Today we picked up our rental car, and left Auckland, heading south. Malin did an excellent job driving, and only drove on the wrong side of the road once! (but she’s not happy that the car beeps at her every time it thinks she’s a little outside her lane..)

The first stop was the Hunua Ranges Regional Park , where we did a small hike, and looked at a pretty nice waterfall.

After this it was a pretty unexciting lunch. According to Google Maps there was supposed to be a Thai Food Truck somewhere along the route, but once we arrived it was nowhere to be seen, so we had to make due with some old cafe instead, where the chef was still on vacation. Oh well..

We continued south, and landed at the Hamilton Gardens , which was a surprisingly large botanical garden. They had about a million different themed sections with a bunch of flowers and plants, and we looked at all of them!

Now we had a shortish drive left, and we arrived at our lodge/bed & breakfast, which lay high up on a hill and overlooked the river and mountains, and a bunch of cows. It was a pretty epic view, and I felt like I could sit there all day just taking it in.