We left Taupo after breakfast and sadly with lots of tears from Myles who didn?t want us to go. After promising that he would see us again in the future, he calmed down and waved us off with the rest of the family. The journey to Rotorua was a foggy one, but cleared up after an hour or so. We decided to go to Te Puia, the Maori village and thermal resort. The $35 entrance fee was well worth it, we had a great time. We learned all about the Maori origin in New Zea...

We followed the Thermal Explorer Highway from Napier to Taupo, arriving by 10am. Jeremy, Joanne and the children were pleased to see us. The children were really excited about the campervan and spent ages climbing on anything and everything. Jarryd was a bit disappointed as he expected it to be ?much bigger? and have a toilet and a shower, and when he got in there, the first question he asked was ?where is the dishwasher?? After another of Joanne?s tasty lunches ...

We had a bit of laying as the drive to Napier wasn?t going to be that long around 3 hours. We left around 9.30am and enjoyed one of the nicest drives of the week passing through plenty open green hills covered in cows, sheep, deer and more it was kind of the image you imagine before coming to New Zealand, the towns were very few and far between each other and it was endless view of hills, animals and wineries it really blew us away.  We got to Napier at lunch ...

We had a long days driving ahead of according to the map and we planned to take a more central road and cut off some of the east coast as the drive would have been far too long to go all the way around. So we left at 7am and Whakatane was the target for lunch time. The road started pretty windy but eventually turned into a nice flat road and we had expected a boring drive but I don?t think New Zealand is capable of a boring drive. The police had a road block a...

After arriving back from the north we stayed in Bens aunties flat for the evening and cleaned up the campervan in the morning. We left after rush hour to ensure we didn?t get caught up in the queues of traffic. We headed south east and made Coromandel the target to stay in a motorcamp for the evening. Our first stop of the day was in Maraetai where we enjoyed the weather and the gorgeous beach to ourselves. Ria decided that she going to have a crack at driving th...