We allowed ourselves a lie-in until 8.30, and then filled up the car with petrol and our assortment of plastic bottles with cold water from Burger King and drove to Taupo. Once at the I-site, I was asking where various things were and when it came to asking where the thermal pools were, embarrassed the lady by asking where the "spermal, no... spermal, no..." was. Alice had realised she needed some shoes to walk the 20 km hike of the Tongariro crossing in, so we q...

The good news was that we hadn't been blown away, the bad news was that because we hadn't dared go outside the car, we hadn't noticed that I had left the headlights on, and so had ran the car battery down. Luckily there was a car at the petrol station, so I went over to ask if they had jump leads. They hadn't but they were going to the lighthouse too, so they dropped their bags and guitar in our car and drove us up there. Danny was from Brisbane, and Grant was fr...

This morning was spent at Wai-O-Tapu Thermal Park, although we're a bit annoyed at Bo, the lay at Peter Pan's who we booked it with, because the leaflet she gave us was for the park itself and so we thought we had just brought the entrance for it. However it turned out we had paid, presumably considerably more, for transfers there, which, given she had just booked a campervan for us, she should have known we didn't need. I was maybe expecting the driver to at lea...

The radio station we were listening to as we were driving away from Piha announced the line-up for Raggamuffin festival. The final act they mentioned was... Damian Marley (apparently the one person Alice has to see before she can die happy). This caused a flurry of excitement and a rush to find somewhere with Wi-Fi so we could book our tickets (we had already used Alice's 3G on her tablet to check when and where it was). It's on 31st January and 1st February whic...

We thought it best to get away from the shop ASAP this morning, so ate breakfast at a picnic spot along the drive- despite the route 12 road being longer, we thought we may as well drive down the west coast to see both sides. Further along we stopped at a lodge so we could pay $5 each to use the showers, and to wash up our mugs and cutlery, and to clean up the fridge, which you can detach and use as a cool box, because our milk had spilt everywhere in it. It was ...