Just a quick blog to let you know we are now in New Zealand. Not wanting to brag, but on the way over we used our points to upgrade to Business Class with Emirates, wow, this is the way to travel! As my mother said,"so money can buy comfort", but it can't buy happiness. After this high we were finally let down by our bike, not that we really blame it. We went to pick it up from the shippers and had to jump start it, but when it stopped again we couldn't get it started, no ignition, nothing. So we got it taken to very helpful dealer in Kingsland, they were brilliant. Here we took out the battery to replace it and found the one they had wouldn't fit, so we charged up our battery and cleaned the terminals, put it back in and away we went. Turned out there was a problem with the negative terminal, so we don't blame the bike for letting us down, maybe it needed a bit more maintenance.
Everyone has been really good to us so far, the shipping agent picked us up from the airport and dropped us off at the campground when we couldn't get the bike started, the bike carrier was very helpful and professional. At the campground they upgraded our cabin for free and gave us towels and Internet card, all on the house.
So now we are ready to get on the road and have planned an interesting looking route down to the South Island. Today we looked around the Auckland Botanical Gardens, they were stunning and well worth the visit, might go again later.