A Showering of Chocolate Peacocks!

Our last day approached pretty quickly and after waking up surrounded by bird life in the Shakespeare Regional Park (another free camping spot) we shooed away the peacocks and seagulls who were tucking in to a hideous looking fish head and made our way the short drive to Auckland.I was pleased this was the last journey of the trip as in 5 short weeks we have travelled 7150kms - but we have seen a lot!

Having completely ruined our budget we needed somewhere free to park for the day in Auckland so we asked in the I Site who explained to Liz in what seemed like a hung over drawl"Yeah, you can park anywhere, having said that I did get towed the other day!" - as they were pretty much no help we set about finding a free spot ourselves.Liz, with her magical map reading skills found us a good spot in Parnell - the creative district of Auckland and explored as much of Auckland as we could in the half a day we had.

We had a walk around the Parnell area and through the park as the sun started to burn through the clouds.It was nice to be in a city again and see some café culture and people reading the Sunday papers.It was also Mothers Day in NZ so lots of families out and about treating the mums.

On our way back to the car we felt like being civilised again, even if only for a brief half an hour so we walked into a great café and ordered a hot chocolate each - to our delight this came to our table with a chocolate covered marshmallow on the side.Liz proclaimed that this was the BEST hot chocolate she had ever had and I was inclined to agree with her.It is amazing that when you don't have something for so long it tastes so good when you do.That said I am looking forward to a beer on the plane to Fiji!

We finished up in Auckland and headed to our holiday park for the night so we could clean up the van, do our laundry, cook and most importantly, shower!It had been a few days so the shower was needed!

Some scrambled eggs and beans on toast and a good cuppa and we set about using up the last of our internet credit to make sure we were up to date on the blog and we had checked in with family and friends.

This morning we dropped back the van, no problems there and we managed to get our $12 back for the battery charge we needed to do - bonus!

Now we are at the airport ready for our flight to Fiji and hopefully some free food and drink on board.

NZ has been brilliant, fully recommend it to everyone.

Next stop - Fiji!

Sam