Tauranga and the Mount

On the plane to Auckland, I had promised to catch up with Sue in Mount Maunganui. So on Monday I set out from Hahei heading south toward Tauranga and the Mount. It was a pleasant enough drive, with not many on the roads, and plenty of time to take in the views along the way (there seem to be quiet roads with great views everywhere so far!). I stopped off in Waihi Beach to send an e-mail to Sue to let her know I'd be in town that evening, then picked up some lunch and made for the beach to enjoy it.

However as soon as I started my roast beef sandwich, the clouds turned dark and the rain started pelting down. I've heard it a few times about NZ weather, especially as it's still Spring, that it changes quickly and often from hot to cold, dry to wet. Still, it caught me by surprise!

I drove on and navigated through the city of Tauranga easily enough, finding the lovely Beaches Holiday Camp at the base of Mount Maunganui. I parked up at a spot right next to the beach, and had a nap. When I checked the e-mails later there had been no reply from Sue, so I had some dinner in the van while watching a very spirited game of beach rugby, then went into town looking for a drink and some kind of socialising.

Unfortunatly though I guess monday in the shoulder season isn't exactly the time to go looking for a big night in Maunganui. I spoke to a welsh bartender for a while over a Guinness (which wasn't too bad!), then went to another bar and chatted to a Kiwi barman, and a guy from Slovakia. Not much was happening that night. However I did have a brief chat with a girl from New York. However she seemed a bit paranoid, or maybe it was this tall Irish guy making conversation randomly, as she downed her white wine, settled her tab and vanished.

Hahei and Cathedral Cove

The next morning I was climbing blearily out of the van when Christoph appeared to let me know that he had decided to go north instead, and that the lift would not be necessary. He then left, and I prepared a nice breakfast of kiwifruit and peanut butter on toast.

Ines was doing some housekeeping (in exchange for board) at the hostel part of the camp, and came over to say bye. She gave me a blue top that she thought Christoph had left, with the request that I give it to him if I see him on the way. So I jumped in the van and checked the roads going north, but there was no sign of him.

I drove back to the camp and returned the top, said bye again and set out. Strangely enough, when I turned the corner onto the road to Whitianga, Christoph was standing by the road with his thumb out! He'd changed his mind and decided to go east. When I took him back to the hostel, it turned out the top wasn't his anyway.

So after a strange morning, I said bye for the third time to Ines and set out with Christoph to Whitianga.

It was a decent drive, taking in some nice hills and viewpoints. We stopped off for lunch in Kuaotunu, and finished off the garlic mussels. We then managed to drive past Whitianga without realising, and took a detour up through Cook's beach. On the way we decided that rather than drive all the way round to Whitianga, it would be better to go to Hahei, a pleasant beach resort town near the famous Cathedral Cove. It was probably for the best anyway, as the camp grounds in Cook's Beach have both been closed. Speaking to a local shopowner I found out that the land has become too valuable, with some baches selling for over $2 million.

Still, Hahei is a great destination, and the camp ground is a 5 minute walk from the beach and the start of the Cathedral Cove walk. When I arrived and found a decent spot, I realised that the camp ground also contained the hostel that I had stayed at last year in the same place. As well as that, according to the Stray schedule, Mike would have been arriving in less than an hour after I got there.

The weather was fine, so I filled my water bottle and set off to check out the Cathedral Cove walk. It's a lovely walk, with some very Shire-like hills and great views. The cove itself is alright, but to be honest I preferred the walk!

I got back to the camp, made some dinner of boiled baby potatoes and tuna in olive oil. As I ate it, I was entertained by some of the staff trying to coax a trailer of dirt out onto the middle of the camp field. After dinner I was sitting with my feet up on the back of the van when Mike walked past. He had indeed arrived earlier, and just finished the Cathedral Cove walk.

It was good to see that he was getting on alright, he seemed to be excited about the tour so far. He had seen an early showing of Borat! The movie came out in the UK at the beginning of the month, but in NZ it doesn't open until November 23rd! Apparently it's great. He said the entire audience was laughing outloud, which sounds pretty cool.

Mike went back to the hostel to have a much-needed BBQ, and I took my mp3 player down to the beach to see the sunset. The beach in Hahei is very nice, but what was even better was watching the gulls diving from great heights into the ocean to catch fish. Every few minutes or so another one would circle higher then suddenly dive down into the water with a huge splash, and resurface after a few moments with a flopping fish in its beak.

