Into the South We had now left the North Island and were on the ferry across to the south island. Unsurprisingly, this was just like getting the ferry to Ireland, except that it's a much rougher crossing. They actually have a warning sign at the entry to the terminal as to what condition the seas are, we had a calm crossing which was true for most of the journey as the ferry is sheltered by the islands, however once you get out into Cook Strait itself, the boat ...

Last of the North Island. We left Waitomo and headed for Lake Taupo a little further south. Lake Taupo was formed in the crater created by a giant explosion thousands of years ago. It's a huge lake and the town built around it is a popular holiday destination and a haven for trout fishermen in particular. Taupo was a bit like Rotorua for us though as there wasn't a lot there that we were interested in. It probably didn't help that we had some awful weather whil...

Heading South After leaving Cape Reinga, we turned our campervan south and set off. There isn't a huge amount of things to see as we started to head south, along the west coast road down to Auckland. There is a huge amount of farmland in this area and you can get all sorts of fruit and veg from the roadside stalls as you drive along. One of the main sights along this route is 90 Mile Beach which runs up the east coast at the tip of northland and as its name s...

Northland One of the things that we have noticed while travelling around Oz and NZ, is that early explorers like Capt Cook weren't very original with the names of places that they spotted. For example, Bay of Islands….is exactly that; a bay full of islands. This tradition seems to have stuck with Kiwi's as the area to the north of Auckland is imaginatively known as Northland! This was the first part of our journey around in the campervan and we headed north to...

Auckland & Start of road trip We landed in Auckland at 8 in the evening and very rapidly acclimatized to the winter weather as it was bucketing it down. We had a slight delay as we didn't have our onward itinerary and had to wait at one side for 20 minutes until the man from immigration was happy that we actually intended to leave the country and had a departing flight booked.After we cleared all that up, it was out into the rain and a new country. We had tr...