Travel Guide and Photos on our journey by road and ferry from North Island's Taupo to Motueka in South Island New Zealand.

Having enjoyed our holiday in New Zealand North Island we then headed south on 370km drive from Taupo to Wellington where we stayed overnight.

We then took an early morning Interisland Ferry across the Cook Straits to Picton and then on by road to Motueka - which was our next stopping place on our New Zealand holiday.

We used the SH1 for this long drive - the road goes down right through the middle of New Zealand's North Island - mostly it's just forests and miles of undulating farm land to look at and nowhere of any particular note to stop.
One particularly bleak part of the drive down was when we climbed for ages through the forests of the Tongariro National Park to get onto the levels of the Desert Road - this area was very barren and with the low cloud and drizzle extremely horrible to drive. In a way it was quite a relief to reach the coastline at Paekakanki for a change of scenery and then after that the area around Paremata was quite interesting.

The motel we had booked was located right on the north edge of Wellington and by the time we got there and settled in the time was getting quite late for doing anything much - and the light was going fast due to low cloud and drizzle.

We therefore just took a drive out for a look around the coastline from Owhiro Bay to Oriental Bay and did not go into Wellington itself. One particular other thing to note about Wellington is that the city and area is often extremely windy - as in extremely - apparently this is quite normal.

The ferry terminal at Wellington is extremely accessible and clearly signposted - all you do is line up in several rows and get your ticket checked off. Although we thought things were pretty quiet whilst heading down to and then in and around Wellington (from the little we saw of the city) the ferry was still perhaps three quarters full - probably pre-booking is a very good idea. There are lots of comfortable seats on the ferry plus you can get around for sightseeing on the decks from nearly all round the ship. There are of course restaurants and cafe facilities on board too.

Our Interisland Ferry left quite early in the morning for it's 103km 3 hour trip across the Cook Straits - this was a really interesting and scenic journey as the boat passed Owhiro Bay. However the South Island side of the Cook Straits was really excellent for it's views - the ferry threaded it's way through a narrow channel with Arapawa Island to the north and the mainland to the south.

The views and scenery became even better as we joined and went on through Queen Charlotte Sound passing places such as the wonderfully named Curious Cove before ending up at Picton's small Harbour. Unloading was very fast and straightforward - and the roads out of Picton were clearly marked too.

Rather than use the main road out of Picton we decided to go via the 21km Queen Charlotte Drive - this was a really scenic route although it should be noted the road is very bendy and has quite a few hills. The road drops down to pass through several beach areas notably at Ngakuta Bay and Momorangi Bay.
We joined the SH6 at Havelock - again this was really scenic especially where the road bends at Pelorus Bridge. After that the scenery became mostly forest until we reached the coast just after Atawhai.
The road from there became increasingly busy and at times we were just crawling along most of the time - especially whilst going through Brooklands, Nelson and in fact as far as Saxton. However things got much better once we turned off onto the SH60 at Richmond and then it was just a really pleasant drive on into Motueka.

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