Coromandel Town

Today Mike was to go his own way, and take on a tour with Stray. We set out from the north beach camp and drove into Auckland. Thankfully it was relatively easy to find the city center, it's a bit mad driving in Auckland as the place is so big you have to use a motorway just to get from one part to another.

I parked the car near the ACB hostel, and went in with Mike while he booked his tour and I purchased some insurance for the van. What, I'd been without insurance for a week? Well, yeah. In NZ insurance is not compulsary, though as I'll be driving around for the next month or two on unfamiliar roads, third party insurance is a good idea.

A good thing about the insurance is that it's the car thats insured, so other drivers can quite legitimately drive it as long as they have a license.

Anyway, Mike booked his trip, and as luck would have it, Stray are currently offering $200 off any two-island trips. Sweet as! I bid him farewell after he had checked in, and set off out of Auckland.

I drove south along the motorway, then turned east toward the Coromandel. It was pretty cool to be setting off by myself, if perhaps a little daunting. I had no plan as to where I was going to go, or how long I'd stay anywhere.

As it happened, the weather was pretty grim, but I made my way up the west side of the Coromandel, and at a picnic stop got the Lonely Planet guide out to read up about a few destinations. Coromandel Town sounded pretty good, it had a small, friendly camp ground, some nice walks, and a famous mussel shop. I decided that would be the first stop, and drove up the coastal road from Thames (a very nice drive, probably better when it's not raining though).

When I got there, I was greeted by a very funny site manager Wendy who was happy to tell me all about the area, as well as the bloody drivers who keep breaking the speed limits in the road up from Thames. She also told me that the Coromandel Smoking Company was cloing soon, and if I wanted any mussels I'd better get going.

I parked the van, rushed out to the shop and picked up two 150g bags of smoked mussels, one plain and the other garlic. I then brought the first bag, along with the laptop into the common room with the intention of updating this blog.

However as I sat down I got chatting to a girl from Madrid called Ines (with an acute over the E.. not sure how to do that on this keyboard), and a German from Stuttgart called Christoph. The two of them were great craic, so rather than blog, we went for a walk and then watched the first half of the Lord of the Rings part 1. Ines fell asleep.

As it happened, Christoph was looking a lift across to Whitianga the next day. As I had planned to go that general direction, I was happy to offer him a seat in the van.

Back in Auckland

After a night at Matakohe, we were just a couple of hours out of Auckland. We got to Auckland just after lunchtime, and after a bit of stressing around the roads in northern Auckland, managed to locate the Takapuna Top 10 camp ground. This was quite a nice camping ground, but not quite as perfect as the Matakohe. Still, for a city camp ground it was good.

After a nap to recover, I met up with Mike and we went to the Pizza Hut round the corner. After a stomach-burstingly large pizza with stuffed crust each, we staggered across to a DVD shop. We couldn't rent without membership, but they did have some DVDs on sale. I picked up Die Hard, and the three theatrical version Lord of the Rings DVDs for $20 each. We went back to the camp ground, unplugged the TV in the TV room, plugged in the laptop and watched Die Hard. That is such an awesome movie, a perfect mix of comedy and action.

The Camping Life

The next day the rainy weather from the previous couple of days had caught up with us, and we drove out of the park ground in the rain. The drive was even more winding and hilly than before, with some really amazing forest stretches. I can imagine this country would be a really great place to drive through, either in a souped up American hotrod or on a motorbike (hear that Skry ;) ?).

We drove for an hour or so, and the weather improved. By the time we got to Dargaville, the sun had come out and the day was looking nice. We drove up to the Dargaville museum / lookout point. We passed a very twee farm-machinery museum on the way up, and the museum carpark was full of over-70's. Rather than shuffle round with the denture daytrippers, we just took a look at the view over the town before leaving. That morning I had picked up some superglue, and took the opportunity to fix a snap in the van's rainguard.

We drove on from Dargaville for about an hour or so, and decided on a whim to stop in to the "Top 10" camp ground at Matakohe. As it turned out, Top 10 camping grounds are a chain, I guess they're aiming to be in the top 10 of camping ground chains or something. Anyway, as it happened, the camp at Matakohe was superb, with really nice facilities, an amazing view, and it even had internet access. Well, it wasn't the fastest or most reliable, but it was fine for checking e-mails.

As we had arrived early (just after lunchtime), we had time to do a bit of sitting around in the sun. That evening we charged the laptop in the lounge area and Mike got to have a go at Halflife 2 (I managed to download it through Steam while in Paihia.. fastest internet in NZ I've seen so far!).

