The Rest of New Zealand!

Again, apologies for the lack of blogging action! We are now sat in Auckland airport awaiting our flight to Sydney, so have an hour or so spare to download the next chunk of thrills and spills!

Following on(ish) from the last entry, we still had a few days in the South Island to do before heading up to Auckland.


On Sunday 22nd February, after careful consideration, we decided that we would go to a town called Geraldine to see the worlds largest jumper.

The bloke who had knitted it had also recreated the entire Bayeux Tapestry as a mosaic (and had made up the ending, which is apparently missing from the original) by hand painting it onto tiny metal fragments. The chap had started this project in 1979, and had finished it in 2004! Goodness knows where he found the time to knit the jumper as well. New Zealand isn’t all about adrenaline sports you know.

The next day, we then drove on to Akaroa, where I swam with some dolphins - it was bloody freezing water, but it was great fun. Lauren opted to stay on the boat and not jump in, but got some good pictures and a video!

We then headed back into Christchurch to clean up the van and hand it back to the company. This took quite a while, and luckily when we handed it back, they failed to notice the new long(ish) dent, courtesy of a multi-story car park, or the new portion of chips in the windscreen. Quite a relief!! You just can’t get the drivers these days… We then had a great day in Christchurch, and went to the best pub so far, called Dux de Lux, which served alcoholic ginger beer - very good indeed.


On Thursday 26th, we arrived in Auckland in the blazing sunshine. We made our way to our ok hostel, which provided a free supper each - I.e. double portions for me as they don’t really do veggie stuff - good wheeze. We then met up for some beers with a chum based in Auckland called Rob.

The following day was collection day for our new van for the North Island. We met the bloke from the company at the wharf, who presented us with a veritable motor home in comparison to the van we’d previously had.

The chap was a bit of a dodgy geezer, who wanted cash for the van - this proved problematic given the cash point would only let me have a certain amount per day , but we eventually sorted it out, and headed to the supermarket to get provisions for the next few weeks (soup and pasta). We finished the day off with some more drinks with Rob, and his girlfriend very kindly let us crash in her spare room, on the promise that we’d go to a music festival with them in a place called Matakana the following day.

Shortly before leaving Auckland on the Saturday morning, we heard on the radio that the music festival had been postponed for a day, due to rain and gales, which kind of played merry havoc with the plans, so we carried on our journey up north by ourselves. On our way, we came across a cheese factory for a spot of lunch (Blog followers, I have to report that the cheese was non-vegetarian, but was consumed with gusto by both of us)

For the next few days, we drove around the top of the North Island, staying at some beautiful campsites and seeing some spectacular scenery.

Highlights include the drive up to Cape Reigna, via the ninety mile beach, and the spectacular sand dunes, which where absolutely huge, and totally exhausting to climb up!

The next weekend was again upon us, and we had arranged to meet with Rob and his girlfriend and some others, at a beach house they had rented for the weekend in Coromandel. We had a fantastic weekend of midnight swimming, surfing (nearly), a massive bbq and the amazing Hot Water Beach, where if you dig in the right place two hours before low tide, water comes out of the ground at about 80 degrees! Very strange, but great fun, apart from the scalded feet!

We left the beach house on Sunday to carry on with the southern half of the northern island, with a lot of ground to cover in only a week. We managed to squeeze a lot into the week, including caving 300ft underground at Waitomo, home of the impressive glow worms, horse trekking in Taupo - resulting in a very sore bum, followed on my birthday by go-karting and mountain biking (another sore bum), and topped off with a huge birthday curry in a town called Rotorua (final sore bum of the week, thank goodness).

We then started heading back to Auckland in order to drop the van off this morning, without any dents! All in all, we had a fantastic time in New Zealand, and reckon that the camper van option is certainly the best way to do it!

Next stop Australia, where we’ll be meeting Andrew later this afternoon…