckland in pouring rain. We have been very thankful for the weather, as it hasn’t really prevented us from doing anything. The times the rain has been heaviest has been while we have been travelling between locations (although not so great for Luke driving…).

We arrived in the city by midday, and took a wrong turn to end up taking the scenic route over the “Harbour Bridge” before we found our accommodation.

We went straight there to drop off our bags even though official check-in time wasn’t until 3pm. Only one of our three rooms was ready, and we found it to be much smaller than we expected, so Beck put her assertive voice back on, spoke to management and managed to get all three rooms upgraded for another $25!! 🎉 The size difference means we can open our suitcases on the floor of the bedrooms, can sit at the dining table to eat, and can congregate to watch the World Cup final tonight 👍

While they were preparing our new rooms, we went to find some lunch and explore the city. We stopped at Wendy’s for lunch because the cousins had never tried it (mixed reactions, we probably won’t hurry back there…), and then walked up to Albert Park. On the way back to the hotel we discovered a Dunkin Donuts for afternoon tea and a souvenir shop (which turned out to be even more expensive than some of the tourist attraction gift shops we’ve explored!).

We also discovered on the opposite corner from our accommodation (called Barclay Suites) a pub whose claim to fame was that it is NZ’s oldest microbrewery, The Shakespeare Brew Pub. The boys went to try the beers there while we showered the kids and put some washing on, and discovered kids eat free on a Sunday night, so we all piled in there for dinner! And now it is time for World Cup cricket on Sky Sports and the card game Kaboo before bed and our last full day in NZ.

Ross, Luke and the OB Joneses started the day feeding the animals on the farm. It took them close to an hour! They obviously impressed our host because she later sent me a message to tell us to reduce the balance we owed her by $120 – she though the family was lovely and NZ was expensive enough! Therein lies our bargain of the day!

We headed straight for the Waitomo Caves area to the Black Water Rafting Company. I had found some great deals (for example, one teenager caving for free with a paying adult etc.) last night. Our concern was whether Sam and Cooper would be old enough and heavy enough (the minimum weight requirement is 45kg, which neither of them make, and Tim only just does!). One of the staff assessed both boys and decided an immediate no for Sam because he was “just too small”, wouldn’t fit a wetsuit and was at risk of hypothermia. The utter devastation on his face was immediate, and he held it together just long enough to return to the bus where he could cry in his seat. Cooper was borderline, so returned to the bus to sympathise with Sam.

Ross, Luke, Jarrod, Tim and Zac ended up signing up for the three hour rafting/tubing tour of the caves, and Beck and I took the others for a 45 minute glow worm caves tour (which is probably my limit underground in dark claustrophobic spaces anyway!). Luckily Beck and Abi were there to hold us all together: Jess and I with our anxieties about being underground at all, a smiling but still unwell Ollie, Belle, and two very sad and sulky boys in Coops and Sam who would rather have been tubing with the big boys!

We were able to take a boat ride and see many glowworms, and then enjoy a leisurely lunch at the cafe upstairs while we waited for the boys to return. Before heading back to our accommodation, Luke took us on yet another walk 🎉…..a half hour loop track to a natural tunnel and waterfall which their guide recommended, near Ruahaki Cave. If done at night, you can see glowworms, but we though we would try it during the day first. It was beautiful scenery, but I concussed myself on a stalagtite as I was busy focusing on my footing, and now have an egg on my head 😩

We returned to our cabins for an afternoon siesta, and met up for dinner at the HuHu cafe (unable to house us last night).

There are now cousins playing together in one cabin (supervised by Abi who is trying to finish reading Othello before school returns), while adults play cards in the other cabin (Kaboo, a game that Ross, Jarrod and Tim managed to practice a lot in Europe). Tomorrow we travel to our final destination, Auckland.

We survived the night! 😉 The top 10 things to do in Whanganui as per TripAdvisor and the Guest Info book in our room include local markets, a paddle steamer ride (out of action for maintenance), national park walks (Aunty Beck says no…), and a Bridge to Nowhere (quite literally) which is in the National Park and accessible by kayak! There is also a historic church called Putiki covered in intricate Maori carvings – which we drove to but did not enter as it looked like private land – and NZ’s only underground elevator which takes you up to a lookout and tower to climb.

We couldn’t find the elevator entrance, so drove up to Durie Hill and climbed the 176 steps to the Tower lookout and 176 stairs back down to the bus. There we discovered the elevator ride was $2 each way to get down to the city ground level, so after enjoying the views (and catching my breath!), we returned to the bus to head on to Waitomo.

We stopped in a small town for lunch but found every cafe and bakery full of people. So ROSS suggested a quick stop at McDonalds (capitalised to show how important that was coming from he-who-hates-Maccas-and-never-suggests-eating-there). The poor thing was then rewarded with the knowledge that it goes down in history as our worst McDonalds experience EVER. Service was slow, the store understaffed, and we waited 40 minutes for our meals and then had to show our receipt three different times to show them what part of the order they had got wrong!!!!! Beck had to put on her cranky face and speak assertively (which the rest of us enjoyed watching).

