Well here we are in NZ land of the long white cloud .......and a million whiz bangs. Well guess what....we're now one of them. OUr van is a VW diesel and very comfortable. Now we have sorted out where we are and where we are going all is well. It was a bit hairy and it took us 2 hours to find a caravan park once we had picked up the van. In the end we found one only about 5 klms away from where we started,

We spent our second night in a lovely free camp in Gulf harbour on the waterfront along with some very interesting other vans (see the photos!) We took off and headed north to Stanmore Bay, Manly, Tindalls Beach, and then to Gulf Bay. Gulf bay is home to hundreds of yachts and boats. It is definitely millionaires row but for us it was our first free stop and we thoroughly loved looking across the water to Auckland.

Next day we headed up the east coast to Puhoi - a quaint historical villages, Leigh Boat Harbour, Goat Island where you can snorkel to your hearts content, Pakiri Beach (lunch) and then onto the RSA club in Hakaru where we camped once again free for the night.

We are heading fro the Bay of Islands and I should have lots more to tell you.

The flight was really great although Tony's TV didn't work (not happy Jan). I watched the Book Thief. Great movie! We think we did very well with all the custom stuff, purchasing the SIM card and finally getting to Apollo for our van. It sort of went down hill from there - really had to get our bearings and get used to the traffic, motorways and sort out the GPS that still wanted to travel Australia instead of NZ. Anyway all good so stay tuned.