We had booked a campervan way back in March for the 1st week of May as the prices were nearly halved and we knew that it would be the cheapest way to travel around the north island at our own pace. We picked the campervan up at 10am and after a bit of waiting we were on the road heading north to the Bay of Islands which was about 200km away. We were both quite excited especially Ben who had been bothering Ria for the last 5 months to rent a campervan. We had marked a few places to stop on the way and the first was a place called Goat Island that was suggested to us by a local in Auckland and it was well worth visiting. When we got there the weather wasn?t terribly good but ok and as he told us we walked and climbed up onto the rocks, once we got to the rocks the water was about a metre deep and crystal clear and the whole purpose we were there became clear as you could easily see hundreds of fish all different colours swimming around including the Snapper which we had been eating pretty regular since being in New Zealand so it was cool to actually see what we were eating. We could have gone snorkeling to get closer to the fish but we decided it was far too cold to jump in so we admired the view whilst standing on the rocks. The rest of the drive up to Paihia was stunning with beautiful green hills everywhere and very winding roads up and down hills which made it very interesting and the weather contributed a fair bit as it was sunny one minute and lashing down rain the next. We arrived in Paihia around 4.30pm and found a decent motorcamp with showers and power for the van. The Hurura Falls were right behind us and gave a nice view and made it feel like it was raining all night. We had a great laugh setting the bed up and making dinner and laughing about who would have thought Ria Palmer could live out of a campervan!! We settled down for the night and watched Entourage on our portable DVD player which was provided by the rental company before getting a surprisingly good sleep?. The next morning we did some gift shopping and enjoyed the view out onto the Bay of Islands before heading as far north as we could. We headed for Doubtless Bay which had 4 stunning areas to visit (Mangonui, Coopers Beach, Cable Bay & Taipa) on the way around these we also took a wrong turn and ended up in Whangaroa which was beautiful, one of the locals who we asked for directions told us it was the jewel of the north island and we had to agree it was stunning. Ria gave us a great laugh at lunch when she decided to take a short cut to the toilets at Coopers Beach and slipped 6 foot down a mud bank in front of a few people?a big red face to say the least!! Once we had achieved seeing all the beautiful sights we decided to keep driving and head back to Auckland for the evening as we needed to go south the next day we arrived around 7pm and had been driving nearly 10 hours of the day so as you can imagine we were pretty tired!! We hit bed pretty early ready for a new adventure tomorrow!!