We're now in 90 mile beach in the very north of the North Island. We spent the last couple of days in the Bay of Islands in Paihia and took a boat over to Russell. We found a lovely site right on the beach so woke up each morning to the sound of waves and ate breakfast listening to the kids count the boats passing the bay - fantastic. The weather fortunately has improved and we're enjoying sunshine and warm temps. The rain that we had was so torrential that apparently as much rain fell in 24 hours than they've had in the last 3 years in total. No wonder the place flooded. As we've driven up here we've realised how lucky we were to avoid most of it. Lots of roads have been closed due to landslides, roads collapsing and being washed away and cars being washed into the ditches. The roads are also now covered in sludge so a bit hairy in places.

Anyway, just got time to tell you about a classic Keith story...... On the campsite in Paihia Keith took the van to fill up with water. I was playing with the children at the playground when Keith came running over across the field (I've only seen keith run twice in his life so I knew something was wrong). He told me he'd got the van stuck. Assuming he just needed some help reversing I started to laugh. 'You won't be laughing when you see it' he said. What he'd actually done was attempt to take the van round a tight hairpin bend on a steep hill and had managed to wedge the undercarriage of the van on the verge on the inside of the bend. 3ft behind the van was a wooden chalet and 3ft in front was a 5 foot drop so the van was at 90 degrees on the bed. I wish I'd taken a photo! Fortunately after much clutch burning and reversing we managed to get the van safely down the hill!

We had a laugh last night too as I did a comedy fall into a load of the clay sludge that was covering the campsite on the way to the toilet in the dark. I couldn't see how bad my jeans were until the morning - they were covered!