29th June 2009

Haere Mai from NEW ZEALAND !!!!!!!

We had a brilliant last night in our dorm with our roomies!! We watched High School Musical 3 with all our beds pushed together, the boys loved the movie more than me!! Then a couple of girls from next door joined us for a good old sleepover!! We are so excited (or fizzed as a cola bottle as Mike would put it, lol!) to be here!! We couldnt leave Oz however without one more problem with Mike, lol....thankfully this time it didnt involve illness or injury but the fact NZ immigration wouldnt let him into their country!! So we were at check in for a good hour as the supervisor was trying to work out what the problem was! After numerous calls and attempting to check Mike in 5 times, it turned out NZ had a generic expiry date4 for Mikes passport, so it was 01/01/01!! So luckily it was eventually all ok. It happens to 1 in 50,000 people apparently, and of course Mike was the 1 ! He now thinks that he is very special (not unlucky!!).

Our flights were both fine, we got lunch and dinner. Until you are a backpacker you do not realise how much you appreciate plane food!!!! Its free and actually doesnt taste that bad, plus free alcohol which is even better!!! Sorry about all the exdclamations, im trying to show our excitment, lol! Once we landed we got through immigration and luggage very quickly which was good as we expected to get stopped. We arrived at our hotel by midnight and were both very tired so fell asleep quickly.

30th June 2009

We got dropped off at the Explore More depot by our hotel to pick up our campervan this morning. We were waiting around for a while as our camper was still in with the mechanics, so we were given a hire car to drive to the nearest supermarket to do our foodshop to save time later on! So off we went in some crappy little car! We managed to get Marmite again which pleased both of us!! After our shop we went back to the depot only to be told the camper still wasnt finished, so we were handed a voucher and given directions for a place for lunch. Not expecting it to be much more than a sandwich shop or anything we were suprised to drive into a very posh winery! We were in our crudy hire car, both in hoodies, me in uggs, neither of us looking our best, lol. So we parked up and walked to the restuarant to be greeted by a waiter who looked down his nose at us and alot of business people in suits and all looking very lardy dar! So very awkwardly me and Mike are sat near the window out the way! As it was such a posh place the menu was very limited, Mike chose or said very politely ("ill grab the lamb"), the most expensive dish on the menu, and I put on my "posh oxford accent"and asked for the 'winter salad'!! I had the most expensive glass of wine and pretended I could tell the difference between a chardonnay and a Shiraz!! Our food came and is was absolutley beautiful, it tasted so good, Mikes lamb was in a sauce with veg and mash and I had flaked marinated salmon on rocket salad with roasted pumpkin. We didnt hang around for long as we were on our best behaviour but it was such a good free lunch!!!

Back to the depot we went, and there he was, Trevor the Tron was waiting for us!!!! We were shown around the vehicle and how everything worked, threw our bags and shopping in and headed off straight away. Exploremore also gave me 3 bottles of wine, happy days !!!! With one not very good map, we made it out of Auckland city very well and over the Harbour Bridge which is pretty impressive! We are heading North for a couple of days, our first stop was in Waiwera for the night.

Our campervan is SO SO good, its a transit van so much bigger than the jucy camers we had. Its 6m long and we can fully stand up in it. It has too long seats at the back of the van which at night turns into a massive and very comfy bed. We have a table, loads of cupboards, a wardrobe, shelves, microwave, toaster, grill, 2 hobs, kettle, a heater and a portable sony windscreen dvd player!! Its AMAZING!!