Today we woke up early (7am!), showered, and then it was time to phone / text home to deliver the big news! We used the payphone on site and Dave phoned home while I text my mam and dad, Dawn, Lee, Amanda, Emma and Chris! Straight away the congratulatory texts started arriving and the Parsons' all sounded pleased on the phone!

We ate our breakast, standing next to the van then packed up and headed into Auckland. We'd read about a road in Parnell that has free wifi so we headed towards there, and after driving aroudn for a while, eventually found somewhere to park on the main road in Parnell. However, the internet wasn't working so we had a drink in a cafe then walked to Auckland museum. We spent a few hours looking round the museum - highlights were the mauri sculptures and the volcanoes exhibition where you went into a room, like the front room of an Auckland house and it showed you what would happen if a volcano errupted in Auckland!

Afterwards, we headed back to Parnell and found a cafe with free wifi, so we ordered 2 coffees and updated our facebook statuses to let everyone know our news! Earlier on we'd phoned and reserved a space in a cheap campsite so we headed there. We paid $5 each and when we got there found we were staying in the car park of a working farm (the campsite was closed) with one other campervan. The ranger / farmer came over and chatted to us for a while, and showed us on our map some other places we could stay on our way North to Cape Reinga. He came back later with some leaflets for us!

We cooked our pasta and sauce on a stone surface near our van and ate on a picnic bench. By that time it was already dark (sun sets at 6pm!) so we packed up then pulled out the bed and read our books for a few hours by torchlight! The toilet blocks were nice and clean and had showers so we had everything we needed. We went to sleep at about 10pm, exhausted after our first full day campervanning!