Hello New Zealand!

We arrived on Saturday 25th October to our home for the next year- New Zealand. Unfortunately it was raining. But we were still excited! We were also very tired after our 13 hour flight from Chile..and a bit confused after losing a whole day while on the flight!! We quickly got orientated in Auckland, it´s a great city and not too big so quite easy to get to know quite quickly. The first thing we noticed about the city was the abundance in Sushi restaurants (YES!!)..and also how like England it was..there is a WH Smith equivalent and a Boots equivalent. It was all so civilised and familiar to us after spending 9 months in South America where nothing is like home!

Our plan for travelling around New Zealand is completely different to our South America jaunt. We decided we would buy a camper van to eat and sleep in, to allow us more freedom and to really go off the beaten track wherever we want. In South America it was all about long bus journey after long bus journey and it really got tiring- the 3 day bus journey we did should never be repeated! So our first mission in New Zealand was to find a van that we could call home!

We spent a few days around Auckland centre seeing a few sights like the magnificent Sky Tower, which at 328m the tallest structure in the Southern hemisphere. We went right to the top on a beautiful day and had amazing views across all Auckland- pretty impressive views! My favourite thing about New Zealand so far is the wonderful colour of the sea- it´s a lovely turquoise blue due to the volcanic minerals and looks stunning in the sun. So it was great to see the Auckland harbour with the sea sparkling below us from the top of the Sky Tower.

We visited all the different suburbs of Auckland- Newmarket has great shopping, Ponsonby is sweet with lots of little cafes and we had a morning exploring Devonport, climbing up two small mountains to see some lovely views. We had amazing Fish and Chips there too- we are very pleased to see that Fish and Chips is a bit of a New Zealand staple meal..as it is in the UK!! Brilliant- that's one meal you really cant get in South America!

Auckland has many great traits, one being that it is full of volcanoes- the city is actually built on 50 of them! And worryingly they are not all extinct! The last volcano to erupt was Rangitoto, which at 260m high is the largest and youngest of Auckland's volcanic cones. Rangitoto is an island within the beautiful Hauraki Gulf surrounding the Auckland region. The Hauraki Gulf stretches between the Coromandel Peninsula and Auckland and is dotted with islands- it is absolutely stunning! So we took a ferry out to Rangitoto Island one day and climbed to the summit of the volcano, luckily it was a lovely sunny day and the views were incredible back over to Auckland's city skyline and over to the other islands in the Gulf..really spectacular! We walked around the craters rim and we found some caves created by the lava all those years ago.

We stayed with the lovely Stickland's in Pukekohe, about 40mins outside central Auckland for a week which was so much fun and an absolute luxury too..it was lovely to have some home cooked meals and watch TV on the sofa! Sophie and Matt were absolutely amazing helping with the bits and pieces we needed for the van, and Sophie even made all the curtains for it- and they are the best curtains ever!! We also had lots of fun with their gorgeous little girls, Olivia and Alice! We all went to a great beach called Graham´s Beach an hour away and had our first BBQ on the beach!

Superbly cooked by Matt we ate sausages and chicken kebabs, and played bat and ball with the girls, it was a beautifully sunny day and Olivia even managed to get Chris in the water! Craziness- I was quite happy lying on the sand! It was great to have such a lovely base as we got ourselves sorted with the van before we set off on our 6 week adventure in the North Island, and it was actually really sad to leave Pukekohe- we'd had a lovely time thanks to our wonderful hosts!

It was very exciting leaving Pukekohe in our new 'home'! Our first stop was a lovely beach called Ahwitu, quite close to Grahams Beach so not too far from Sophie and Matts incase anything went wrong!

We had a lovely walk on the beach and then cooked dinner on our little gas stove in the van, put the bed out and had our first night in the van! And it was a great nights sleep..luckily we have a VERY comfy bed!