Well after 9 hours of travel we arrived in Auckland New Zealand for the beginning leg of our around the world adventure. We picked up a nice little Toyota Corolla hire car at the airport, packed it full of our gear and headed off for one of Did’s friends houses for the first night. In the morning, we decided to discover Auckland’s apparently bristling coffee scene. We found a number of small boutique coffee shops that served nice brews, but the general consensus is that Melbourne still does it better. After a late and casual start we headed north to discover the top of the North Island. But first we had to buy some sleeping bags and a camping mattress. We headed to a local sleeping bag factory for this and with Dids making the executive decisions we ended up with some -10 degree C rated sleeping bags made of duck down and the worlds thickest self inflating double mattress. My only concern with these purchases was if I could physically bear to sleep in the sleeping bags if it wasn’t -10. A concern I found to be quite warranted that night as I slowly died in mine! I did learn though that Dids is definitely a gadgets girl and she likes the best, god bless her. I’m sure if we could have found something rated for the arctic winter I’d be writing about it now.
Moving on with our new acquisitions, the weather on the road north was perfect and the scenery absolutely gorgeous. The first night we stayed in the one of the best camp sites we have ever been to. It was in a little place called Sand Spit and it was run by a really nice bloke and his wife who had apparently done an overseas trip much like what we have planned. As a side note, we are getting really sick of people telling us they have done our trip before! No you haven’t, get out of it! Back on track…the camp site provided absolutely incredible facilities including a trampoline, kayaks, a little sail boat and heaps more! All this right on the shore front as you can see from the photos. So after setting up camp, and doing a few back flips on the trampoline, we talked to a few others at the site and got acquainted with some local wildlife.
Some extreme back flipping action
Some wildlife interactions - Dids' first friend on the road
The next day we moved on to Whangerai for a bit of a scout. There wasn’t really much of note there but it did make for an easy day. Accomplishments were that Dids did see a pretty cool UFO house and we finally formulated an understanding on a little road rule quirk they seem to have in New Zealand. The quirk goes, when turning into oncoming traffic, no one has any idea who has to give way! Sometimes the oncoming traffic would stop, others only oncoming traffic turning down the same street as you would give way and finally maybe the turning vehicle would give way. Our understanding was basically centered on the game of chicken…. Maybe these kiwis have too many thoughts of sheep on their mind to make sense of proper road rules.
UFO house, nice spotting Dids
Whangarai Falls in the middle of Whangarai - Show cased beautifully I would say
Moving on and with a little less slagging off about the kiwis, we headed for the Bay of Islands. On the way we stumbled upon some absolutely amazing beachside locations including one that we both reckon could make it into our top 3 placed in the world to live, just stunning! But we aren’t giving that location away too easily…. The Bay of Islands is a very picturesque place if the weather is good, especially the sea side village of Russell. Here we discovered coffee served by the bowl, awesome!
Bay of Islands
It was 6 days in total that we spent in NZ and the general feeling is that we need a fair bit more time to explore the area. The people seemed genuinely friendly and really easy going. They do like to say bro a lot which is pretty funny and they don’t seem to mind when Dids makes fun of them with a really poorly executed kiwi accent :)
Nice place, next stop the UK. 27 hours of travel, no good. Travelling on a Qantas A380, hopefully cool.
