After we got settled into the hotel and rested a bit, we went out for dinner at a restaurant called Shakespeare's. We all had great meals. Meat pies, fish and chips, and a calamari salad. For dessert, we had a really great brownie with vanilla ice cream. But the best was the beer! YESSSS, you heard me the beer. Gary had a stout that he said put Guinness stout to shame and Sunni and I had a pale ale each that was delicious! Afterwards, we went for a long walk around the hotel area. Saw an absolutely gorgeous Anglican Church which was unfortunately locked up so we couldn't go inside. Considered going up the sky tower until we discovered it would cost $112 for the 4 of us. We have a pretty good view from our hotel so decided to settle for that. Had a really good sleep so now we will have breakfast and head for the caravan pick up area to truly begin our journey! We arrived at the camper van rental place at 10am and it took about 1.5 hours to go through all the paperwork, watch the training video, and go through the camper to learn how to run it. We then drove out of the yard to go to the local supermarket and heard a loud crash! One of the drawers had lost its faceplate. While Jean and Sunni went grocery shopping, Gary and I determined what to do to fix the drawer. I went to the local hardware store and bought a screwdriver and we tightened the faceplates on all the drawers. When we left the supermarket, we had to go through a roundabout and as we went through, we realized we didn't know which exit to to, so there we were circling the roundabout until we figured it out. Jean and Sunni were howling with laughter! We then headed north or at least tried to. We needed to get onto hwy 1 which is the main highway headed north but instead ended up in downtown Auckland. We waited at least 15 minutes at one intersection to make a right turn. The cycling on the turn allowed for 1 turn every 15 minutes! Once we made the turn we found the access to hwy 1 and went over the bridge. The new highway is a toll highway so we left it at Orewa and did the scenic route finally getting back onto Hwy 1 north of Orewa. No major incidences until we got to about 20 minutes south of the turnoff to a place called Waipu Cove (one of my favorite places!). We were climbing this fairly large windy hill when the traffic came to a stop. We waited there for about 45 minutes and determined that a Ford Explorer near the top had caught fire and burned up. There were numerous police cars and 2 fire trucks there at the scene of the fire. We then continued north until Whangerei where we managed to get caught in the rush hour traffic. We finally arrived in Pahia at about 5:30 pm. Got settled in and started dinner. Met some very unfriendly Aussies and finally figured out that they thought we were Americans!! It's now 8:30 pm and we are relaxing for a bit before going to bed.