Simon and Becky's travels

To say we have been looking forward to this trip for a long time would be an understatement. We both couldn’t wait to go to Hobbiton and see the Shire. We had decided to book our Hobbiton trip as part of the Middle Earth Trilogy package, which included: Hobbiton, Waitomo and Raikari Caves and Te Pui (cultural experience). We booked these tours so that we were doing one each day for three days. We added up the savings and we would save a large amount by doing them through a package deal rather than individually so were pretty happy.

We left our accommodation in Coromandel early as we had a 2 hour drive to the Matamata area where the Hobbiton set is based. As we approached the area, with its sweeping hills and lush green countryside, we new we were close. You honestly felt like you were in the middle of the Shire before you even made it to the set. We parked up and checked in as a bus would be taking us the final distance into the set. We learnt that Peter Jackson (the director of the LoTR and the Hobbit trilogies) had flown over the area in a Helicopter searching for the perfect sight for Hobbiton and as soon as he saw this sight, he knew that this was it. The land belonged, and still does, to the Alexander family. The land had been used as farm land and as we drove towards the set we enjoyed seeing all of the sheep roaming around on the beautiful hillsides.

The set was built temporarily for the LoTR trilogy, removed after filming finished and then rebuilt permanently for the Hobbit trilogy. It has been accessible to tour since then. We watched a video on the bus as we pulled up to the site and you could tell that everyone on the bus was getting pretty excited.

I won’t go into too much detail about all of the little filming secrets they told us about, or what every single hobbit hole looked like, as I don’t want to ruin it for anyone who will visit in the future. However, I will tell you that there are 43 hobbit holes, 4 more than were built for the LoTR trilogy as Peter Jackson wanted to be able to get more sweeping panoramic shots during the filming of the Hobbit. We got to walk around most of them, which are unfortunately only facades. All of the internal shots were filmed in studios either down in Wellington or elsewhere in the world. Some of the highlights were seeing Bag End, Sam’s house, the Party tree and the Green Dragon pub. I’ll put a selection of photos below for you to see.

The weather was glorious, the air of excitement was all around us and it was a really lovely tour. We ended the tour with a drink in the Green Dragon. We both had tasty cider and couldn’t believe that our 2 hours were over already. The one downside to the tour was that is was VERY busy. When you wanted to get photos back to Hobbiton there were queues of people in the shots and you were constantly getting moved along to keep up with your tour group. As it is designed for Hobbits, the paths are narrow and taking photos was pretty difficult. But, we did have an AMAZING time.

We arrived back at the carpark wanting to go around again, just because 2 hours wasn’t enough time. We ate some sandwiches in Maverick and then moved on towards a town called Cambridge. The wifi situation has been pretty rubbish so far. Never having good enough wifi to upload photos, write blogs or do research, so we went to a local Mcdonalds and had a drink to use their wifi. Their wifi was BAD!! We hardly got anything done. The rest of the day was a work day. Laundry needed doing and food shopping needed buying, but we ended the day by watching the Fellowship of the Ring. I mean, what else would we have watched that night? 🙂

We left our random accommodation in Orere Point in the early morning to head over to Coromandel Peninsula. The two activities we were heading over to do are both quite touristy, but we’ve been looking forward to them both since seeing all the pictures.

We had about a 2 hour drive on some of the windiest rounds I’ve ever driven on before we got to our campsite for the night. We weren’t going to risk not having checked in again so we headed straight to our campsite, checked in and then headed off to Cathedral Cove.

If you’ve ever seen pictures of the Coromandel region, I would guess that you’ve seen pictures of Cathedral Cove. You can only reach the cove by walking (around 40 minutes), kayaking or by boat. We decided we didn’t want to get the passenger ferry as most of the fun of getting somewhere beautiful like this is the effort it takes to get there. There were so breathtaking views along the walk and some even better views once we made it to the cove.

As we walked back up towards the car we stopped at Stingray Bay. It would appear that most people skip over this beautiful cove and head straight to Cathedral Cove, so we had it to ourselves for most of the time we were there.

We got back in Maverick and headed into Hahei to get some food and to have a look at the beach there. We enjoyed a takeaway pizza, some icecreams and another play on a tree swing.

(look how happy I am).

