Ranining again this morning (not a great way to the start of a VERY quiet week) so unfortunately we didnt have much to do for most of the morning! When it did eventually clear up though we took a walk up into the town centre and spent the rest of the afternoon eating ice-cream and wandering aimlessly round the many shops! We even treated ourselves to a night at the flicks in the evening - slightly bored from having absolutely nothing to do during the day!

We moved a little closer to Auckland this morning stopping in Takapuna. A beautiful seaside town with lots of bars, restaurants, cafe's and shops. The perfect place to spend the next few days by the sea, relaxing and spending very little (well apart from having to buy our stuff for the holiday to Fiji!)

Not wanting to drive too far and with just over a week to pass before our flight to Fiji we settled in Orewa for the night. Unfortunately it was still throwing it down so we spent most of the afternoon and evening staying dry in the camper.

Absolutely throwing it down this morning, but this didnt stop us from doing a 2 hour walk into the ancient kauri forest. Completely and thoroughly drenched we eventually reached Te Matua (Father of the Forest). The oldest at 2000 years old and widest at over 5m in diametre in New Zealand. The other ancient and huge trees to see were Tane Mahuta (God of the Forest) which is the largest tree in NZ and the Four Sisters and Yakas. Normally, a tree is just a tree,...

We left Paihia and set off north to the top of NZ. We weren't planning on going all the way to the Cape, a good 2 hours more driving so we after stopped at Manganui for some fish and chips on the seaside - apparently it's a 'World Famous' chip shop, but got to say, England's chippy's still win hands down! Rowan and Abby wanted to head up to the cape so arranging to meet up tomorrow we went our seperate ways for the rest of the afternoon with us staying in Opono...