It was great being able to stay in a place with a decent kitchen, that provided washing up liquid in the kitchen, hand soap in the bathrooms, decent hot showers.. luxury! And all for NZ$14 per night.

Driving through Northland

We woke early on the next morning. Thankfully the double bed was easily big enough to accommodate us sleeping head to toe without any issues. We had quite a distance to cover, so we set out promptly and started the journey south.

As we had driven up the east coast, we drove back down the west, through Kaitaia, Ahipara and Manukau to name a few places. In Ahipara, we expected to find quite a bustling town, as the map suggested that there was quite a lot going on there. However all we found was a seaside street, and a hill. We tried driving up the road to see what was up in the hills, but the judderingly bumpy, narrow, cliff-edged road did my nerves no good, and we gave up on that idea. Instead, we drove on south to meet State Highway 12, where we went west to the coast and stayed at Opononi.

We stayed the night at Opononi Beach Holiday Park. It was a nice enough place, and after a long day's driving we were happy to have an early night.

To the Cape

After a couple of relaxing days in Paihia, we set off for Cape Reinga. On the way we passed through the delightfully named Puketona, at which point the highway went north through Kerikeri (known for it's year round fruit production), and stopped off in Mangonui for lunch. The road we were following was the Twin Coast highway, a route that takes on several highways but represents a great way to travel up one coast and down the other, taking in the sights along the way.

Apparently Mangonui is home to NZ's most famous fish and chip shop. Naturally we tried ourselves a bit of Dory with chips. It was nice, but I'm not convinced that it was the best New Zealand has to offer. More research may be required...

We decided not to try to take on 90 mile beach. Last time I did this trip was in a tour bus driven by an experienced driver who knew what to look out for. The last thing I wanted to do was get stuck in sand and end up having the van washed out to sea!

The next stage of the journey was pretty tough... We didn't check the map beforehand, but there's an unsealed road for the last 20 or so km of the drive up to the Cape. The second half of our drive therefore took about an hour longer than the first half. This was the first time I'd driven on an unsealed road, and this being a very popular road meant that it was particularly rough. We drove most of it at around 30kmph! Still, it was worth it, we passed quite a few people driving back from the Cape, so when we got there we found the car park empty. It was a bit cloudy, but the Cape's always worth a visit!

As it was getting dark soon, I didn't relish the idea of driving all the way back along the bumpy stony road, so it was a great relief to find that there was a camp site just a short drive away. It was a bit exciting driving down to the campsite, as the road was both unsealed and very steep. The van did very well though, and we found the DOC (Department of Conservation) camp ground easily. It was located beside a nice beach, and had basic facilities like toilets and (cold) showers.

Mike and I unfolded the folding chairs I'd picked up for $10 each at Wharehouse (Where everyone gets a bargain!), set up the portable gas stove and warmed up some Irish stew (from a can).

Doing up the van!

With much help from DJ, we bought some wood and used John's tools to put together a nice solid frame for the bed in the van.

We took a trip to the Wharehouse for curtains, duvet, pillow, sheets, cutlery, cooler box, storage boxes, and a supply of dried noodles. I also picked up a travel gas stove. John had a light foam double mattress, which he kindly gave with two sets of sheets, and the transformation was complete! With the curtains closed it became a cosy, comfortable bedroom, and with the curtains opened it transforms back into a van! Sweet.

That was on the Friday and Saturday, and on Sunday morning we set off for the Bay of Islands. It was a nice drive, through some beautiful scenery, and the two of us arrived in Paihia in time for dinner. The roads all the way up were quiet, and with the sun shining down it couldn't have been better.

I parked in front of a hostel across the road from the Saltwater Lodge, where Mike stayed. It was a little strange sleeping in a van, but as it was nicely curtained off from the lights and surroundings, I had a great night's sleep.

If you had been reading my previous entries, you may have already read about Paihia here. Last time I was in Paihia I didn't do much besides visit Russell, the historic previous-capital of New Zealand. This time Mike and I took a walk up to Waitangi, the place where the infamous treaty was signed and is still the source of much controversy today.
After a good day's walking on Monday, we finished off the day with a couple of beers by the sea (Monteith's Summer Ale - quality!).

Found a van!

I had pretty much given up looking for a camper van in the Whangarei area, having checked online the previous day and found nothing much. However John had asked a friend of his at the hostel if he'd seen anything in the area. As is happens he'd seen some vans for sale not far away at a dealership.

