Another easy day, I'm afraid we'll get used to such lazy mornings. There's something nice about waking up in a home after staying in hostels for a few nights. Not that the YHA's haven't been amazing, there's just something nice about waking up and hearing the hustle and bustle of a family going through their morning routine, even if it's not your family.

Tom was excited about showing us around and after a quick tour of the veggie patch and chicken coop he drove us a few minutes down the road to his favourite café for brekkie. Nice place, good eggs and the biggest coffee I've ever been served- morning perfection!

We decided to hit the road again and after our farewells to Tom, I was back behind the wheel heading further south. Our drive was fairly uneventful, Raglan is about two hours from Auckland and we found that the further south we drove, the calmer the landscape became. We passed through farmland for most of the day, with the exception of a few patches of dense forest. It was sheep, sheep and more sheep all the way to the coast. We realised during this drive that we had inadvertently joined the coolest on-road club in NZ- the Juicy club. Every time we passed another Juicy van there was much hand waving light flashing and horn tooting. We found it totally hilarious.

We made it to Raglan and to the YHA, which is just a few minutes out of town. This is by far the most chilled-out backpackers I've visited, with a yoga room, tipi village, veggie patch (help yourself) and an awesome view of the coastline below. All the rooms and old renovated train carriages that have been scattered over a couple of blocks. They have also built a couple of wood-fire pizza ovens that are put to good use. We decided to give it a shot and made some pizza for dinner, others used it to bake fish and muscles- both freshly caught from the beach below. It's a really great area to sit and chat with fellow travellers, or lie back in the hammocks with a good book. We were very impressed, both of us saying we would have loved to stay longer. With only one night here we enjoyed our evening with some new friends and a couple of ciders. Someone brought out a ukulele, another provided some maracas and another pulled out a didgeridoo. It would have been hard to make the atmosphere more relaxed. I only wish I had brought my triangle.