We then drove to Tauranga and had a pumpkin soup lunch by the sea with a view of mount Maunganui. I had a nap and Garth went for a long walk. We then took a stroll around Moturiki Island before going to Duane's parents (Barbra and Jack) house in Pyes Pa (with a little help from tourist information)! Our van comes with lots of maps and guides, but it's more of a nationwide map and has little or no town maps which makes life a little hard! We had not met Barbra a...

We woke early to shower, pack and have breakfast and prey with Hannah and Matt before they went to work at 8am. It was so lovely seeing them and getting to meet Hannah. It was also really refreshing hanging out with amazing people! We drove to Matamata where we went on a tour of the Hobbiton film set at 10am from The Lord Of The Rings and The Hobbit films. It was great to see the set and to see that they had kept it watered and green despite the hose pipe ban....

We arrived at Raglan. Beames dropped us off in town whilst he went to the viewpoint to check the surf. There were some super cool boutique and retro/vintage shops there. I bought a really cool ukalalie for £21 but we found out later that it won't stay in tune :( need to buy some gaffer tape and try that. Beames returned disappointed that the waves weren't good enough to surf but we went to the beach anyways to have a walk. The sand on the beach was dark due to...

We woke late and Hannah made us some amazing pancakes with fresh pineapple and bananas for breakfast! They also very kindly did some washing for us! We made some sandwiches for lunch and after a card game it was nearly 2pm!! So we set off to Raglan for Beames to show us where he surfs. It was so kind of them to have both then the day off work to show us around! Especially since they had only been married 4 weeks! We stopped via an amazing coffee house and I go...

We woke at 7am after a much needed sleep! We walked aces blocks to get a bus (which was hard work with jet lag and our big bags!) to this random place east of Auckland to pick up our van! It was quite funny because on approach there were beautiful big camper vans, but as we got closer we could see that ours was the tiny car like van parked between them! The paperwork was really quick and we soon had our van! It is the same width as our old ford and a bit tall...