North of Auckland - New Zealand

Ok, ok, enough avoiding this necessity. I did travel all the way to New Zealand and Australia and have tons of images to show for it so it's about time you see them :) We landed in Auckland where my family met us at the airport. My grandfather is from New Zealand and moved to America when he was 20. The first several days were filled with visiting family that I had never met. It felt like I was discovering some long lost family. Everyone there are cousins to my granddad or mum. We drove all over visiting different family members and exploring the country. The image below was north of Whagerei in the Bay of Islands.



We stayed with Auntie Gill and Peter in Whangerei. Gill is short for Gillian and she is my granddad's cousin. My mom's cousin Joye picked us up at the airport. So, one thing I learned from this trip was where my name came from! Who knew!



This crazy girl is my best travel buddy! Somehow the horses loved her and walked away from me :( Good travel buddy, bad left-side of the road driver...



This is a shot of a road worker immediately before he gave us the "crazy foreigner" look. Only because once we were allowed to go Kristan went RIGHT around the cone and swerved to the left side when I yelled at her... I think the guy probably heard me. We made him laugh.



A random shot from a random town, and I like it :)



This is the most beautiful country ever. So much untouched land. I almost don't want to post and talk about it with people cause the more people that know about it the more people will go there and then someday it will be ugly like all the big American cities.



A lone tree.