We had been looking forward to spending a few days in Rotorua as we had heard and read good things about it and also it would be nice not to be putting the tent up and down everyday! We arrived on a Sunday after an hours drive to find a very quiet smelly town. Due to levels of Sulphur in the air, Rotorua often smells like rotten eggs, at first quite noticeable but it soon goes away, or you get used to it I suppose! We found a campsite really close to the town and...

Time to move on to the next place again. We are getting experts at the camping life now. Next on the road trip was Tauranga about 45 minutes away from Waihi. We had a campsite in mind and headed straight there. It was a gorgeous day, the warmest so far at around 27c, its nice having the summer weather. After our usual routine of putting up the tent, we headed out to explore. We needed to drive into the main town as our campsite was around 4km's away. As it wa...

A one hour drive south of Whangamata brought us to our next destination, Waihi. We are really enjoying the short drives through the country side and the scenery is amazing. Its like the North Yorkshire Moors but everywhere!! The main attraction of Waihi is the gold mining industry. We found another motorcamp in Waihi, this time abit closer to nature as our tent was pitched right next to a duck pond and amongst a few chickens, sheep and a pig! Our one day here was...

Travelling south down the Coromandel Peninsula, we arrived at our second road trip destination, Whangamata. On the way we stopped at Hot Water Beach, which is a small beach that when it is low tide, you can dig yourself a hole to sit in on the beach and due to hot springs, the water that comes in from the sea is hot and you can have your own personal spa on the beach! Unfortunately for us it wasn't low tide till the evening, but we still got to see some prett...

The first stop on our road trip was Whitianga, which is situated on the Coromandel Peninsula about 2 hours from Auckland. After filling the boot and back seats full of bags and camping gear we headed to the east coast. The journey took us through the Coromandel forest where we got to see some lovely scenery. The car we have rented is a small 2005 Daihatsu Sirion and is very easy to drive and having power steering unlike the good old fiesta made it alot easier. At...