I was terrified when we were told on the plane that the temperature was around 15 degrees and it was raining in Auckland. For just over two weeks we had been lucky if the temperature dropped below 28 degrees and the prospect of being cold and in the rain in my flip flops was not nice. We finally made it out into the rain and wind and made our way to Base backpacker where we were staying for the first night. A lovely double room with a bathroom. We were unable to do anything that we had planned in Auckland because of the weather. The best thing we did while we were there was pick up our transport, home, kitchen and luggage storage for the next 5 weeks...our spaceship! I was really pleased that we got one with a cool name, our new best friend Galileo! We got shown how to use him etc and headed off up to the North as far away from the rain as possible!

Now, Galileo is not just any kind of camper van...he is a converted Toyota people carrier. The seat have been ripped out to make room for a bed and there are still two seats in the back which you can sit at to eat as you can put up a table/ chopping board. The boot opens and the back lifts up to store luggage and inside the front of that lifts up to store food and cutlery and the fridge and water tank. Probably one of the winning factors in our little house is the DVD player and free DVDs that come with it. It also has a second battery that charges as the car is going so unlike other campers with a DVD, you don't have to have the engine running to watch a movie. The funniest thing is that Galileo is bright orange with "Spaceships" written over his back, front and sides...beautiful!

So we arrive in the Bay of Islands and decided to do a trip where we get to swim with dolphins and go and see the 'world famous' hole in the rock. Clearly not world famous as no one has ever heard of it! Anyway we got out into the bay of islands and it was stunning. It was a beautiful day and the sun was shining and before we know it there is a pod of dolphins swimming up beside the boat. There were so many of them and they were all jumping out of the water and playing around. It was fantastic, until they saw that they had a baby dolphin with them so we wouldn't be able to swim with this group. They do this so the mother and baby do not become stressed which is fair enough but just our luck! We hoped to get another pod but we never did so we had to settle just seeing them. It really was brilliant to see so many though and at least Barry got to see them this time!

On the way to the whole in the rock, the water started to get really rough and I started to feel sick, it wasn't fun at all. We got to the whole and the majority of the boat were sitting at the back with a little boy being sick. After staring at a stupid hole for too long we were on our way and headed back to calmer seas and sailed along through the islands. They were stunning and it was amazing to see them but I was glad to be on dry land.

We were now heading for Rotorua so we decided to stop off in Auckland for the night again...still raining. We are going to check out Auckland on the way back as we are flying out of there. We just spent a little time getting some warmer clothes as we had heard that it was going to be cold down South. So off we headed South.