It was about time to head over to Hot Water Beach. Hot Water Beach is a naturally geothermal beach where you can utilise the hot water that comes up from the ground to build your own hot tub. We had heard that it was a good idea to get to the beach about 2 hours before low tide as the thermal water comes up around 2 hours before and after low tide. We hired a spade, got into our swimmers and headed down to the beach. Despite being 2 hours early, the beach was PACKED!! We couldn’t believe it. We spotted another British couple and decided to join forces with them in digging our hole. The boys took the lead and dug right next to this super impressive pool that a local had made. However, our pool wasn’t getting a lot of hot water coming up into it, so it was slightly cooler than lukewarm. Simon decided we needed to move so we moved closer to the middle of the thermal activity where it was actually TOO hot. Simon was jumping around on the sand trying to find a spot. We decided we could create a hot water channel down to the cooler pool and eventually it would be a perfect temperature. It was. We sat in the pool for about an hour and a half enjoying the scenery and chatting to the British couple, then an American couple and then some guys from Switzerland. We were super jealous as some of the other pools had beers and we really started to crave a beer. Right towards the end of our time we both ran into the sea for a cold plunge and then back to our hot pool. The pool was about the temperature of a bath just after you’ve run it. Perfect!! For me, a bath lover, it was a great way to end a lovely day.

We went back to our campsite, where the other British couple were staying too, had a couple of rum and cokes and chatted away. A really lovely evening and day!!!

We got up relatively early the next day and got ready. We were being picked up at 7:30am by the Dune Rider, a 4WD coach that was going to take us up to Cape Reinga and along 90 mile beach with a lot of other interesting stops along the way.

Our first stop was at Mangonui where we were able to pick up a coffee. I desperately needed a coffee as I had taken a motion sickness tablet for the bus and couldn’t stop falling asleep. Unfortunately, I’ve now run out of my trusty British tablets so have had to try some others, which are making me pretty drowsy. Mangonui is a really pretty town right on the coast. We would be returning here later for fish and chips.

We kept traveling North and ended up at an old Gumdiggers park. Kauri trees are some of the largest trees in the world, growing up to 50m tall, with trunk girths of up to 16m and living for over 2000 years. Kauri gum is the fossilised resin or sap of the Kauri tree. At the Gumdiggers park we saw the remains of the work that used to happen here (shelters, tools and the holes where they have excavated the Kauri gum). We also saw a huge and very ancient Kauri tree which was believed to have been blown over in bad weather and then preserved in a swamp.

We got back in the coach and headed up to our lunch stop. We had a pretty basic lunch at a cafe on the way (meat and rice salad) and then headed up to Cape Reinga. At Cape Reinga 2 oceans collide, the Tasman Sea and the Pacific Ocean. It was so cool to see the different currents and waves hitting each other creating all of these beautiful patterns on the surface of the water. At the northernmost tip of the cape there is a pohutukawa tree, believed to be around 800 years old. Cape Reinga is a very sacred place to the Maori people as they believe that the spirits of their deceased leap from this tree into the ocean to return to their ancestral homeland of Hawaiki. As we approached the Cape, our bus driver started to chant in Maori. He told us that he had lost a few family members recently and this place is the most appropriate to say goodbye. Cape Reinga isn’t quite the northern most point of New Zealand, but North Cape (which is) is inaccessible as it’s a scientific reserve, so it’s as far North as you can go. We walked around the lighthouse and went up to a vantage point to get some good views back across the Cape. The whole area had a really magical and sacred feel to it. Beautiful.

We got back in the bus and started our journey back south. Our first stop was to Te Paki Sand Dunes where we were going to spend some time sandboarding. Neither of us had sandboarded before so we were pretty excited to have a good. I couldn’t believe how steep the dune was that we were going to be riding down, but we both had a good and really enjoyed it. Simon even moved up to the higher dune, but I didn’t want to as you would have to go through water at the end and I was already pretty cold. I stuck with my other dune. We only got videos of this, but I will try and put some videos onto facebook soon.

After leaving the Te Paki Sand Dunes we drove onto 90 mile beach. 90 mile beach was named by Captain James Cook (this name keeps cropping up doesn’t it) on his circumnavigation of New Zealand in 1769. He had a pretty useless device for measuring and measured the distance of the beach in nautical miles, coming to the number 90. It has been since measured at 55 miles, so quite far off the original distance, but the name has stuck. We drove along the beach for about an hour, only getting stuck by the tide once. The driver did some clever timing and we got through no problem. The whole area is really just so beautiful and it reminded us of our time on K’Gari in Australia, which is never going to be a bad memory.

