On Tuesday we drove to New Plymouth via Brooklands Park, where we saw several old trees including one that's 2000 years old! Our campsite was on a cliff overlooking the beach and we did a short evening walk along the coast. On Wednesday we went to see the waterfalls and fountain at Pukekura Park before driving to Hamilton via Waitomo Gloworm Caves (photos weren't allowed) - the gloworms were eerie but very pretty. Today (Thursday) we drove back to Auckland via...

On Saturday we drove to Taupo via Wai-o-tapu, another geothermal reserve - very awesome and colourful, a wonderful place. We didn't like Taupo very much, in contrast to Rotorua where we could easily have stayed another week! - Taupo is basically a stag and hen resort with lots of watersports and noisy cars! We ate dinner at a friendly cafe that served lots of GF food - I had a courgette crust-free quiche and Dom had a salmon & asparagus quiche, along with l...

On Wednesday we drove to Tauranga and stayed near Mount Maunganui; in the morning we did a high speed dinghy boat trip from Hahei which went around beautiful Cathedral Cove (which featured in The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe) and other places around the Coromandel Peninsula. We also visited Hot Water Beach (where you can dig a geothermal hot pool in the sand - we just had a paddle, as the water was really hot!) and Opoutere beach. We didn't do much in Taur...

On Sunday we travelled from Whangarei Heads to Waiwera via Pakiri beach. We tried to visit the beaches of Cape Rodney and Leigh but the map and the GPS were against us! The campsite at Waiwera was very nice and our campervan was on the beachfront - we visited Waiwera Spa as soon as we got there, where we had 1 hour in a private spa then a couple of hours in several pools of different temperatures. The spa cafe had GF burger buns but I decided to have a smoothi...

Since we last posted on Thursday, we have travelled north from Auckland to Whangarei. On Friday we travelled to Parakai Springs via a twisty and foresty road called Scenic Drive - we did a short nature walk at a forest in Arataki, saw a 700 year old kauri tree with a 7m girth and drove to a black sand beach at Karekare. After we left Scenic Drive, we took a short detour to Muriwai Beach where Dom ate a huge icecream cone (chocolate & coconut ripple with mint ...