Surprisingly, Auckland was slightly warmer than Melbourne as we stepped off the plane, never thought we'd be saying that before we set off.

Checking into the hostel, we then bumped into a couple who had spent the previous month driving around New Zealand's two main islands, just as we will; naturally we pumped them for information, before heading off to grab a bite.

The guidebook directed us to 'trendy' K Road, which it certainly was not, unless you count a load of rubbish takeaways and adult stores in that category. It was fairly late, however, so we had to settle for a poor Turkish meal.

Our opinions of the city were lifted the following day as we headed down towards the harbour and Skytower, though, showing Auckland in a far better light. We then spent the rest of the day buying supplies in preparation for picking up our fantastic camper van, including a couple of second-hand DVD boxsets (Party of Five and 24) to watch on our portable player, provided with the van, and a transmitter to enable use of our ipods in the van.

We decided to go with Jucy campers after knocking them down to a wallet-friendly price; although we spent the rest of the next day waiting around for the camper to be prepared after the sales staff messed up our booking, we were soon happy enough after another price reduction. You just can't get the staff these days.

After an all too brief demonstration of how the van worked by another dissatisfied staffer, we were eventually on our way to the northerly Bay of Islands. The road trip begins!

Kev