We had to drop off some people at a shop that specialised in Kauri products. We were told to go straight to the middle of the store as there is a very impressive staircase carved our of one piece of Kauri wood. This piece being 50 tonnes in since. The staircase was stunning and it felt like an honour to be able to walk up the stairs. The original piece that was discovered was actually 110 tonnes, but that was used to make smaller products.

Our last stop of the day was fish and chips in Mangonui. We both enjoyed the Hoki and chips as here in New Zealand they have so many quotas and laws in place to product their marine life that I didn’t feel bad at all eating it and it was super tasty!! Our whole day had been amazing and completely worth what we had paid for the whole trip. To celebrate such a good day, we drove into town, bought some icecreams from the supermarket and sat in the car over looking Paihia and the Bay of Islands.

The next day we were starting the long drive back down Northlands, passed Auckland and over to Coromandel where we would be spending 24 hours. Unfortunately, we stopped too many times to look at things and explore that we didn’t travel as far as we wanted to during the day. We’ve learnt that most holiday parks, where we’ve been parking the car, need you to check in by 8pm and by 7pm we were hardly past Auckland. We quickly readjusted our plan as we had nothing booked and went and stayed in Orere for a night.

Here are some of the spots we enjoyed on our drive through Northlands:

Paihia beachfront

Kawakawa to look at the railway and the famous toilets

Whangarei falls

A.H Reed Kauri Park

Langs Beach

Off to Coromandel next to enjoy Cathedral Cove and Hot Water Beach. Wooo!!!

On the day we collected Maverick, our spaceship, it was very grey, cold and wet. Anyone who knows me knows I’m not the best when it comes to camping. I get cold in Egypt, so how will I ever manage living out of a car? Anyway, despite my little niggly worries, we were both excited. We have loved the times when we’ve had our own transportation and now we were going to have a car for 6 weeks!!!! YAY!!

The company paid for us to get a taxi to collect Maverick (he will be referred to his name from now on), we had a briefing on how everything worked and then we were free to go. So, what is a spaceship? A spaceship is a type of camper car. So what is a camper car? It is a long car that has been modified in the back so that you have a double mattress, fridge, camping stoves and storage compartments. We went crazy and also rented a power cable so we could charge our electrical items at powered campsites and a summer pack (chairs, table, cooler box and solar shower). Unfortunately they had run out of tables so we got refunded the cost of the table and will be buying our own as soon as possible. All in all, we were pretty impressed with the size of Maverick when we collected him and so far he’s been a very smooth and reliable ride!

As we left Auckland we decided to go up to Mount Eden to get some views back to Auckland. Auckland is a city surrounded by extinct volcanoes and Mount Eden is one of them. However, when we arrived at the carpark, the weather turned even worse for us. The spectacular views we were promised didn’t really happen and we were soaking wet by the time we made it back to the car. My worst camping fears were coming true… everything being damp and gross. We had planned to go to a local beach called Piha for lunch, but decided the weather was too bad so we started our journey up towards Paihia in the North. We would be using Paihia as a base for the next 3 days so that we could explore the Bay of Islands and Cape Regina.

Not long after we left Auckland we saw a Pac n’ Save. I’d heard that these were the Aldi’s of New Zealand so we went shopping and stocked the camper with nearly a weeks worth of food!! Bargain! When putting all of the food back into the camper somehow I dropped the keys down the side of the fridge, an area not easily accessible. Simon had to go and by a screwdriver so we could get the keys back and get on the road again. Whoops! Thank you Simon. You were a hero!!!

We stopped in the next town, which was called Orewa and had some lunch. We whipped out the camping stove, made a cuppa and enjoyed our sandwiches whilst looking out over the beach. Maybe this camping thing won’t be so bad? I think the best of the weather was coming to an end now and we decided to just plow on with our 250km. The maximum speed limit in New Zealand is 100km so it’s not too fast to travel anywhere really, but we made it to our campsite by about 6.30pm. The whole drive was beautiful, at times reminding us of Norway and at other times reminding us of Wales and Scotland. The North Island is the less ‘pretty’ island apparently. Jeez, we will definitely be spoilt by the end.

