Road Trip Through New Zealand – From Auckland to Waitomo

After arriving in Auckland and spending the first day there, we started our New Zealand road trip in the morning on the next day. I hadn’t surfed since we were in Peru, so I was totally eager to pass by a surfer beach on the way from Auckland to Waitomo, our first official stop. The straight route to Waitomo takes around 2.5h. So a few hours of surfing on the way sounded awesome. We decided to pass by Raglan, a small beachside town, for that. And it would have worked out perfectly fine, had we left Auckland earlier and/or if we hadn’t been totally side tracked by the nature beauty just next to the road. Because of the latter we took lots of little stops at random beautiful spots. All amazing and lots of fun. The only catch was the time by which we finally arrived in Raglan. Around 4.30pm. Much later than we planned! So the long surfing session did not take place anymore, unfortunately. Instead, given we already were off the quickest route to Waitomo anyway, we decided to take the slow but pretty route by the coast just south of Raglan. And this is the picture story :)

Raglan, North Island, New Zealand

Also Cat Monkey, our pink little travel mascot, enjoyed the beach view a lot :)

‘Off the beaten track’… south of Raglan, along the coast

We took so many breaks along the way as there were countless breath taking landscapes. We even spent the entire sunset on this route on the coast, taking in the beautiful change of colours and the even more beautiful scenery. In the end we arrived in Waitomo only in the evening. But it was totally worth it and we still had two full days to explore the Waitomo Glowworm caves :)