The Wine, the Cheese and The Yeti

Once the ferry had docked at NZ's capital city, Wellington, we headed straight to our first "legal" campsite.It was another race against time as the gates of the park closed at 6pm and having only driven off the ferry gone 16.30 we raced to get there in the van.

We made it to the site with about 5 minutes to spare and paid our fees before firing up the stove for our stir-fry.It was so dark at the campsite and really quite eerie so we cooked up our supper and retired to the van to watch one of our DVDs.Now, when we hired the van we were given 2 DVDs and told to swap them with other drivers when we had watched them.We hadn't seen any other drivers to this point so we settled on The Eye to watch for the evening.This was VERY short lived when we realised that watching a very freaky horror film in the middle of a forest with no light was a bit much.We turned this off and had a game of cards instead.One saving grace was a hot shower in the morning, we are clean again!

We had a quick look round Wellington the next day and booked our 15,000ft skydive for Taupo in a few days time - extremely excited about that activity.We stayed up the west coast that evening in a free site that only had one other guy, in a tent, who looked like a yeti.Our routine cup of tea post dinner was not so great as the milk had definitely seen better days - we used it anyway and about 10 minutes later I was in the bushes!!Enough said.

Bright and early we set off for Napier on the east coast.Napier is an art deco town with some cool buildings and some fun little cafes.Lizzy, suggested we skip the usual (and quite frankly a little dull now) sandwich and crackers for lunch and we go nuts and have lunch out, saving our sandwich for supper.A "lunch special" of fish and chips for $7 each did us just fine and we felt replete before heading towards Lake Taupo.

The Department of Conservation campsite booklet showed about 5 free campsites all pretty close to each other so the plan was to park up and go for a walk.The campsites are generally very well signposted but this time we couldn't find any signs.Driving down a dirt track for about 20km we gave up and parked up in a very desolate space with only one truck parked up.

So that we wouldn't be in the van for hours we went for a quick walk before it went dark.On the way up the hill we were greeted by a particularly hairy man with a dog and his rather large weapon slung over his shoulder……….a rifle complete with silencer!Turns out he was hunting deer and we were on a hunting track.He headed back down the hill after an obligatory "sweet as" and we continued until it was getting dark.

When we reached the bottom of the hill we noticed a fellow camper van had arrived - it was like an oasis in the desert.A lovely family greeted us and within about 60 seconds of saying hello we were invited in for a glass of wine and some cheese & biscuits - excellent!Their van was the mansion of vans, far roomier than ours! Brendan and Sarah were very welcoming and we chatted and snacked for a few hours before we retired to our MUCH smaller van and rearranged the back seats in to our bed for the night.

Another good kip and now we're off to Taupo.

Sam