New Zealand – North Island

Kia Ora everyone! We arrived in NZ a few days ago and stayed on the harbour front in Auckland for a night. It had what they called a heavenly bed which truly lived up to its name. Lovely but very concerning that we had such luxury the night before we picked up the campervan. Concerns were looming in my head that after a month and a half living in hotels/motels, Colin would not react too well to living in a van for a month! More on that later.

Auckland, what we saw of it, was quite nice. We had a wander around the town in the day after landing on the plane around 0930hrs after a miniscule amount of sleep on the plane. After a 12 hour sleep (nice!) we went to pick up Lucy (apparently all campers should be named and as ours is from the Jucy company it seemed to be fitting). We had booked a fairly no frills van but found we’d been upgraded to one with a toilet and shower because they didn’t have any others in. We soon discovered that the shower cubicle would be the storage area for the luggage. Don’t know how anyone would manage to go on holiday in one of these and not take luggage so it’s a bit pointless. Other than that it’s much as I expected.

I was so excited. My first trip in a campervan and despite a few teething problems it is living up to my expectations. Some of my first and best memories are of having camping holidays with my family so even the less fun stuff like freezing toilet blocks with spiders webs in are still fun. I am loving the basic back to nature living. Colin, on the other hand, has never stayed in a hotel that moves, and sounds like a tank when it does, and is boiling in the day and freezing at night! I know he’d much rather be in a hotel but it’s just such fun to watch him in an unfamiliar environment that I could do this for much longer just for that reason!

On our first day we didn’t drive far. Ended up in a campsite in Waihi beach. Campsites in NZ are much better equipped than those in the UK, unlike the campervan. We arrived on site and went to get out our camping chairs which were supposedly in one of the under-seat storage lockers, but they weren't there. Never mind, we had a picnic table in our area. We made our first home-cooked meal in over a month, spaghetti bolognaise, and opened our box of red wine (you can’t break a box, right?). We soon realised we’d need to start cooking/eating earlier as it was nearly dark by the time we sat down to eat and even though we have lights they just attracts the bugs. So by the time you’ve eaten, washed up and converted the seating area into a bedroom you then have to spend the next hour bug-killing. Lucy is now covered in small dead bug stains on her ceiling.

The following day we drove to Rotorua, a lovely area famed for its hot springs, mud pools and Maori cultural heritage. We decided to check out one of these Maori evenings last night and it was good fun. Good haka, singing and dancing and a lovely meal. Quite cheesy and touristy as warned (thanks Julie & Mikko) but definitely worth seeing. Then we went back to Lucy who had no electric hook-up as it had blown up (well sort of) the night before. Luckily most things work off reserve battery so we had lights but no heater and no way to charge our dead mobiles.

Today we spent the morning buying a blanket, some camping chairs and then heading back to the garage we’d visited yesterday to get the new electric cable which had been couriered down here overnight. Now we have power and all Colin’s gadgets are now being charged and he is happy again and I can write a blog on the laptop!