North Island, New Zealand. The road trip begins!

A month holiday from Australia, after working for six weeks sounded lovely! :) Haha....I know, it's almost considered slacker style. But do not worry, Holly and I have been traveling and seeing so much while here in New Zealand, that I might have to go back to work to relax a little! ;)
Here is to the first few days in New Zealand, a beautiful place and a lot of diverse scenery.

Downtown Auckland, New Zealand. This is where a quarter of the population resides!

Harua Falls, I believe. We have seen so many falls here, I can't remember all their names. haha! Gorgeous none-the-less!

Caving! and we are not experienced as you can see, because we did not expect the water. One thing we did bring with us though was our cameras and torches! We randomly met up with Michelle, who joined us on the caving adventure! It was cool, literally....water temp = frigid :) This is where we forgot our wetsuits!

Even caves have beauty!

The glowworms!! Here they are :) The string like structure that you see is called saliva beads. This is what the worm uses to catch it's food. The butt part of the worm is what actually glows and it's an amazing site when you are in complete darkness, to then look up and see all the blue dots above you. You'd almost think they were stars. The sight in real life is so much better because I would need a tripod to accurately capture the scene.

This is a better idea of how many there were! It of course depends on the cave you go into, but they were awesome!

Continuing the adventure northward to Bay of Islands! Holly and I hiked to a view point that gave us some excellent 360 degree views and by the time we got to the top the sun came out to shine the the brilliantly blue/green ocean! Gorgeous.

This was a great couple from Pennsylvania  whom we ran into along the beach. We saw this lady out hiking early in the am and her attitude is great, keep on going regardless of the pain. She suffers from RA. I admire her for her perspective.

Tane Mahuta. The largest Kauri tree in New Zealand. It was quite the sight. Massive.

On the road again....oh wait, we are always on the road :) haha. Just a common sight to see us pulled off to the side of the road taking pictures. The colors are so vibrant and the hills just stunning! Usually littered with sheep and if not sheep then cows.  :)

Auckland from the highway as we passed by on our way to the southern part of the North Island.

A random ranch road. A place we slept in our car for the night. Woke up to this heavy fog!

Straight away > Pulling over at a brown sign! This one said the Three Sisters. We stopped and hiked around the beach to the rock formations. This was some vibrant green moss growing on the rocks.

These black shells were so shining, a person could mistake them for black diamonds :)

Oh!! I forgot to mention....this was also a black sand beach! Gorgeous :)

Here the Three Sisters be. 

I loved the golden grass against the black sand. So pretty!

A view of a valley from the road.

And in NZ, it's no big thing if there's a cow in the road. Drivers beware :)

What's not to love?!

Take care mates and there will be more blog posts to come....this is just the beginning :)