We spent last night in Cambridge, which is just South of Hamilton. Each night we have spent so far in a camper site. These accommodate a combination of static mobile homes, caravans, camper vans and tents. Yachties would classify them as a marina on land. The toilets and showers are of a variable standard and of course it depends on your other campers. Maybe we should publish a guide? It is the end of the summer school holidays but this site along with some others has school parties who generally have been well behaved.
Cambridge itself is a pleasant town with wide streets and small shops. Outside Auckland there are no shopping malls, thank goodness.
We continued on south to the Whakarewara thermal area. Hot sulphur smelling water rises from the ground and in some places there are geysers. This is also a Maori sacred area so we saw another cultural show. We were struck against the Polynesian link. I don't think we want any more Haka war dances on this trip. Continuing south we passed by lake Taupo which is enormous about the size of Lake Geneva. We spent the night at Turangi on the southern end of the lake. We had a beautiful spot in a site being done up. It was originally the building workers on the electric stations homes and was full of what best Can be described as sheds. These all needed painting as the wood was all peeling, it felt like several years work to fully restore.