Once we got to our campsite we had the fun of trying to put up an awning and turning the back area into a bedroom. We managed quite successfully and used the camp kitchen to make some dinner. 4 guys who were working over here from India gave us some left over sausages that they had BBQ’d and invited us to join them for a chat. They were very lovely people and told us that their culture was to share everything. They kept offering lamb steaks, beer and rum. We offered them some coca cola and cookies. I have to admit, at first I was skeptical as it’s not common to do that in British culture, but they genuinely were being nice and we had a lovely chat with them about New Zealand, India and Britain. We headed off to bed as we had quite an early start for our first tour of NZ the next day.

We woke up nice and early to head to the for the wharf for our ferry tour. We were going to be visiting the Bay of Islands and the Hole in the Rock, with the hope that we may see some marine mammals on the way. We had heard that the swells yesterday were up to 1.5m and the guests didn’t have a fun trip, not even making it to see the Hole in the Rock. I took some seasickness tablets and hoped! Before the boat departed we had a little bit of time to walk around Paihia, which is a very pretty little coastal town. I learnt that the name comes from someone saying the town was ‘Fine here’. Maori for fine is Pai, so the town is now Paihia (pronounced Pai here).

Once on the boat we got chatting to a couple of groups of Brits, one who has lived in NZ for 40 years and worked for a while with the NZ Royal Navy and another guy who also served in the Royal Navy. Lets just say there was a lot of Navy chat for a while. We picked up some more people from Russell (more on that place later) and then set off through the islands. The Bay of Islands is a subtropical micro-region made up of 144 islands. The islands are absolutely stunning. Our skipper provided interesting commentary throughout the trip telling us that only 4 of the islands were inhabited, 2 of those are fully privately owned and you can only camp on one of the islands.

We were very lucky because quite early on we saw a pod of Bottlenose dolphins following our boat and jumping out of the water showing off. We saw another pod later on, but they were travelling at a much quicker speed when we were out in open ocean on our way to the Hole in the Rock. Dolphins and other marine mammals are usually spotted about 80% of the time on these trips, but are never guaranteed. It was breathtaking seeing them jump out of the water and playing around.

We kept heading through the beautiful islands and eventually made our way up to the Hole in the Rock. This island is the most pristine in all of the Bay of Islands with no sign of any introduced species. The 60 foot hole at sea level was created over centuries by wind and waves. Unfortunately we were unable to go through the hole in the rock due to the swells on the North side, but luckily we made it up there to see it. The waves were nothing like the day before, but the skipper kept saying it was going to get rough and windy, he kept going on about seaspray. Fortunately i think he was just over exaggerating because I didn’t get sick at all.

On the way back from the Hole in the Rock we stopped for lunch at the largest island in the bay, Urupukapuka at Otehei Bay. Lunch was soup, bread, a wrap and a brownie. Pretty tasty stuff and much needed after our exciting morning. We had a walk around the island after lunch and went up to the top of a hill for a panoramic view. The view was stunning. The water was crystal clear, beautiful sandy beaches and all of these interesting island formations. I was finding it hard to believe we were in New Zealand it looked so tropical.

We made sailed back to Russell and this time we got off there. As part of our tour you get a ferry passenger ferry ticket from Russell to Paihia, so we decided to spend and hour or so there looking around. Russell used to be known as the ‘hell hole’ of the Pacific. It was the first permanent European Settlement in New Zealand and because of its links to whaling, prostitution and a lack of law enforcement. It’s pretty nice now and I don’t think anyone would call it a hell hole anymore.

We walked along the front and then went and visited the oldest church in New Zealand – Christ Church. There was an interesting gravestone which belongs to the chief of the Maori people in Northlands at the time the treaty was signed with Britain. You could see gun shot holes and bullets in the side of the church from a siege. I’m not really sure what the siege was about though.

To end our time in Russell we went to a cafe and had a smoothie and a milkshake before taking the ferry back over to Paihia. We decided we didn’t want to go back to the campsite just yet, so went to see Hurura waterfalls just outside of Paihia. We have seen quite a lot of waterfalls recently and it always amazes me how each one is so different. This one was no different with the falls being pretty powerful initially and then all of a sudden calm in the river below.

We settled in for the night as we had an early start the next day on our second excursion whilst up in Northlands.

I’m going to leave this blog here because the wifi at this McDonalds is so bad and I’m getting a headache from moaning at it so much! I will aim to do the next day as soon as possible.

