After brekky we hit the road with today's destination being Napier about 100 kilometres away. The road there was fairly quiet with only minimal aggressive and arrogant tossers to deal with. The landscape along the way was very green and verdant as usual and we drove through a lot of commercial plantation forests. The weather started out gorgeous today and we arrived in Napier under a blue sky. A lot of the roads into Napier were lined with huge palm trees and the...

We had a lie in, a late brekky and chilled out all morning. Around lunchtime we went for a drive down to the lake. With a surface area of 616 square kilometres it is the largest lake by surface area in New Zealand. It lies in a caldera created by a supervolcanic eruption which occurred approximately 26,500 years ago. The lake was very calm and peaceful today and the view across it to the snow capped mountains was gorgeous. We had some lunch with this view as the ...

We hit the road straight after brekky and hoped that the drivers would be less aggressive today. They were but only very slightly. We drove south from Mount Maunganui for about an hour to Rotorua which is famous for it's geothermal activity lying on top of the Rotorua caldera. The city air was sulphur rich and smelt of rotten eggs. Apart from the sulphur air and the small glimpses we got of steam billowing out of the ground Rotorua was a very ordinary place. We h...

We had parked the camper van near to a picnic table, big mistake! These things only cause trouble. What is it with people (sheep) and picnic tables? They see them and seem to get tunnel vision having to use the picnic table no matter what. Personally I think that they're overrated but others seem to wet their knickers over them such as the two women who pulled up on the site next to us last night. Now camping etiquette unless I'm much mistaken means respecting ot...

We left our wonderful sea view at Takapuna after brekky and left Auckland for the second time. On our way out of the city we needed to visit Mighty Campers near the airport to get a snagging list of problems we've had with the camper van sorted out. We drove south along the motorway and past the impressive city skyline for one last time. We successfully managed to navigate the confusing Auckland road system today and got to Mighty with no problems. Our snagging l...