Our last stop in New Zealand took us from Paihia to Auckland. It is a big city here and we all really noticed the large volumes of people around! It's strange to be back in such a busy place again. We arrived and first spent a while driving around until we found our hostel, Silverfern backpackers. It is very nice, clean and spacious, exactly what we needed after our camping experience! After emptying out our belongings, it was time to return our campervan. We ar...

We have had a lovely last few days in our camper van up in Paihia in the Bay of Islands. We drove from Matamata, along and past Auckland on one of the two motorways in New Zealand and up to the north of the North island. We stopped along the way to utilise the free wifi at McDonald's and arrived to Paihia just in time before the tourist information office shut to book a boat trip for the following day. That evening Sally and I took a walk along the seafront an...

As soon as we left the lighthouse, the rain caught up with us and poured for the rest of the day. We arrived quite late to the less remote DoC campsite at Matata. Even though it's location was a bit less lonely than the previous night, we still struggled to find it, driving up and down and up and down and up and down the main road of Matata! It was another rainy and miserable night. The weather has picked up today and we have driven on to the similarly named, b...

After four hours of driving we reached the most easterly point of the north island at East Cape. We saw the lighthouse up on the hill ahead of us and presumed the sea was on the other side, but the only problem was, we were stuck at a dead end on the other side of the hill. We ate our lunch disappointed that we had come so close, but not close enough to the most easterly point. As we were driving away we noticed a sign where a walking path led up to the lighthous...

As we arrived into Rotorua through the rain and stepped out, there was a faint eggy smell smell to the area. We had heard it stunk over here due to the high geothermal activity and sulphur in the air, but it didn't seem too bad. We stayed that night at a DoC campsite right on the edge of lake Okarera. The rain was tipping down again and we were really exposed to the wind so the camper rocked us to sleep that night! We stayed in and watched a film but could barel...