Our time in Australia had come to an end and it was time to head to New Zealand. We had been getting pretty excited in the last few weeks about New Zealand. Maybe because we would have a car, maybe because we were doing a lot of the same activities in Australia (coastal walks, lighthouses, botanical gardens etc.) or maybe because Australia was sapping money from us. From the blogs I’m sure you can see that we aren’t be extravagant. We aren’t eating out hardly at all. We definitely aren’t doing all the tours or activities we could be doing, so we were ready for a change.

We had booked into a motel near to Avalon airport for the night as we would have to get up at about 3am to drive to the airport, return our rental car and catch our flight. Everything was going as planned until we got to the check in desk. We walked up to the desk and I went to put my backpack on the conveyor belt for checked bags and the lady behind the counter said ‘Don’t bother’. Uh oh! She told us that the flight had been cancelled and that we had been sent an email notification about it. I didn’t have any Australian data anymore and I hadn’t had wifi throughout the night so we didn’t know this. Actually, on later inspection anyway, the email wasn’t sent until about 10 minutes after we went to the check in desk. She told us that there were 6 seats left on a flight from the other Melbourne airport at 8.05am. We had quite a long layover in Sydney before our Auckland flight so thought that would work and they were going to drive us all over to the other airport at 6am.

We received $8 each of free food vouchers and had some coffees and muffins and waited patiently. By 6.30am we were getting a bit panicky so Simon went up to the desk to ask when we would be leaving (it’s about an hour drive). The bus pulled up shortly afterwards. We made it to Tullamarine airport at about 7.25am, had 2 bags to check and had to go through security. Uh oh again! We did a bit of running and made it to the gate with plenty of time as the flight was a little late. A flight has never been cancelled for either of us before so it was a little nerve racking, but Jetstar did sort us out and we did make our connection in Sydney for Auckland. The only thing that annoys me still about this whole experience was the reason they gave for the flight being cancelled. Now… I booked these flights about 8 months ago and even if someone was sick then you would have thought that would have been enough time to have backups in place.

There was a HUGE tailwind on both our flights, the first was meant to take 1h25 and only took 55 minutes and the second was meant to take 3h25 and only took 2h15. We were flying at 1000km/h most of the time. Super fast!

We landed in Auckland and used the sky bus service to take us into the city centre. We booked it online while we were waiting for our baggage and saved a bit of money compared to going to the desk once through security. New Zealand are super strict on what comes into their country and we had to tell them that our hiking boots had been in the Grampions National Park a few days before, but it wasn’t a problem and they let us through. Simon bought 2 bottles of Captain Morgans Spiced Rum in duty free to keep him going during our time in the Campercar. By about 5:30pm we were at our hostel and ready to go get some shopping! I have grown to enjoy looking around foreign supermarkets. Not because the food is different but because I like to look at the prices. New Zealand is pretty similar to Australia for many foods, but meat, fruit, veg, and cheese doesn’t seem to be as expensive, which is great. Also, in Australia something may have cost $10, in New Zealand it might also cost $10, but the exchange rate is far nearer to $2 to £1 than in Australia, so more value for money. YAY!! We went back to the hostel, ate and relaxed. We’d been up since 3am and even though it was only a 2 hour time difference we were feeling a little jet lagged.

The next day we woke up quite late and decided to go for a wander. Our hostel was very close to all of the piers so we headed out along the cost, along Queens Street to buy some warmer clothes and ended up having a late Sunday Roast in Danny Doolans, an Irish Pub. We hadn’t had a roast for about 2 months and I had been really craving it. This pub was offering a roast and a pint of cider for $20, which, when the pints are usually $10 over here, was a bargain. It was great too!! After this we decided to go and have a closer look at the sky tower. We hadn’t really planned to go up the sky tower, but decided that we would to get some good views and to actually ‘do’ something.

The sky tower is a relatively new building. It’s the tallest structure in the Southern Hemisphere and provides panoramic views across Auckland. We really enjoyed our time up the sky tower, ending up staying for nearly 3 hours to watch the sunset. We also managed to skype home a few people and enjoyed a coffee in the cafe. Have a look at some of the views we had during our time up the sky tower. After the sky tower it was pretty late so we headed back to the hostel to cook some food and watch some more Californication (it’s our new thing).

The next day we decided to take another free walking tour. These have become our go to activity in the cities that we visit and they really do help you get orientated and provide you with some history and insider info on the place. In hindsight we wished we would have been able to get up earlier and go the day before, but we had been too tired for that.

