NEWS FROM NORTH NEW ZEALAND

HOPE YOUR GETTING USED TO THE PICTURES FIRST AS WE CANNOT DO NOTHING ELSE ,SORRY!!!

US LADY KNOX GEYSER

FIJI'S DEPARTURE TERMINAL

OUR SMALL PLANE

AUCKLAND FROM THE SKYTOWER

ONE WAY TICKET!!!!!

MEETING UP WITH AMY & RICH

SHEEP GET EVERYWHERE IN NZ

A ROOM WITH A VIEW

YES YOU  HAVE A PROBLEM

THE COOK FINALLY GETS BACK IN THE KITCHEN

FISHING AT SPIRIT BAY

DOLPHINS BY THE SHORE

A WINDSWEPT 90 MILE BEACH

SHAYNE & SHARONS FARM

THE TALLEST KAURI TREE

A TWITCHER IN NZ

WHAT A LIFE

"VINCE" THE ROOSTER

NEW CHUMS BEACH SUPPOSEDLY ONE OF THE TOP TWENTY IN THE WORLD

SPOT THE THERMAL POOLS ON THE BEACH!!!!!

THE MODERN CARAVAN "STILL IN USE TODAY"

I NEED A NEW WOOLY JUMPER

JAN ZORBING

I THINK MY HEAD MUST HAVE SHRUNK AFTER THAT LAST FAST RUN

LAKE TAUPO

WELL THE BLACK SKY MAKES A GREAT BACKGROUND FOR THE GEYSER

CHAMPANGE POOL

LOOKING OUT TO THE BAY OF ISLANDS

ANOTHER WINDY DAY ON THE BEACH

NOW THATS WHAT YOU CALL A WATERFALL

Well we leave Fiji the same way as we started delayed! After turning up at the small airport ready for our two o’clock flight we discover that it is delayed, by at least two hours and as it turns out three and a half hours due to all their planes being grounded for mechanical reasons very reassuring! We at least get a free lunch back down in town by the marina, courtesy of the airline, and board our even smaller plane an eight seater run by Pacific Island air, piloted by a very laid back Fijian in a very bright yellow south pacific flowered shirt. Jan adapts well though, after having to shoe horn her on to the aircraft with cries of I’m not getting on that as she first sees it, she soon settles in and enjoys the last bit of the flight between the mountains of Vitu Livi, something about being so close to the ground it wouldn’t hurt so much if we crashed! Oh yea! Back to our hotel to recover our stored bag, we were only allowed 15 kilos on the internal flight and so had to leave about seven kilos at the hotel. After recovering our bag I had a very long discussion about the payment of our first nights stay which they didn’t think we had paid for, but after a short while on the internet I could prove we had paid, Fijian bureaucracy don’t you just love it. The next morning we fly out bound for New Zealand and with only a 20 minute delay, not at all bad for Fijian time. It’s a bright but cooler Auckland that greets us some three hours later, in no time at all we have our campervan and are out on the open road heading for the north shore of the windy city to spend our first few nights in New Zealand. We spend Sunday in Auckland doing the Sky Tower, getting a feel for the city which is well strung out rambling over several miles, the link bus service is the ideal transport to get you around the whole city. That combined with our ferry ride across the water from the north shore at Devonport makes for an enjoyable day, especially as we manage to get a good deal with a new mobile phone provider, we await to see just how good the coverage is though as we ready to move north up the island! An hour up the road is Warkworth, our first stop off point to meet up with Amy & Rich who left England four months ago in their travels around the world. Amy is our niece and arrived in NZ only a few days before us, after spending the last four months in south east Asia. They are now staying with Chris & Conny on a sort of chicken farm, earning their keep by keeping the place clean & tidy, which is a full time job with 250 chickens roaming around some even in doors, always watch where you sit or you could sit on anything. Chris & Conny invite us back for dinner, several bottles of wine later, and it’s one o’clock in the morning, we’ve caught up on all the news and through some lateral thinking, Amy has even named one of the roosters, Vince, my claim to fame having travelled halfway around the world, there’s a rooster in New Zealand named after me! We have a few problems with the camper namely the fridge is not working properly, but Apollo campers are not getting back to us after leaving three messages with their service centre because all there operators are always busy! As it turns out when I finally do manage to speak to someone after ringing there airport pick up line, the only line that a person actually answers instead of a machine, and almost losing it on the phone about the lack of service from their service centre (I haven’t been stressed like this since the photos wouldn’t go right on the blog, oh the traumas of travelling) we finally get joy and a few days rental refunded in compensation. I soon realise after talking to Daniel in the service centre on several occasions over the next week that it is only Daniel in the Apollo service centre, which is for all of Australia as well as NZ so no wonder he’s so busy, I think he’s the only operator in the southern hemisphere. Finally after one new auxiliary battery we can now keep our fresh produce from thawing out overnight, this never happened in our trusty Hilux in Oz. We wind our way slowly north, the roads in NZ are especially windy & the tyre and brake outlets here must do a roaring trade, Roger & Karen you must have had a great time here on the bike. Stopping off at Whangaruru North Head Scenic Reserve, we park with views overlooking the beach and Whangaruru Harbour. It’s during the evening that we are treated to the sight of three Orca’s hunting down and killing a large Ray in the bay about 200 metres off shore, this is just one of nature’s natural wonders that we are so lucky to see. We arrive at the top of NZ, camping at Spirits Bay, even trying a little fishing off the beach, without any luck though, but we are treated to the sight of six dolphins swimming through the surf along the beach right in front of us another amazing sight. Returning back down towards Auckland we visit 90 mile beach (it’s actually only 52 miles long), and is used as a highway