So for those of you who have been following our travels you'll know that we had 6 weeks in New Zealand but we've not blogged about it. This is mainly due to not having any internet access whilst we were there and then we seem to have been playing catch up ever since then. We've got a few days now were we don't have a lot planned so we're hoping to be completely up to date by the time we start our whirlwind 4 week tour of China.

We arrived in Auckland to the friendliest immigration staff we've met so far on our travels. Firstly, they smiled and secondly they had a laugh and a joke with you, as soon as we landed we knew we would love it here.

Accommodation in Auckland is pretty pricey so we'd booked a dorm room in a Hostel, not ideal but needs must! On our first day there (Sunday) we spent most of our time on the phone trying to book a campervan for 5 weeks, once this was booked for the Tuesday we had a day to kill so we just mooched about, we walked around the viaduct looking at all the swanky yachts in the harbour, checked out the town centre and then settled down into a bar for a couple of pitchers of beer.

On the Tuesday we were up and out early, we had to get a train out of the city to pick the van up, we were both so excited. We'd booked a 2 berth Toyota Hi Ace which had seats that converted into a bed, small fridge freezer, sink, cooker and a portaloo. We LOVED it immediately and named him Terry.

Our first stop was Pak N Save which is a huge supermarket chain in New Zealand, we're not ashamed to admit it, we went a little bit over the top. We hadn't done a supermarket shop in 3 months so we were both like fat kids in a cake shop and piling everything into the trolley. The damage was about $200 but totally worth it, we had everything we needed, beer, charcoal, food! Well almost everything, we just needed that one important item .... a BBQ, the quest to find one was on!

We were heading to the Coromandel that day which is a coastal drive on the North Island, on the way we called into a few camping shops but the BBQ was proving elusive. Eventually we came across a shop called Warehouse which is a huge shop that sells everything, similar to a Wilkinson's or B&M bargains back home. Unfortunately there were no BBQ's but we improvised and bought a stainless steel fish smoker, we could relax now in the knowledge that we could have a barbie that night.

Casson was driving as he was absolutely loving it, this isn't the norm as usually I drive us everywhere but I think he was enjoying the Max and Paddy moment. Our theme tune for the trip was "don't know where we're going, got no way of knowing, driving on the road to nowhere". Unfortunately we got to the top of a pretty big hill and the van started spewing water out, luckily it was just because they'd overfilled the water and it had overheated and so bubbled over. Once the van cooled down we were back on our way.

The views on the Coromandel were beautiful, the coastline is so nice. That night we pulled up in someone's garden for $5 and had the best view of the beach, we were literally parked as close to it as we could be without being on it. We got there at about 5pm so Casson decided to go for a dip in the sea, he lasted about 2 minutes, it was absolutely freezing! We had a BBQ whilst watching the sun go down and then we watched the moonrise, it was glowing red and looked like it was coming out of the sea, it was an amazing first night in the van.

The next morning we had a full English and then went for a walk along the beach, life was really good!

We carried on driving later on in the morning (Casson still refused to let me drive) and headed to cathedral cove, it was about a 40 minute walk to get to a beautiful beach with some really lovely cave formations. That evening we found another lovely spot by the beach to camp and fired up the BBQ again.

General points

1) This is the start of our addiction to Pak N Save and Warehouse

2) Casson is never going to give up the driving seat