We met our walking tour guide, Louise, at Queens Wharf where most of the ferries leave to go out to the outer islands and harbour trips. You could tell that she loved living in Auckland and really wanted to share her knowledge with us all. The start of our tour was next to an old railway building and she told us about how James Cook navigated around NZ in 1769, one year before he arrived on the East Coast of Australia. Next to the railway building there was a relatively new building, which looked like a cloud. She asked us why that was and I told there that New Zealand is often called the Land of the Long White Cloud (thanks Mum). We started walking through the CBD which Louise told us was currently getting a bit of a renovation and a metro station. We had noticed the day before that there was a lot of building work going on. Apparently 50,000 people are moving into Auckland every year from around the World, making it the 4th most multicultural city. Auckland already is home to around 1/3 of the New Zealand population (around 1.5 million in Auckland) so there is a lot of work to be done to keep on top of the immigration.

We walked down a lane way which had a red light running down it and saw a cafe that had been converted from an old cinema. This lane way used to be the main spot for sailors when they visited or arrived after a long journey, to get their fill of entertainment. It was lovely to see that the cafe had kept a lot of the quirky features of the old cinema. The floor was still slanted and you could see where the old cinema screen used to be. Unfortunately, we didn’t have enough time to go back and have a coffee there, but it’s definitely one to visit in the future.

After the CBD we were shown sights such as Suffragette square, which is also getting a face lift. We didn’t realise that Kiwi women were the first women in the World to get the vote. This square is a memorial to that. We saw the National Art Gallery and learnt more about the arrival of the British settlers to New Zealand, and the signing of the treaty that allowed the British to govern NZ, but allowed the Maori people to maintain their culture and rights as well. We couldn’t believe how different this story was compared to the indigenous people of Australia who were treated so badly. The Maori culture in NZ is so prominent and you can see Maori people everywhere you look. In our whole 8 weeks in Australia we only saw a handful of aboriginal people out and about. Simon and I were talking about why this is and we think it may have something to do with the Maori people settling on NZ from the Pacific Islands. We think that maybe because they had officially ‘settled’ there before the British that was seen as a reason to give them rights. Whereas the Australian indigenous people had been living in Australia for tens of thousands of years, the British maybe didn’t see them as advanced? This is all speculation and it is an area we would like to learn more about during our time here. The picture below shows the maori people meeting the new governor.

We walked through Albert Park (named after Prince Albert) and through the University complex where we saw the old Government building. Simon was asked to go up to speakers corner and explain what they were. He did a good job! Louise told us about University fees here which are around £3000 a year, far more manageable than our £9000+ fees. She also told us that recently New Zealand had held a referendum (does anyone not want a referendum at the moment?). This referendum was to decide if their national flag was to be changed or not. Apparently 60% said to keep the flag the way it is, so that’s whats going to happen.

We stopped in Emily Place, which happened to be right next to our hostel, and saw the site of the first church in Auckland. When settlers arrived here the first thing that they wanted to see was a church so it was built on the highest point, allowing ships to see it when they arrived. Now, the area has a monument to the church, with a typo on it, and is full of Pohutukawa trees. These trees are really impressive and it is illegal to cut them down or even to trim back a branch. As you’ll see from the photo this means that they have overgrown the park and you can hardly walk around there anymore.

Our last stop was walking through the area of Britomart. This area is pretty high end and is built on the original edge of the city. This area has now been reclaimed and the water level is further away than previously, but they have a fountain to show where the boundary used to be. We walked through the Britomart train station and then headed back to Queens Wharf to end our tour. Auckland isn’t a city that is full of huge amounts of history or massively impressive buildings, but we learnt a lot about its history and heard lots of interesting stories.

The rest of the afternoon we camped out in McDonalds to use their free wifi and book lots of tours for our time in the North Island. I still needed to buy leggings so we went to do that and then we sat on the pier and read our books for a while, enjoying the views back over to Devonport and the Harbour Bridge.

We had really enjoyed our time in Auckland. It had been an excellent start to our time in New Zealand and showed us what everyone had told us before. The people here are SOOOO friendly. You really can see why so many people are moving into the area and to New Zealand in general. The next morning we picked up our Campercar (called Maverick) and started our 6 week road trip around the North and South Islands. More stories to follow.