On the Road Again

Sunday we picked up our campervan - a size smaller than the one we had with Irene and Neil. It is the same size as the one we have at home.  We headed north from Auckland and thought we would be getting into a more sparsely populated area.  Well it is more sparseley populated but there are still lots of big towns. The countryside is so green.  There are many orchards, dairy farms, vegetable farms and wineries.  We had to get used to the windy narrow roads again as you can see.

About 3 hours north of Auckland you come to an area known as the Bay of Islands.  This is a beautiful area with about 140 islands( still doesn't beat La Ronge which has over 1000).  We took a boat cruise around the islands. Boat was quite large with two stories and held about 100 people but it looked pretty small compared to the big curise ship parked in the harbour.  On our boat tour we went to the famous Hole in the Rock.  However, it was a little too rough for the large boat we were on to go through that day. The boat does go through on a calm day with only about 2 metres clear on each side

An exciting expeelorience on this cruise was to watch the Dolphins chasing the boat.  They were jumping very high in the air but this was my most disappointing picture taking experience as much as I tried I could never get them in the air.  The best I have is the picture below.

We stopped on an Island that had a very nice Beach.  Did not have our swimming stuff so we just walked in up to our knees.

There is a chain of campgrounds in New Zealand called Top Ten and that is where we are staying.  Very nice campgrounds.  In the Bay of Islands we stayed at Russell which is a very old town and there must have been 50 campervans there.   We had to cross the Bay by ferry to get there.

The hardest thing about booking the campgrounds is to pronounce the names as the North Island is the real home of the Maori culture.  So most of the places have Maori names - sometimes they will have two names - a Maori and English. So the pronunciation of names is a challenge.  Wh is translated into the "fa " sound so here are a couple examples :  Our first night we stayed at Whangarerei which is pronounced as fanjery.  Tonight we are at Whatuwhiwhi which is pronounced fatufifi.  Not sure we got it right yet.

Over the next two day we will go to our furthest point -- the very northern tip of the Island  is Cape Reinga and is very sacred to the Maori culture and here you have the dividing line between the two oceans - Pacific ocean and Tasman sea.   It is about a two hour drive from where we are at tonight and there is a 90 mile beach going up the narrow peninsula to get there.  If we take a bus it will actually drive one way on the beach but we are not allowed to take the campervan on the beach.  So we are still deciding what we will do.  On Saturday we will head back down the other side of the North Island and back  close to Auckland.  We return the campervan on Sunday and the drop off point is near the airport so we will stay in an airport hotel Sunday night.  Early on Monday we will fly back to Sydney, Australia and spend one last day there before heading home on Tuesday. We will fly back through Vancouver and will be back home on Tuesday March 13.  It is hard to believe a two month trip away is coming to an end.