Beck’s face didn’t change a great deal when we arrived at our accommodation at Waitomo – a farm stay that Ross had booked in “rustic” cabins…….not quite The Castle of Wellington!! The owner was lovely and has stocked the fridge and pantry very well for us, providing a continental breakfast as part of the deal. A restaurant was recommended to us for dinner but couldn’t fit the 13 of us in, so we went with the second recommendation of the Thirsty Weta Bar in Otoharanga, which was a great choice. Our waiter enjoyed teasing us about Australia losing in the cricket World Cup, and even gave me a free cappuccino as we left! (I had ordered one because I have a headache from no coffee all day, but we were ready to leave before it was ready so Ross just got him to take it off the bill, which he did and then made me a small takeaway one anyway – I have found someone new to enable me!)

Our kids played Scattergories with Ross and Luke for hours after we returned to our cabins. I hope they are up in time to help the owner feed her animals as promised in the morning!

Ten minutes before State of Origin started last night, the boys realised they weren’t quite ready and the streaming was very laggy, so they had to race around to ensure we could watch the game! The excitement finished after midnight, so everyone did well to be up and packed up and checked out of The Castle* by 10am.

We had intended to leave earlier, but poor little Ollie has developed high temps and an ear infection, so Beck needs to take him to a doctor for medicine to nip this in the bud before we get back on the plane. She found a local medical centre that only opened for business last week that could see him this morning, so that was our first stop.

From there we headed back into Wellington CBD to ride the cable car. We couldn’t find parking, so headed up the hill to a park next to one of the cable car stops (of which there are only three).

We then caught the cable car back down to the city, explored a little and came across a food court called Press Gallery. We bought pizzas to share there, from a hole in the wall called Tommy Millions. Luke carried them back to the cable car and up to our stop where we ate them in the bus! The boys then played soccer and frisbee in the park while the girls sat in the bus and people watched – the nearby university made this fun as people came to and left from lectures.

We then set off on the long drive to Whanganui.

This is our second biggest driving day as our plan now is just to get up the coast to the glow worm caves and then Auckland. I am responsible for tonight’s accommodation: the Whanganui River Top 10 holiday park……where I had booked “deluxe villas”, and we found them directly opposite the cheapest cabins in the park which attract a different kind of clientele 😬

The park manager recommended a local restaurant called Caroline’s Boatshed for dinner, which was lovely and we enjoyed really good meals. The poor waiter dropped Tim’s beer all over Tim as he brought it to the table and was very apologetic. And suddenly the washing bag I managed to empty at Wellington is full again! 😩

Jarrod, Tim and Zac are in a separate cabin tonight, so Luke and Ross went to play cards with them for a while while the rest of us stayed in our cabins for the night!

* That is its official name on Airbnb, and this photo shows why…..

Today marks the halfway point of our holiday, which was not well received when I shared that with the kids. Everyone looked depressed and Oliver looked sadly at Abi and said “why would she even tell us that?” 😂

We designated today a sleep-in day and decided to leave at around 10am to head into the city to explore. However, with eight OB Joneses sharing a bathroom and six needing to shower in the morning, we didn’t get out the door until 10.15am. (I’m allocating everyone a 10 minute time slot from tomorrow, which if they snooze, they lose!!!!). With showers predicted for the afternoon, we headed straight for the lookout at the top of Mt Victoria. Much fun ensued as we played with panorama pictures, and we then drove back down to Wellington’s waterfront.

Luke managed to find a two hour paid parking spot that fit the bus, so we left it there and walked up to the Cuban quarter. This was disappointing as it was not dissimilar to Pitt St Mall, and we somehow missed a craft brewery and chocolate factory! There were several lunch choices though, so Ross, Luke, Jarrod and Tim had kebabs while the rest of us had Subway.

We then met up again and walked down to the national museum, called Te Papa, which was highly recommended by our Airbnb hosts, our Lone Star waitress and TripAdvisor! It was very good, but our favourite exhibit there was a Gallipoli exhibit, with larger-than-life models made by the Weta Studios (which are based in Wellington and responsible for props and characters in LOTR and The Hobbit movies).

My intention during my research phase was to do the hop-on-hop-off bus around the city, as that worked well for us in the USA and gave us a lot of information about each city as we landed there. However, there was no family or group price, just a cost of $49 per adult and $30 per child, so we voted to give that an absolute miss and explore ourselves! I did use it’s route as a guide of what to see in the city though.

Another stop on the hop-on-hop-off bus journey was the Beehive building which houses Parliament, but surprisingly, no one but me was interested in seeing it! Sadly we could not find parking nearby, but Luke did drive around it so I could have a good look, which allowed us to also see the Reserve Bank 🏦 (🎉) and the historic St Paul’s Cathedral Church.

From there we headed home, just as the rain set in, so Ross and Luke could have a power nap before State of Origin tonight (which doesn’t start here until 10pm and we are planning to live stream on a child’s computer – the boys bought a HDMI cable yesterday to hopefully stream it through the large tv). The kids are now watching a movie on Netflix, while Abi does some Maths homework (finally!…rather than just talking about doing it), and Jarrod and Tim are playing with Ollie (the quality cousin time being my favourite part of family holidays!), while sharing a pre-dinner cheese platter with us. We are ready for Origin!