DJ was good enough to drive us over to the dealer's on Kairora road. We saw a couple of camper vans outside my budget, but also spotted a very decent looking Nissan Largo people carrier priced at $3,500. We thought we'd be able to fold down the seats for sleeping, so took it for a test drive. I was most impressed by the very retro cool wooden steering wheel. When we got it back we found that the seats had been welded to stop them moving, and so couldn't be folded flat.

This was a pity as everything else about the van was spot on. However, DJ suggested that if the seats were removed we'd be able to put together a wooden frame for a bed, and convert it. This sounded like a plan, so I put in an offer of $3000, which was accepted.

The purchase process was very simple, it just involved filling out a transfer of ownership form, and a trip to the bank for the cash. Half an hour later I drove out in my own van!

More van photos here!

I didn't bother with the pre-purchase inspection this time, as the Warrent of Fitness was very new, and to be honest I just had a better feeling about this one. What I did do was take it into a garage for a service. It did need a bit of work, as the timing belts needed adjusting and the brakes were a bit soft. In the end, the rear brake discs had to be replaced, along with the spark plugs, an adjustment to the belts, and some other car stuff that I can't remember now. It cost about $500 to have the work done, but I had budgetted that into my offer on the van in the first place.

Oh yeah.. I must remember to get back to the garage at some stage.. they still have the seats!

Going to Kamo

DJ drove us over to a place near Whangarei called Kamo to see the camper van. It was not in great shape, but thinking that I would put in a lower offer than the requested NZ $9,500, I took it for a test drive. It was a laugh trying to drive it as without power steering it was like a tank, and had a tendancy to pull to the left.

Still, I took it to a test center to have a "Pre-purchase inspection". It took about an hour after which I was convinced that the van would need a fair amount spent on it, and wasn't a good deal.

Still hunting for a van...

On the hunt for a camper van, I checked the listings on Trademe.co.nz for the local area. There weren't many to choose from, but I did find one which seemed pricey but very good. I took down the details and called the owner, arranging to see it the next day.

When I ran the particulars past John, he offered a few tips on what to look for, and even asked a guy working for him, DJ, to drive me over the next day to check it out.

Looking for a van...

We didn't want to spend long hanging around in the city, so we jumped on the bus from Auckland to Whangarei. It was an easy journey, about 2 hours with a coffee stop along the way. This was the first chance for Mike to see a little of the NZ countryside, as the bus was going north.

Whangarei is a small, unremarkable town. We stayed at the YHA hostel on a hill overlooking the area, run by an awesome guy called John. He's in his late 60's or 70's, but with piercings in his ears, eyebrow and tongue. He also happens to be very friendly and helpful, and runs a free walking tour of the local caves and glowworm sites.

The hostel itself is as quiet as the town, and we got a 4-bed dorm to ourselves. My plan was to locate a camper van, with the aim of selling it for something near what I paid for it at the end of the trip.

That night Mike and I went for a walk around to find a bar or something, but the town was very quiet, so we went to a restaurant called Killer Prawn. As it happened it was a bit pricey, and neither of us was very hungry, so we settled for a starter each. As is happened the starters were huge, I couldn't have managed a main.

New Laptop

During the TV the previous night, I had noticed an advert for a big sale on at Harvey Norman. I had need of a laptop to do some work while in NZ, so we jumped on a bus to the suburbs and checked out the deals. I ended up buying a nice Compaq Presario V2000. It's not much of a game machine, but it's small, light and suits my purposes well. Also it looks great ;)

That evening we used our free Domino's pizza vouchers that had been given to us at check-in, and spent the evening playing some of the games that came with the laptop.

Considering that November in New Zealand is similar to May, it was suprisingly warm. Since arriving here I've been wearing shorts. It does seem changeable though, it can go from being hot and sunny to cloudy and cold very quickly.

NZ 2

Back in NZ! Tired from the flight, we were too early to check in to the ACB hostel, so sat at the marina instead. We checked in at 11am and were given a room on the 10th floor, with a decent view over Queen Street. That evening we ate at a Belgian restaurant on Vulcan Lane, quite a cool little road with some funky bars and live music.

Mike was a bit shell shocked at being in New Zealand, but it felt quite familiar to me having been here before. The time change from Vancouver was only a few hours, but by early evening we weren't up for going out so sat and watched some random NZ sports channel at the hostel.