for local Maoris’ and tour buses going up to Cape Reinga, the day we visit it resembles being on Felixstowe sea front in January while someone is operating a sand blasting machine in your direction, needless to say it was one of our quickest beach visits ever! We head back inland to come down through the large Kauri forest on the west coast, these trees are a magnificent sight with huge trunks up to 5 metres in diameter, and 60 metres tall, they are now protected and cannot be felled, but the loggers still harvest Kauri’s by digging them up from the peat swamplands where they have been perfectly persevered. In these swamplands there are three layers of Kauri trees dating from a few thousand years old to some 40,000 years old. We stopped overnight at a small hobby farm run by Shanye and Sharon, with just a few animals on 100 acres of paddocks & bushland, with great views from the top of the ridge. They have just put this property on the market complete with large house plus planning approval for two others for $675,000 NZ, now this even at today’s poor exchange rate equates to less money than we sold our bungalow in Felixstowe for which sits on less than a quarter of an acre, yet more food for thought? Calling back in to see Amy we spend the evening in the hot tub which has just been installed by Chris, sipping yet more bottles of wine under the stars, but it’s an early start, as our fridge is now running constantly and freezing all inside so Apollo’s Auckland depot is our next stop. Anyone coming to New Zealand who is thinking of hiring a campervan DON’T GO TO APOLLO which also trades as Cheapa Campers the customer service is lousy. We arrive to a shop full of newly arrived customers that didn’t take to kindly to me going to the front and asking to speak to a manager, and of course with this sort of bad service no manager was to be had anywhere, but after telling them the van would be parked across their gates until my problem was sorted we finally got their attention. So one hour and one new van later we are back on the road with a nice quiet working fridge plus a cabin heater which now works as well and supposedly a few more days credit on our hire, but I’ll wait and check my bank account first to see if that actually happens! We spend the evening catching up with Ethel & Roy my father’s cousins who came out here in the sixties with their campervan by ship. They broke their journey by getting off the ship after passing through the Suez Canal and driving through Africa in their Commer campervan which was specially built (campervans weren’t big in those days), and this was when Zimbabwe was still called Rhodesia so hats off to you guys for your pioneering trek, that makes our travels look quite tame by your standards. Anyway getting back to today, New Zealand with it’s 4.1 million residents in some ways seems to be stuck in some time warp some twenty years behind the UK, sixties and seventies style caravans seem to be everywhere and still in use! Pin numbers on bank cards are only just starting to get used (the times I’ve signed after using Jan’s bank card and not been picked up on it, it must be the way I’m wearing my dresses nowdays). And it was only a couple of weeks ago that it became illegal to use a mobile whilst driving. We travel down through the Coromandel peninsular enjoying the coastline on the way, Hot water beach was going to be a highlight, where you dig a hole on the beach, and then sit in hot water as it percolates up from below but one look at the crowds crammed into the small area where this actually happens means we opt for a couple of photos and then move on, too much like Brighton beach on a summers day. Rotorua is the big tourist attraction in the middle of the north Island with lots of thermal activity from where the Indian/Australia plate and Pacific plate buckle under each other below the surface, Geysers, mud holes & thermal pools you could spend a fortune here, three days is enough for us, with the highlights being for us the Zorb which Jan threw herself right into and the luge for me, these things go a lot quicker than I ever thought possible. Oh yes we enjoyed the Maori cultural evening as well but I think the kids in us managed to escape at Rotorua. The smell of rotten eggs(sulphur) follows us as we travel down to Lake Taupo, which is the flooded cone of an old volcano, stopping off at Wai-O-Tapu Thermal Wonderland for us the best value of all the thermal attractions. Several different thermal features are packed into a small area, such as the Lady Knox Geyser which erupts at 1015 am everyday (with a little prompting from some organic soap), the Champagne Pool which boils with tiny bubbles of carbon dioxide with a surface temperature of 74 degrees, several boiling mud pools and mineral terraces round off our two hour visit. We spend the next week winding our way down the east coast hoping to get a spot of fishing in at some point but the weather is against us and the rod and line stay inside the van. New Zealand’s Maori name is “Aotearoa” which means, land of the long white cloud, it certainly hasn’t changed over the years & we spend most of our time on the North Island under this very cloud, at times even a huge black cloud, like at Rotorua where the heavens opened, or at Napier where temperatures were nudging 29 degrees under the broken white cloud. It reminds us very much of the uncertainty of the English weather and with the chilly evenings here, it’s a gentle nudge of the things to come when we get back home. The North island for us has been far more scenic than we expected and once your away from the cities nice and quiet, if only the campervan and the weather had been a bit kinder to us it would have been a great experience, but now we move on to the South Island and hopefully the jewel in the crown so fingers crossed the weather improves just a little, while we spend our last few weeks in the southern hemisphere.