Today’s journey began just after 9am as we left Napier and headed towards Hastings. It is only a 22 minute drive from Napier, and a twin city to it, with both based around wineries and agriculture. It is without the Art Deco flair though, so after a quick scenic tour of the town centre, we travelled on.

Today was always planned to be our biggest driving day, as our goal is to just get to Wellington. The result is a four hour bus ride 😳, stopping to stretch our legs at a little park (ie. boys and Belle play frisbee*) along the way and again for lunch at Palmerston North. This town appears to be a regional centre, but we couldn’t find much to look at (apart from a NZ rugby museum), so grabbed some KFC for lunch and continued on.

(Views from our bus window on our long drive)

We met our Airbnb hosts at their home in Lower Hutt, Wellington. She reminded us a lot of a school mum, Janine Vos, and they were both absolutely lovely, and left straight after greeting us and giving us a quick tour. The house is called The Castle, spread over five levels (and our most expensive accommodation on the trip 😉). It is beautiful with excellent views, such as this from my bedroom window.

We spent the afternoon exploring and enjoying the house, and then headed to Petone for dinner on our hosts’ recommendation. The restaurant they suggested was family friendly was only open for dinner on weekends (Seashore Cabaret), so we explored Jackson St which was full of restaurants, but due to not booking in advance and being a party of 13, the only place that could house and feed us was Lone Star again. Our waitress was so lovely and left us a nice little note on our bill (which she called a “summary”), so we left her a tip and returned to The Castle for the evening. We explore Wellington CBD tomorrow.

* Ross found these little rubber discs in a pack of 5 online somewhere, and thought our ball-sports-crazy children (being Tim, Cooper and Sam mainly) would appreciate having them on the trip. Genius move – they have been a welcome distraction in the absence of actual balls, easy to carry, and fun! And we’ve only lost one so far…..(it’s in a roof gutter at Te Puia, Rotorua).

We were packed up in the bus by 9.20am and on our way out of Rotorua. Our first stop was a controversial one: Kerosene Creek. Luke had found this online as a beautiful spot to swim in a warm geothermal pool, and Beck had read less than flattering reviews, such as thieves in the area who rob vehicles, bacteria in the water and broken glass on the bottom of the pool 😩

About 40 minutes south of Rotorua we found the turn off and parked next to the walking track. We immediately decided to go in two groups so one group could mind the bus (well, protect it from the junkies parked next to us 😬). It was a beautiful spot, but the number of Maoris already bathing there made it a bit awkward to enjoy, and definitely turned us off actually experiencing it ourselves!

We drove on towards Lake Taupo, stopping just before there at Haku Falls, where 220,000 litres of water per second barrels over an 11m high waterfall. And it was only a 3 minute walk to access the lookout!

At Taupo we grabbed some lunch from Bakers Delight to eat in the bus looking out over the lake, and travelled on down the heritage trail to Napier. Napier is in the wine-producing region of Hawke’s Bay, and was rebuilt in Art Deco style after a 1931 earthquake. We spent some time walking the streets to admire the Art Deco buildings (we were too tight to pay for any paid tours) and returned to our motel apartments so the kids could enjoy the (free!) games room.

Abi sat down to do some schoolwork she brought with her (but still managed to stay abreast of anything happening on social media) and we settled in for the evening. Ross and Luke went grocery shopping again, and we had Dominos pizzas followed by a spa for Belle and the boys before bed.

Our first destination in Rotorua this morning was Te Puia, a Maori culture and geothermal centre. This is the site of the famous Pohutu geyser and several mud pools. We joined an 11am free guided tour, run by a Maori woman called Aunty Carol, who was a fantastic guide, and we saw the geyser erupt as well as toured the Arts and Cultural centre and several other features of the centre.

We even saw a forest gecko and a green gecko, and two kiwi birds in a nocturnal habitat. Most surprising was the fact that the sulphur smell was not overpowering, and once we stepped away from the geothermal pools, the smell dissipated quickly.

We were there for a few hours, so rather than going home for lunch, we grabbed two loaves of bread and some hot chips at a little takeaway near Kuirau Park, a geothermal park near the city centre. While this park is lovely (and free!), we were pleased we had spent the money to go to Te Puia for the information we gained from Aunty Carol.

On another note, it takes $20.30 to feed 13 people hot chip sandwiches! 😳

From there we went straight to Skyline Rotorua, as the boys were desperate to luge ride! We arrived after 2.30pm and were concerned they would not be able to fit in their three rides before closing time, but the line was only long for the first ride. I say they, because Beck, Jess and I went for hot chocolate in the cafe while everyone else luged.

As the sun set, we took a gondola back down the hill and went to Eat Street for dinner, as it came highly recommended. Around the corner we had dinner at Lone Star – Ross and Luke were still craving steak, but couldn’t bring themselves to pay the price! so settled for bbq ribs instead. This was the restaurant of choice as they had a tv and offered to play the Sharks v Broncos game for the boys.

Home for a game of Five Crowns (and washing for me!). We move south tomorrow…