We landed at Auckland airport on Monday 12th April 2010 at 11.50am after one on the nicest flights ever! A super quick flight only about an hour and a half in total and we were provided with water, tea and a snack as well as a quiz on the TV's to pass the time! All for £40.00 each thank you Air New Zealand! They were super efficient with check in machines scanning your online boarding passes and chosen seat selections!

Having spent hours online previously trying to find a hostel in Auckland with a free airport pickup (Jimmy convinced there would be one!) we had no luck in finding one so used the City Airbus to get into Auckland itself and spent two nights in the city in a hostel, we have found the hostels to be a lot cheaper in NZ compared to Australia and of a lot better standard too! The hostel was really central so spent two days in the city exploring and even climbed Mt Eden an extinct volcano just on the outskirts of the city which has amazing views across the Auckland skyline!

After two days we then picked up camper van number two! A snazzier version compared to the one in the South Island with a hi top so you could stand up in the back and built in fridge/freezer hobs, and grill!! Luxury.. lol! Unfortunately it was equally as un fuel efficient as the last van and liked travelling up hills even less! (like dragging a 30 foot lorry up!)

We first headed up to the Northland area of the North Island we unfortunately we couldn't make it up to Cape Reinga and 90 mile Beach (too much in fuel and time costs!) but had a good tour round and said hello to the biggest tree in New Zealand in the Kauri Forest with a girth of 16m!!! Also made a standard tourist stop to see some toilets!! The world famous toilets were designed by Austrian artist Hundertwasser and are world famous! Also stopping at the beautiful Whangarei Falls nearby too! We next headed across and back down towards Auckland stopping at the famous fish and chip town of Manganui for their famous Kiwi "fush and chips"!

Next stop the Cormandel area(witnessing a car crash on the Harbour bridge on route, you can't beat the Kiwi drivers for their appalling driving skills!) The Cormandel was lovely, loads of nice beaches including New Chums Beach a isolated beach you have to ask directions to from the locals which is one of the top ten beaches in the world! With white sand and bright blue sea! It was a bit of a mission to get to though, crossing another beach, a stream in which I fell into (soaking my trainers and leggings much to Jimmy's amusement for the rest of the day!) crossing boulders and walking through a forest and over a saddle! We also visited a lovely place called Cathedral Coves and Hot Water beach where you can dig your own hot water pool in the beach and the water can reach temperatures up to 64 degrees!

Next stop was Mount Manganui, really liked it here, not only because the lovely Rowan was currently living here and we finally got to meet up but it was also just a lovely town with a really nice atmosphere and people! We spent a lot of time just chilling out here which was nice for a change to our usually hectic road trip schedule and spending time catching up with Rowan who has had an amazing year travelling and working in NZ! We walked on the beach, climbed the Mount and even had a very windy picnic on the beach too with sand everywhere!! We camped on Rowans driveway and even managed to have a very unplanned drunken night out which meant we left a day later than planned due to the shocking hangover that followed our 8 hour drinking session! Was soo nice to see and spend time with Rowan and see her travelling life there and are very excited for her for her next adventure in Australia but hope that she will come back soon to the UK too!!

Our next stop was Rotorua, here we visited a Maori village Te Puia which has the thermal mud pools and erupting geysers (again amazing sights that we have nothing to compare to in the UK!) and where we also sampled their traditional Hangi food and had a Hokey Pokey ice cream and saw Kiwi birds! Highlight in Rotorua had to be the Zorbing!! We opted for the Zydro Zorb which basically involved us both in giant plastic ball with warmish water being rolled down a hill!! A twenty second ride but hilarious fun and you end up feeling like you are in a washing machine and get absolutely soaked! Great fun though and even though you can do it in the UK, Rotorua is the original Zorb or so we are told! Jimmy could not stop giggling the whole way down and for some reason i was sliding all around the ball with my legs ending up tangling and on top of Jimmy's! We also visited the free thermal pools in the local park and rested our feet for a short whole before camping for the night!

A highlight for the sights of the North Island was Huka Falls, an amazing torrent of water which is like a giant rapid with really clear turquoise coloured water which was pretty impressive!

Lake Taupo was also pretty impressive being the largest lake in NZ it went on forever! Taupo was supposed to be the place for our sky dives.. but due to extremely none existent budget and changing my mind we decided not to do one on this trip!

Next we headed to Napier (art deco designed town after it was destroyed by an earthquake in the 1930's) really nice town which also had one of only two Art Deco McDonalds in the world so of course being the tourists we were had to drive to get the photo opportunity! We also visited the town of Havelock North just south of Napier home of the Mata Peak again amazing views this time of the Hawkes Bay region and the town itself and Napier!

The next day we were supposed to be going to Wellington but took a slight detour on Jimmy's suggestion to go on a brewery tour at the famous NZ beer Tui's! I soon become DES driver for the day and we had a tour round the museum and then the factory and then with the option to sample up to three beers each! Of course as I was driving there was none for me so Jimmy proceeded to try four and then had to stop due to the current lightweight he has become with our lack of alcohol on our trip! They seemed to be good from the few sips I had and Jimmy certainly seemed to like them! The beer's slogan is ... Yeah Right and they have a giant magnetic board outside where you can make your own slogans and take pictures hence the Jimmy Des Driver Yeah Right slogan photo we put together! We finally got on the road with me now in control of the driving! (felt like a bus driver driving the van!) and managed to make our way to a suburb of Wellington, Upper Hutt before it was too late. Although the end of the day didn't go as well as the start.. as our gas bottle ran out whilst trying to make our lunch, we were not happy as our last van also had a similar sized gas bottle which didn't run out for the whole trip and we were only on day 8 so it implied to us that it hadn't been full when we picked it up which is should have along with the fuel (which also appeared not to be as full once we subsequently filled it up during the weeks!)We phoned the rental company who were not particularly helpful and just advised that we either got in re filled at a petrol station and they will reimburse us on return of the van, or we find alternative ways to cook without gas! We were not happy to say the least but found a petrol station that did gas re filling only to be told when they attempted to re fill the bottle that it was actually a faulty, dangerous and damaged bottle!! (proving our point that it can't have been previously refilled) but also leaving us without any gas for that night! So it was sandwiches and ginger nuts all round for our tea!! To cut a long story short we managed to get another gas bottle from one of the rental company depots and then managed to get this filled up in wellington but was a big faff and wasted our precious time for travelling round but was all sorted in the end!

Anyhow I don't want to start ranting like Mr T! We finally made it to Wellington and living up to it's reputation was a very windy city! Lovely city though and we visited the national Te Papa museum which was pretty impressive, went up the cable car and then walked back down to the city through the Botanical Gardens and visiting the beehive (Parliament buildings) which look a bit dodgy on our photos so I have been carefully positioned to make it look less so!

We also visited the Tongariro National Park, unfortunately not being able to do the famous one day Alpine Crossing walk we did a forest walk instead!

Our last stop on the North Island was the famous Waitomo Caves, home of the famous glow-worms! We did a tour here which involved walking through the caves and then finishing with a boat tour in the pitch black to see the worms glowing! It was pretty unique and they can only be seen in this area of NZ and parts of Australia!

We spent our last night in a town called Perongia and paid to camp behind this cafe where they had toilet and shower facilities so we were on route to Auckland for dropping off the van the next day, lovely little town until during the night we were awoken to the sound of someone trying to break into our van!! All we heard was someone clearly trying all the doors (all locked luckily) but pretty scary all the same so spent most of our last night wide awake!! But glad it happened on our last camping night otherwise not sure we would have camped anywhere after!

Next and final stop of our trip was Fiji!!