There are pros and cons to your best friends living halfway across the world. The negative is that your best friends live halfway across the world. The positive is that they live in New Zealand and are okay with you visiting them and their cool country for a month. Okay, this might not be the most relatable experience. Nevertheless, we’ve been on New Zealand’s North Island for about 10 days and will be in the country for another 2 and a half weeks. I plan to write about some individual experiences but also wanted to add a trip report about our entire time.

This is our first trip to New Zealand. The longest I’ve ever been on an airplane before this was about 11 hours from LA to Tokyo or Paris. I wasn’t sure how the 13 hours flight would go, especially as it was overnight and I’m not prone to sleeping on planes. Thankfully, both Melissa and I felt like those 13 hours went pretty fast. We flew from LA to Auckland and both slept a decent amount.

This time of year, New Zealand’s summer and America’s winter, the time change between LA and NZ is 21 hours apart. That works in our favor as jetlag was minimal, there’s just a 3 hour (plus a day) difference from what we’re used to on the west coast. It made for a long first day but, these 2 paragraphs to say, the travel wasn’t as bad as we expected given such a long trip. If you want more info on the logistics of the trip then let me know in the comments.

We were through customs quickly and had a few minutes at the airport so we took advantage of their free(!) showers and then got some breakfast before meeting our friends. Before long, we were back in a vehicle moving toward the Coromandel area, which is along the northeast coast of New Zealand’s North Island. In total, we drove about 4 hours that day, up and around the coastline. It was a lot of time in a vehicle after 13 hours in an airplane but the views were spectacular and we were just happy to be with friends.

With the sprawling nature of the trip, I’m going to spare you the step-by-step details and just hit highlights throughout our first 10 days. I’m sure many of you are here for the photos so I’ll oblige. That windy coastline drive was certainly a highlight, although I’m not sure I’d recommend for those that get easily carsick. After settling into our hotel that night, we drove back about 15 minutes to a gorgeous beach and walked around.

The whole day was a little bit of a daze, thanks to the amount of time in vehicles, but the ocean woke me up. Seeing the Pacific about 20 hours after taking off over it in LA can give some perspective. The water attaches us all. We walked around that beach for an hour or so – skipping rocks, looking at shells and taking photos. Eventually, we got some pizza at a nearby restaurant and then conked out after a very long but wonderful day.

Our main motive for going to Coromandel was to see Cathedral Cove. Melissa usually goes along for the ride on trips, happy with whatever’s planned. Her two requests for New Zealand were Hobbiton and the “Narnia Cliffs”, also known as Cathedral Cove. She had a much better recollection of the 2005 Chronicles of Narnia movie than I did but our friends knew what she meant almost immediately.

While we didn’t encounter Aslan on the beach, the place was pure magic. The day we visited was rainy but we embraced the elements and ended up having a great experience. Bad weather meant almost no one else was on the beach. We took a shuttle bus from a park and ride, then hiked down the hill for about half an hour to get there. The hike included several lookouts and was beautiful in its own right.

Eventually, the path spits out onto the sand and a small little cove with cool rock formations. Just to the left of the path is the famous rock cut out that is somewhere between a giant archway and a tunnel. It’s breathtaking. We walked under that archway and found another cove on that side with more rock formations. Both sides were surrounded by tall cliffs. We stayed down there for about an hour but you could make a full day of it if the weather cooperates. Cathedral Cove is one of the prettiest places I’ve ever seen.

After a hike back up the hill, we drove 10 minutes to Hot Water Beach. The sell here is that a portion of the beach is on top of hot springs so people dig down into the sand and hot water comes out, making a de facto hot tub while looking out at the ocean. In our experience, it sounds a little more glamorous than it actually is. That’s not to say it isn’t incredible. Digging into sand to find extremely hot water coming out is something I’ll probably only get to do once. But the whole thing felt more like making a sandcastle in a crowded spot with friends than it did a relaxing soak while watching waves. We all had a good laugh about the 50 or so people huddles together, each trying to make their sand kiddie pool better than anyone else’s.

While it was all a little silly, it was fascinating to see and experience. The stop was made even better by Hot Waves Cafe, where we stopped for lunch and then again for dessert and coffee afterwards.

That wrapped up our first weekend, as we made the four hour drive back to our friends’ house in Turangi. We were so happy to experience everything we did that weekend but were excited to be out of the car for a while.

The work week was fairly uneventful, as both Melissa and I (as well as our friends) aren’t taking much time off until the latter half of the trip. We had plans to go to Lake Taupo and maybe do a few other things but the weather didn’t cooperate for much of the week. In fact, the whole country was hit heavy by rain to the point where we wouldn’t have been able to make it to Coromandel the next weekend due to road closures.

While the weather was a a bummer, we weren’t upset. That’s a benefit of having such a long trip here. It was fun to see how a regular week would go in Ben & Shelby’s (our close friends) life, comparing it to our own. We know them well; talk all of the time and have traveled with them fairly regularly over the last 3 years. But you get to know people better when you see them in their own home. I’m grateful that we’re experiencing that, along with seeing beautiful sights.

The next weekend came along and we traveled to Hawkes Bay to see a good amount of friends that we’d met a few years back at Ben & Shelby’s (post-COVID) wedding ceremony in Hawaii. We stayed in Napier and found the oceanside town lovely, with some charming shops, restaurants and a great spot to walk along the water. A few other highlights included seeing Ben’s band (Mirrored Walls) play a show, visiting a winery, and driving up Te Mata Peak. More than anything, it was good to be in the company of friends.

The weekend extended to Monday here thanks to a national holiday so we visited a few places in Taupo. After browsing through a few shops, we did a walk called Craters of the Moon. This is a loop that takes between 45 minutes to an hour to complete. It circles around geothermal activity, with steam constantly rising from the ground and mud pools bubbling in pits. This is another fascinating experience and something you won’t be able to find very often.

Following that, we stopped by Huka Falls (seen below) and then went to the Wairakei Terraces Thermal Hot Pools. The latter was wonderfully relaxing and a great way to cap off a busy weekend.

There are pros and cons to your best friends living halfway around the world. The negative is that you’re already trying to figure out when the next time you’ll see them is, before your trip is even halfway over. But the positive is that when you’re together, that’s enough. We’ll keep seeing mind blowing things that we’re really excited to see and that I’ll be showing off on this site. But the rainy days when I don’t get out the camera and we play games, go get coffee or watch movies are good with me too.

Stay tuned as we’ll continue writing about our trip over the next few weeks! If you have any questions or thoughts about the trip report then leave them in the comments below! Planning a Disney trip? Check out our Travel Guides to help get you there! Here’s a link to discount tickets at both Disneyland and Walt Disney World. If you enjoy what you’re reading here on Wandering in Disney please subscribe to the blog via email or WordPress and like our social media pages. You can find all of those things on the right side of this page. Thank you very much for reading, we appreciate it!