We arrived in New Zealand surprisingly perky after a 13 and a half hour flight. The flight from LA to Auckland was excellent we had our own TVs and lots of legroom(shocking!) so we can definitely recommend qantas over BA any day. We got picked up by the camper company and met another English couple in the car doing the same as us, they had just driven route 66.

We were so excited when we picked the camper up but also nervous to drive it! We set off for the supermarket and stocked up on cleaning stuff and food, we were a little dissapointed that food isn't as cheap as the USA but we expected it. The weather was nice and sunny but that wasn't really a good thing as we hadn't washed for two days and were wearing clothes that hadn't been washed properly! Ash set up his mobile phone with a free sim for travellers we got at the airport. Then we set off to drive through the centre of Auckland to get to our campsite at Takapuna Beach. Ash did a pretty amazing job at changing the way he drives, in a camper here you have to pretty much let everyone pass you which is the polar opposite to how agressively he drives at home! We got lost once but Becky found the way back and we arrived at the campsite and were very pleased at being beachfront! The view from the camper back window should be the photo attached to this post. We then did all our dirty washing from the last week in America and cooked a healthy pasta tea. We tried to stay up late but couldn't manage past 8.30pm NZ time we were knackered! It started to rain at night but we were so cosy in the van it was actually quite nice!